France Part 3: Paris, or “You can’t bleach history, except in America.”

It’s only been 3 months since my trip so now seems like a good time to finally post the last installment of my temporary travel blog.

Before I jump in, I would like to mention, for anyone following along, that my ankle is still fucked up which supports my doctor friend’s suspicion that it is actually a stress fracture and not just a sprain which I accept because it sounds cooler.

Megan and I stayed in an Airbnb in Paris and I won’t pretend to know anything about the different districts. They’re just like any city neighborhoods but they’re numbered and so they sound intense to me and anyone who knows what they mean is a boss.

The building was super interesting. I took a lot of pictures using a polaroid which doesn’t help you at all and I’ve never been good at describing settings (and I usually skip over those parts in books). But they did have very stereotypically European style windows whose shutters opened  outward onto a very stereotypically European street.

It was about 90 degrees most of the time we were there and the Airbnb had no air conditioning. My bed was in the living room and I wanted to sleep with the windows open because it was so hot but one of the shutters wouldn’t lock properly. Megan pointed out that we were fairly high up and said she was unsure how dedicated Parisian rapists are, but I decided to just keep the one working window open and risk dying of heat stroke instead.

1. The things you plan:

When taking a trip to Paris, especially if it is as short as mine was, you’ll want to plan ahead. I’m not one of those people who thrives with a strict schedule, but I wanted to pick a handful of must-sees.

The must-sees (according to me, a lazy planner and person in general):

You will find, if you ever make this trip or one similar, that when asking people for recommendations of what you “ABSOLUTELY MUST” see while you’re in Paris that you’ll get somewhere between 200 and 1 million food recommendations. Eventually you’re kind of just like “Okay, meats, breads, and cheeses. Got it.” I won’t tell you where to go. I won’t tell you what to eat. It is all pretty much the same, and it is all great.

I will mention, however, that my friend Megan and I did take one person up on an ice cream shop recommendation (she had recently married a Frenchman so we decided her input had more value). I’m not much of an ice cream person, but it was hot out and I figured it was a nice French experience and that an adventure like this could add to my portfolio of proof that I’m a human person.

The place is called Berthillon and it is delish. There was a bit of a line, but just as I was starting to feel like a dick for making my friend wait in line in the hot sun for half an hour because someone she had never met told me it was tasty she remarked that it was worth the wait. PHEW. We aren’t insta models and therefor didn’t think to take a picture of our treats at the outset of our eating. Please forgive me. I should also add that I’m very lactose intolerant and  despite all the lactase pills on earth, I had the most explosive poop (a proper poomergency) later that evening, which was unfortunate for my friend because her room connected to the bathroom by way of a flimsy sliding door. I praise the gods (the old and the new) for the fact that our airbnb host kept air freshener in his bathroom. While pooping, I reminisced about the ice cream and thought, “Still worth it.”

Museums

Museums are definitely a must-see, but there are so many that I would recommend just seeing what tickles your fancy. I’m sure the internet has a comprehensive list somewhere. Megan and I decided on The Louvre and Musée d’Orsay (I copy and pasted that from google so I could get the correct accent mark and spelling).

Musée d’Orsay is a truly enjoyable experience. The building was converted from an old train station so it has a really unique and beautiful aesthetic. Also, it is very manageable in terms of size and amount of exhibitions.

At The Louvre, I found not only beautiful art but a deepened hatred for humanity.

First of all, it’s massive. This can’t really be helped because art needs to go somewhere and there’s just so much of it. But it does add to the general frustration one might experience walking for miles in a sea of people while stressing out about how you will possibly consume all of the important art and history in your limited time there and coming to the conclusion that it is, in fact, impossible to fully appreciate it all in one sitting but it is also simply financially irresponsible at this time in your life to split the viewing into two days and isn’t it crazy how it’s actually easier to fully appreciate something if there is less to be seen anyways? Like if it were just the Mona Lisa, a bowl, and 2 sculptures your mind would be blown? But you walk past like 10 Raphaels that you can barely fucking see on the top row and you’re like “BEEN DONE” and even if you had the capacity to immerse yourself into more than a few pieces of art in one go, it’s simply temporally impossible? Like how even if you wanted to read every book ever written, you wouldn’t have time to in one lifetime and mightn’t we as well give up?

So if you aren’t plagued by existential dread, you should find it enjoyable. And I imagine most people who go there aren’t because they aren’t smart enough to experience such a phenomenon to begin with (this is the beginning of a very long and impassioned rant about the state of humanity. I feel I owe you a warning).

In the fucking Louvre, you will find that most people spend their entire time there snapping pictures of things. Now, I understand the need for documentation and the desire for physical memories, but this is not what is happening here. What is happening here is a fundamental lack of the ability to have an experience without trying to figure out how to hold onto it. This is the most understanding sentence I will write about this issue, because while I understand the phenomenon and I know that it is a real issue that plagues our society and adds to a lot of dissatisfaction and depression, I also understand that most people suffering from this issue aren’t aware of what is going on or have no intention of fixing it and they’re fucking ruining everything. People are so worried about memories and experiences slipping away and out of their grasp that they spend their time seeing their own experience secondhand instead of actually creating memories and engaging with their surroundings in a meaningful way.

This issue is not only tragic but it is infuriatingly illogical. You have paid to see these paintings and sculptures (or concert, or comedy show, or firework show, or whatever the fuck) in person. You have, presumably, seen pictures of these paintings and sculptures (or members of your favorite band, or comedians, or a firework) online or in a book at some point and have decided to now take the next step and see it in person. WHY in the FUCK are you choosing then to continue seeing it through a lens other than your OWN FUCKING EYEBALL? I assume many of you intend to post these pictures online where I hope you are aware you could simply look up pictures taken by actual fucking art photographers if you’re ever feeling real nostalgic. FURTHERMORE many of the artists whose works you’re reducing to a poorly lit and over filtered 4 inch display didn’t imagine a world in which you had a lil device in your hand that could capture images and they were painting this shit so you could look at it with your own stupid fucking unadulterated face, you imbecile.

IN ADDITION, you standing there like a flock of goddamn lemmings makes it NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE for actual human beings to squeeze through and look at something with their actual human eyes.

I at one point managed to get through a group of people blocking me with their stupid arms in the air holding cameras and phones in order to see a sculpture and one dude had the audacity to tap me on the shoulder and motion for me to move out of his shot. I yelled “NO. Fuck you. Your picture is not more important than my eyes!” He didn’t speak English, but HE KNEW I WAS ANGRY.

Also no one is looking at your iPhone picture of the Mona Lisa thinking you’re cool. You’re not an art photographer (and if you are and are just there on vacation and not work you’re being a dickweasel). You’re not going to capture it a way it hasn’t been captured. And we don’t value this as some verification that you’re in France. We saw your status about it. We weren’t doubting you. Fuck off.

I did take one Louvre pic because this is great:

“There, there.”

A couple times we were actually able to glimpse sculptures through cracks formed between the different teams of hardworking cinematographers and we marveled at how severely unfathomable to us the process of sculpting something is. How in god’s name does someone have the patience to delicately craft a ballsack out of stone without chipping anything? And how did they have time to do it 30 more times on 30 more bodies? Thankfully, one of our friends is an artist so we bombarded her with questions about how long various art things take:

Megan attributes the prolific nature of sculptors to their apparently extremely fortunate lack of Netflix.

So in addition to the many wings and levels with many different works of art from many different eras and locations, the Louvre has maintained some of the underground (I think?) original structures from when the building initially acted as a fortress. You can walk through and learn about the different phases of the building’s use and structure. It’s actually pretty cool, but for some reason smelled like bleach. We wondered whether that was how they kept everything clean, but figured you can’t bleach history, except in America.

2. The things you don’t plan:

Even though planning is important if you want to feel like you got the most out of your $700 plane tickets, the best part of my trip was the part we didn’t plan at all. We spent an entire day there just walking around to sites such as the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame (I won’t include pictures because I imagine you’re capable of googling). We also walked along the Seine (some water) and had a picnic of cheese and bread. At the end of the day, we started walking home and saw an ice cream stand that called to us. We then took our spontaneous ice cream and walked around the corner where there was a group of street performers. Two of them were playing violin and guitar together and we decided to stay and enjoy the music. At one point, the violinist went over to the guitar player and started playing his guitar with him over his shoulders! It was incredible! Then, as the sun was setting, we walked through central Paris, through locals and tourists alike, down to the delicately noisy subway to our perfectly Parisian apartment where I had explosive diarrhea #2 in our beautifully European bathroom.

As it turns out, the best days of our lives are the ones you couldn’t recreate even if you tried, yet we spend our lives frustratedly chasing the high of each one anyways only to be reminded of how foolish we are when we fall upon the perfect day unintentionally.

So, you know, if this is still a travel guide to anyone, leave time for just chasing fancies.

3. The things you really don’t plan:

Megan again helped me plan my trip back but I took it all alone. I had to take the subway to the airport so I left super duper early, having experienced a subway or two in my life.

I got there a couple hours early, I got some breakfast, picked out plenty of snacks for the flight, took my anxiety pills, and finished downloading my in flight entertainment while journaling about my wonderful travels.

PSYCH!

The subway for some reason stopped being express and started stopping at every single stop which added about half an hour to the trip. Then on two separate occasions we had to get off the train and get on the next one and I wish I could tell you why but I don’t speak French. I just followed all the angry people with suitcases. When I got to the airport, they had sectioned off my entire terminal due to a suspicious package. They held us there for about an hour and then hundreds of people tried to get through security at the same time. By the time I got to customs, my plane was boarding. I kept asking employees if I would be ok and they assured me it was fine which reduced my panic attack by 0%. Finally they started calling for Air Canada and suddenly I spoke French “Oui, Madame! Je suits Air Canada!!!” They put all of us through customs where they decided they had to go through my entire backpack and not put any of it back at which point I decided to just run (ON A SPRAINED ANKLE) with the contents of my bag in my hands. Once I got to the gate I realized I had at some point dropped my favorite sweater. I mentioned this to one of the other passengers in line to board (I honestly have no idea what came over me to cause me to talk with people at this juncture) and they mentioned they had seen it in the hallway and that I probably had time to get it. I sprinted about halfway back down the hallway and then decided I’d rather just be as near to the plane as humanly fucking possible so I KNOWINGLY ABANDONED MY SWEATER.

When I got back to the gate from my failed rescue attempt, I immediately boarded with an empty stomach, a full bladder, a swollen ankle, no food, and no water. I sat down, took a deep breath, and dry chewed my klonopin. 6 hours later, I was in Canada and able to have the thought “Yeah, that was really great.”

I Bisou’ed Olga – My Trip to France Part 2

If you’re following along in your blogpostprayerbooks, this is going to be the “Wow! Things are so different in another part of the world and it has really, truly opened my eyes in ways I never expected!” part.

After taking a train from Paris, I spent the first half of my trip in Grenoble where my friend Megan lives. Though I was really looking forward to seeing Paris for the first time, I am very glad for my time in Grenoble because I got to see what life might actually be like for a person my age living life in France.

These are the things I learned about life in France:

1. They really do eat pastries for breakfast and baguettes with every meal.

Every morning, Megan would go out while I was still sleeping and get pastries and a baguette for the day (have I mentioned she’s amazing?). For breakfast, we would eat soft boiled eggs, fruit, an interesting yogurt/cheese hybrid type substance, and some of the pastries that she had picked up. My favorite was one that had almonds in it. The part of me that is overly concerned about sugar intake freaked out internally, but I told myself to shut the fuck up because we are in France and we’re going to have ourselves a French old time and enjoy ourselves doing it, dammit. Also no one in France is fat or has diabetes (statistic is 100% made up but also seemingly 100% accurate) so I think people only die of things in America, probably because of some sort of international accord that I don’t understand because politics isn’t my strong suit.

For lunch, we would picnic with sandwiches or simply a baguette and cheese.

One night, we went to a very nice and traditional French restaurant. I ate steak (I broke vegetarianism for the trip). It was delish. We also made friends with some Israeli table neighbors who were cool until one of them started talking about how Trump isn’t that bad and then we went home.

2. France does not believe in air conditioning.

France puts Los Angeles to shame when it comes to lack of proper climate control. Everywhere is hot and everyone is sweaty and no one is talking about it, aside from Megan who obviously realizes they’re all insane even if they are saving the Earth for all of us.

3. People bike everywhere.

Not only is everywhere hot, but everyone arriving everywhere is already sweaty because they biked there in 90 degrees. This, too, is not addressed. This, too, will save the planet. Basically, France is just one giant eco friendly humble brag.

I did expect the biking due to my trip to Amsterdam a few years prior. When I went on that trip, I hadn’t ridden a bike in approximately ten years. I don’t know if you know much about Amsterdam, but picking up biking there after a 10 year break is comparable to deciding that because you played basketball in your backyard with your little brother a couple times when you were 10 that you could hop into a pickup game at age 20 with tall, fit people who play every day and are actually secretly on a professional team and are just there for funsies and it’s possible they’re on steroids or were, at the very least, born with super human strength that is yet to be understood by scientists. By some fucking miracle, I biked that whole trip and left mostly unscathed (one of my Toms got mildly ripped when I had to squeeze between a parked car and an oncoming car and hope for the best). I don’t know if it was the magic of weed or if God smiled upon me for my first European jaunt, but whatever happened there made me overly confident that I’d make it through France okay, too.

Megan planned a really beautiful, romantic French day for us. We would bike to the train station, take a train about an hour outside of Grenoble to a town with a beautiful lake. We would then bike from the station to the lake and spend the day laying in the sun, swimming in the water, and biking around the lake in the cool breeze with baguettes in our baskets and sandals on our feet.

We borrowed a bike from one of her wonderful and kind friends. I would use Megan’s helmet because, in Megan’s words, “I have fancy French health insurance and you don’t.”

The bike we borrowed was, I want to say, 50 lbs. It was almost definitely more like 25-30, but a large, unwieldy metal object has a way of becoming impossibly heavy when you have to carry it up and down multiple flights of stairs at train stations.

I tried to feel confident about biking to the train station. I was definitely wobbly and looked like a freakin idiot, but I managed to get there okay even with the addition of a few leg bruises from clumsy bike carrying.

After the train ride, we got off and started our journey to the lake. There was less city traffic than around Grenoble and we were amped about our lake picnic and the beautiful view we would have, so we went a little faster than we had before. I started to really feel like I was doing it. My friend was killin it ahead of me and I was following her. She turned, I turned. And I was even getting less wobbly!

We were almost there! She took a right turn seamlessly and I…did not. I saw a car out of the corner of my eye and froze. In fact, I straight up just stopped in the middle of the street in front of the car and fell over. My ankle snapped as I fell and the 75 lb bike fell on top of me. If you were to ask me how I did this, I would liken it to a time you might have tripped over absolutely nothing and not known how to explain it anyone, even yourself.

I knew I would be okay, but the initial pain was too much for me to do much of anything. The man in the car started getting out and presumably asking if I was okay, but I don’t speak any goddamn French so I just started waving my arm at him in a swatting “I’M FINE JUST MOVE ALONG” type motion which did not seem to get the message across well enough because he continued to stand there. Eventually I yelled “MEGAAAAAAN!” and she returned to rescue me (as one does when they suddenly look back and see their friend on the ground under a bike waving their hand lazily at a Frenchman) and tell the cab driver, probably, that I was okay and he could go, or perhaps that I was just her simple minded cousin who has trouble with basic tasks such as riding bikes but not to worry because she’ll be okay soon and it’s good for her to try things on her own sometimes.

Somehow, miraculously, despite the horrible pain upon falling, I was able to walk and (lucky me) continue biking.

4. France can be stunningly scenic.

We made it to the lake and it was truly stunning.

The breathtaking beauty of this place took up about 20% of my brain while the other 80% was concerned with a combination of how bad my ankle would turn out to be and how I was possibly going to return back to the train station (and then from the train station back to Megan’s) without killing myself. Considering it was sudden lack of confidence that had fucked me over on the way to the lake, a post-injury trip was seeming less doable as time went on and panic rooted itself deeper within me. Not to mention the fact that the seat of the bike was so hard my taint was as bruised as the apple that’s been floating around in my bag for 5 days wondering if it has a purpose. I was stuck in the most stupid, bike themed self-fulfilling prophecy of all time.

Megan kindly distracted me from my worries by taking me through a 15 minute synopsis of Big Little Lies so that I would never have to watch it. Megan is a hero.

Eventually it was time to leave. Megan, with the patience of a saint or someone who has just stopped giving a fuck, let me walk the bike through “scary areas” (ones where there were cars or people) and we made it back okay.

The next day, we had planned to take a hike early in the morning but I decided based on the state of my ankle that I should pass.

We went to the Grenoble Bastille, which can be hiked but instead of further cankling my cankle we took a murder machine to and from the site.

I’m sure I learned a lot about France, but  I can’t say with honesty I remember much of it at all. The coolest part of bastille were the caves. They were chilly and utterly silent. The walls and floors were wet and despite thorough googling we couldn’t figure out how a man made cave would hold water like that. If you happen to know how that works, please hit me up: aandreano11@gmail.com.

Also here is France from the Bastille’s point of view (plus me not knowing what to do with my arms or face):

5. The Bisou.

America has the handshake, Miami (decidedly separate from America) has the one cheek kiss, and France has the bisou. Technically, I think “bisou” simply translates to “kiss” but I heard it used colloquially to refer to the double cheek kiss that French people do upon both meeting and greeting. It’s used as universally, casually, and with as little meaning as when Americans say “it was nice meeting you” – you know, when you’re with your friend walking and talking and all of a sudden they run into someone they sort of know and they talk for a couple minutes and they’re not exactly important enough to fully introduce to you so you just stand there awkwardly trying to look like you’re neither annoyed nor intruding so you manage like a glazed half smile and then at the end of it all, you remark upon how incredible the experience was in the biggest lie of your life?

That’s what the bisou is. Or at least that’s what it can be in certain situations, such as this one here:

I was at a bar with Megan and her friend when they saw someone from their PhD program walking down the other side of the street with his girlfriend Olga. They was too far to call to, so they just spent a lot of time gossiping about him and Olga. I can’t remember whether Olga was bitchy or just weird but whatever it was, we don’t like Olga. Unexpectedly, dude and Olga crossed the street and changed direction which put them on a course for us. When they came up to our table, I was positioned at their access point and Megan and Bea were busy talking to dude so I ended up in an obligatory Bisou with Olga, the non-French stranger about whom I had just been engaging in shit talk. And then they left. It was nice meeting them.

6. France is big into street art.

I don’t know why I found myself surprised by this, but at least in Grenoble street art is a big part of the landscape. Some of it was grand:

Some was tiny:

And some was just perfect:

I saw the tag “Kunt” in multiple locations around Grenoble but we never snagged a pic of it.

As we got on the train to leave Grenoble after my 4th day, we mused “Maybe we’ll see some Kunt in Paris.”

“The Exit Row is a Serious Job” – My Trip to France Part 1

About a month ago at this point (I’m really not timely with these things. My friend is currently doing his travel blog AS he’s traveling and I hate him), I went to France for the first time to visit my friend, Megan. Megan is lovely. If you ever get the chance to meet Megan, you should. But don’t startle her. She doesn’t like strangers just coming up to her. Try calling to her from afar.

I’m trying to figure out how to break this up so that it makes sense and so it’s most interesting to you. I’m really putting in a lot of work for you. How do you feel about starting with my travels there? We’ll get through it quickly, I promise. Not much happened.

“People in exit rows should take their job more seriously” – My Trip There

My lovely friend Andrew agreed to drive me to the airport in the morning while it was still dark out, so I got him some dark chocolate as a gift. Andrew revealed to me on this car ride, while I still had the smug smile of a gift giver on my face, that he, in fact, only likes milk chocolate. “This trip will go well,” I thought.

I learned upon checking in for my first flight that Canada is metal:

I spent one hour of the flight watching Pete Davidson’s SMD and the remaining 3 1/2 hours watching the man in the window seat of the exit row who, instead of taking his job seriously, was sleeping. I mean do you think you’re just there for extra leg room, buddy? I watched you give verbal confirmation to the flight attendant that you felt up to the task. Want to switch seats because I will gladly remain unnecessarily alert for 4+ hours. One time when I was like 7, I heard a weird noise while sleeping at my Grandma’s house and I stayed up for a good two hours with my arms stretched out over my stuffed animals and my eyes wide open because no one was going to hurt my beanie babies on my watch. Get your shit together.

Eventually we landed in Canada, no thanks to window man, and I guess I probably got on a plane to Paris.

My plan was to sleep as much as possible on this flight because I would be landing around 8 AM France time. I immediately drugged myself with a cocktail of klonopin and Benadryl and pulled out my neck pillow and earplugs. Despite my well thought out sleep accommodations, I did not rest undisturbed for very long because there were 3 middle aged women behind me chatting loudly the entire flight. At one point I gathered the courage (rage) to say “Can you please keep it down? I am really trying to sleep” (badass). When we landed, the women were changing the times on their watches, laughing, saying “Oh my goodness it’s morning here! I guess we’ll just sleep all day today! Ha Ha!” HAHAHAHAHAHAHHA.

So I was to take a train from the airport to my friend, Megan (you remember Megan) in Grenoble. About a week before my trip, she gave me extremely detailed instructions that I turned into an extremely easy to follow, numbered, to do list that I ran by her to make sure it was accurate and I still texted her from the station to clarify various steps. Additionally, everyone spoke English so it didn’t even fucking matter.

I will describe my train ride to Grenoble in a series of screenshots and pictures:

 

And then I was in Grenoble.

Up Next:

“I Bisou’ed Olga” and “Will we find more Kunt in Paris?”