On Friday morning, I flew to Paris to meet up with Margie and Nate for the weekend. I was really worried that my flight would be cancelled because of the snow and cold weather, but luckily it wasn't. However, I did have to wait an extra 2 hours for the plane to be de-iced, which sucked...especially because we just had to sit in the plane the entire time and wait. Oh well....it gave me a chance to read a few more chapters in my mystery novel, "Die Zahlen der Toten."
Going through security was a pain in the butt this time, but just because I had my purse with me in addition to my backpack. This has never been a problem for me in the past, so I was a little irritated when the man at security told me (rather rudely, I might add) that I could only have one bag, and that I would have to put my purse inside my backpack if I wanted to continue. Otherwise I would have to check my backpack. This wouldn't have been a problem if my small backpack wasn't already stuffed almost as full as physically possible. Luckily, I managed to squish everything in a little tighter, and just barely jam my purse in without it exploding. Stupid easyJet.
The flight was fine, and I didn't care about being a few hours late, because I was still at the hostel over an hour earlier than Margie and Nate were.
My first impressions of Paris were lukewarm. It smelled kind of disgusting and the metro system is totally dirty and ghetto compared to Berlin's S-Bahn (although you never have to wait longer than 3 minutes for a train, so that part is great). I was also really surprised to see so many ethnic peoples...I mean, even though I know Paris is a major metropolitan city, I still expected that there would be more white people. (I'm not saying I have a problem with it, and I don't intend to sound racist at all. I'm only making an observation, so don't get too excited.)
Margie got to the hostel before Nate, and while we were catching up, we had ordered a pizza in the bar/restaurant that was also part of our hostel. It was good, except that they try too hard to be "hip" and appealing to young people by playing their music WAY TOO LOUD. It really irritated me, because you couldn't ignore it if you wanted to. And heaven help you if you didn't like the song, which I didn't 90% of the time.
After Nate arrived and we all had a chance to relax a bit, we headed out to the Eifel Tower. It is so beautiful at night, and took our breath away. It was glowing with yellow-orange light, and looked stunning. There was a cool Christmas market along the way that we walked through, which also had some beautifully lit, vintage-style merry-go-rounds.
All around the Eifel Tower, there are men who try to sell you small knick-knacks and souvenirs, and they pester you at every stop. You literally have to yell "No!" at them and keep moving. There we so many of them, wandering aimlessly around in the cold and dark with their giant key ring of little metal Eifel Towers, muttering some half-English, half-French nonsense, that they reminded me a lot of zombies. And of course, my first gut instinct to zombies is SHOOT THEM ALL!, but unfortunately they weren't real zombies and I didn't have a gun, so I just had to ignore them instead.
We waited in line for about 20 minutes before getting up to the 2nd level via elevator. We actually wanted to climb the stairs, but they were blocked off for some reason, and the top was closed. Probably had to do with the weather, because it started to snow. It was cold, but also very beautiful. The view from the 2nd level was breathtaking, especially with the snow and all of the Christmas lights.
On the way back to the hostel, we stopped at a tent in the Christmas market for some hot chocolate. Unfortunately, we didn't speak much French and they didn't speak much English. This resulted in 1) us making a few French-sounding noises that we hoped would make sense to them, 2) all of us looking confused at each other and pointing at various things, and 3) EPIC FAILURE. Eventually, the lady just chose a cup size, poured in some hot chocolate, and asked for 4 euro. lol.
We stopped at a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner along the way, and had some awesome food. I might eat there again today before I leave, actually...
More to come.
