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.”
Midnight Oatmeal 