Milan was lousy, but Nice was NICE. And j'aime Paris!

I'm alive and well and living in Paris! ...Never thought I'd say that, but it's true! We've been here for a day and a half, and things are excellent. Sorry I haven't written until now, but the internet has been scarce. Before I tell you about Paris, let me go back a couple of days. I've been keeping a journal of the things that have happened recently, so it starts on the 13th and progresses from there:

Dec. 13th

Today I woke up in Verona, walked outside and past many blocks lined with shrub-decorated balconies, to the Casa di Giulietta – Juliet’s house! (It's not the real Juliet's house, of course; Shakespeare may or may not ever have even seen Verona in his life. But with all the balconies all over the place there, I would totally set a play featuring a balcony scene there, just to be safe! Anyway, I saw Juliet’s house, and walked to the main piazza. I saw a fountain (!) where the Montagues and Capulets might have fought. Maybe. Then I walked back, we checked out of our B&B and walked to train station with baggage (ugh.) Then we took the train to Milan.

In Milan we had a two-hour layover, and Maddie wanted to sit and read, so I left her at the train station with the baggage, and went to go see some sights. The city is huge, and I wanted to go to this piazza to see the largest Gothic Cathedral in the world, so went to the Metro station. The Metro was crazy though… it took me like 15 or 20 minutes just to figure out which train to get on, then which direction to go in. Switching trains is a big hassle too, lots of escalators and hallways involved, and there’s tons of people around all the time so I was wary of my bag and purse. ...But not wary enough, apparently; as I was buying my ticket, this girl grabbed my purse and covered her hand up with a newspaper that she looked like she was trying to sell me. I didn’t know what was going on, but I pulled my purse back and said “no thank you.” Then she backed off, and I got on my train into the center of the city. It wasn’t until later, at a sandwich shop, that I realized she’d stolen 100 Euro out of my purse! Wha...? I've never been mugged or stolen from before, so it was a real shock and I was a little bit afraid. The poverty in Milan is crazy… I assume the wealth is very polarized there, due to the supreme richness of the upper classes? Maybe? Anyway I took a moment to be glad that I'm fortunate enough that 100 Euro doesn't mean life or death for me, and that I'm able to get on with my travels safely and without too much worry. It will affect how much dessert and beer I buy though, which may or may not be a bad thing. It's kind of funny, actually; of all the ways to get rid of 100 Euro in Milan, the land of designer bags, belts, and fashion accessories of all kinds... I lost mine in the subway.

Well, that was that, and there was nothing I could do. Deflated and wary of Europe, I went back to the train station, got Maddie, and got on the train to Nice. Nice was SO NICE. In Nice it was warm, and it was only a 10 minute walk to our Hostel, where we were lucky enough to get just a two-person private room, and we met a girl there named Corrinne (sp?) who arrived too late to check in and so ended up crashing on our floor. She made us tea, which was nice.

Dec. 14^th

Today I woke up in Nice, at around 8 o’clock. I’ve found, recently, that I don’t need coffee to get my day started; I have plenty of energy just from knowing that as soon as I get up, I’m going to see tons of new and cool places. It’s pretty sweet. The hostel that we stayed at ended up giving us a two-person room, so we had our own shower. So naturally I took a good long time getting cleaned up and dressed! Then I walked out of our apartment after speaking in French (!) with a guy on the stairs for a minute or two. I turned right and walked towards an enormous palm tree, and came to la plage… the Mediterranean Sea again! After a month on the island of Lesbos, it was like running into an old friend in a different city. And the beachfront was gorgeous; lots of pink hotels, palm trees, and women in fur coats (just like in my Broadway-musical vision of the place that I had in my head!) Ah, the French Riviera… too bad it was still pretty chilly, and I was wearing my knit hat and gloves! Nevertheless I stared at the sea for a while, and then went back to the hostel to wake Maddie up.

After she got up, we searched online for a cheap hostel in Paris (NOT an easy feat, let me tell you! We were this close to not going there at ALL, and just staying in Strasbourg or something. Then we found a place with a double-bed for 24.50 Euro per night, and although 20 is usually our top end, we decided to go for it. Phew…)After that, we ended up going to the train station with all of our baggage and finding out that the train to Paris didn’t leave for another 5 hours! We checked our bags into lockers at the station, and walked back to the beach. On the way, we got bagguettes, ham, grapes, and wine, so that we could have a picnic along the Riviera. It was pretty cool, just sitting on a bench on the boardwalk, staring at the lapis lazuli sea and eating the BEST bread I’ve ever tasted in my life, drinking wine and just chatting with Maddie. Then we left the boardwalk and went to a café for tea and coffee, and sat for ANOTHER few hours just drinking and talking. (I’m beginning to see a pattern here, in Riviera life, and it suits me well. I was sad to leave, actually.)

When we returned to the train station, we sat and read our books until the train arrived, and then it was about a 6-hour journey up to Paris, during which I finished Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, which I’ve been working on for a few days and have found very moving and interesting. Aside from painting a compelling portrait of the Greek people in modern history, it made me very nostalgic for Lesbos, since most of the book takes place on Cephallonia, another Greek island. All that talk about olive trees, goats, tavernas, kafeneions… it was like, total flashback time, even though the story takes place in World War II. Anyway, it’s really great, I recommend the book to everybody!

Now I’m sitting in our room in Paris. The whole thing, including the bathroom, is about 2/3 the size of my bed room back in Minneapolis, which most of you readers have seen. There’s just the one double bed for Maddie and I – we’ll see how that works out. At least there’s a shower though, which will be a very good thing. We took a cab half way, until we were sure we knew where we were, and then walked the rest of the way, about 8 longish blocks, which was challenging because there weren’t any street signs, we had to rely on our map and a map we found on the street near the Metro station to guide us. It’s very cold in Paris at Christmastime, for those of you who’ve never been here in December! Bring gloves, hat, and scarf! I don’t know what we’ll do tomorrow, probably just the main stuff; the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Louvre. More later ~ Ciao!

Dec. 15th

J'aime Paris! Today I woke up, got dressed, and Maddie and I took a 10-minute Metro ride to the Louvre. We're both on super-tight budgets now, so the 9 Euro entrance fee was a bit steep, but it ended up being totally worth it. When we got to the Louvre, we could actually SEE the Eiffel tower from the Pyramids! "WHAT?? Are we actually IN PARIS??" I thought to myself. After wanting to come here for ALL of my senior year of high school and much of the year before, not to mention Sophomore year when we did "Sunday in the Park with George," it didn't seem possible that now I had actually achieved what before had seemed only imagineable.

Inside the Louvre, we saw tons of Roman statuary, and the Mesopotamia wing with all its ancient Babylonian and Levantine art from way back in Old Testament times, which I enjoyed but which Maddie got bored with pretty quick. (We totally saw part of the castle of Darius I. Nice...) So we hopped up to the Apollo Wing to see the coronation crown of Louis XV (SO pretty) and then over to the Mona Lisa. It was a bit anticlimactic, because by the time we walked down the Grand Hall to the room where the Mona Lisa was, we had gotten separated, and my first glimpse of the Mona Lisa was a bit clouded with thoughts of "Where's Maddie? Oh god, she's lost, she's been kidnapped, I'm going to have to go look for her, this sucks, why can't I just enjoy the Mona Lisa..." but I eventually found her and everything was cool. So we went and saw the "Raft of the Medusa," which we'd studied in Middle School, and then just walked around for a while. The place is ENORMOUS. I couldn't get over the size of it, it was pretty overwhelming. It just never ends! We also saw the "Venus de Milo" and tons of other cool famous things. What a day!

So we left, and I thought it would just be a quick jaunt up to the Arc de Triomphe, so we headed that way. As it turns out I'm an idiot, and can't read maps; it took us about two hours, and we were super tired when we got there. I'd invested in a "flute" (or baguette, as we Americans call them) and munched on that as we contemplated the world's largest traffic roundabout, that encircled the mighty archway.

We then took the Metro to the Eiffel Tower. By that time it was about 4, and the sun was going down and it was COLD. We were freezing our butts off (quite literally, because neither of us thought to bring long underwear) and after contemplating the massive size of the Tower and its beauty in the crisp winter air amongst the leafless trees, we hustled over to the street and into a cafe. We lingered over way-too-expensive tea, hot chocolate, and French fries (ha ha, pommes frites, rather) and watched the sun set, because we wanted to see the Tower all lit up in its night light. When we left the cafe it had gotten even colder, and we only had enough energy to walk to the tower and "make a photo" before going to the Metro station. We saw the Tower go all crazy-like with the lights, as if fifty thousand tiny people with camera flashbulbs were going off all up and dow the place, which was awesome. We had a crazy adventure in the trains which ended up with us back where we started... but our general attitude was, of course, "at least we're warm!" It's true; better warm and inside a train going nowhere, than outside in this cold. One good thing came of our roundabout journey though; we ran into the Kuglers! They had decided on a whim to come to Paris for a day before going to Germany, and had been at the Louvre today as well, and were just on their way to the Eiffel Tower when they saw us! How crazy is that? Like a one-in-a-zillion chance, that's how crazy! I was so happy to see them and Mitzi was yelling so energizingly, that I hugged all of them.

After Maddie and I sorted ourselves out with the trains, we came back to Place d'Italie, near our hostel. We had seen KFC advertisements all over Paris, so we decided to check it out. DON'T JUDGE US! We like Kentucky-fried chicken! And it's part of the culture, to taste the fast food. Anyway, it was an interesting experience. I didn't know what to make of the fact that we were the only white people there. The food was good, and we had ice cream treats called "Avalanches" which I hope they have at KFC's in the States because they were REALLY good.

Now we're back at our hostel. Tomorrow we plan on seeing Notre Dame, then going to Caen and Rouen. Tomorrow's our last night in Paris, then it's off to Amsterdam! We've booked our hostels for Amsterdam and Dublin, so that's all set. It's shaping up to be an awesome journey. More later, I promise. All my love goes out to everybody back home, I'm getting very excited to see everybody very soon :) Cheers!