Paris: bring your lover.

Eiffel 65

If Paris were human, Goose would make sweet love to this city. And I’d consider joining. Between the history, the buildings, the scenery and the crepes, it pretty much has it all. I also discovered that France’s people are awesome in a pretty unique way. Upon arrival, my metro pass didn’t work because that would have made too much sense. Goose went barreling away down the stairs (probably because I had recently called him out for his fanhood being spread too thin) into the depths of the metro system, leaving me with a giant bag, 0 functioning metro passes and 4 words of French known. But an elder, stereotypical-looking French man donning a blue suit coat and gray pants nearly put his life on the line to make sure I could get through and cheat the system. After realizing we couldn’t communicate, “The Saint” pointed at the turnstile and wanted me to get in behind him within the same slot, grinding up on him like a rap music video and getting through in one swipe. Because I’m neither gay nor French I shrugged that idea off. He didn’t give up. What happened next was an incredible feat of human strength and altruism combined. After people flooded out the automatic, sliding exit doors he shoved his arms in them as they slammed shut and nearly decapitated him, and began to pull them apart like the Incredible Hulk. The Saint was easily 70, and easily defeating this machine. Unfortunately, I couldn’t squeeze through the space he made. Strike 2, sorry Saint. After another solid series of “It’s OK, merci!” shrugs from me and looks of “I’m getting you through these doors even if I die doing it” from The Saint, he stopped a middle-aged woman who was really digging my American vibe and allowed me to squeeze in the turnstile with her. We got friendly for a second, and I scooted through behind her without paying. I shook The Saint’s hand, almost genuflected and asked for a blessing, found Goose, concluded that old French men are all amazing, and we moved on.

We extended our stay in Paris to make it three days in lieu of two days in Paris and two in Bourdeux, which was a superb decision. This way, after walking around and seeing all of Paris’s big hitters the first two days, we could go see the most obnoxiously large house of all time on the third day: Chateau de Versaille. King Louis the 14^th made Versaille the capitol of France and from there he basically said, “We’re goin’ big.” He proceeded to construct a home that could house my entire lineage back to Neanderthals.  Surrounding this would be two man-made lakes and hundreds of statues and fountains placed throughout hundreds of acres of meticulous hedges and gardens trimmed by, at the very least, a top-3 AP Press landscaping squad in the world.

After street food for 4 strait days, spending ~50 Euro combined in that span, we decided to treat ourselves the last night. Similar to Nice, Goose treated himself far better than I treated myself. Meaning, my plate of lamb was overshadowed and outmanned by an order of escargo, French onion soup, steak and potatoes, crème brulee, and two bottles of wine. 83 Euro. He wears the pants in this relationship. We also treated ourselves and did laundry, and by that I mean Goose woke up and did our laundry while I slept.

Clean laundry is an amazing feeling after about a week of using “the smell test” on boxers before wearing them and wiping myself dry with a mildew-infested Bear Grills style camping towel. Over the trip, I’ve slowly discarded the following: 3 pairs of sweaty socks, one pair of boxers I didn’t feel like washing, 5 out of the 400 La Quinta Inn shampoo and body washes that my mother packed me (love you Mom!), a stick of deodorant, and Becca discarded a non-empty toothpaste tube for unknown reasons.

After a pretty awesome experience, we’ve arrived in Bourdeux to begin mental preparations for Pamplona’s Running of the Bulls this weekend. Here’s what we ended up with for Paris’s Power Ranking:

Hostel: 8

Not the best location in the city, although being based in this neighborhood allowed me to discover that Paris has a very large population of black people. Fun fact! Plus, it was super spatious:

SHOTTY BIG SPOON!

Food: 9.5

The final meal showed French food off. We had been talking to a Canadian couple at the table next to us for about a half hour and when I tasted the bearneaise sauce on my lamb steak I made the claim that I would probably eat my shoes if they were covered in berneaise. I’m still not sure if they thought this was funny or really weird, but I was pretty serious. France’s fine dining owns.

Sites: 10

Went for a run in the morning, got lost (only) twice, and still enjoyed it just for Paris’s architecture and parks. On several instances strolling the Seine River I went “full Asian” and just clicked away, not really finding a point to put my camera down. I snapped pictures until I finally snapped out of it when I realized I was taking them of houses and buildings that didn’t even register on the map of Paris we had.

Ex: We actually didn't even know what this was.

Move it or Louvre it!

Best Site: Top of Eiffel? Chateau Versaille? Sacre Couer? – All 10s.

While picking the “best site” for the city, we compared the best sites to a bullpen combining to throw a no hitter (not a perfect game, because there were a lot of walks in between). It’s a great feat, but done with a spectacle of performances by at least a couple pitchers, not to mention the rest of the team as support. In simpler words – there’s a lot of cool stuff in Paris. A lot. The whole squad came to play. But only one can be credited with the win in the stat book at the end of the day, so I suppose that would be the top of the Eiffel as it allowed me to see everything within 5,000 miles. I have good eyes. Wherever we went the same conclusion generally held true though: bringing your lover here is essentially mandatory. So Goose and I will fill you in on wedding details soon.

I hate ledges.

Probably the coolest place I've ever tossed a disc around. This or Council Bluffs.

Side Note: many may consider the Notre Dame Cathedral the best site. Considering how painful it was to give Marseille’s Notre Dame any sort of recognition as a USC and BC fan, we deemed this illegal. We also perpetually pronounced it in exaggerated French, so as not to give any indication that we were hanging out near anything remotely related to a corrupt Catholic university in the U.S.

Nightlife: 7.25

Saw some cool “Indie” bars that would be a smash hit in Omaha, but chilling next to the Sen and Sacre Couer at night was much cooler. Sacre Couer, obviously, is French for “sack of Coors,” or, “epic basilica on top of a giant hill overlooking the entire city where lots of people go drink and lots of Senegalese men try and sell you the same thing.” I think. Whatever it is, it was awesome and we had another phenomenal acoustic cover artist accompanying us on the hilltop who drew a crowd of probably 200. Not a bad summer night.

Ring Challenge Update: I think you can actually see skin growing around it now. It's a part of me. Also, this picture is completely original and never before attempted by any previous tourists. Copyrighted.