By Myself in Paris

I was by myself today.

I liked it that way.

1. Breakfast: totally french. Baguette with Camembert cheese... amazing.
2. waited in line for almost an hour to climb 400 stairs up the Towers of Notre Dame. view was great, liked the "gargoyles".
3. Ate Nutella crepes on a park bench by Notre Dame
4. Visited the Museum d'Orsay
5. Ate another baguette with Camembert cheese
6. Visited the Rodin Museum...
7. Bought a trashy novel in the famous bookstore "Shakespeare and Co."
8. Ate expensive ice cream in a little cafe
9. Laid on a park bench near the Eiffel Tower and read some of my bad fiction
10. Caught the metro to Montmartre
11. Visited the Basilica Sacre Coeur in the middle of a Mass, the church is so beautiful and the ambiance during the mass was amazing--they sung and prayed (in french). it didn't even have that churchy musty smell!
12. Browsed cheap gift shops in Montmartre-- realized I got ripped off paying 1 Euro for my Eiffel tower keychain AND 30 cents for postcards... oh well.
13. Ate a cheese and tomato panini for dinner (YUM)
14. Avoided strange black men
15. Took the metro home... i love the metro
    

I climbed a lot of stairs, ate a lot of bread and cheese... and it was fabulous.


Some interesting things about today:

1. in the Musee d'Orsay, this guy got a business call on his cell phone and this older French gentleman/coot starts going off in bad English about how inappropriate it is to have a conversation in the middle of a museum, and after the guy leaves to continue his call elsewhere, the older French gentleman/coot continues going off to the guy's wife, who is obviously feeling a little intimidated by the French gentleman's/coot's audacity to make such a scene...

2. i saw this younger dude on the Metro on the way home and I totally wanted to take a picture of him, his hair was AWESOME.. it was longer, and he just had so much of it... i guess you had to have been there.

3. Musicians like to hang out in metro stations...and on the metros themselves. they even come around with a cup expecting you to give them money for the service, lol... it is kind of neat to have a sax or clarinet in the metro while you're riding, i'll admit

4. I have not had anything stolen from me this entire trip so far

5. I ate too much today and I don't really give a hoot nor holler. French bread and cheese is amazing and i know I'll burn everything off when I get home!



All in all it is really awesome to be able to travel like this. Quite an expensive hobby, i must admit, though. But it's a cool feeling when you suddenly become aware for a moment you're in the middle of a city with so much history. you're really there. I am really here. it was cool today to just sit. i made it a point to just sit. if I felt like doing something, I did it. I wanted to eat bread and cheese, i did it, I wanted to leave the museum, I left. I wanted to buy a book, I did. I wanted to take the stairs instead of the escalator? I DID.

And the whole day, well, it just rocked.