Where People and Pigeons Sit Down Together

Today was our first day in Paris. And it was a busy one and I do have a couple stories to share. Hopefully I can remember them all.

As I said last night, we got to sleep in this morning because classes ran late, but a brave handful of people in our group got up at 04:00 to go photograph the Eiffel Tower at sunrise. Apparently they had an unfortunate run in with their taxi driver, who started their meter when she was called to pick them up, and not when she picked them up. Her dog was also apparently in the front seat of the car, and she refused to allow anybody to sit up front, and then when the total of the ride came to 15 Euros and they gave her a 20, she only gave them 2 Euros back and refused to return the rest of the change.

It seems like people are, in general, kind of rude here in this city. It hasn’t been everyone, and it hasn’t been non-stop, but I’ve definitely gotten the sense that ‘manners’ are just kind of out the window.

Regardless, though, I didn’t wake up until 09:00, at which point I got breakfast and then slept a bit more. At 11:00 we met down in the lobby and got our train tickets, and we arrived at the Louvre at around 12:00. A small group of us (not the usual suspects) went and got lunch at a small crepe (german pancakes, for my family) restaurant. I got one with Nutella (it’s like chocolate peanut butter), and it was delicious. This restaurant is where today’s title comes from, though. There were a few pigeons wandering around inside the restaurant, just checking things out, hoping for scraps, totally unafraid of people. It was funny and maybe even a tad bit cute.

We met at 12:30 for our appointment at the Louvre, and by 13:00 we were in the museum with plans to meet at 16:00 outside to walk to the next one. I don’t know if any of you have ever been to the Louvre before, but here are my impressions.
To be honest, I didn’t think too highly of it. It definitely had a very extensive collection, and there were some respectable pieces of art in there, but it felt very much to me like it was starting to become a tourist trap. If I can remember correctly, this is only the second museum on this entire trip that has allowed us to take our bags in and take pictures with flash. It almost seemed like the museum was resigned to the fact that it was just an attraction, which I felt was somewhat disappointing. Oh, and the Mona Lisa is really tiny, and I didn’t even bother getting too close to it, since about 200 people were crammed right up against it taking pictures. Somebody even said they doubted it was the real one, and I’d totally believe that they would put a replica on display. Nobody’s the wiser, right?
But hey, Barry Bonds was there today. Literally. People got pictures with him. He was just there walking around with his family. It was the high point of about a dozen people’s lives, I think. Haha

After the Louvre we walked across town to the Pompidou museum, which has modern art in it. Our appointment wasn’t until 18:30, so a few of us went to a Pizza Hut for some good old American style pizza and paid 25 dollars for a pizza that would have cost 8 back home.

The Pompidou was a much better museum, in my opinion. I’m not the biggest fan of modern art, I feel like a lot of it is baloney, but there were a few pieces I liked. One was The Deep by a guy named Pollock. See if you can google image it. It just looks like a white piece of canvas with some black splotches down the middle, but I kinda got the sensation that I was drowning when I looked at it. Weird.

The Pompidou was our last stop for the day, so I went with Kate and Jenny back to the hotel. We had to come up with our own route, since we were at a different stop to begin with. We had to make two connections, but during the first one we ran into another ticket checking machine. So Kate just put her old one through and when it didn’t seem to open right away she literally drop kicked her way through. It was pretty hilarious.

I went and got a sandwich from a nearby shop after we got back since the Pizza didn’t quite fill me up, and at the shop I met a guy who lives here in Paris, but spent some time in Texas. He talked about how great a country America was and how nice the people were there. I didn’t want to be rude, so I didn’t outright agree with him when he said America was nicer than Paris, but secretly, I agreed. Haha. He was a really nice guy though. So I still can’t decide if the people here are generally mean, or if we just had bad luck earlier in the day.

Maybe tomorrow will tell. Tomorrow is an early day, so I’m going to call it quits for now. Hope everything is going well. I'm actually going to go write a short story. A happy one.

Tata.