So Long, Paris. 5/29/09

We got breakfast with the girls, as planned, and a funny little thing happened: I tried to order a black coffee without milk, and instead, I just got warm milk. I ordered in English, too! It wasn't like I was trying to practice my French or anything.

We saw the Notre Dame after breakfast, and all I have to say is that it was really dark inside. You can pay money to light candles (we didn't), and there are confessionals. The architecture and atmosphere were really interesting to me because they made me think about what people thought about God back then. On the one hand, the Gothic nature of the cathedral depicts an angry, awesome, worthy-to-be-feared God, but one thing I noticed was that there are little hearts hidden throughout the structure. So at least they realized the matter of God's love. Maybe I'm reading too much into this.



We went to the Crypt Archaeology afterward because it was adjacent to the Notre Dame. It was pretty fascinating inside because you can see what ancient Paris was like. They have the ruins, and they even had models that showed how Paris developed throughout the ages around the Seine River:









I guess it was cool because we saw present-day Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

Next was the Arc De Triomphe/Champs Elysee. The Arc De Triomph was crazy and totally worth seeing (Thanks Jen!). The structure itself was cool, but what was even cooler was the way traffic flows around it. It's the largest roundabout in I-forget-where, but what's insane is the fact that there are no traffic lights or lanes. People just drive in where ever, and it totally looks like the cars are going to collide and people are going to die Final Destination style. Look it up on Youtube. I forgot to get a video, but I bet other people did.

The Champs Elysee is a big shopping district, and I think my sisters would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did. We kind of weaved in and out of the side malls, but it was cool passing by a real Louis Vuitton store in Paris. No, I did not go in. I don't have the money for that kind of stuff (no Kanye West here).

This was supposed to be our easy, relaxing day after a long day of walking (see previous post), so we headed back to the hostel after this, chilled, and ate some fruit. David and I started singing some of the hymns we learned and tried to come up with harmonies to some of them. We might try to make a CD with some of the other bros later in the Summer.

We did this until Aleth, Rebs, and Jen came back from their escapades at the Palace of Marseille. Apparently, the gardens there are gigantic and beautiful. I guess I'll save that for my next trip to Europe.

We went to eat at that small Kebab place we went to on our first night in Paris, and I ordered something that was totally better than the panini I had the first night. It was a Grec Nos Sandwich, and I loved it because it had no cheese, a lot of meat, and pretty good sauce. I got the fries with Samourai sauce again, which I'm getting used to. I don't think that's a good thing, though.

On the way back, I got a small sketch of the Louvre with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and I'm going to watercolor it after I get home and finally have the time. I just realized that the day after I get back I have to drive down to Socal for my friends' graduations, and then immediately after I start volunteering for a construction project. A little off topic, but this is the busiest and happiest I've been in my entire life.

Here are some of the lyrics to the songs we learned in London and sang today. I didn't memorize them all, but I'm sure I can look it up somewhere:

Song One (I don't know what the title is)

I never thought that God would be enjoyable,
In my experience so indescribable,
But when I opened up my heart to Him,
He came to me and filled me to the brim.
Oh Lord You're wonderful, You're wonderful.
Jesus, Jesus.

*I modified the words a bit. I think It fits better this way.

Christ is the Tree of Life

Christ is the Tree of Life,
Eating Him always satisfies.
Christ is a river,
Fountain of life and pleasure.

Eat Him and drink Him,
Christ our enjoyment.
God is our treasure,
He is our joy and pleasure.

We're about to head out to the metro station to catch our overnighter bus to Stuttgart, but we took these group pictures and hardcore pictures with our packs:





I will update when I get to Germany or on the bus, depending if I can sleep or not!

'Scuse My French 5/28/09

I woke up at 8:30 and couldn't go back to sleep. Too excited! Breakfast was awesome for being free: we got baguettes, coffee, orange juice, and croissants with a chocolate cream filling:



Minor inconvenience, but nothing worth really complaining about: we had to switch rooms because another group wanted to occupy the same floor of the hostel. We had to move up 6 floors, but the "hike" was worth it. The new room is a lot better and cleaner!

After breakfast and our little move, we headed out to the Louvre. The homeruns for me were the Mona Lisa (SO HARD TO GET A DECENT SHOT), biblical paintings from the Italian Renaissance, and the statues. Again, I took a lot of pictures*. We couldn't find the Venus De Milo (I wanted to see it because of that Simpsons episode where Homer eats the gummy one), but overall, this museum was awesome. I'm really happy I got to go to both the British Museum and the Louvre. The amount of history contained in these places is almost overwhelming - we spent about three hours in each museums, and didn't see everything. I think if we tried to, our heads would have exploded.

Next on the itinerary was the Eiffel Tower. We walked up to the second level (a heck of a lot of stairs), and then took the elevator up to the top. The view was amazing, and here's a shot from one of the faces of the tower:



As always, the walk back down went a lot faster. We were starving by this point, so we stopped by a restaurant that was serving steak and fries (steak frite), which is apparently pretty popular here. Again, the fries were served with mayo, so I asked for ketchup. I figured they already knew I wasn't French, and I didn't feel like having a heart attack in Europe.

We stopped by the hostel afterward because I filled up my camera card (1 gig) and needed to pick up a fresh one. Plus, we needed a short breather from all that walking. We took a little rest, then headed out again to see some smaller sights and find a place for dinner. A lot of the places were outside of our budget, but we found a small place that was serving three-course meals for 20 euros! Actually, this is a lot of money (about $30 US), but Paris is pretty expensive. A bonus was that they served escargot, which we wanted to try when we were in Paris. The place was called L'uberge du Champ de Mars (I have no idea how to say this properly), and I got escargot, roasted duck, salad, and pear sorbet. It wasn't the gourmet French food that you see in movies like Ratatouille, but the portions were big and it was delicious. Anyway, David and I had a pretty good talk here. In some ways, we're really similar.

After dinner, we walked back toward the Eiffel Tower to see it at night. I knew that they lit up the structure at night from our tour of it earlier in the day, but I didn't know that there was a spinning beacon of light at the top. It's pretty breathtaking. Here's a shot of it and the Seine River at night:



It was pretty late at this point, so we metroed back to the Hostel.

Surprise! Aletheia, Rebs, and Jen moved back to our hostel because a room opened up and the other hostel was shady. We caught up, and shared our more interesting Europe stories thus far. I guess the discussion got pretty loud because one of our neighbors came and knocked on our door. We opened it to apologize, and it was an older dude wearing a tee and whitey tighties. I was sitting on the floor, so it was at eye-level for me. I swear, I had to close my eyes and picture the Eiffel Tower again to wash that image out afterward.

That pretty much killed the mood, so David and I headed back to our room, showered, and are pretty much ready to sleep.

Thanks to Jen's advice, our plan tomorrow is to check out the Notre Dame, Arch de Triomph, and Champs Elysee (I've been saying this during our whole time in Paris because it's fun to say). SHOMPZAYLEEZAY. We head out to Stuttgart at 10 PM tomorrow on an overnighter bus which will arrive the next day at 7 AM. I kinda wish we were flying, but we couldn't find a cheap flight from Paris to Stuttgart. This is a pretty good option, though. Hopefully the seats are comfortable.

Night!

*My Paris album is here.

Rocky Start in Paris 5/27/09

This is the first time I totally knocked out on a flight. Usually I have trouble falling asleep on planes, but I didn't realize that I fell asleep and I even missed takeoff! That's usually my favorite part of a flight because I love the feeling when the plane first lifts off the ground. Anyway, it was a pretty smooth flight - Easyjet is a no-fuss, cost cutting airline (which is why their tickets are so dirt cheap) - but it wasn't a bad experience.

We got off the plane at Charles De Gaulle at 9:30 PM and took the metro to Gare De Norde. That part went fine, but after we left the metro station, it took us over an hour to find our hostel. We got directions to the place ahead of time, but Google Maps kinda screwed us over - to make a long story short, it basically told us to turn left/right at LOCATIONS, not STREETS, which doesn't help if you don't know the area/are visiting a foreign country for the first time. Anyway, we gave up the tough guy act after walking through a few shady neighborhoods, and asked for help. An old professor looking guy was the best pick out of the characters on the street, and he even had a map. The guy was super nice, and told us how to get to our destination. Thank God David speaks a little French.

We were pretty beat, but hungry so we dropped our stuff (said 25 pound packs that we lugged around for the past 2 hours) off at the hostel and went to look for Aleth, Rebs, and Jen at the hostel they got moved to. Their hostel had a curfew/non-friendly receptionist. Darn.

So we got food instead. We ended up at a kebab place that was still open (it was past midnight at this point), and EVERYTHING in there had cheese on it. I got a panini with fries because it had the least amount of cheese on it, and David got something that had a heck of a lot of cheese on it: on top, between layers, etc. I forgot what it was called, but here's a picture:



The panini was ok, but the cheese was kind of putrid. I've been taking these lactose-intolerance pills, so let's see if they work! Another thing that I was having trouble getting used to was the fact that fries are served with mayo. It's like eating fat and dipping it in more fat...yummmm. Heart attack...

They had this pretty good sauce for the fries (Samourai sauce), that was basically mayo with ketchup and tabasco, and that was pretty good. The flavor was great, but it was still a little too thick and greasy for my tastes.

After our midnight snack, we took another shady walk (our theme for the day) through Pigalle, a neighborhood with a lot of pimps. We got approached by two, who handed us cards of their girls. Not interested! Haha. We made it back to the hostel in one piece, took hot showers, and washed our laundry in the tub (very necessary at this point in our trip).

I'm going to sleep soon, but totally looking forward to free French breakfast provided by the hostel. The only downside is that it's served between 7:30 and 9:30, so that means less than 6 hours of sleep again followed by a day of walking like 10 miles. Oh well. Gotta make the most of our trip here.

The plan is to spend tomorrow (or today, now) visiting the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower. If tonight was any indication of how the rest of our stay here is going to be, Paris is going to be realllly interesting!

Last Day in London 5/27/09

So we finally got a taste of real London weather: miserable, windy, wet, and cold. We woke up around 9, had awesome omelets courtesy of Sam, and then headed out to watch the changing of the guard. It was pretty interesting, but would have been a lot nicer if it wasn't raining. Anyway, it was one of the last things we wanted to do in London before we had to go to the airport.

We walked from Buckingham Palace to the Science Museum, but there was a fat line all the way around the corner. It didn't seem reasonable to spend half an hour waiting in line for something on our last day in the UK, so we kept walking.

We ran into the Imperial College, a science and engineering school in central London. It was pretty cool inside. They have a pretty good mechanical engineering department:



And it was pretty funny because the engineering students looked just like engineering students in the U.S. You know what that means if you're an engineer. I guess engineering is the same everywhere.

I'm really considering going to school in Europe in the future now. I'm stuck at Stanford for my M.S. degree (5 quarters), but I really want to come to Europe to work on my Ph.D or M.D. It's funny. I graduated from Berkeley and I'm still on the fence, career-wise: Engineer or Doctor?

After we toured the Imperial College, we passed by the backside of the Science Museum and surprise surprise, no line! We walked right in, and saw the main entrance where people were still piling in. Hah. I guess we got lucky. Anyway, I wasn't that impressed with this museum. It was free, but not hands-on enough. There was one floor of exhibits where the kids could actually touch things (expectedly, it was also the most crowded), but the other floors were full of exhibits behind bars/glass cages. The Exploratorium is soooooooo much better.

It was getting close to the time we had to leave for Luton Airport, so we stopped at a small cafe for a quick pastrami sandwich, and then to Sister Ching's place to pick up our bags. We left them there because her place is close to the train station, and we didn't wanna carry our 25 pound packs all day.

I had my first (and last) slipup at the Tube station! I lost my pass after getting off the metro, and was kinda mad at myself because I didn't want to buy a new one for 7.20 pounds, but this nice old lady tapped me on the back and told me she saw me drop it before the escalators. I ran back, and it was still there! Felt touched by an angel.

I'm on the rail right now to Luton Airport, and nodding off. We're taking Easyjet, a discount airline, to Paris CDG Airport. I'm gonna miss my London friends, but I'm really excited for Paris.

This is a reminder for myself: Sam likes spicy food, and he misses cheetos from the states. They don't have them in London. Stefan really likes college t-shirts. So...get a fat thing of flaming hot cheetos and Cal/Stanford t-shirts to send to them!