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November 23, 2003
Europe trip (Day 1-3)
Note: This is part 1 of 3
In short, my trip to Europe was phenomenal. Whenever I travel, I think in the back of my mind about something I read awhile back. I don't recall where it's from but it talks about traveling being pointless, and for awhile there, I didn't see the excitement other people had in traveling mainly because I traveled to the same places I had been already.
So to summarize, I had a blast. The details follow below:
Day 1:
I worked all day Friday, borrowed a multi-band GSM phone from a co-worker at the last minute with his only request being a magnet. We at lunch then flew out around 1:30pm with little hassle and arrived at Dulles with a little bit of time to spare. The lunch thing proved smart because while getting on the plane at Dulles, 20-30 had passed the ticket agent to board the plane when they stopped the line and I overheard the lady talking about "mechanical trouble." People had already boarded so they instructed us to board and as we sat there, finally someone came on the PA and told us that they were changing some brakes on the plane and we would know more in 20 minutes. Twenty minutes pass, 30 minutes, etc and after 2-3 hiccups, we finally depart an hour late. The flight seemed to take forever even though I'm used to flights much longer than 7 hours.
Day 2:
We arrived in Paris around 9:30am instead of 7:30am. This threw plans off since we were to go to the Louvre in the morning and pick up Kristin's middle sister and her sister's husband who were flying in later. We went into McDonalds and had some hot chocolate for awhile before we met her sister. I didn't realize how diverse Paris was until I passed tons of black people of French descent. Part of this surprise came because of my ignorance about Europe and European history.
We started the day by dropping our things off at the hotel, grabbing lunch and heading out. Since it was getting later in the afternoon, we managed to visit Notre Dame which construction began in 1163 and ended 200 years later in 1345. Next we went to admire the stained glass at Sainte-Chapelle. Each pane of glass was intricately done with a difference scene. After that, we made a trek up to the Sacre Coeur Church which gave us an amazing sunset view over Paris. We ate dinner at an italian restaurant that was in this area where there were many restaurants lined up street after street. We mainly saw Greek, Italian, and French food. I swear our feet were about to fall off, I had never been in so much pain ever.
Day 3:
We awoke a bit early and had breakfast at Kris' sister's dorm. The standard fare seemed to be coffee, cereal, fruit, a baguette, a croissant, and some yogurt. Our first stop of the day was the Louvre. Ironically, about 6 months prior to our trip, I had taken an art history class and studied a lot of the works in the Louvre. It was surreal to be standing right in front of them when I had read about them in a text book not long ago. Some notable works were Liberty Leading the People by Eugene Delacroix, Raft of the Medusa by Gericault, and of course the strikingly small Mona Lisa. We managed to lose a person for about 45 minutes so we didn't leave as early as we would've liked to. We were going to try to go to Chateau de Versailles but didn't have enough time so we hit up l'Arc de Triomphe (The Arch of Triumph) next. It offered another incredible view of Paris after climbing 284 steps. No trip to Paris is complete without going up the Eiffel Tower. The evening view was amazing and we got to see the light show that happens where lights flicker on and off making it glimmer and flash.
Posted by beamz at November 23, 2003 2:10 PM