Up until this point, everything I have posted was written that day or the next day. The last three posts, although put up recently, were stuck as drafts in various stages of completion.
From here on out, this is all fresh material. France was exhausting - every day we would get home, I would pull up my blog, and wake up at three in the morning with my face ground into the keyboard, too groggy to do anything but put my computer away and fall into bed. So I have no drafts - this is all me remembering.
However, since I want these last few posts to mesh with the rest, I'm going to write them as if it is the day of, just like I wrote the rest of this blog. It'll help me keep chronological.
Clear as mud?
Great! Let's go!
We woke up at around 5:00 in the morning, after staying up until well after 1:00 the night before. I think we all felt like the walking dead. I know I did. All we had to do was pack our pajamas and strip our beds. The sheets went downstairs. I mean way downstairs. There's a flight that goes down from the servery, down to the laundry rooms and kitchen. It's incredibly steep and narrow, and since breaking my foot, I haven't been down it much.
No, those are not all my sheets. That's the pile that had already accumulated by 5:30 Monday morning. Some people had left Sunday night, but we were the first group leaving on Monday.
I thought ahead enough to grab a couple apples and stick them in my pocket, and make a quick jam sandwich - and then we were off, out the door with all our worldly goods.
I couldn't help but remember, as we trundled along the sidewalk, of our first day. We'd got off the tube with absolutely no idea where to go, or which way was which. We thought we were incredibly lost, but were in fact only a few streets away. Now, walking as fast as I could through the early light, I knew the street better than the palm of my hand.
One thing hadn't changed - the weight of my suitcase. That, compounded with my boot, made it a real adventure.
This is our friend Rebekah. The three of us went to the station together. If anybody's a Harry Potter fan, you'll be excited when I casually mention that we went to the King's Cross/St. Pancras station. If you're not a Harry Potter fan, (believe me - I know the feeling), then I'll explain really quickly.
King's Cross station is the place where the platform 9 3/4 is, where you catch the train that goes to Harry's school of wizardry. The only reason that is important is because the young wizards have to run through a seemingly solid brick wall to get to it. So, to placate all the rabid HP fans, there is a cart of luggage that is cut in half and fastened up against a wall. Fans can have their picture taken while posing with the luggage, making it look like they're halfway through the wall and on their way to the wizard school.
We didn't bother. We had our own, quite whole luggage to take care of, and a destination far more magical, to Miriam at least. France.
No, that is not a zombie. That is me, looking incredibly relieved to be at the station. Little did I know the problems that would await...
Yes, you guessed it. The luggage scanner got broken. The three of us heaved and wrestled and helped each other get our stuff on the conveyor belt to be scanned, and then we walked through the person-scanner - and then the luggage scanner broke down. Completely crashed.
No, it was not the weight of our luggage that did it.
So there we were, stuck on the "I am scanned" side, anxiously watching our luggage, with our tickets, passports, cameras, phones, computers, and insurance information, which was stuck on the "I am not scanned" side.
Finally some nice official noticed our plight, and called us back through. So in our stocking feet (at least they'd let me keep my boot on), we wrastled all our stuff back off the conveyor belt, across a few yards, and onto the one that another line was using. They weren't horribly pleased - the official held them all up for a little bit while we put our stuff through that scanner, and then we went back through our people-scanner - and finally we were reunited with our belongings!
Yay!
Then, of course, we had to find our train. We went up a slanted conveyor belt. I don't know why they chose it instead of an escalator. Maybe they thought it would be easier with luggage, but it wasn't. Everybody was struggling to keep their wheeled suitcases from careening down the ramp.
Our train at last! That thing out the window from Miriam is another train, just like the one we're in.
A nice gentleman helped me with my suitcase - I think he realized that I was pretty much handicapped. Even with my crutches stowed in my luggage, the boot is a pretty dead giveaway, and there was a big gap between the platform and the train.
Technically I think we took too much stuff on with us. More than is allowed, anyway. But nobody stopped me, so that was that.
We took long sighs. We hunkered down in our seats. We pulled out our Paris guidebooks, and I consulted the map, trying to figure out where to go once we got there.
It took a long time - our train was delayed by the time we finally left the station. A lady announced the time over the speakers, first in slightly accented but fluent English, and then again in French. And then - the wheels were rolling and we moved out of the station and were off!
For about two minutes.
And then the train stopped.
There was a very long pause.
Then the lady with the accented English and the French came through the cars to explain.
There was a problem with the train. We would have to go back.
We waited for probably twenty minutes before the train started up again, this time going backwards. We pulled back into the station, and there was another long pause. The nice lady kept going back and forth through the cars, answering questions. I didn't really have any. We had no connecting rides we needed to make - we just needed to end up in Paris by the end of the day.
Finally, another train was pulled up on the other side of the platform, and we were instructed to cross straight over.
Here we go again.
I manhandled my things over into the new car, and helped Miriam get hers stowed away too - and then we were off again!
This time it worked.
The train we were on is colloquially called the "Chunnel." If you're going to be correct, it's called the Eurostar. It goes through a tunnel dug under the English Channel, so that people can travel from London to Paris in about four hours. We used the time to study up.
Here is the inside of the train. Pretty standard bus-type thing, but there you go.
Not too long before we went under, I took a screenshot of my map app. You can see by the time how long it took - remember - we'd been up since 5:00, and boarded the train by 7:00. The most exciting thing to Miriam and I are the two place names there on the map - Dover and Calais!
If you're a Scarlet Pimpernel fan, you'll remember that the Daydream is docked at Dover, and that it sails back and forth from there to Calais. Calais is also the place where Marguerite follows Sir Percy - I'll say no more. But if you haven't read the books, you should. They're much better than the play. Better even than the movie, though by a smaller margin.
The Chunnel runs from Dover to Calais, just like the Daydream, and this is what we saw on the other side!
Yes, blurry, but it's the best I could get. Notice the white dirt in the road - we quickly realized that it is very standard, very powdery, and very fond of shoes. More of that later though.
While the train was in England, all the announcements over the speakers were English first, then French. Once we'd exited the tunnel, the announcements were French first, and then English. I was in awe of the lady's language skills!
I don't have a picture of the Paris station Gare du Nord. There are many, many stories of pickpockets, and I had my phone and camera tucked away safely. We got through customs with zero hitches - in fact, I didn't even realize I'd been through until later! I still wonder if I somehow cheated...
Back in Provo, we had a lesson that talked about pickpockets, and since a bunch of us were going to Paris, the teacher took some time to tell us about common scams there, so we could avoid them. Imagine how Miriam and I felt - only a few minutes after getting off the train, we saw the first one! A girl soliciting signatures for her clipboard doesn't look very suspicious, but of course I was on red alert. Besides, they often have companions that go through your pockets while you're signing.
We steered clear.
The rest of the girls took a taxi to their hotel. Miriam and I aren't staying with them - we're at the Hotel Beaugrenelle on the other side of town, so we tackled the metro system. It's less expensive. So we cornered ourselves and our luggage against a pillar so nobody could walk off with it, and poured through our books and helpful websites until we figured out what we needed.
Metro passes here are different from Oyster cards in England. Oyster cards are a card about the size and thickness of your standard credit card. Metro passes are slips of paper about as big as a carnival ticket. Somehow they seem much easier to lose. But we hung onto our things, consulted the transportation app, and set off to conquer.
My arms have never hurt so much, and I don't think my suitcase will ever be the same again. I dread the thought of doing this all over again in five days, but I'll worry about that then. There were friendly people though, who would sometimes pick up the back of our suitcases and help us get them up the stairs. No elevators or escalators of course.
At long last, we popped up into the sunlight again - and there was our hotel, right across the street!
I'm not sure I've ever been so glad to get to a destination. At least in England everybody spoke English. Everything seems more daunting here, just knowing that they have a different native language.
The lady at the front desk spoke English, much to my relief, and we checked in.
Now, when we reserved this room, Miriam put in a request to be on the top floor. She'd heard that the Eiffel Tower was visible from some rooms up there.
The lady looked at the reservation.
"Sixth floor. The lift is out of order."
We looked at each other. We looked at the stairs.
The lady offered to let us leave our stuff by the front desk until the repairman came.
"Will it be safe?" I asked.
We were left with the definite impression that if the other desk clerk were there, the answer would have been no, but that she would keep a good eye on them. Some other visitors had left their suitcases, so after some deliberation, we decided to leave our suitcases there, and carry up the duffle bags. Maybe we would carry the suitcases up one by one afterwards, or wait until the lift was fixed.
I carefully locked my case before we went up, and tried to ignore the fact that a lock on a zipper won't do anything to keep somebody from wheeling it out the door. Still, try to remember that my suitcase was weighing an estimated fifty pounds at the time, and Miriam and I had been lugging them around for ages.
Six flights of spiral stairs later:
I was so glad - it's a nice, clean room with it's own bathroom (believe it or not, that's not taken for granted over here), and the door was solid with a good lock. Finally I felt safe. The whole day, we'd been careening around with no home base, trying to read signs in a foreign language, and carrying all our possessions around with us. Somehow, having a room with a bed and a bathroom and a lock made a big difference.
Of course, Miriam headed straight for the window. She's always wanted to go to Paris, and always wanted to see the Eiffel Tower. That's one reason why we got a hotel so far from the other girls - it was in hopes of seeing it from our balcony.
We scanned the horizon, with only a rough idea of what to look for. I mean, how big is it, anyway?
Then Miriam gasped, and started to cry.
It was visible. If you lean out over the six story drop to the street and looked left, you can see it quite clearly.
Um, what are you supposed to do with a sister who's wildest dream has come true?
I tried patting her on the shoulder in a "there, there" manner, but it didn't really do anything except make me feel silly.
Not too long after, the phone in our room rang. It was the lady from the desk - the elevator was fixed! I was ridiculously happy, and rushed down. It felt so much better to have all our things safe in one room.
We didn't stay long. Tired as we were, there was a whole city out there. The other girls were going to start at Notre Dame Cathedral, so we gripped our metro tickets tight, and headed off, blessedly luggage free.
Since we'd already figured out the tube system in London, and we'd used the one in Paris this morning, it wasn't too hard to figure out how to get to Notre Dame. On the way, we crossed the Seine river. Actually, it splits into two pieces, goes around an island, and joins up together again. Notre Dame and a lot of other buildings are on that island. It's kind of a long island.
Looking up, we could see the Notre Dame cathedral looming ahead of us. It was actually really neat. When I was little, our family watched a documentary all about how Notre Dame was built. It took ages and ages, because people kept dying and economy happened, but they finally finished it. It's one of the most famous Gothic cathedrals anywhere - in fact, it probably helped invent the type. It's also one of the first cathedrals to use flying buttresses, which are the half-arch things along the side, holding up the wall.
If you've ever read Hunchback of Notre Dame, he runs through this top part hollering "Sanctuary" and carrying Esmeralda. If you haven't read it, no need. It's super depressing, and I just told you the best part.
The wonderful thing about this cathedral is that it's free to get in! You just stand in a long line. Theoretically there are bag checks, but we didn't see any. However, pickpockets are rampant, so we held our stuff very close. I've never seen beggars quite like here before. Dark-complexioned women wearing many layers of bright clothing and headscarves bow down clear to the ground, holding or shaking little cups. It's like they're deliberately trying to channel the gypsy vibe for all those who read or watched Hunchback. Either that, or they actually are gypsies. No idea.
Notre Dame is the tallest cathedral I think I've yet been in, and also the darkest. That's why all my pictures look more or less grainy. It's darker than it looks in the pictures - it's a very dark building.
That's looking up at the ceiling. In the picture below you can kind of see the bright colors that this building is painted with. In all the British cathedrals we saw, they always said, "Imagine these walls painted with bright colors." All the cathedrals were that way until they were painted white when King Henry VIII started the Anglican church. I never could really visualize it until we came here, where there never was Anglicanism or Puritans, so the churches are still very brightly painted, although poorly lit.
This next is of the Rose Window. Possibly one of the most famous stained glass windows in the world, and the crowning jewel of Notre Dame cathedral.
Oh, I loved this. Lo and behold, who should we meet but Joan of Arc. It was in this church that the decision was made to un-excommunicate her and make her a saint posthumously.
I really admire her for being willing to stand up for her convictions, no matter what the cost. Although I don't think I could ever lead an actual army into battle, I can try to stand firm for what I know is right and true.
I have two pictures of her because the color is better on the first one, but the detail is more crisp on the second. Besides, I like her. What can I say?
Okay, so all cathedrals are built in the shape of a cross. You come in at the bottom of the long end, and walk up towards the top end. That rose window was on one of the ends of the crosspiece. When you reach the top end of the cross shape, you see this.
It's a little roped off area - they call it a chapel - for worship, and there are seats for worshipers to sit in. Miriam and I did not sit, but we stood as close as we could. France didn't have a big Puritan movement like England did. In England, statues of saints were smashed, and reliquaries with saints' relics were destroyed or lost. France never had that, so they still have the statues and the relics.
My point being...
You see that glowing red box in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary? See the shadow of a ring inside the box? Well, that's supposed to be the original crown of thorns, purchased ages ago by one of the Kings of France. It's displayed in the red glass box - you can't see it, but you can see it's shadow.
Really neat!
Okay, this is looking up the length of the cathedral from the bottom end of the cross shape. See how tiny all the people are! And that's just the seating area - behind the rows of arches on each side are the hallways that you walk down, so it's actually wider than the picture makes it look.
Wow!
So after that, some of us decided to go find the Eiffel Tower.
Mom texted me at this point. "Where are you? Are you having fun?"
I didn't bother to write anything back. I just sent this picture.
This is part of the park to one side of the tower.
It's really big - bigger than I ever thought!
We all took turns taking pictures of each other.
This is the lawn in front of the Eiffel Tower. Nice lawn, huh? Think again. It's covered in cigarette butts and bottle caps - the metal kind. Also, there were signs warning about ticks in the grass. We thought there must be some kind of translation error until one of the girls found a tick crawling on her arm.
Well, it had been a very long day, and was getting on in the afternoon, and everyone started feeling hungry, so we stopped at a place that sells food. Notice our concentration.
This is the reason for the concentration. Only two of us speak any French at all, and I am not one of them. I'd hoped that I would be able to figure out written words through context and similarity to English or Spanish words, but no luck. I think the only words I can read on here are 'crepe,' 'nutella' and 'banana.'
And these are some random buildings and cars and bicycles. Just to give you an idea what walking around in Paris looks like.
Being our first day, it seemed right that we should get dinner someplace. I have plenty of granola bars and fruit leather, but we desperately wanted something hot after our long day. We found a review of a crepe place that looked really good, so we stopped by.
The place was full, but not too full, and they had no trouble seating us. The person at the door and the waiter both spoke English, which was wonderful! Again, I had trouble with the menu. It's one thing to be reading Jane Eyre or War and Peace and run across a few French words; you can figure them out by context or something. It's completely another thing to be reading a menu and trying to make sure you don't order something awful.
We ended up with two crepes - I can't remember what they were called. A long French word. But they were hot and cooked and filled us right up - just what we needed.
The crepe place was only a couple blocks from our hotel, so we walked back. Here's another picture of the streets we went through. I don't know why it looks so dark - it wasn't really.
Ah yes, remember the six flights of stairs?
Last but not least, here is the view from our balcony. See the Eiffel Tower? It's easy to miss - for some reason it was hard to get a good picture. It's hiding behind the window roofs, just left of the center of the photo.
The picture is tipped because I was taking it at arm's length, over the edge of the balcony, six stories above the street. Believe me, I used my camera strap!
And - that is all from me for today! Tune in tomorrow for the continued adventures of the Burton girls!
No comments:
Post a Comment