Week 2: France, C'est Sketch

Okay at this rate I know I wont be able to finish up my trip for possibly a few years but I need to at least do one more week before I quit and move on to other stuff.

I took the chunnel train from England to Paris. It was a short trip and on those high speed trains you don't really feel much at all. I was a little disappointed when I got into Paris to find that no one was there to stamp my passport. There was barely any customs officials at all since this was inner EU travel. Once in Paris I found my way over to the metro station where I was stopped by some woman Dutch woman who pleaded to take a picture of my t shirt. Somewhere in the Netherlands is a computer with a picture of my torso. Anyways, I navigated my way around the train system to the St. Garmain Des Pres station, and I busted out some poor rusty ass French to ask people how to find my way to Rue De Sein where Evan's apartment was. This is the part of the trip when I met up with my traveling companions for the next few weeks. This motley crew consists of: Ethan Emerson "Fanny pack connoisseur," Sean "Fashion" Rosen, Evan "West coast soccer ball representative for RABRO" Span, Alex Paulos "Cartography expert," and Josh "Late night grub" Yousem.

I arrived to find the apartment in good form, but the group was already set into a deep stupor of cabin fever. They had made it off a 10+ hour flight, to discover that their baggage had been left behind at their LON to CDG connection. They had been waiting for their baggage to be delivered and were set in a thick madness, catalized by French wine, cheese, and jetlag. Their eyes were beady and they were rambling incoherent nonsense. Nonetheless, it was bastille day and shenanigans were due to go down!

That night we grabbed a few bottles of wine and left off to a bridge 5 minutes away from the apartment which connected us to the Louvre. We watched the tail end of some fireworks while finding some space to sit down in the swarm of people on the bridge. As the night progressed the people thinned out a bit and some of our group let back to the apartment. That was when we made a new friend. A man came up to us and told us something like he was Dutch, then Turkish, then some other country. He told us he did not really speak French or English, but told us that he was "hashish." Some other dude came over they started spouting off in a flurry of Arabic and then switched to French. Then the guy started screaming at him and then left. "Hashish" then settled back down next to us and chilled for a bit until some tattered possible crack whore came by and sat down next to him they talked for a bit and his other friends came around to our little circle. This is we started to feel a bit sketched and left gracefully after offering up the rest of the wine and whiskey we had with us to some strangers with cups that came up to us. Other highlight Josh bought a beer off a man on the street that tasted like it had been dragged out of the sea.

The next few days included walking the city, the Louvre ( which I think had a very unimpressive collection but the building itself was awesome ), the Musee D'orsey ( which had both awesome building and one of the best collections I have seen in a museum ), Paulos' cousin studying in Paris set up a party in the apartment with kids from her trip, sketch extra traveling companions, Montmartre, Sacre Ceour, Pigalle, Ethan and I hit up the Catacombs, the arch de triumph, Notredam, a cemetery which had the corpses of Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, and Gay Le Sac, and a lot of other places.

There was also a meet up with French friends Cedric and Stephan. It was good to see those guys since it has been about a year since I have last seen and talked with them. They left us off at the Eiffel Tower which gave us a great view of the city all lit up at night. It was very romantic being there with 5 other guys.... Not exactly, but it was still fun going around Paris with friends. The food and wine was good, it was nice in the apartment, the guys finally got their bags, and it was time to get on the train and to take off for Amsterdam. In my next post more on Amsterdam, and possibly a post in between to discuss my recent trip to Oakland to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Bubb Rubb.