Tuesday, October 14, 2008

A Stranger in a Strange Land - Friday

Good morning Paris France! The first things on our mind on Friday were The Eiffel Tower and Le Breakfast. We had noticed a McDonalds close by so we figured that was a safe bet until all of our Jr. High School french came back to us. Plus I wanted to see if there really was a Royale with Cheese on the menu (a movie line from Pulp Fiction). I was not disappointed!



It is funny how they mix French and English up on menu's. I saw that alot. Like Chicken Nuggets are Chicken Nuggets but a small salad is P'tite salade. Filet-O-Fish remains unchanged while French Fries become Frites. One crazy thing in Europe is the lack of a real menu. I noticed this in London as well as in Paris. You get a menu board with a few colorful pictures of meal deals and then maybe a very small menu of a few items located on a side wall near the front counter that you can't read until you are practically ordering. Sometimes the big colorful menu like you see in this picture flips through 3 or so different pictures which can make it really hard when you are trying to order off of it. "Ummm give me the, uh, uh, hold on here it comes, umm chicken meal with ummm oh crap there it goes again..." McDonalds wasn't the hardest place to order but it was a bit tricky especially with breakfast items. I managed to get extra stuff almost every time I ordered. It was always a suprise.

After breakfast we headed down to the River Seine and the fabulous Eiffel Tower! You can see a bit of the river in this picture as we walked down from our hotel.

Of course like everything in our lives the weather was blessed by God and crystal clear and around 65-72 degrees every day of our vacation.

We raced onwards knowing we just had to take a ride up that big steel monster. Unfortunately for some reason the lift to the very top wasn't working so we could only go up to the second level. We were still able to take in the beauty of Paris and you could see so much from up there.




After our fun on the Eiffel Tower we signed up for Le Rouge Buses. A bus tour around Paris that hits all of the big sites in about 2 hours and 15 minutes. Your tickets last for 2 days and you can hop off anywhere and just jump on another bus whenever you want. It is a pretty cost effective way to get around Paris and to hit the highlights when you have a limited amount of time.



We saw so much, we literally took hundreds of pictures.

We stopped at Notre Dame the famed cathedral in Paris and decided to grab a bite to eat. We had heard how good the crepes are and had to give them a try. Literally every where you turn is someone dishing up made-to-order crepes with Jambon (ham), Nutella, Oefs (Eggs), Chocolat, Banane (Banana), or any variety of things. We grabbed a Jambon, Champignon (mushrooms), and Fromage (cheese) crepe and a Nutella Crepe and a few drinks and chowed down.
The tour of Notre Dame is free and it was beautiful.

They had signs posted "No Photography" but it seems like nobody really cared as there were enough flashes going off I thought I'd wandered into a disco instead of a church. I did snap one sneaky photo just to say I was really there.

This was another place where I saw some of the saddest, poorest people I have ever seen before in my life. There was a dirty, scraggled, old man with eyes that were completely white begging for money and a little old lady with a hunchback so severe that her frail wrinkled hands almost touched the ground when they grasped her little miniature crutch to support herself. In London as in the US I am used to people asking for change but I have never seen anything like this before.
We continued our tour where we saw the Louvre, Some palaces, A cool egyptian Obelisk, and some gold shiny things.



We stopped at the Champs Elysees and did some window shopping at Louis Vutton and some other super-upscale stores. We drank coffee's at a little sidewalk cafe and trying valiantly to order some milk for Ryan in french. Strangely enough it is really hard to get milk at restaurants here. Even McDonalds doesn't sell it. The nice people at the cafe put some milk that they use for cappuchino's into a cup for Ryan to drink. We stopped to look at the newest innovations in euro vehicles and even let Ryan test drive one himself.
After that a quick peek at the Arc de Triumph and back to the Eiffel tower and our hotel to call it a night.



Goodnight Paris!

1 comment:

Farman29 said...

Very cool! Great photos for the great memories I am sure you all will have.