there's nothing nicer than a Galway hooker

Finally, after more than a year and a half, I have finally returned to Ireland. Now to back up, for those of you that don't know, I lived in Ireland (Dublin, more specifically) for two months during the summer of 2012, and I loved every second of it. I couldn't wait to go back, and Paddy's Day seemed like an appropriate time to do it. I even got the Tufts-in-Tübingen crew to come with me. Well, all of them minus Marlena. 

On Sunday, the day before Paddy's Day, we flew from Frankfurt into Dublin. The flight was short and painless and had free wine, and we got into Dublin around 17. Instead of taking that stupidly expensive Airlink bus, I brought us to the Dublin Bus stop. However, that's when our problems started. I had hoped there was money on my Leapcard (a card that, when loaded up, is good for transportation all around Dublin), but unfortunately there wasn't. The Dublin Bus, while a decent bus system, is possibly the largest pain in the ass if you aren't from there. They accept only coins, and the ticket machines are very rare. (And when they do exist, they rarely work.) After Julius, Theron, and I got on the bus; Elizabeth and Yasmine were sent to the ticket machine that didn't work and then left at the airport. So that wasn't ideal. But we all ended up meeting up in city centre, because the Spire is wonderful and a great meeting point. 

After that little debacle, we continued onto our second debacle: the hotel. We booked this little adventure in January, and by then, there was not a single hostel in Dublin with availability. So we found the cheapest hotel that we could, booked a two-person room for two nights and hoped that we could sneak all five of us into it. When I google-mapped the place before, it seemed easy enough. Right on the Liffey, just have to keep walking East. But, as it turns out, the hotel changed its name without letting anyone know. So we went a little bit further than was originally planned and only ended up finding it because we went into the Spencer to ask where the Clarion was. "This is the Clarion," they responded, as if that should be completely obvious. After sneaking five people's-worth of luggage up to our hotel room, we went to something I had been looking forward to for months: The Counter. The Counter is a wonderful burger joint on Suffolk Street, right near Trinity College and Grafton Street. From the outside the place is pretty unremarkable, and you can easily walk by without even noticing it, but they make a mean burger, and having lived in Germany for the past 7 months, I have been craving a good American-style burger. (Because German burgers, while good if you don't have anything to compare them to, just don't stand up to American burgers.) So I brought the Tufts-in-Tübingen crowd and Yasmine's friend, Tori, who is studying at UCD for the semester, to The Counter. We had burgers and cosmos (my old Counter tradition), and it was wonderful. I also met up with Megan and Bri (two of my housemates from when I lived in Dublin) there, and that was a surreal and really great reunion. 

I didn't get to talk with them much that night, though, because after the Counter, we all decided to head up to my friend Shane's place. Shane sublet from my friend's in Boston this past summer but is Irish and lives in Dublin. We had agreed to meet up while I was there, and he invited all of us over to his house to hang out on Sunday night. And strangely enough, his house was about a five minute walk from where I had lived, so getting there was pretty simple. We ended up hanging out with him and his friends until about 3AM, when we caught a cab back into town in order to wake up early for the Paddy's Day parade. 

The parade started at noon, but we woke up early. We got there around noon, just as it was supposed to be starting but the entire place was absolutely mobbed. There was no way to see the parade, unless you were four years old and sitting on someone's shoulders. But we made our way towards Trinity and found a decent place to stand by the statue of Henry Grattan. The parade got to us about 45 minutes after the start time, and we didn't stay long on account of not being able to see much and the desire to get back to The Counter. Yes, my friends enjoyed The Counter so much that they wanted to go back roughly 18 hours later. I felt accomplished. 

After our delicious, second-round of burgers, we waited at the head of Grafton Street for our Irish friend Eimear, who studies with us in Tübingen. We caught up with her and walked around Stephen's Green and Merrion Square (where I had worked whilst living in Dublin). We went our separate ways, though, after Julius managed to attract an entire group of 14 year-olds, who swarmed us like pigeons. Shortly thereafter, Yasmine, Theron, and I did the same and went back to the hotel to take a nap. Elizabeth and Julius got back a little while later, and after a little while, we met up with Shane at the Spire. He took us to a bar south of the Liffey but in the eastern part of town called O'Reilly's. It a cool little bar built under the railroad tracks that has pints for very cheap. It was pretty cool, but Shane had to leave us for a little bit, because his drunk housemate lost his keys. We were supposed to meet up at a club in Temple Bar called the Button Factory, but that didn't end up working out. Temple Bar was absolutely disgusting that night with drunk people and garbage everywhere. We tried to get into the Button Factory, but it was a mad house. So instead of staying amongst the garbage and absolutely packed bars and clubs, we decided to go back to the hotel. 

The next morning we woke up around 10 and commenced the packing process. We were hoping that getting everything out of the hostel would be as chill as getting it in, as we hadn't messed up anything with the whole cram-five-people-into-a-two-person-room thing yet. Fortunately, that all went off without a hitch. We then went, got bagels, and then made for Heuston Station to catch our train to Galway. 

We got to Galway and our hostel, Barnacles Hostel, without any problems. Barnacles is right on Quay Street, one of the main streets in Galway, and very close to the ocean. So after dropping off our stuff, we decided to go exploring and wander along the beach. It was a little cold and windy, but still absolutely marvelous, especially because we have been land-locked in Tübingen for so long. After our walk, we went to a seafood place about 20 feet from our hostel (and recommended to us by the hostel) called McDonough's, where we got really, really good seafood chowder, fish n' chips, and Guinness. Gah, the fish. How I have missed the Irish fish! After that, we went back to the hostel, took a nap, and headed out in search of Irish music, which we found at Taaffe's. I also had me a really good whiskey ginger. It was just a lovely night, but we went to bed early because we had an early morning for our Cliffs of Moher tour. 

Dunguaire Castle

I figured it would be better to do the Cliffs of Moher the first day. The trip required little planning because there were tours going there all the time and there were a hell of a lot of tours. We got to the bus station at 9:45 for our 10AM tour and got seats in the back of the bus. Unlike the last time I went to the Cliffs of Moher, this whole thing would take us to a bunch of different places, like The Burren and Dunguaire Castle. Our tour guide was a little Irish man named Gary, who used the phrase "in itself" way too frequently and nonsensically. (For example, "there you see the chimney, where the family would do all of their cooking in itself.") But we had a wonderful day of touring, seeing The Burren (a really interesting part of Ireland with limestone covering most of the ground), Dunguaire Castle (which is really just a lookout tower), Corcomroe Abbey (an old church), and finally the Cliffs of Moher. Other highlights include a really tasty beef and guinness stew at a pub in Doolin and finding a Milwaukee Irishfest bumper sticker at said pub in Doolin. 


Then there were the Cliffs. The Cliffs of Moher are pretty brilliant. Gary gave us the whole schtick about don't go where the signs tell you not to, but that's the best part. So Yasmine, Elizabeth, and I made straight for the Cliffs. (The boys went to the recommended, and in my opinion, over-rated O'Brien Lookout Tower.) We did some cliff-walking, which was windy and cold and wonderful. We were lucky the weather had held-up otherwise it would have been a lot worse. 

After the Cliffs, we drove along the Atlantic coast for a while, stopping briefly at another cliff, and then made our way back to Galway with Gary blabbering on about leprechauns and "in itself" most of the way. We got back around 19 and after brief contemplation, decided to get an Irish breakfast for dinner (an Irish brinner), as it may have been our only chance to have one. And that was a good decision, because it was absolutely delicious. 

Afterwards, we decided to hit up a bar called Monroe's because they were having "world music" (ie salsa and other fancy types of dancing) night, and Elizabeth really wanted to go. The pub ended up being really cool (with just enough similarities to the Loj to make me a little home sick for it), and Elizabeth taught us to dance (or at least, tried to, I am not the most graceful human). 

View from Dún Arainn

The next morning, it was rainy and miserable. We figured that our good weather (at least for Ireland) streak had run out. But we boarded a bus bound for the ferry bound for the Aran Islands, because it was our last day in Galway, and the Aran Islands are incredible. After a rough crossing, we made it there, and much to our surprise, the sun was out. We met Mister Oliver Faherty at the docks, and he took us around the island in his van. And strangely enough, it was only us. I guess we get rewarded for our perseverance. Anyways, I guess I should give a little bit of background info. Three islands make up the Aran Islands, which lie off the coast of Galway: Inis Mór (pronounced een-ish-more, the largest, 11miles by 3miles, population 800), Inis Meadhóin (pronounced: een-ish-man, population 300), and Inis Oirthir (pronounced een-ish-eer, population 200). They are a Gaeltacht (an Irish-speaking area). Seriously, the language used in the home and stores and stuff is Irish. It's really cool. The economy is based upon tourism, fishing, and a little bit of farming, and they are known for their (really cozy and wonderful) sweaters. They didn't get electricity until 1975 and have one small supermarket on the islands (located on Inis Mór; it's a Spar.)

So I guess that gives you an idea of what kind of place I am talking about. Mr. Faherty started the tour by bringing us up to a fort called Dún Arainn, which was supposed to be closed for renovations, but he didn't say anything so neither did we. It was absolutely incredible. This fort is on the tallest point of Inis Mór. We spent probably 45 minutes, climbing on stone fences and admiring the view, which, as you can see above, is pretty breath-taking. 

Dún Aonghasa

Afterwards, we continued on towards Dún Aonghasa (pronounced dun angus), which is the most famous fort on the island and sits right on the edge of a cliff. Oliver dropped us off for about two hours. Before heading up to the Cliff, I went into some of the shops and bought Dip a Claddagh ring and myself a wonderful cozy green sweater. The five of us also had a wonderful chat with Sarah Flaherty, the woman selling the sweaters, who told us that the whole family sweater pattern thing is a load of crap. (I had heard from multiple people that each family on the islands had their own sweater pattern, that way if someone got lost at sea while fishing and turned up later, you could identify the body...morbid, I know.) The more you know. But in any case, the sweater I bought is really cool and intricate. 

After the sweater-buying excursion, we made our way up to the fort. May I reiterate how incredible this place is. These cliffs abut the Atlantic. You can tangle your feet over. It's probably my favourite place in all of Ireland. Up on the cliffs, we had a picnic with cheese, sausage, and baguettes that we had bought from the grocery store. Eventually, we headed back to meet up with Oliver.

We continued the journey to the northern-most point on the island, which has a beautiful, albeit very rocky beach, where we hung out and enjoyed being so close to water. 

We finished our tour by the Seven Churches, which is actually two churches and some other church-related living quarters, which had their roofs burned off them by Oliver Cromwell. (Oliver Cromwell was a proper prick, in case you had some sort of misplaced positive notions about him or something. Before he came, the Inis Mór had 2,000 people on it...then he killed them and anything else that moved or seemed Irish.) Anyways, the seven churches are pretty incredible especially when you have the place pretty much to yourself. Oh and we met a really friendly donkey. 

After the churches, we had a pint and then got on the ferry home. That night we had one last fish n' chips at McDonough's and then went back to Monroe's for live music and fun. And that was about it. The next day we got up early for 12+ hours of travel back to Tübingen. 

That's all I got for ya, dudes. I am not really sure as of right now where my adventures for the remainder of the break will take me, but I will keep you posted. With that, bis später, dudes.

Oh and P.S. a Galway hooker is a boat, you dirty-minded people. 

Wait, you can't be a police officer...

Dam Square

Amsterdam was a very last minute thing. I had been thinking about it a while, but whilst in Brussels, I decided I wasn't quite ready to go home on the 11th, so I booked a hostel for 2 nights in Amsterdam, choosing it only because it was called The Flying Pig and it was in the middle of everything. (It was a very good decision.) 

I got there around 6PM on the 11th, just as the sun was setting. I had taken a very mediocre screenshot of the directions to my hostel from the train station, but despite that, I didn't get lost. I arrived to an absolutely hopping bar as the lobby. There was music and quite a few people for it being 6PM on a Tuesday. I checked in, put my stuff in my room, met a Swedish guy, and then went downstairs to do what I usually do–hang out, look at my map, and try and make friends. In relatively short-order I was approached by a tall Englishman named Daniel. "You look lost," he said. I told him I was just trying to figure out what to do tomorrow, and he gave me a few ideas and then told me that I should accompany him and the large group of people next to me on a pub crawl in an hour. That was how I ended up on a pub crawl within 2 hours of arriving in Amsterdam. The pub crawl itself was pretty OK. I met some nice people from all over (Daniel as it turns out is a police officer–I still don't really believe him), but over all it wasn't anything to write home about. I ended up leaving early to go back to the hostel, but it was alright.

Once I got back, I had a beer with a few of the guys who had also come back early, and then went up to my room to go to bed. Before I went to bed, I struck up a conversation with an Israeli guy who just finished his three years in the IDF and did the typical Israeli thing: go travel and party afterwards. And strangely enough, it turns out his parents are both from Wisconsin. Weird, right? We shut the lights off around 3AM. 

All six of us in our room woke up around 9:30 and went downstairs to have free hostel breakfast. Then the Israeli guy–whose name I don't know how to spell and I feel bad–surprised me by saying "when do you want to go to the Van Gogh Museum?" I had told him that I wanted to go the night before, and he had said that he'd be interested in coming with. But didn't actually expect him to follow up on that.

So him and I set off on our adventure through Amsterdam. It started with us getting a little lost and doing maybe an hour and a half worth of wandering (and nearly getting hit by bikes) before actually making it to the Van Gogh Museum, but that was fine. It was a beautiful day, and he was super easy to talk to. 

The Van Gogh Museum is rather small. Like get through in less than an hour small, but still really cool. And I prefer Van Gogh to stuff that you might see in, say, Italy. Renaissance art doesn't really do much for me. So that was neat. But by the time we got out, it was only 1PM. So we decided to go to the Heineken Museum. 

The Heineken Museum is definitely the best thing to do in Amsterdam is you are anywhere under the age of 30 and probably if you are over that too. The whole experience is kind of similar to the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, but it seems the Heineken people wanted to one-up the Irish, so they put quite a bit more stuff in it. The do the whole, this-is-how-we-make-Heineken thing, but then they "turn you into a bottle of Heineken" which was really cool. (It's a little ride thing.) They then show you all sorts of other cool Heineken in popular culture stuff, and then send you to the bar where a bartender explains to you the importance of foam and quizzes you on various things. ("What color is Heineken?" "No! Not yellow! We don't want to be confused with Budweiser!") He also asked how they say 'cheers' in the Netherlands. No one said anything, so one the off chance that the German was right, I said 'prost' quietly. And, guess what, I got it right. "That's right, expect we don't sound as angry." (I guess now is as good of time as any to tell you how many times I laughed reading the Dutch in the streets. It looks a lot like German, if you were a country bumpkin or something. Quite funny.) We spent quite a bit of times with the ads and stuff after that, and then eventually made our way out. 


By that point, we still hadn't had lunch, so we got some schwarma and went to the Torture Museum for the hell of it. That was kind of a trip. The actors were super into and spoke in a mixture of Dutch and English, and there were lights everywhere and that was just nuts.

With that, both of us were tuckered out, so we went back to the hostel to take a nap. I got back up around 7:30PM and hung out in the lobby for a while. A few people that I had met on the pub crawl were down there, so we ended up hanging out for a while and wandering around Amsterdam. Afterwards, we grabbed some dinner to-go and brought it back to the hostel, where we chilled until midnight or so. I was so tried from the night before and the prospect of  a half day's worth of trains the next day that I decided to hit the hay early. 

I left Amsterdam around 10:30 the next morning, headed for Tübingen. Surprisingly there were no hitches and no missed trains. A Deutsche Bahn miracle! And now onto the next adventure: Ireland for Paddy's Day. Going to be a wild, wild time. But more on that later. Until then, bis später, dudes.

I was like, hello?

On to the next leg of my trip: Belgium. Just after Christmas break ended, Lasse and I promised Louise that we would come to Belgium for her birthday, which was conveniently situated for two reasons. 1) it is right in the middle of our Semesterferien and 2) it was on a Saturday. So I showed up in the early afternoon on Friday the 7th of March. After dropping my stuff off at her apartment (which was really, really close to such lovely tourist attractions as the Mannekin Pis, you know, the small little pissing boy that Belgium is famous for), we made directly for the important stuff. You know what I am talking about: frites. Now, fun fact: the "French fry" was actually invented in Belgium, but I guess whoever named was like "eh, they speak French there, we'll call it the French fry." But make no mistake, they are not, in fact, French. Anyways, they were delicious, and my life is forever changed. 

We did a little meandering after that, but not for too long. Louise had a study group and a class from 3 to 6, so she left me her keys on the presumption I might need them so that I could, I don't know, perhaps go out and explore. Instead, I took a shower and accidentally napped for 2 and a half hours. So yeah, go me! When Louise got back, she laughed at me for my nap and then we went to the grocery store to pick up some food for dinner, and, of course, beer. After getting home, Louise showed me the magic that is Bugles and goat cheese (these Belgians are brilliant!), and we drank beer while waiting for Ameline, another Belgian girl who had studied with us in Tübingen during the Wintersemester. We drank, ate a lovely dinner of salmon, pepper, and zucchini pasta, and baked a fondant au chocolat cake. Eventually midnight rolled around, and it was to pick up Lasse from the bus station, after he rode for nearly 10 hours on 5 some-odd busses from Tübingen. That boy is nuts. We continued with Louise's birthday debauchery. First we went home, dropped off Lasse's stuff, and sang happy birthday with the cake Louise had made. Did I mention that Belgians know how to do food? Afterward, we went to some of her favorite bars and just hung out and talked. It was quite a lovely evening. Except when Louise thought she lost her keys and they actually ended up being in her room the whole time. That wasn't great.

Grossmarkt

Lasse, Louise, and I got a late start the next day, but ended up walking around most of the tourist-y places of Brussels, including the Grossmarkt, the palace where the king and queen don't actually live, some unstable old building that has guards on it, a garden, the stock exchange, and a few cathedrals. We also ate sandwiches where the bread was waffles because Belgium. For the most part, it was quite a bit of walking. However, we had to cut the tour short, because we had to catch a train at 16:50 to go to Louise's parents' house in a small town called Péruwelz near the French border. It only took maybe 2 hours to get there, including our short stopover in Monse, where we over heard a very interesting and vulgar conversation between a drunk guy and his girlfriend, which Louise translated for us. It was pretty graphic. So much so, that the old woman next to me laughed and asked, "il est discret, non?" to me. I laughed back and was proud for understanding what she said. Mediocre French for the win! 

We got to Louise's around dinner time and were greeted by a dog, a cat, Spaniards, and the rest of Louise's French-speaking family. The entire gaggle included: Louise's mom, dad, older brother, his wife who is Spanish, his wife's brother (also Spanish), his wife's brother's girlfriend (also Spanish), and Louise's younger brother. It was a crew, and it was very French speaking. I felt bad that I could barely string sentences together in French without it turning to German or just straight up not knowing enough French and hitting a wall. But her mother spoke pretty good English as did her brothers. We hung out and ate dinner before the great spooky walk. Now, you may be thinking, Sarah, this isn't Halloween, what is this nonsense? On this side of the Atlantic, it's Carnival season, and I guess Belgium doesn't care that it normally stops with Ash Wednesday, because they are still doing Carnival things, which includes the great Péruwelz spooky walk. 

We arrived at the town center, and I swore I was in French Gilmore Girls. Everything was so Stars Hallow from the cheesy decorations to the washed up 80s music to the fact that everyone knows each other. So we got our stamps and commenced with the walk, which wasn't exactly scary but instead just a walk that had periodically strange things throughout. For example: there were people dressed up as rabbits playing bongo drums, at another there were a bunch of dressed-up old people eating a fancy meal and singing French (possibly drinking?) songs about a lawyer and a gorilla. So yeah, that was kind of a trip. 

We did our second round of birthday cake after that back at Louise's parents' house, an awesomely tasty fruity thing, and shortly thereafter went to sleep to prepare for the 7AM wake-up call. 

And so it was, we were awoken at 7AM, in order to go to Chimay, another small town that is famous for its beer brewing. In this case, we were going there to walk. Louise's dad, brother, sister-in-law, sister-in-law's brother, and sister-in-law's brother's girlfriend were running in a race there, and simultaneously the community held a walking fundraiser thing for those of us in not as good of shape. So Louise, her mom, her sister, Lasse, and I walked 10k that morning through the Belgian countryside, which was actually pretty wonderful. It was a balmy 65ºF and the sun was out. I got sunburned even! In March! Afterwards, we met up with the rest of the family to go back to Thuin for a barbecue and our third-round of cake. As with the rest of the weekend, it was very fun and very French, but I think improved more in that weekend than it had in a long time. I actually understood some things! ("Sont ceux les seuls mots que vous connaissez?"–are those the only words you know?–Louise's dad's question after we started singing Ein Prosit der Gemütlichkeit; my response "Oui" with a laugh. Proudest moment of the weekend.) 

After eating way too much food, the Bonnave family (minus Louise's older brother and the Spanish gaggle) piled into the minivan with us to take us to a brewery a little outside of the city of Thuin. The entire cathedral and monastery where it was originally brewed is in ruins, but the brewery remains a-brewin'. We then headed back for Brussels to drop off the three of us and Louise's younger brother back at their universities. We chatted with Lisa over Google+ after we got home and ate some of the food that Louise's mom had sent with us. Then we packed it in early and went to bed because Louise had an ungodly early class the next morning. 

The next morning Louise left her keys with Lasse and I so we could go exploring. We went out around 11 and just walked around. It was a beautiful day, verging on being called hot. It was at least 65ºF, all the signs read 20ºC; so nutty. We ended up doing a large circle around Brussels, starting at Louise's, going through the financial district, cutting up to the Basilica of the Sacred Heart, and slowly making our way back to the Senne River to drink some beer. We continued the walk after that, ending up close to Louise's apartment and by the stock exchange. By that point, we figured we had walked our required 10k for the day and decided to take a break at Louise's apartment. After 3 some-odd episodes of South Park, we went back out, this time in pursuit if two things waffles and finding the EU parliament. The waffles were first because the 1€ waffle place was on the way. I got one with strawberries and chocolate, and life was awesome. Then, we wandered around looking for the parliament for a while, got horribly lost, asked for directions, took the underground, and ended up at a very disappointing modern-looking office building in the shape of an X. After that, we wandered a little ways up the street to what Lasse and I called the belgian Brandenburger Tor, as it looked a hell of a lot like the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, and then made our way back to Louise's. 

We skyped with Team Boring (Lisa, Anna, Hannah, and Lucia) after getting home, and then decided to have a chill evening, got Vietnamese food, and watched the third Hangover movie, which was a significant improvement from the second. 

The next day was typical, leaving-day stuff. We woke up, cleaned, and packed while Louise was in class. Lasse and I also went to buy postcards. When Louise came back, we wrote on the postcards and then went to get one last round of Belgian fries. Nomz. (Yup, Pookie and Dobby, all I do is eat.) After the deliciousness, Louise and Lasse accompanied me to the train station for my 14:50 train to Amsterdam.

And that, my friends, is my time in Belgium. Stay tuned to hear about fun times in Amsterdam.

Go Back to Your Country

So it's been a crazy ten days, and that is my excuse for the radio silence. In those ten days, I have been in 4 different countries (I'm including Germany in that). It was the longest consecutive amount of time that I have been out of Tübingen since getting here, and it was wonderful. For the ease of both writing and reading, I'm going to split it into three blog posts. Otherwise, it might start looking like a novel. So I shall start from the very beginning (a very good place to start): Paris.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Paris. Of course, it's supposed to be wonderful, with macaroons, baguettes, the Eiffel Tower, and all that, but after five years of very frustrating and not-particularly productive Frenchg classes, I had quit with not particularly nice (and completely irrational) feelings towards France or the people in it. I also didn't have anyone to go with. So that was also a little intimidating. For those reasons, I wasn't particularly excited when I got on a train with Paris as the destination on Monday, March 3rd. But I got on nonetheless. 

I ended up at Gare de l'Est (the east train station), when I thought I would end up at Gare du Nord (the northern one). So my adventure started off interesting. With my gigantic, blue turtle-looking backpack, I wandered from the east train station to the north one, where the screenshot of directions to my hostel started. Luckily, the two train stations weren't very far apart, and I found my hostel in a little over a half an hour. The Woodstock Hostel is located in the 9th arrondissement, near Sacré Coeur and the Moulin Rouge (and therefore the redlight district), but it's not actually in the redlight part, and it's quite wonderful. As expected, the entire thing was very hippy-ish with brightly-painted walls and a Volkswagen Beetle (like a big one) sticking out of the wall with a skeleton inside and bumper stickers all over it. 

So anyways, I checked in and brought my stuff up to the room, and after a bit of fiddling with my phone, decided to head down and get a map and see what was close that might be worth exploring. I sat down with it in the lobby, and just as I was about to start wandering a girl came in with her bags and started speaking to the receptionist. I overheard that she was in my room, so after she went up, I decided to go up too and say hi, just for the hell of it. And that was how I met Giulia. She is from Brazil and was with her boyfriend in Spain for his job, but decided to come to Paris for a few days by herself for the hell of it. After she unpacked, we decided to got up the hill a little ways to Sacré Coeur and check it out. Most simply put, it's a huge and beautiful basilica. Beyond that I know very little about it. According to Wikipedia, it is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the excesses of the Second Empire and socialist Paris Commune of 1871 crowning its most rebellious neighborhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ. So yeah, that's about what I got for you on that. Despite it being a Monday night, it was still crowded with tourists and people trying to scam those tourists. We stopped in for a little bit, but there was a service going on, and both of us (being not-real Catholics) felt the whole Catholic guilt, God-will-smite-you-down thing setting in and decided to leave. 

Praise Jesus 

After some wandering around Montmarte, we went back to the hostel, where we met a guy who claimed to be from California but was really from Wisconsin (like arguably more from Wisconsin than me), a girl from Australia studying art in Italy (Jessie), an English girl studying in München, and Stefano. But more on Stefano later. We ended up getting pizza at a nearby restaurant with the English girl, and returning to the hostel. We had promised Jessie that we would meet up at 10:30 and go for drinks or something. When we got back, it was the three of us, Stefano, and the receptionist, Nate. The English girl went to bed early, and Giulia and I sat, drank a beer, pet the cat, (named Jesus) and chatted with Stefano. Now Stefano is an interesting creature. Upon meeting him, we thought he was French, as from our non-native-in-fact-barely-speaking-any-French ears, he sounded like a native French speaker. He also refused to tell us his name instructing us to call him Jesus. (after he realized that would get him confused with the cat, he revised it to God.) After we got back from dinner, he continued to tell us to "go back to your country" with a shit-eating grin. When Giulia had had enough of his shit, she turned her attention to a boy who was quietly typing away at the computers. "Hey, what's your name? Where are you from?" That's how we met Cornelius. He was from Berlin and also traveling alone. Shortly thereafter, Jessie came back, and the four of us sat, drank, tried to ignore Stefano telling us to go back to our countries, and chilled. At some point, Stefano threw his Italian ID out on the table and that's how we learned that he was, in fact, not French nor was his name God. So that was my first night in Paris.

On the morning of my first full day, we woke up early and met in the lobby for breakfast, as the four of us had agreed the night before. We had decided to go to Versailles. Something I hadn't intended upon seeing due to my limited time in Paris, but I decided why not? Better to hang out with people than not. So after a little bit of confusion and searching, we boarded a train from around Notre Dame to Versailles. Two things surprised me about my journey there. I was under the impression that Versailles was very far out of Paris, but in fact, it's only a 30 minute train ride, which is the amount of time it takes to go from one end of the #2 Metro line to the other (more on that adventure later). Also, I expected to be thrown out of the train in front of Versailles, which also was not the case. So the four of us wandered for a little while, got some cheap food (a half baguette size sandwich for 3€? Madness!), and eventually made it to the palace, on the not-usual-entrance side. We first stopped by a lovely little manmade pond on the east? side of the palace and then walked to the gardens. After spending way an embarrassing amount of time trying to get a good jumping picture, we wandered to the area with the boats. 

We rented out a boat at 11€ for a half an hour, and struggled to paddle our way through the rather large Versailles pool thing. Despite the struggles, it was very fun and cool seeing the gardens from the water. 

The Hall of Mirrors

Afterwards, we went back up to the palace and commenced with the whole tour thing. And despite that all four of us were from different hemisphere, we all managed to get in for free because we all had EU citizenship or residency. How cool is that? Anyways, we commenced with the tour. Versailles is huge and golden and fancy with high and sometimes painted ceilings. You can see the Louis the XIV really had a huge ego or was compensating for something or both. But in any case, it's a neat thing to see and kind of transports you to another time. It's weird to think there were once fancy balls and king and queens living there seeing it has been a museum since shortly after the Napoleonic Wars. 

After the tour, we wandered around and struggled a little bit with finding the train station, but we eventually found it, got on a train, and headed back to Paris. We got back to the hostel probably a little bit after 6:30, and shortly thereafter went back out again to buy wine, cheese, and olives, and then go to find real dinner. Unfortunately, most things around where we were (except for the shitty kebabs) were quite expensive, as it was a tourist-y area. So we stopped in an empty Chinese with reasonable prices. 

We walked around for a little while after that, and then made camp outside the Moulin Rouge and had a lovely little picnic, the first of three. Then we went to a bar next to the Moulin Rouge that Jessie had been to called O'Sullivans. She had described it as a total dive, but it was definitely wayyyy to nice to be a dive bar. We ended up leaving early, though, because we wanted to get up kind of early the next day to do more tourist things. 

The next day, after breakfast, the four of us split up. Giulia and I decided to do a whirlwind, see-all-of-Paris-in-one-day tour, while Jessie went to draw Notre Dame, and Cornelius went to explore a cemetery and catacombs. Giulia and my adventure started at the Metro, took us to the wrong side of Paris–hence how I know how long it takes to get across the city by Metro–and then brought us eventually to the L'Arc de Triomphe, which is pretty cool albeit in the middle of the craziest traffic circle this world has ever seen. We got back on the Metro, started our walk at the Eiffel Tower, then continued along the Seine, seeing the Palace, the Musée d'Orsay, the Louvre, and finally ending at Notre Dame. Seeing as we didn't exactly have time to go into any of these places, I don't think there's much to say about them. But we did meet Jessie at Notre Dame with cheese, crackers, and olives. We chilled there for probably 3 some odd hours. While Jessie sketched and fed the birds, Giulia slept and I read Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down. 

Heaven on Earth

Then the time finally came. The time to go to Shakespeare & Co. Shakespeare & Co. is an English language bookstore maybe 5 minutes from Notre Dame. Hemingway used to chill/live there during his starving-artist/ex-pat times in Paris. The store still has space for starving writers to rent out for cheap and just write. It's super cool, and I restrained myself and only bought five books. Everyone should be proud. The three of us then went back to the hostel to meet Cornelius. 

We had decided earlier that we would do a picnic by the Eiffel Tower that night. So we got back to the hostel, hung out, ate some very, very mediocre kebabs, and bought more wine, cheese, and olives, acquired a new French friend that resembled Tom Welling from Smallville, and then made our way to the Eiffel Tower. We sat there, drinking and talking for quite a few hours, so long in fact, that we didn't make the last train by l'Arc de Triomphe and ended up having to walk an hour back to the hostel. But that wasn't so bad. It wasn't terribly cold out, and hey, exploring Paris at night, amirite? 

So that was my time in Paris. The next day I had to leave on an early train for Brussels, so it really only consisted of breakfast and saying goodbye, which was sad. But I was still excited about heading to Brussels to see Louise for her birthday. And that, my friends, is the next installment in this three-part series. Stay tuned.