Paris, gay old Paris. Or so they say. Having left Annecy, I have to pinch myself when I find that I am actually sitting on a boat in Paris, a massive, historic city that I did not previously know. Leaving Annecy happened extremely quickly, with Valérie (the second host mother, because I moved and oops didn't write about it) helping me get to the train station and my platform and N arriving to say goodbye and see you in Boulder and so on. The train itself was a smooth ride, as much as the TGV is or can be, and it took exactly as long as anticipated. When we got to Gare de Lyon, it was almost surreal, because all of the surroundings were already familiar from arriving, and I had a sense that this wasn't such a mortifyingly huge city after all. I schlepped the good schlep back to the boat, had an awkward encounter with the owner as he went over all of the details of staying there, signed a contract, and then the day was started.
Except, was it? Where do we go from here? That is the question I asked myself, thinking about what to do with the days by myself that I have before my parents arrive and everything changes yet again.
So I was supposed to meet one of the girls, B, who was studying at IFALPES in Annecy in my class and also happened to be coming to Paris the same weekend as I was because she was leaving to go home (to Colombia!) the next week. We decided to meet in Paris, naturally, and hang out, because exploring new places with friends is nearly always more fun than doing it solo. The problem with this plan is that we were planning on meeting by the metro station Bastille, which is right where my house boat was located. Me being a dumbass smart person and not realizing that oh wait, metro systems usually have multiple entrances for large, connecting stations, I overlooked this, and we ended up not finding each other. She didn't get a French phone, so it was always going to be more difficult. This ordeal went on for about 45 minutes before I went back to the boat and the wifi thereupon, hoping that perhaps she would have internet on her iPod as well, where miraculously we found each other and reworked our plans in order to meet at Notre Dame cathedral. Find the horse monument, she said, you can't miss it, and we will meet there. Done.
I was glad that we were able to successfully rework our plans and find each other, because I had already developed a lot of unanticipated stress from the change of scenery, not being completely familiar with where I was, not particularly knowing anyone in the city, not knowing anyone in the city (for the duration I would be there) that spoke the language I was more comfortable with, and so on. Much as this trip has been about being by myself, any new change of scenery amounts to starting over and it can get to be a bit much rather quickly.
So we met at Notre Dame as planned, me finally seeing her as I was literally sitting on the statue that she told me about so that there would be no chance of getting lost again, and we took a boat tour on the Seine, wherein we learned about the numerous bridges of Paris and saw monuments and generally went delirious with hunger. When we got off the boat, we were practically nonfunctional, so we started walking around looking for somewhere to eat. We crossed the bridge off of Île de la Cité and moved onto the area around métro Saint Michel, where there is a great wealth of food options, and we ended up stumbling upon an extremely busy and extremely small Lebanese to-go place. They specialize in shawarma, which was perfect for both of us, being starving and not fed enough meat throughout most of the trip. After a short ordeal paying for it, we got our food and sat down by the Seine, finally truly enjoying Paris and pinching ourselves that we had been in Annecy mere hours earlier.
We made it! We made it!
We got on the metro after our food, it finally getting dark out, and discovered how to get to the Eiffel tower, walking along the quai to get there and taking many, many photos. We spent enough time to get as many photos as possible and ended up walking through Champ de Mars toward the metro again, where we decided to go to the Louvre area and see what was around. After more photos, we decided not to walk all the way back, because it was late and there were enough drunk people out on the streets to convince us that the metro would be the better option. This is where we decided that tomorrow we would meet at the tower of Gare de Lyon, it being a famous monument on the outside of the building, and that if for some reason we couldn't find each other again, we would go straight to the Eiffel Tower and find each other there, in the middle, underneath it.
The Louvre at night is pretty! But dead. Let's continue to get our tourist on.
So I woke up early the next morning, excited for the day, and definitely hungry. I ran out of the boat, getting through the metro to Gare de Lyon as was planned, and then waited for the amount of time we said without finding B, so I decided to go back into the metro and I would find her at the Eiffel Tower. With a stroke of luck, I actually found her wandering around inside the metro station, which at Gare de Lyon is ridiculously confusing, a labyrinth of repeated entry and exit points just to get onto the metro or change lines. We were both relieved, but also starving, and so we headed out toward the Eiffel Tower together, excited to be touring the city with a friend for the day. The stops on the itinerary were to go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower, go to the Louvre, and then take a walking tour around the city. It was going to be a good day of touring. We got through Champ de Mars again, pausing to take photos, and then we went up to the Eiffel Tower and got in line.
This is where everything in Paris came crashing down and the whole day and the trip up to that point turned to complete and utter shit hell.
We decided to grab some food at the kiosk we saw just across the way from us one at a time, I would go grab something and tell her what was on the menu and then she would come back and we would be able to hold our place in line. There were two lines forming at that point, so it shouldn't have been too bad, but then I went for my coffee and beignet, and I came back and B was absolutely nowhere to be found. I scaled both lines up and down twice to no avail, feeling caffeinated and desperate. All of the stress of Paris from arriving amplified beyond my own comprehension when I realized that we weren't going to find each other again, and so I got in line and went up, hoping that she might have stayed in line and that we would either find each other on the tower or at the exit. With no such luck, I went over to the Louvre area, realizing that I was probably not going to find her there either, and then I went back to the boat and lost my shit broke down from the turn of events. I knew a couple of French men living in Paris, so I texted them and got unnecessarily cold replies back about not being able to see each other that day, which only made matters worse, and so it was that I ended up getting myself together and traversing the town on foot by myself, not knowing what to do or where to go.
I walked through the Saint-Germain-des-Près neighborhood, a well-known artsy and upscale neighborhood of Paris, where I found a small bookstore and got a gift for one of my friends, had lunch at a hole in the wall there, and saw plenty of interesting things, public art and otherwise. I went from there to Île de la Cité, where I went back to Notre Dame and saw more of it, strolled through all of the old streets there, and then went to Hôtel de Ville and saw the things there were to see on that side of the river. It wasn't such a bad tour, but I was distraught and my nerves were frayed, so I could only appreciate it so much. I knew that she needed to go back to her hotel later in the day and then catch a train back to Annecy, so I decided that perhaps I would run into her and went out to look for her, where I ended up finding her on the metro on her way back to the train station. We took the metro together and I showed her where her train was going to be departing from, having taken it both ways already before from the same place, and we said our goodbyes, laughing about getting lost at the Eiffel Tower. From there I voyaged on to Sacré Coeur at the top of the hill in Montmartre, having to wriggle my way out of one of the famed scams by a random African man and some yarn, and got home at the end of the day completely exhausted.
Well, at least they know what they're selling, right?
I wasn't kidding. Interesting, and also disturbing.
Things ended okay and justified, but I'm not sure if I love Paris yet.
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