The Paris of France
Posted on April 10, 2010 with 0 comments
Where to begin... did you know that the Eiffel Tower turns into a billion strobe lights at night on the hour? I wasn't quite ready for that as I stepped out of the subway after a few midnight glasses of red wine (the bottle being under 2 euros : ) I confusedly analyzed an office building on which many little flashing lights were twinkling in the windows' reflection. Tim, ahead of me with our absolutely wonderful couchsurfing host Manon (thankyou for everything!) beckoned us to hurry ahead. Around the corner, my jaw dropped, there in front of me was entropy, chaos in a controlled system, beautiful lights dancing on the familiar shape I'd only seen in textbooks. The Eifell Tower at night, strobing, and completely deserted. Wha...
There was much busking to be had. Day 1 on the steps of the Sacre-Cœur overlooking the wide expanse of Paris. Beautiful and industrial in one. Parisians really like space - the sidewalk of the Champs Elysee is like 3 highway lanes wide - a bit different from the alleys of London. Astonishing stuff. Crowds came and went while a loyal handful listened for most of the day. Saw a neat French band called Fergus that night - the singer a beautiful French girl named Sacha. Gave her the old wristband - networking is tough stuff. Next time I roll through I'll try a bill with them.
The architecture in Notré Dame cathedral is outrageous. It's too bad we don't do it like that anymore. If I had any atheist friends which is tot-lly crazy, I bet they'd believe in god for a moment or two. I almost did ; ) At Centre Pompidou in front of the modern art museum, we saw yet another young beautiful parisian girl (I know, hard to believe) this time playing the didgeridoo. Gave her some change for good busking karma, especially since we did not have the shock value of playing didgeridoos. (At least we're gorgeous and clean and groomed... been wearing the same pants for 8 days). So we setup and busked there too. The cool thing about a crowd, it attracts more crowd. Our new friends (fiery & petite - pretty Lorrette, the sweetest of sweet - Manon, and Marie and Juliette and Ramón and more whose names escape me) sat around us just to hang - the weather was incredible! So curiosity built and chemical changes in peoples minds took place and before long we were playing in the round for a spontaneous crowd of fifty or sixty - ?! Made some money and went back to Lorette's to cook some coco milk noodles, chillax like the French with cigarettes and rose wine, trade music, stories, meet a beautiful French family, and so on. The best nights I've had on this trip si far are not out in the night life, but sitting at a table meeting conversation with humour, laughter, and debauchery. France, I'll be back for you.
A word to the wise, book your trains in advance. Our night train to Berlin was booked, so now I sit here on a day train to Amsterdam (slight change of plan). Apparently a lot of thought has to go into spontaneous travel - we were thinking "oh, we'll just go to Europe and just go get on some trains and just go have a swell time just going around Europe going on trains." Yeah... So now it's Amsterdam, can't say I'm complaining ; )
Also, congrats to my godbrother Ben Williams who just got accepted into Harvard onn scholarship for a PhD program inn religious studies. Hell yeah Ben! I'm so proud of you :)