Chillin

After the Eiffel Tower, we all went back to Fabien's place and hung out with some of his Parisian friends. Pretty much the whole conversation was in English. His friends were eager to practice. There was talk of going out to a bar or club, but that never happened. We ended up staying up until dawn playing the traditional French card game Texas Hold-em.:-)

Tour Eiffel

The views from the top at night were excellent. My only complaint was that there was an excessive amount of making out going on up top and it was very crowded.

We got there in the late evening just as it was getting dark. It was cool seeing the lights come on as darkness fell. We opted to take the stairs up to the second level so as to not have to wait in line at the bottom. The only way to the very top though was to take an elevator. It took us roughly 10 minutes to walk up to the second level and then about an hour to wait in line for the elevator.

Tour Eiffel

My friend Sandeep from San Diego was also in Paris for the weekend. We met up with him on Friday night and he joined us for the tour of the city on Saturday. That evening Sandeep, Sim and I went to go see the Eiffel Tower. The biggest must see tourist attraction in Paris.

Cimetière du Père Lachaise

Another stop on our parisian tour was the Cimetière du Père Lachaise. This cemetery contains the grave of many famous french figures as well as that of Jim Morrison (seen here). After the cemetery we took a driving tour of Paris to see many of the other major sights.

French Record Store Technology

We went in a FNAC store in Paris which would be the equivalent of a Tower Records in the U.S. They had the coolest thing to allow you to listen to music in the store. Along side traditional listening stations where you listen to one CD, there were stands that had headphones and a bar code reader. You could pick up any CD in the store, scan it and listen to it. It was very cool and an excellent idea.

Place Dauphine

On Saturday Fabien took us on a tour of some of Paris lesser known sights. This is the Place des Vosges which is another lovely park. At the time the uniform architecture of the surrounding buildings was revolutionary. We also checked out the Hôtel Carnavalet which is a museum devoted to the history of Paris and somewhat to France as a whole. I find it incredible to see what a turbulent political history the country has had. Up until the 1950's there were uprisings, invasions, revolutions, and all sorts of unrest at pretty regular intervals. This sort of history I would find was pretty common throughout Europe. We walked around the Marais district a bit and had lunch at a café at the Place de la Bastille.

La Sourdiére

Our first night in Paris we had a nice dinner at La Sourdiére which is about 3 feet from Fabien's door. They serve classic french cuisine. I had foie gras for my first course and les cuisses de grenouille (frog's legs) for my second course (pictured here). I had never had frog before, but it was excellent. Frog meat is very fatty and tasty, and you get to eat with your hands in a nice restaurant. The meal was very reasonably priced too for such a nice meal. I believe the prix fixe menu was only in the 25€ range. It was a very good meal altogether.

Fabien lives in an old building which has a tiny elevator. I believe I took this picture before I even got in the elevator. Three is definitely a crowd.

Le Louvre

We stopped by the Louvre and discovered Friday afternoons are free to people under 25. I only went and saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. My legs were pretty tired. Sim stayed for a few hours.

There is an attempt to keep these restorations as invisible as possible in order to maintain all of the beautiful sight lines in the city. At this construction site along the Seine, this trailer is hidden by a wall painted to look like the adjacent building and fence. It is so good that many people across the river probably wouldn't even notice it.

Pont Neuf

All of the old cities in Europe are in a constant state of restoration and repair of old structures. Restoration of old structures has got to be a huge business over there. This is the Pont Neuf (translates to: the new bridge) which ironically is the oldest bridge in Paris. It is in the process of being cleaned. You can see the dramatic difference between the cleaned bit on the left and the dirty part on the right.

Place Dauphine

This is the Place Dauphine on the Ile de la Cite, which has a lot of significance in the architectural history of Paris. It is nice to visit a place where you are very familiar with the history and the architecture. You know where to go and what to look at. In other cities I visited I found this to be less of the case.

Notre Dame

The rose window inside Notre Dame. We hit it at the right time of day when sun was illuminating this side of the cathedral. I carried a tripod around Europe which allowed me to take pictures like this.

Notre Dame

Sim and me at Notre Dame cathedral. I had been there before, but it is still an impressive piece of architecture.

If you are laughing right now you are probably a fan of Jackass. These signs do exist on the Paris metro, but if you look closely you will see that in the show they reenacted the danger incorrectly.

métro

Many of the métro stations in Paris have beautiful Art Nouveau entrances.

Champs Elysées

Looking down the Champs Elysées back towards the Place de la Concorde and the Louvre.

L'Arc de Triomphe

From the Musée d'Orsay, Sim and I crossed the Seine and walked from the Place de la Concorde up the Champs Elysées to the Arc de Triomphe. We took the stairs to the top and enjoyed the great views.

Musée d'Orsay

Our first stop of the day was the Musée D'Orsay, which is home to the best collection of French impressionist painting in the world. The museum is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay train station. The building itself is worthy of a museum even without the art inside. Many works by Monet, Manet, Renoir, Cézanne, Seurat and many many others were represented here. There were also fantastic sculptures by Rodin and others as well. This is the most impressive single collection of art I have ever seen. I think it is a better museum than even the Louvre.

Parlez-vous français?

Since I took French in high school for four years and even passed the advanced placement test on the subject, I should be able to speak French. On the other hand, until yesterday when we arrived in Paris I had not spoken a word of French for roughly six years. My first test, which I passed, was getting us to Fabien's house which included buying metro tickets from a machine only in French and navigating the métro. That however was only reading French, which is fairly easy.
This morning, sim and I went to a café to get breakfast. I went up to order and just drew a blank. I was only able to get out "un café, un thé, un croissant and une baguette avec beurre," no verbs or anything. I couldn't even remember how to say "outside" at the time. It was a pretty miserable beginning, but my French gradually improved as I remembered things I learned in school, heard French spoken and saw French written in Paris.

Bienvenue à Paris

In Paris we were staying with my friend Fabien. Fabien was an exchange student who stayed with my family in Oakland many years ago. He has an apartment in Paris which is about three blocks from the Louvre. It was a fantastic place for us to stay. On Friday Fabien had to work, so Sim and I went out and wandered around the city ourselves. When I visited Europe in 1997 I spent about 3 days in Paris so I was already familiar with getting around the city. I also took a class in college called "The History of Paris" so I knew quite a bit about the city and there were lots of things I wanted to see.

The Eurostar

We caught the Eurostar to Paris which travels through the Chunnel. The whole journey takes about 3 hours. This was my first experience with a high speed train and I thought it would be more exciting. It is basically just a train. The scenery goes by a little faster, but it is still all flat farmland. Most of the high speed sections of track are in a ditch so there is often no view at all. The chunnel is pretty boring too. I guess I should have expected that. We arrived at my friend Fabien's apartment in Paris around midnight.

Damn Terrorists

After Greenwich, Sim and I were eating lunch in a pub when breaking news came on tv that there had been another bombing on the underground. On July 7th, a fortnight earlier (since I am in England I can't miss the opportunity to use words like fortnight), there had been four suicide bombings on the Tube and a bus in London that killed 52 people. People were pretty edgy when I arrived in London. Lots of police walking around with automatic weapons and such. Details were sketchy as the new "bombings" had just happened. Fortunately this attempt failed, although we didn't know it at the time, and no one was killed (more info about both bombings).


This did however throw quite a kink into Sim and my plans for the day. It was roughly 14h (2pm) when we heard the news while in Greenwich in Eastern London. Our bags were at the Hostel on the North side of London and we had to be at Waterloo station on the South part of London at 19h (7pm) to catch the Eurostar to Paris. Normally not a problem to cover this distance in less than 2 hours, but we weren't yet sure how severe the bombing was or how the tube would be affected. We caught the train from Greenwich back into the central part of London without a problem. We then learned that one of the "bombings" was at Warren st. on the northern line which connected to our hostel. The northen line was shut down. We got off the train at Goodge Street (pronounced geedge if you were wondering), which was one stop from warren st. We attempted to walk around the Warren St station which had been cordoned off for several blocks around. The photo above is looking down the closed off Warren st. We finally made it up to Euston station above Warren st. and discovered the trains still weren't running. No one knew how to take a bus to our hostel either. We hopped on a bus that was headed north and got to the next tube stop only to find that everything was still closed. At this point I thought we were at a point where we would have to choose between going back to get our bags or catching the train to paris and leaving our stuff in London for a few days. I didn't think we were going to be able to do both. I called the hostel to see if they could store our bags and they said that the news was saying the trains were running again. We went back to the station and it was still closed, but in a few minutes it reopened and we were the first people to be let in again. We made it up to the hostel and then down to Waterloo with about an hour to spare. Plenty of time to get a few pints and some food at a pub (you can probably tell that I like pubs). For a while it seemed like it was going to be a very close call.

Prime Meridian

Look at me! I'm straddling the Prime Meridian!

Greenwich

On Thursday Sim and I checked out of the hostel, but left our stuff there for the day. We were catching a train to Paris that evening and didn't want to carry bags around all day. The plan was to visit Greenwich and maybe some other places before leaving town.
Greenwich as you may or may not know is home to the Prime Meridian which is like the equator, but for longitude. It is completely arbitrary in terms of location, but since the British empire controlled the world and the seas several centuries ago they got to pick where it went. There is also a Maritime museum at Greenwich which was pretty cool (at least to a nerd like me). There were some amazing models of ships that had incredible detail. Lots of hands-on exhibits too. Also in the observatory at Greenwich, there is an exhibit about the history of navigating at sea (part of the reason the Prime Meridian was created in the first place). It was interesting to see the process by which sailors learned to navigate out in the open ocean for months at a time. It is apparently fairly easy to determine latitude, but determining longitude was not as easy of a nut to crack. This problem was worked on by many of the great minds of the day and all of their inventions for calculating longitude and keeping accurate time can be seen here. I thought it was cool.

Gastropubs

Shortly before my trip I received an issue of Gourmet magazine which was exclusively about London. I brought it along hoping it would be useful for finding good food. One article was about Gastropubs which are converted pubs that tend to focus on good food more than a traditional pub. Sim and I decided to check out "The Eagle" in Farringdon. It was a good restaurant, but the experience was a little weird.
***Warning, this may be a Sean story***
Sean Story - def. - A long story which has no point or no punchline. Named for Sean Slattery, a frequent teller of Sean Stories.
I ordered a dish that had stewed lamb in it. When my food arrived it looked like grilled lamb and the sides were not what I expected either. There were only about five or six things on the menu, so it wasn't like they could have given me the wrong lamb dish. I was puzzled and was looking inside trying to read the chalkboard and figure out what I had originally ordered. One of the workers noticed and came out to talk to me. He obviously knew something was wrong, but I really couldn't understand anything he was saying. He was speaking English, but neither Sim nor I could understand him, or even the gist of what he was saying. He seemed to know that I didn't get what I had ordered, but he offered no answer as to why I received a dish that wasn't even on the menu. The food was actually very good, but I was thoroughly confused and it was really bizarre.
I have found thus far on my trip that I have a lot of difficulty understanding British English spoken by a non-native speaker. The same people have trouble understanding my American English as well. I can understand and be understood by Englishmen just fine though. I guess this is just practice for the foreign languages that I will encounter later on my trip.

Harrod's Food Halls

Just one example of some of the things you can buy at Harrods. I believe this is prawns stuffed with lobster. Very opulent. If you ever go to London and you like good food you have to check out Harrod's.

Harrod's

One of my favorite things in London was going into Harrod's which is a huge department store. The best part of all was the food halls. It is truly indescribable. There were rooms and rooms filled with glass cases with all sorts of really good exotic food. You could probably buy anything you want for any sort of meal there. It was mouthwatering walking through there. Not surprisingly, it was all very expensive too.

Wandering the City

Some monument near Trafalgar Square. London contains all sorts of monuments to the exploits of the British Empire. We went into the National Gallery which was a very impressive museum. After that we headed over to Picadilly Circus which was a little bit disappointing. Kind of like a poor man's Times Square.
Getting around London is extremely easy. You can buy a metrocard which is good on the Tube, the busses and some of the Trains in the city. The Underground (aka the Tube) which is London's Subway takes you almost everywhere. The stations are like a maze. Many times I found myself getting completely turned around and confused when the train came into the station from the opposite direction than I was expecting. The signs in the stations are very good for finding which train and which direction you need to take. However when you get off a train and exit up onto the street it is very hard to orient yourself when you come out. The streets of the city and lack of street signs don't help either. Taking the double decker busses around the city is cool too.

Buckingham Palace

There were no guards with the big hats that have to keep a straight face. I was disappointed.

Travelling Buddy

My friend Sim from San Diego happened to also be travelling in the British Isles at the same time as me. He had already been there for several weeks in England, Scotland and Ireland, and we met up in London on the tail end of his trip.

St. Paul's Cathedral

The SwissRe Tower

A very interesting structure and one of the few skyscrapers in London.

The Tower Bridge

The Tower of London

Wednesday morning I headed down to the Thames again and saw the Tower of London and the Tower Bridge and St. Paul's Cathedral. Nothing too exciting about any of these. I didn't go into the Tower of London because it cost £14.50 ($25) which seems ridiculous to me for any sort of attraction.

London Backpackers Hostel

I'm going to try to write something about all of the hostels that I stayed at in Europe. The first two nights of my trip I stayed in the London Backpackers hostel. This was my first experience with a hostel and I didn't really know what to expect. It was fine for how much it cost.
+ Cheap
+ Free Internet
- Way out of the city (Zone III on the Underground) which necessitates buying a more expensive metrocard and not really being able to drop into the hostel during the day. The hostel itself was right next to the Hendon Central Underground station which was nice.
- All of the beds in the dorm room squeaked a lot. Basically any time one of the ten people in the room moved at all.
- The bathrooms were kind of crappy and the showers could have been a little more private.

Westminster

Big Ben and the Houses of parliament were very beautiful lit up at night. It is a magnificent building and definitely represents a lot of history. I walked up towards 10 Downing St. (The prime minister's residence), but it is tucked away down a narrow street with heavy security. Not really much to see. I was pretty tired despite my nap so I called it a night and headed back to the hostel.

Stroll along the Thames

After Covent Garden I walked down to the Thames and strolled along the waterfront. Here is the London Eye at dusk.

Which way do I look?

These aids painted on the street in many parts of London were helpful in getting used to figuring out which way to look when crossing the street. It took me about three days before I was comfortable looking only one way when crossing the street instead of looking both ways just to be safe.

Covent Garden Wandering

St. Paul's Church near Covent Garden. I couldn't really figure out what the attraction was with Covent Garden. I guess it is just a place to hang out at cafes. I did check out a few of the pubs in the neighborhood. Excellent ales. I had a steak and ale pie as well which was great.

The bend in the Thames at Richmond from Paul's apartment. The wooded area to the left of the river is Richmond Park.

Arrival

Arrival at London Heathrow went smoothly despite the early hour. Customs took less than 30 seconds and my bag arrived intact. My friend Paul from Breckenridge picked me up at the airport. It was nice that I didn't have to find my way around town right away in my drowsy state. We drove towards the center of town in morning rush hour traffic. Paul lives in Richmond which is a neighborhood to the southwest of the central part of the city. The cars driving on the left in England made me seriously disoriented. Parts of the city were almost gridlocked during rush hour. The traffic was madness with cars squeezing by each other with only inches to spare and motorcycles riding on sidewalks and on the wrong side of the street. Apparently this is just normal for rush hour.
Paul's parents apartment has a great view looking out over the Thames. This is a very famous location on the river which I later saw in a painting by Turner at the Tate Britain museum. We went down and took a walk along the Thames to go get breakfast. We ate at this little cafe right next to a big grassy park. It was a quintessential London area with red phone booths, brick buildings, tree lined streets etc.
I took the train and the tube from Richmond to my hostel in Hendon on the North Side of London. I know you are supposed to try to stay up until a normal bedtime to get over the jet lag, but there is no way that was going to happen. I went and took a nap at about 1pm (oops I mean 13h00 now that I am in Europe). I definitely needed a few hours of sleep.

It Begins

I took United airlines flight 930 non-stop from San Francisco to London. The flight left SFO a little after noon and arrived in London at 7am the next day (11pm California time the same day). I tried as hard as I could to sleep on the flight, but it wasn't possible because of the times. It was also difficult because the polar route that the flight took meant it only was kind of dark for about an hour during the flight.

All of the maps/satellite photos I will show in this blog are courtsey of Google Earth. If you have never heard of Google Earth, it is an awesome program which you should really check out.

Me and my backpack

I spent more than two months traveling throughout Europe carrying only what you see here. Believe it or not, I actually felt like I had brought too much stuff. Who needs to wear clean clothes everyday anyway? By the end of my trip, my backpack was my best friend.

Planning (Lack of)

I basically had about two weeks from the time I returned home from Breckenridge (breckenridgebum.blogspot.com) until the day I left for Europe. This is definitely not enough time to thoroughly plan a trip, but I didn't let that stop me. My only firm plans for the trip were my flight to London and a train reservation that I had from London to Paris a few days later. Everything else I was just going to plan as I went along. There were a few places that I wanted to go and a few people I wanted to see, but the entire trip was pretty flexible. As you will see, it all worked out pretty well.