Thursday, February 9, 2012

writing frozen is hard, but paris is so worth it.

today has been ultra surreal. although now that i'm thinking about it, it started off as anything but.
me and marissa woke up this morning in a room with a young korean couple, who had decided to shower sans curtain last night making it necessary to wear boots to wade through all the water. wet sock, to the extreme.

the day was all uphill from there though.

at about 10:30 we caught a bus to the Louvre Museum, (aaand we totally got in fo' free! thank you Innsbruck Student Pass) where we spent a good chunk of our day. turns out i have a huge affinity for greek statues, but we all kind of already knew that. i took a bunch of pictures that i'm not willing to sort through right now, but once i do i'm sure i'll let you all know.

at about 3 we decided to find our way over to the Eiffel Tower via tour bus, which we got at an inflated "discounted" price from our hostel. Marissa reminded me that i probably wasn't going to have a chance to sit on top of a tour bus while it traversed Paris ever again, so i braved the cold and we sat on top (a decision i am stiff suffering the consequences of as i sit here in the lobby in my scarf and coat, even after three hours of being indoors). all day i was on the hunt for an eiffel tower charm for my unfortunately bare charm bracelet, and i'm happy to report i found one in the gift shop at the base of the tower for only 12 euros.


i took this from the top of the tour bus. all of paris looks amazing like this. i wish i even knew what this was a picture of, but alas i do not. 


the view from on top of the tower was something i don't think i'll soon forget. we went at sundown, which is apparently the best time to go, and i swear the city seems to stretch on forever. it's gorgeous.


the view from the eiffel tower. uhmm amazing. 

me, frozen. i fully realize i'm going to look the EXACT same in every picture because it's freezing and i'm wearing as many layers as humanly possible. 


but since i was already so unfortunately frozen i couldn't stay up there for long and we ended up leaving after only five minutes. we made a mad dash for our bus in hopes that it would be there sooner than later to minimize our time outdoors and after a very heartfelt impromptu song i made up and preformed to entice the bus to hurry, it arrived, just in time for me to realize i had misplaced (or rather lost) my 32 euro, two day ticket. after waiting in the cold. with no other way to get home. i frantically searched all my pockets as the bus that was supposed to take me and marissa home left without us. for the first time in a few hours my thoughts weren't consumed with how frozen i was, but instead they were focused on just how retarded i was to lose that pass now that we were the farthest from our hostel that we planned on going.

so with no other way to get home we decided to take a taxi, which didn't end up costing as much as i thought it was going to, plus it was warm. oh! also i promise to never complain about St. George drivers again. oh. my. gosh. as far as i can tell there are no traffic rules here. or at least no rules that are followed. pedestrians walk when they want. drivers know no lanes. and car horns are apparently necessary... pure insanity.

we made it though. we purchased quite the inventive lunch/dinner of random items we found at the market a few buildings down (side note! they're playing "hey there delilah" here in the lobby. aw... american music) and sat down to eat it in the lobby here right next to steve, an older gentleman from southern california, who felt it was his duty and his right to inform us of... everything. we got a nice little lecture on how mass with in an ancient catholic church is living art, how republicans are doing their best to destroy america, and on the history of paris, van gough (and his film maker grand-nephew... who get a muslem murdered or something), the lucrative LA art movement in the 80's, and a bunch of other random bits about this dude's financial status, or lack thereof, how many mormon's he's ever met and his opinion of each and every one of them, and how many times he's been to whichever country. we seriously talked to him for an hour.

it's now almost 10 PM my toes are still frozen, i just finished my hot chocolate and one of my ribs is fighting to pop out of place so i'm going to call it a night.

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