Day 10: Keats and Yates Are On Your Side...Paris, Part One

Where were we? We were, perhaps unsurprisingly, stuck in the bus, in traffic. This time it was for a legitimate reason-- Bastille Day, the biggest holiday in France, was in two days. We would miss it by one day. This brought the number of times I was leaving a major city one day before a super-amazing city/nationwide festival up to two, the first being the Water festival in Bangkok last April.

Even with all of that, MJ the tour guide came through like the champ she is, so the first day in Paris we did a bus tour...in our own bus. It was a good way to see the city and get acclimated, and we stopped for several photo ops along the way. The best part of the drive was easily when Frank, our bus driver, took on the Triumph D'arch-thingy roundabout. Roundabouts are terrifying enough, as anyone who has lived in Long Beach knows, and this one is the most dangerous in the world--apparently there's an accident every half-hour on average.

At first I was leery of taking a giant tour bus onto a crowded parisian deathtrap, but when I looked at the tiny little peugot's and smart cars, I realized we had nothing to fear. MJ put "Highway to the Dangerzone" on the speakers and we whipped into the circle. The inertia was terrifying, and I braced for a crash that never came. As quick as it had begun, we were out, headed down the Chante Lize (Say "Shant-A Lee-Zay...I think). Our hotel was unremarkable--tiny, functional. I had a baguette and a small bottle of wine for dinner, and then we were heading to the Eiffel Tower, as it was going to be insane tomorrow, the day before Bastille Day, and besides, the ET at night is a must see. The lines there were pretty long, and a few French assholes tried to cut in, only to face a bunch of irate, threadbare, mildly drunk 20 somethings: us. We yelled at them and they slunk off. Kirk, perhaps out of boredom, made the boneheaded move of talking to a Hawker-of-Mini-Eiffel-Towers, only to be rewarded with the guy refusing to leave us alone for twenty minutes. Getting to the top proved to be a series of elevators and lines for elevators, but all in all it took about 3 hours. The top is small and fenced from top to bottom, obviously, but the views are still incredible. So is the wind. I have to say, it was pretty fucking romantic and shit. We stayed up there for over an hour, but by that time it was closing. For kicks, a few of us took the stairs all the way down. Alllllll the way. It's a lot of stairs, obviously, and it really gave a much better impression of how tall it was than taking the elevators did. We even saw the resturant that's in the middle of the Tower. Sweet! It was closing time so the lights were off, but it looked very hoity-toity. I'd like to eat there some day.

We would have a long day ahead of us, so Kirk and I grabbed a cab like the pros we were by that point, and I fell asleep watching a Simpsons episode that was dubbed in French, which gave me odd dreams.