Louvring It Up

Yeah, I know. And I'm not going to apologize for that pun. I don't think puns are the kind of thing a person should apologize for. I like to think my physics teacher from high school would be proud of moments like these. By which I mean moments I revel in the terrible corniness of my own puns, not moments in which I am unapologetic. But I digress.

"So, France?" you say? "Yes!" I would reply. I have now been to France. Paris - if we're being specific, which I will be for now.

Thursday night, three friends and I headed off to Victoria Station to catch an overnight coach to Paris. Armed with sleeping pills, an eye mask, and Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me podcasts, I was ready to pass out for the duration of the bus ride. My body and the border agents had different ideas. After waking up at the border to hand over my passport and drag my backpack through a scanner, I drifted in and out of drug induced sleep for the rest of the bus ride. Consequently, when we arrived in Paris before 7 am the next morning, I was not in the most navigation ready state for the walk to the 20 euro a night hotel we had booked. It was 5.2 kilometers away, but I had scribbled down directions before leaving Paris and we had a few hours to kill before we could check in, so walking was fine with me.

After some vague confusion, struggles to communicate, and a drawn out breakfast in a random cafe, we made it to the hotel. My friends took a short nap while I pored over a map of Paris and did some homework. Around 11, everyone who had fallen asleep was shaken awake and we ventured out to the streets of Paris.

The first day, we hit the Louvre and the Carrousel du Louvre. I don't know a whole lot about art and won't pretend to. We saw the Mona Lisa, which was crowded and smaller than expected, and then I spent the rest of my time in the museum wandering around taking pictures of art I thought was funny. Funny paintings? Pshaw! Well, art snobs, tell me this isn't funny:

I have more examples should any skeptics remain.

After the Louvre, we were pretty exhausted but found a place to have dinner. We ordered some escargot to share, and I excitedly ordered some sort of sandwich with raclette cheese on top of it.

"It's the food of my people!" I proclaimed to the table at large. I was met mostly with strange looks, as I so often am in life.

Fairly beat, we made our way back to the hotel.

On day two, feet still sore from the exhaustive walking of the day before, we set off to cross more things off the list of "must-dos" that I had gotten from a co-worker who is a retired French teacher as well as simply amazing. We made it to Notre Dame, Musee D'Orsay, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower with sandwiches and crepes eaten along the way.

I haven't the energy to write about everything in detail (particularly because I am procrastinating homework right now) but I doubt that anyone would have the energy to read all of that anyway. Right? Right.

The Musee D'Orsay, however, warrants a bit of dwelling on. It's a museum of modern art. Again, I spent most of my time looking for vaguely amusing pictures or things I've read about for various classes. The Musee D'Orsay used to be a train station, though, and after World War II prisoner of war, victims of Nazism, and concentration camp survivors would return to France via that train station. I was more interested in seeing the building for that reason than the art - given that I had already seen swaths of it the day before. The only reminder of its past, besides the interior architecture, was a plaque outside that we nearly walked past.

I was surprisingly adept at translating the sign for my friends. I don't speak the French, but the amount of cognates and the repetition certainly helped. I could give you my shoddy translation now, but it falls apart at the end and shoving it through a shitty translator would probably build character. For you. Not for me. You're welcome.

The final morning in Paris, two of my friends and I went to a big ass cemetery, the Pére Lachaise Cemetery. It's sprawling and home to a lot of formerly famous people that now have the potential to be famous zombies. Good luck to them and good luck to the Parisians at surviving that. My main focus for visiting the cemetery, besides liking cemeteries in general, was to see Oscar Wilde's grave. I may be writing more on that later. We shall see if I find the time and energy. Or if the zombie apocalypse comes. That would probably limit my ability to carry out many of my daily functions, let alone blog updating.

For now, I must conclude this rambling, bullet point of a blog entry and try to return my focus to the homework I have been putting off. So, I'll leave you with one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes: "Life is far too important a thing to ever talk seriously about it."