Noah's Ark, Paris Style

Long-awaited Paris update!! I have been putting this off because there is oh-so-much to say, but now I realize that the longer I wait the less I have to say because of my lamentable forgetfulness, so here goes... ('tis long but interesting, I promise...)

On Thursday (Valentine's Day), Laura, Josh, and I concluded class and raced to the airport, having cut our time very close between class and flight. Somehow we arrived with time to spare, so of course we sat around in the bookstore and cafe until we had no time to spare, and had to literally run to the gate before they shut us out. So we went Easyjet to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport, and the entire flight was only about one hour until we were deposited onto foreign(ish) soil.

We found our hotel (more on this later), and went to a cafe for a late dinner. As I experienced when I was in Paris this summer, France offers very little in the way of meals if the only meat you like is chicken. I know not what the vegetarians do. There is so much ham that I can only think it symptomatic of France's anti-Semitism. Still, I did not end up with food poisoning this trip, which I sadly cannot say for my first Parisian experience. Reason #1 for which this trip was awesome.

Josh had made reservations for the night at a place called "Hip Hotel." When we reached the address listed, we found a building called "Hotel Atlas." First indication that there was a reason our accommodations were so cheap. (More on this later.) We entered and encountered County Man, with whom our interactions went like this:

Us: (breaking out the rusty French) C'est combien? (How much does the room cost?)
County Man: *mumble mumble* the jist is "I owe you 64 cents."
Us: OK.
County Man: *counts some change, gets up to 60. Looks at it. This is incorrect. Tries again. Gets 65. Incorrect again. Starts over.*
Us: C'est pas grave, garde-le. (It's fine, just keep it.)

We are told that our room is on the 5th floor (really the 6th, because Europeans consider the ground floor as floor zero), and that there is no elevator. We climb a very windy staircase. We continue to climb. We understand why the French are so skinny. We arrive at the room with buns of steel.

The room consists of: 1) Tile floors. 2) A cot for Josh, comfortable enough. 3) A bed for Laura and me. We throw our bags onto it, and they do not bounce. We throw ourselves onto it, and experience pain. Turns out there is no significant difference between our bed and a slab of concrete. There are also no pillow cases, but the sheets have been wrapped around the pillows such that we do not notice for the first 2 minutes. 4) A lamp that actually gives off shadow instead of light. It is so dismal that we call it the Light of Despair. We grow to love it as the week progresses. 5) A bathroom that smells like cat litter, in which we find a shower with iffy-looking faucets. More on this later.

The room is so horrible that it is the best part of this trip. Much laughter commences. I will absolutely stay in this hotel should I ever return to Paris.

On Friday, we walked around Paris. My geography is a little iffy, so I may be confusing places I saw on Friday with Saturday. We went to the Place de la Concorde on which there is the l'Obelisque, and from which you can see a straight line both to the Jardin de Tuilleries and the Louvre, and down the Champs Elysees to l'Arc de Triomphe. So pretty.


We also went to the Place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris in an area called le Marais. It was lovely to walk around, even though it was horrifically cold. I ceased to feel my body after an hour. But then we experienced the wonder that is Starbucks in Paris. We know we are stupid American sell-outs for not going to a French cafe. But the Viennese hot chocolate (not even on the US Starbucks menu) was heaven in a cup. Got us through the rest of the day.

Place des Vosges:


Also saw the Centre Georges Pompidou, which is a modern art museum whose construction the French were not altogether happy with, although I think it is really interesting and fits with the modern art it contains:



Then at night, we went to a new cafe for dinner and had some delish food outside under a magnificent space heater. I met up with my friend Alex, who I had not seen since the summer before senior year, so it was nice to see him. Then we went to an area called Rue Mouffetard, which had much student life and bars and such.

We then took the metro back to Hotel Questionable. A note on the Paris metro v. the London tube: the metro is cheaper, the tube is nicer, the metro has Kinder Bueno vending machines. Paris wins.


Arriving at Hotel Questionable around 2 in the morning, we found all the lights off and the door to the "lobby" locked. We were not given a key, so we knocked on the door, only to encounter...Grumpy Man! Grumpy Man has the night shift, which as far as I can tell involves being awoken from his nap by stupid hotel patrons who need to get in. Grumpy Man mumbled in an angrier manner than County Man, then let us in so we could stairmaster it to sleep.

When we awoke on Saturday, we realized that we had only reserved the hotel for 2 nights, that we had nowhere to go for night 3, and that it was 11:45 and checkout was at noon. So Josh went downstairs and met Asian Lady, who was talking to a group of students who had clearly been searching all day for a place to stay. Asian Lady was offering the students a room, at which point Josh interrupted to ask if we could keep ours for an extra day, at which point she said yes and told the students that she actually did not have a room for them. We felt kind of bad, but honestly...we would have become the nomads if the other students weren't.

So we decided to utilize our location in the Asian district to get some pho (pronounced: fuh), a Vietnamese soup advertised everywhere, mostly because we thought "pho" was a very silly word. It was delicious. Then we walked around some more, this time to Notre Dame and around the Hotel de Ville, the government area of Paris. We found a yummy rhumerie (rummery? I suppose.) They also had an ice-skating rink set up, along with tubing areas for little kids, and it was all very cute and wintry and festive. Though I will repeat my happiness that I have always lived in an area with real seasons, snow included. Paris and London do not generally snow, and I miss that part of winter. Am very glad that I got to see some snowfall at Yale before I left. But I digress.

Hotel de Ville:


Then we met up with Roland, a relative of mine who lives in Paris, and his girlfriend. They were very very sweet and took Josh, Laura, and me out to a lovely full-course dinner, then drove us around Paris at night. Tres belle. Roland was a jokester; the three of us loved him. We met up with Gerald and Andrea, who had also come to Paris but were not staying with us, for a little while as well.

Then on Sunday, we all split up during the day. I went to the Louvre on my own, which was much fun and very leisurely and a nice little bit of independence (not to mention language practice.) I ate at a very French cafe, then met up with Alex again and went to the Eiffel Tower and ate a nutella crepe. The US needs to embrace nutella more than it does, I think. Though all this crepe consumption does make me miss American pancakes. Who wants to do IHOP with me when I return? (Ella, remember our venture on route 17 when we could barely drive?)

Sunday was also a landmark occasion hotel-wise, when all of the clues came together to determine why this was the best worst hotel room ever. Having asked Desk Man to let us stay another extra night that morning, we reflected that karma would not be pleased. Sure enough, after Josh and I showered in the morning (not together), we made the always-welcome discovery that our shower would not shut off. In fact, although the showerhead was dry, water began bursting uncontrollably from the faucets. I alerted Desk Man, who told me that the mechanic does not work on weekends.

Me: But the water is going to go into the room! (This conversation was conducted in French. Most unfortunately, I could not remember the word for "flood." NB: it's "déluge.")
Desk Man: You can use the public shower.

So we decided to just shut the shower doors and hope that the drain would perform its job well. Which worked, miraculously, all day long. But at around 8 PM, disaster struck. Josh put down his foot only to find two inches of water in the bedroom. Turns out one of our travel-sized shampoos had floated up and lodged itself in the drain, flooding the place. So Josh started bailing out water with the trashcan, Laura started alternately saving our stuff and jumping around frantically on the bed, and Josh discovered after twenty minutes that there was a hole in the trash can and abandoned the effort. He went downstairs to Desk Man.

Josh: We were told this morning there would not be a problem. I think there's a problem. There is water in our room.

Desk Man came up to check, looked around, and left for 30 minutes. Upon his return, he asked if we would like a new room. We said yes, and were given room number 1 in the hotel. What this means is that our window was eye level with pedestrians, and we could open the window and step directly onto the street. Reasons #2 and 3 for which this was the best worst hotel room ever. We found the entire fiasco utterly hilarious.

We awoke at 5 AM Monday morning to catch the plane back, having gone to sleep only two hours earlier. We were tired indeed, but too afraid to use the shower. Laura, always unusually chipper in the mornings (I love it), was especially awake and without groggy morningness. I cannot say the same for myself.

So we returned from our Great Paris Noah's Ark Adventure and got ourselves to class by 11. By 2 we were at the Royal Academy of Arts in London for a personal tour of their new "From Russia" exhibit, featuring loads of famous art by Matisse and also modern art.

This one was my favorite, by Kandinsky. I love the colors:


The constant activity did not stop there. Tuesday morning we woke up early to catch a train to Oxford for English class. We spent the day touring Oxford, where most unfortunately we were unable to enter the dining hall where they film Harry Potter. To be honest, I found Oxford surprisingly disappointing. Yale is based on Oxford and shares much of its architecture, though in a smaller and admittedly grittier area. But I guess this is why I was mostly unimpressed. Also, I think Sterling is the most beautiful university library in the world. Oxford's felt cold and unwelcoming by comparison.

We also ate lunch with students and chatted about the Oxford educational system, which is so incredibly different from the American system that I don't think you can even really compare the two. You go to college for 3 years, choose a "major" the second you step foot in the door, ONLY take classes within your major all three years, don't have "class" in the traditional sense but instead meet with the teacher individually for one-hour "tutorials" about an ungraded essay you research and write every week, and have no tests at all until one huge exam at the end of the third year that determines your graduation rank. It sounds like absolute hell to me.

Basically: I love Yale. But Oxford IS beautiful from above:


Us in the Oxford library:


And now, I have been procrastinating on two rather large research papers both due this week. I must go work on those. Women in 17th century England were a remarkably boring group of people.

P.S. I made cupcakes and frosting from scratch on Thursday night! Like, no mix involved. Big deal stuff.
P.P.S. Those of you who have been reading will know that this is mostly cribbed from this blog, but ah well... http://www.yaleherald.com/article.php?Article=6218


In conclusion: Paris was the best weekend ever. I did not stop laughing the entire time.

Evidence, in the metro: