Ambiguous Paris

Bonjour folks!

We just got back and boy are our KNEES tired. Yes, knees.

After walking about for over 8 hours for 8 full days, we've returned with severe jet lag, a sunburn (it was hella sunny ALL WEEK!) and sore knees.
So here I am, half asleep, sitting indian style in attempt to share with you our experiences in gay Paree.

I haftu warn ya, this will be long...

If I haven't scared you away yet, I suggest you get comfortable :)

OK, here goes:

Because it is part of the whole experience, I MUST tell you about our commute...

It was HORRIBLE.
Our route was as follows: Fukuoka --> Tokyo --> Switzerland --> Paris.

Crap Luck #1: The whole disaster started at the ANA ticket counter in Fukuoka. The lady told us that we needed to grab our baggage in Switzerland. We thought that was weird since it should transfer over to Paris. So we asked her 2 more times, "Are you SURE Switzerland?" She confirmed twice without an inkling of doubt. "Ooookay," we thought and onward we went.

Crap Luck #2 came when our first flight departed an hour late. The layover we had planned in Tokyo was about 1 hour and 1o minutes -Not good. When we landed in Tokyo, there was already a Swiss Air lady waiting for us right as we got off the plane. She told us we needed to hurry since our next flight was already boarding! And so, with heavy carry-on bags, we ran. We sped thru customs, then sped to our gate. Still in doubt about our luggage, I managed to squeeze in a quick question with our escort. She also confirmed that we needed to get our baggage in Switzerland. Ooookay!

Crap Luck #3 We land in Switzerland and we run...again. We make it to baggage claim. Baggage not there. No one wants to help us. FINALLY, two workers are nice enough to help. They look at our tickets and say that the wording is weird, but they state that our baggage was heading directly to Paris. WTF. Too Late, we miss our flight.

Crap Luck #4: The lady at the Swiss Air customer service counter was not sympathetic. We asked to speak to her manager. The manager was worse! She was a total a$$hole. We had no choice but to pay $450 to catch the next flight.

Crap Luck #5: The wonderful folks at Paris airport's air traffic control decided to go on strike. Our flight was delayed by 5 hours.

Crap Luck #6: Finally reaching Paris, our baggage was nowhere to be found. And at 10 p.m., all offices were closed...so there was NO ONE there to help us. We go to our hotel, luggageless.

Crap Luck #7: From our hotel the next morning, we call the airport baggage claim office. The lady answering responds so quickly (as tho she didn't even bother checking for our stuff) saying that our luggage was not there. She then tells us that we need to go there personally to fill out a baggage claim form. Wait, you're saying we have to go all the way over there just to fill out a piece of paper? You can't fax it? email it? Nope. And so, the disgruntled Matsuos take a 1 hour metro ride back to the airport.

Once with got to the office, there we saw, sitting plain as day, next to the counter, our luggage. Wow, lady-on-the-phone, you mean you could have just turned ur head to the left to see our stuff? Thanks a lot.

As annoyed as we were that we lost a day, we were SO glad we got our luggage back. With our stuff safely back in our hotel room, we could finally start our vacation!

Places: Where Are We? (A couple of mentionables...)

Bike About Tours.
We didn't want to take just the typical bus tour so we signed up for a bike tour. There are a couple bike tours in Paris, but I went with this one just cause it got the highest rating on tripadvisor.com. It was a good decision. Our tour guide Pamela, a gal originally from Brazil was SO much fun. You could tell she really loved Paris. Not only did she give us the skinny on the basic history about places, but she threw in a ton of funny and useful info too! Another cool thing was that she showed us stuff that only the locals knew about.

Chateu de Versailles.
Better known as the estate of Marie Antoinette, this place was ridiculous. The grandness of it was, for lack of better words, over-the-top! If not for the spacious rooms with high ceilings, the larger-than-life old paintings, the numerous giant crystal chadeliers or the decadent guilded sculptures of the palace, it was the garden that was the star of the show. This garden is ENORMOUS! Even with my new eagle eyes, I could just barely see the end of the garden from the palace! The map we received stated that it would take an hour on foot to walk to the end.

Montparnasse Tower
It's just a simple, sleek, high tower with mirrored sides. The only thing this tower had going for it was the fact that it was the second-to-the-tallest structure in Paris. Pamela told us that most Parisians actually hate the look of the Eiffel tower but hate the Montparnasse tower even more. They say that the Montparnasse is the ugly box in which the Eiffel tower came in. (even tho the eiffel is taller) Haha. In any case it was then that we decided that we needed to go up the Monparnasse instead of the Eiffel. This way, all our cityscape shots will have the Eiffel Tower innit!

Eiffel Tower:
I wasn't even interested in the Eiffel Tower before we got there. But my co's raved on and on about how wonderful it was when they visited! To me, visiting it sounded too cliche. I expected to feel nonchalant about it, since I had already seen the Tokyo Tower and was not at all impressed. But here we were, at the top of Montparnasse tower, watching the sun come down on the left side of the Eiffel. "It certainly DOES stand out..." I thought to myself as Daniel excitedly snapped away on his camera. When the sun was finally gone and the dark came, the Eiffel lit up. "Yah. yah, I GUESS it's kinda nice..." I then thought. Daniel still snapping away,..trying to find the right camera setting to capture it. At that point, everyone was waiting. It was known that the tower would sparkle/shimmer every so often, but no one knew for sure when. Was it every 15 minutes? Every half hour? Every hour? Every 2 hours? Oh man, do I have the patience to find out? After about 58 minutes, I was unbearably cold from the whipping winds, and Daniel was done taking pictures. We decided to go. But as we gathered our things, it happened... The Eiffel sparkled. There was a relatively loud, audible gasp from all the people around us when it happened, followed by many camera clicks -much of them added to by Daniel. The tower look like it was covered with millions of blinking fireflies. It was then, that I finally changed my tune and thought, "Uaaaaau,.. that's awesome."

Basilique de Sacre Coeur
A Roman Catholic church in Montmartre. This place is awesome for three reasons. The view, the people and the crypt. Since this church sits on a hill top, the view of the city is amazing. Imagine, if you will: A bright clear day, an ice cold drink, sitting on a massive set of stairs watching musicians and breakdancers perform -using the fabulous view of the city as their backdrop! What's not to love? We didn't find that kind of excitement on the Eiffel or Montparnasse towers! The other cool thing there was the crypt. Dark, chilly, mysterious and just downright creepy, it was a neat contrast to the fun energy outside.

The Louvre
Ah yes, the one place that we just HAD TO visit. Given what I do for a living, I felt it was my artistic resposibility to visit this place. The Louvre houses numerous works of historical and influential art. As we entered thru the main entrance (the giant glass pyramid in the middle) I felt overwhelmed. What did I want to see? What did I NEED to see? Should I see it all? No no, that would be unreasonable, since people have told me that it takes several days to look thru the Louvre in it's entirety. But here's what unexpectedly happened: After walking through one very large section, I, shamefully, got bored. Of course, Daniel wasn't too thrilled about being in there to begin with so running thru it quick wasn't an issue. So what DID we end up seeing? We saw what pretty much every tourist came in to see: the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. I did get a nice surprise when we stumbled across the Nike of Samothrace scupture -one of the few things I actually remembered learning about in Art History 101. I then wondered if Boticelli's Birth of Venus painting was around somewhere. You know, the painting used to brand Adobe Illustrator? Unfortunately, that painting resides in Florence, Italy. Boo.

Dinner Cruise on the Siene
Nearly a month before we got to Paris, I made reservations for a fancy dinner cruise. Since it was pretty darn expensive, I did a lot of research on reviews to find the perfect one. I finally settled on Bateux Parisiens. When we got to Paris, we discovered just how many different cruise ships there really were -a lot. I started thinking that maybe I might have overpaid and shouldve waited till we got to Paris. Turns out it was one of the best things we did. We hoped on a beautiful, one level boat surrounded entirely by glass windows. The inside had a classy but simple feel to it with its white and light gray tableware. Our very attentive waiter made us feel "upper crust" as he served us our fancy food (that actually tasted as good as it looked) and constantly refilled our champagne glasses. There was even a Parisian band aboard that played french and american music. At one moment, the female singer sang a beautiful french song with only a violin accompanying her ethereal voice. Then, in the next moment the band was playing a cover of the BeeGees' "You Should be Dancing" (that one was pretty giggle worthy) All those things wrapped beautifully in a three hour package added up to: Totally worth every penny.


Food: What We Eatin'?

Chez Jean
A small, cafe/deli/shop just down the block from our hotel in Republique. This place gets first mention because they had a salad so killer that we went there like 4 times during our entire stay. Two out of 4 times we went, they had run out of the "Gina." The Gina is a gorgeous salad composed of lettuce, grilled eggplant, grilled chicken, sundried tomatoes and fresh mozzerella cheese, drizzled with pesto-oil-balsamic vinegar dressing. And it was big! And it only cost about 6 bucks. One time, there was only one left and Daniel and I had to fight to see who could have it. It was a draw -so we ended up sharing like civilized people. But even when we shared we'd growl at eachother a little -accusing the other of eating more than his/her share of the eggplant, mozzerella, etc. No joke, that amazing salad had to be split EXACTLY down the middle! :O

Meat
At a little grocery store near our hotel, Monop, sold various cured meats. They all looked rather disgusting, but Daniel, being the carnivore he is, had to try one. He settled on a little log of Salami. MAN, as soon as he opened that package, the smell that emerged was pure death! It reminded me of the mouse that trapped itself in the wall of our house ...and died. Being a good sport, I sampled a little, and it did actually taste pretty good, but the smell was sonasty that I lost my appetite for more. Daniel managed to enjoy about half of it, until the smell finally got to him too and the thing had to go. Even after tossing it out, the fridge still held onto that smell all the way till the day we left. Eww, perhaps we should have left more tip for the maids ;)

Pain du chocolat
Basically a flaky croissant with warm gooey chocolate in the middle. This thing is DAMN good. But not all pain du chocolats are created equal! The first place we went to have it was at a bakery recommended by the folks at Bike About Tours. Theirs was the best. The other ones we had fell between the categories of "so-so" to just plain "bleh."

Le Poissons
One night, we went to a upscale restaurant specializing in le poissons (fish). Our charismatic waiter who spoke his english in such a flamboyant manner, gave us good recommendations. Both Daniel and I were super happy with what we got -SO GOOD! My dish was a white sole fish with kind of a lemon/butter sauce. It reminded me of my favorite dish at L'Uraku in Hawaii (which is now no longer -so sad.) Daniel's fish was of a salt-crusted, baked assortment that kinda reminded me of hibachi-baked Uhu we made at camping trips.

Well folks, I think this is where I'll stop.

Now it's back to life in little Sasebo. As we reflect on our trip, we both came to an agreement: That even with all the new and amazing things we saw, ate and experienced, it sure didn't beat our home in Japan,...and Hawaii :) Love you guys!

Till next time, Au revoir!
-mag

ps. Pix are up on my Facebook page :)