Wonderful week: Day 1

Its hard for me to believe that one week ago today, I was on a train towards the airport in order to pick up my boyfriend. Alex's program had a week off last week, and he decided he would spend most of it visiting me. I very readily agreed to this.

I met him at the airport, we got onto the train, and next thing we knew, we were in Paris. I decided that I would stay with him because:
a. He speaks no French, and so would probably get really confused
b. I don't want him to get lost

We stayed at the same chain hotel that I stayed at for my night in Normandie. It was pretty cheap, but was in a good area and was pretty nice for the money. I got us to the hotel ok and we got all checked in. Once we dropped our bags off, it was around 5 pm. I figured that we should just head over to the Latin Quarter to wander around and find something to eat.

By 6:30, we had found a nice little sidewalk cafe. We decided to go all out the first night and get a prix fixte menu.

Alex ordered:
Chevre chaud: Hot goat cheese salad
Chitterlings sausage: Sausage stuffed with stomach (ew.)
Chocolate mousse

I ordered:
French onion soup
Steak frites
Apple tart

We had a good time people watching. It was a pretty touristy area (which I didn't care about, because the touristy areas are the most fun), so there were mostly only English-speaking people walking into the restaurant. My waiter was happy that I spoke French to him, even though he knew I wasn't French.

We also saw the most obnoxious person I have ever seen in my life. This guy was yelling at his French server because he hadn't brought him his "large schrimps!" (um, redundant?). The French waiter didn't know the English word "prawn" (what the seafood really was), so he hadn't understood the guy. The guy was appealing to the English-speaking owner, in the rudest voice ever. I wanted to turn around and say to the guy: "Stop giving them a reason to hate our country and sit down!"

Some people.

After dinner, I felt pretty stuffed, as did Alex, so we decided we would walk to the Eiffel tower. Little did I realize how ridiculously far away it was.

We strolled along the Seine and saw a bunch of sights, and stopped into a little grocery store to buy some water.

All of a sudden:


There it was. I had not yet been to see it in it's entirety. I had never seen it at night. I decided last time I was in France to save some things to do the next time I would go there.

When I knew that Alex was visiting me, I figured I'd save them for when he got here, so that we could be all cheesy.


We decided to go up. The very top was closed at this point (which I was OK with), so we went up to level 2.

The elevator was really scary, but my feet had hurt too much to take the stairs.

It was very cool once we got up.


I was enjoying it, but I am not crazy about heights. If I am in a secure building, or something--fine. But I do not like the idea that the only thing between me and falling is fancy chicken wire. There were these little kids climbing on the fence. I almost had a heart attack watching that, but their mom thought it was just fine...

Oh God, I am turning into my mother.

What was really cool was when, on the hour, the Tower dazzlingly lit up. It is hard to tell from this photo, but it looks like a glitter explosion.


We came back down about a half-hour later and walked to the lawn in front of it. Tons of people were laying on the grass. One thing that I will never get used to about France, is that there is no law against drinking in public. It is totally OK for you to bring a bottle of wine to the Eiffel Tower and just drink it. This had been the plan of about everyone else around us.

We left pretty soon in order to make the metro well before it closed. We needed to make plans for Sunday and get the sleep that both of us needed.