Quasimodo

Well, it's 10pm and I'm in Paris. For at least another 10 hours. I have to wake up at 4am tomorrow (haha...ha...) and take a taxi to the 5:30am shuttle to the airport an hour away to check in for my 8:30am flight to Milan. Once we're in Milan, we need to find the train station and get tickets to Florence (in Italian). And arriving in Florence, we have to find our hotel. And then sleep for a long time.

And with all that merriment planned for tomorrow, what am I doing instead of sleeping? Taking advantage of the wireless network that I can access from my room (I've been dreaming for something like this to happen), listening to Simon and Garfunkel and checking my email every ten minutes. For some reason, I don't get new email every ten minutes. Weird.

Oh, and I'm probably telling you about what we did in Paris. Okay, I should do that.

After classes ended, a few of us stayed in London for a few more days and went to the Harry Potter premiere. When I say "went to the Harry Potter premiere," I mean "stood in a crowd of overexcited hormonal teenagers, some of who serenaded us with their renditions of Queen songs and their interpretations of the Knights who say Ni, for over six hours in the rain in order to spend about two hours watching an obstructed view of some of the actors in Harry Potter and a few other celebrities and no I didn't see Madonna." Was it worth it? Yeah, it was pretty awesome to see celebrities in person. I don't think I would do it again though.

The next day, I flew to France with Cheryl and Kara. I don't know if all of you keep up to date on world events, but we were arriving after the 11th night of rioting, with cars and busses being torched and stuff. It's not very reassuring to be flying to Paris when the headline on the newspaper in the airport for that day is "'Stay out' alert as Paris burns." But we haven't seen any trouble since we've been here.

Kara's friend Nicole is studying in Paris, so we met up and spent a day with her. First, we ate some Quiche Lorraine for lunch. I was going to skip that part, but I really couldn't leave it out. I think I talk about food a little too often. Anyway, then we went to Notre Dame, which was very exciting for me. I was there a few years ago, but since then I've read The Hunchback of Notre Dame (one of the saddest books I've read and therefore one of my favorites because I love sad endings just as much as happy ones) and decided that the Disney version of the movie wasn't as bad as I judged it to be when I was eight or whatever. And I love Quasimodo. Anyway, we walked around inside, and I had a really strong urge to sing "God Help the Outcasts." I didn't. But it was close. Especially when we walked through the colored light under the rose window. Anyway.

Then we went up to the bell towers, which was also really exciting because we actually got to go in one of them and see a bell. Which I think we skipped last time. And then I wanted to sing "Out There." Oh, Quasimodo/Tom Hulce. Okay, I'll stop talking about Notre Dame and Disney songs, but I hope I conveyed my deep and undying love for Quasimodo.

Where else did we go? We walked about 4 miles along the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. Of course. Took lots of pictures, but didn't go up because we're too cheap to pay to ride an elevator. Besides, we got a view from the roof of Notre Dame.

Got chocolate banana crepes for dinner (yes, dinner), which actually started a trend of eating chocolate banana crepes for dinner. I think I've had it three times now (out of five nights). We ate McDonald's before the crepe one night so at least we'd get something healthy. Oh the irony. I'm definitely running 5 miles everyday when I'm home or something to make up for Paris. Why is French food just so supreme?

Let's see, the next day we went to Arc de Triomphe (I think that's the French spelling) and the Paris Opera House. Opera Garnier. For your sake, I'm not even going to begin to express my deep and undying love for the Phantom of the Opera. Just know that it has been around longer than my love for Quasimodo. And we did some shopping. Hurray.

Kara flew home, Cheryl and I switched hotels, and we went to the Louvre. Saw Mona Lisa, of course, and a lot of really old Greek, Roman, Etruscan and Egyptian stuff because that's the stuff we like. Also, we discovered this whole floor on the bottom of the Louvre called "Medieval Louvre" and it was pretty much the walls of the castle that used to stand there. It was really cool, actually. You walk along this boardwalk along the walls and it's all dimly lit and there are barely any people, and it is just really cool. I'll add a picture later.

Today was spent trying to figure out how to get to the airport in the morning (not even going to get into that...just know that it took the whole day to figure it out). Ate chocolate banana crepes one last time. Then walked down to L'Ecole Militaire to see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night. Then back to the hotel to pack. Oh, the joys of traveling.

Anyway, here are some pictures.

Dan, Dan, the Harry Potter man (ooh, that was catchy).

That red spot on the right is Rupert Grint's hair.

My personal favorite, the Weasley twins.

I was going to add a bunch of Paris pictures, but my computer is uploading them really slowly, so I will some other time. Anyway, have a great day!