Parrris baby!

I decided to make a separate entry about my trip to Paris, so that I can add it to my memories.


I went to Paris on July 21st. The bus ride wasn't as bad as I had expected it to be, for the bus was pretty comfortable. I sat next to a fun girl, her name was Rita, she's from Sao Paulo and studies theater in Paris - she made the journey much less boring. :) I arrived in Paris the next morning. Hélène (vodka_lemonade) came to pick me up. She had two other girls from Germany staying at her house, Jennee and Christin; then Nina (ninola) arrived for the weekend - so it was a colourful cultural gathering, hehe. I liked hanging out with Hélène and the others a lot! Me and Hélène are so different, as she is a party girl and I'm not into partying, but we got along pretty well. :) She was a sweetheart and showed me around Paris; I was such a horrible tourist.

I arrived on Friday morning and in the afternoon I went to the Montmartre with Hélène, her best friend Amélie and her friend Raphaele, and the German girls. We went to see the Sacre Coeur. The basilica is on a hill from where you get a wonderful view of the city. The insides of the church are stunning. You enter the church and the first thing you see is this huge painting of Jesus with outreached arms on the cupola. There was a mass when we visited and so I was awed not only by the architecture and paintings, but also by the beautiful singing of the choir.

Here is a scan of a picture of the Sacre Coeur I took:



Then we ran around the Montmartre for quite a while, searching for the store and the café that were made famous by the movie, Amélie. We also saw the Moulin Rouge and the 'sex street', hehe.


If I were a whore, I'd like to work in the Moulin Rouge. ;) (Yeah, I know it's a cabaret, not a whorehouse.)

Me and the German girls then took a boat ride along the Seine and got to see all the major sights from the boat.
I took this picture from the boat. I think it turned out quite cool!


We went to have dinner at Hélène's fav Mexican restaurant - I have never eaten Mexican before and I discovered that I don't want to eat Mexican again. Buritos are just not my cup of tea. :d

In the evening we sat at the Seine and enjoyed the fading sun - it was nice, all the musicians and interesting people... In Paris, it must be easy to find a new guy. It really was quite romantic. ;)

On Saturday (July 23rd, I guess) we went to the city. We went inside the Notre Dame - it's one of the most gorgeous buildings I've ever seen. It's so huge and beautiful, I loved the decorated windows and the architecture. I wished I could stay inside a little longer and pray in silence but the girls were waiting for me, sooo... They went shopping after that but I decided to queque for an hour in order to climb to the towers of Notre Dame. It was definitely worth it, I got a wonderful view of the city. There were these little signs with quotes from Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so you could read snippets from the book and then look at the things that Huge described.

Lucy in front of the cathedral:

(The pic turned out nice, considering that it was taken by a quite weird random guy.)

...and Lucy on the Notre Dame:

(This one didn't turn out nice. :/ It was too dark, I tried to lighten it up after scanning it... didn't really help.)

On Saturday evening Hélène threw a party, invited a bunch of friends over to her house... It was actually quite fun, I spent half of the evening talking to one of Hélène's friends - I don't really remember her name anymore, though (oops!). She was really nice and we found out that we had quite a lot in common.
I guess the party got pretty wild later but I'm not sure - I went to bed at about 1am 'cause I was very tired.

It was raining on Sunday morning and so I decided to go to the Louvre. Everybody warned me that I'd have to stand in a line for hours in order to get inside - but I only waited for 5 minutes in front of the Pyramid (the main entrance) and then another 5 minutes at the ticked machines. I guess most people were too lazy to go to a museum on Sunday morning (it was almost eleven, though), or maybe most of them went to watch the finish of the Tour de France.

Another picture of me taken by a random person:


I headed to the room with the Mona Lisa first, as I figured it would be less crowded in the morning. (I was wrong.) The Joconde, as the French call her, is really not THAT spectacular. The painting is pretty tiny, esp. compared to the huge paintings that hang in the same room. It's not very beautiful, either, but it's definitely intriguing and interesting. So I found my way through the crowd of tourists and spent a couple of minutes staring at the Mona Lisa. Everybody took pictures of her, which was a bit stupid in my opinion - c'mon, you can buy postcards or pictures in much better quality. :p Then I moved on to other paintings. (I was a little sad that I didn't find the other paintings by Leonardo DaVinci, the ones mentioned in The DaVinci Code.)
I spent the entire day in the Louvre and I guess I might have seen about 70-80% of the collection. I fell in love with the sculptures, esp. those made of white or black marble (or whatever stone it was) - so perfect and beautiful!!! I've never really been into sculptures before but I LOVED those. (I guess it was the French sculptures from the 17th, 18th century.)
I wanted to walk around a bit but it was raining, so after buying a crêpe outside I went back to the museum and walked around some more.

Here are two pics I stole from Hélène:

This was when we went out for dinner to a nice Italian restaurant. Jennee, Christin, Nina, Italian waiter on the left. Me, Amélie and Hélène on the right.

After that, we went out for a while and ended up taking silly pictures.

(We took one of our feet as well... I want that pic!)

On Monday me and Hélène went sightseeing for real, hehe, I still feel a little sorry for dragging her across half of Paris.

We went to the Eiffel Tower and climbed to the top. It started to rain when we got to the first floor and it got very windy, so we had to wait until the weather got better again (10 minutes?).
On the first floor of the Eiffel Tower:


Climbing to the top was very nice, since you get a spectacular view of Paris. I loved it. Hélène waited for me on the second floor as I took the lift to the top of the tower. It's very high, indeed. :D

After that, we went to see the Arc de Triomph, the Champs Elysées, the Place du Concorde (I know I'm spelling it wrong but I am too lazy to think about French now, sorry), the Invalides... We were soooo tired when we got back home. I think we just spent the rest of the evening signing slams, hehe.

Me doing the 'Asian-tourist hand-gesture' in front of the Arc de Triomph:


You can't really see anything interesting on here (except for me and the Eiffel Tower in the background) but it's the Place du Concorde:


The Invalides:



On Tuesday we went to the Centre Pompidou - they have all sorts of funky fountains in front of the museum, hehe. I would have loved to go inside the museum but that would have meant spending half a day in there, so I didn't go.

Look! fountains. And Lucy.


I wanted to see the Saint Chapelle but I didn't want to queue for another two hours, so we didn't go in. We walked around some more instead, visited the church of St. Germain, which is not very famous but still beautiful, then we went shopping for a bit.
Oh and we walked past the Notre Dame again and I had to take a picture because whoa! architecture! There's this lovely little park behind the church...



In the evening me and Hélène went to see The Lords of Dogtown - it was a good movie AND it had three hot blond boys in it. :D

On Wednesday we went to the Pére Lachaise (accent is probably incorrect, I suck at accents)... We only found the tomb of Oscar Wilde - it had lipstick kisses all over it - how freaky is that? :D We wanted to find the other famous graves but it started to rain, so we went back home instead. I left Paris on Wednesday evening. It was such a nice trip and it was fun to get to know Hélène personally :D I should have bought a tourist guide book, though - I dig all the history stuff and I would have loved to find out more about all the places I visited. I'll just remember that the next time I go somewhere.

And one more thing - Hélène et moi, being 'sexy':

:D