Posts from May, 2009⁽²⁾

Paris has turned out to be the big surprise for me on the trip — i thought i was going to hate it, and was only doing it to buy off my wife for spending seven days in a car running around a nation she’d already seen.

And i have to say, i was partially right. Paris is an ugly, ugly city during the day — there seems to be no sanitation in the traditional sense, the people on the sidewalks aren’t terribly nice, and it was painfully obvious that I just wasn’t in Kansas anymore Toto.

But Paris at night, is just stunning.

I have a feeling we’ll be back — we didn’t get to see even half the things on our list, but when we do come i think we’re going to do another long weekend and not even going to try adapt to the time change.

We’ll just get up at noon, and stay awake until 2am, and do Paris the way that God intended — at night.

friends of ours came to Paris of their honeymoon. they basically rented an apartment for two weeks, and packed a bunch of books, and just lived a normal Parisian life for two weeks (sans blackberry, i hope).

i thought they were crazy — turns out they weren’t.

we ran around like tourists for the first 18 hours we were here, before we started dawdling longer and longer in the cafes around the tourist attractions than in the attractions themselves.

the cafe at Notre Dame is a great example. it’s a horrible tourist trap, and it was horribly overpriced, but sitting there drinking liquid chocolate for two hours is one of the top memories i’m taking home with me.

It’s nearly impossible to overstate the impact that tourists have on The Louvre. They’re everywhere, and they’re crazy. The Lady Sparker and I spent a grand total of two hours in the museum (including 45 minutes at their cafe) and ticked off most of the top 10 things you “have” to see — and then got the heck out of dodge. Beautiful museum, it just needs about 2.3 million less people in it at any one time.