Day Four: English with French Subtitles

26 Dec. 2009

Hey!

…Right, so this is the post I should have written a day ago! :)

[I’ll write it as though today was still the 26th! Don’t get confused about the verb tenses, then. I HAVE WARNED YOU.]

As I mentioned previously, we were planning on going to the flea markets, Musée D’Orsay, and the Eiffel Tower today. {See? That’s where you act like I posted this on the 26th. ONWARDS.} You should have guessed by now, but Dad and I are not very good at planning, so we did not actually accomplish all of that.

However, we did make it to the flea markets! We went to “Les Puces de Paris: Saint Ouen” (“The Fleas of Paris: Saint Ouen”), which is supposedly the largest flea market in Paris. It includes a huge antiques and furniture marché (I keep typing marché instead of market, so I give up. Marché, marché, marché) and countless (really. 1, 2, 3…57…) clothing booths.

In this case, I’m grouping anything that isn’t furniture and/or antiques in with “clothing”, so interpret that loosely. There were booths with chaussures (shoes) and other accessories like wallets, purses, small trinkets, prints, small sculptures, post cards, typical tourist-y junk, and lots of booths with leather jackets.

Unfortunately, I don’t know enough about clothing and such to say if anything was authentic, or if it was stolen (not even kidding). The fakes (of which there were many) were fairly well-done—for example, we saw no less than four stalls selling “Converse” shoes in all sorts of designs and colors, and the tread and boxes and everything looked pretty real to me (and I have a pair).

They had boots for as little as 10€ (YAY EURO SYMBOL! Finally found the Alt control. Geez…); some were cute but nothing was particularly unique, so I didn’t buy anything (I may regret that later, I kinda lovelovelove boots and I’ve been wearing mine nearly every day). [Whoa, that was very ADD.] Anyway, I didn’t buy much.

{Notice the careful wording. “not much” = ONE THING. JUST. ONE.}

The furniture/antiques market was ASTOUNDING, though! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many antiques in such great condition! Some were insanely old, too (then again, Europe in general is old). Everything we saw was veryyyy expensive, but much of it was high-quality, if you ever happen to want a quite-expensive-in-Euros antique something. xD

[Sorry I don’t have any pictures of ANY of that! We really didn’t take any!]

After we got bored of that, we began our search for a cell phone for me. Fnac.com (except they just call it "Fnac”, and that’s pronounced “F-nack”. As in the letter F, nack.)We finally found one (a cell phone, that is) for as-cheap-as-possible. It’s really simple; a tiny Samsung flip phone. We tracked down Mobiho (that’s the name of a cell phone company, just so you know.) SIM cards (that wasn’t easy, I tell you!) so I can call the US for 0,19€/min, but incoming calls are FREE so YOU COULD CALL ME.

(I have a calling card to call my family, but we don’t think it’ll work. SADNESS!)

Unfortunately, the SIM card is only 8€ of calls for now, and each SIM card has its own number attached, so my number will change every time I have to get a new SIM card. I know, confusing and problematic.

Fnac is what you would get if you combined Barnes and Noble and Best Buy and then translated it into French. So, not only did we find my cell phone there, but I bought Harry Potter et le prisonnier d’Azkaban to read. It’ll take me months, but it’s my favorite of the Harry Potter series so I’m looking forward to reading it in my favorite language. And we got an alarm clock—the buttons are all in English, which makes little sense. Not that I’m complaining!

After we dropped off all of our “loot”, we headed over to the Musée d’Orsay, but decided not to go in since we didn’t have enough time to fully appreciate the art. BUT WE ACTUALLY MADE IT THERE THIS TIME, so we did better! Rawr!

At last, we walked/ran/rode a bus for two blocks over to the Eiffel Tower. It’s basically required that you take far too many pictures there, but here’s some of the far-too-many pictures that WE took! (and when I say “we”, I mean “Dad” because I’m too lazy to take my pictures off my camera right now.)

See? I DO HAVE MY OWN CAMERA!

I like this picture because it looks purple. xD

Slightly idiotic expressions are my trademark.

Dunno why there’s dustiness in this one.

You can tell by my expression that this is take 4. Also, it was very cold. xD

The lights were flashing on the tower so you can actually see us well!

As expected, the lines at La Tour Eiffel were long and by the time we got to the first floor (we walked because it was cheaper and we thought it would be more interesting), it was already dark. Then again, it gets dark early here.

Anyway, here are some pictures of the views! (We didn’t get any higher than the 2nd level because we figured that once you get that high, there’s really not much else to see but a further-away view of the same things.)

Montmartre.

Sacre Coeur. Blurry; I think my picture was less blurry but this camera has a better zoom.

The lights turned on while we were on top of the 2nd floor :)

See? Same, just higher.

I confess, I don’t know what this is, but I like the blur. I think it looks cool. xD

La Seine

Once we returned to the ground, it was dinnertime, so we took the bus over to Odeon, where we found a tiny Italian place, and had escargots. That shouldn’t need translation: SNAILS! Yum. They weren’t as good as last time, but still good :D

After we were happily full, we went to see Pas si simple because the lines at the theaters playing Avatar were too long. It was still in English, but it had French subtitles, which definitely weren’t exact. (The title itself is an example of this—pas si simple is literally “not that simple” in French, but the title of the movie was actually It’s complicated.) The French seemed to enjoy the French references… “it’s so very… FRENCH!” xD

{It’s funny; but it had a lot of filler but the cast was well-cast which probably helped it a lot.}

So, that was day four!

Hopefully that made up for my lack-of-post due to Skyping my twin! :)

-Aly

Day Zero: Takeoff

*waves*!

Bonjour, PARIS!

So, it's 2:40 pm here in Paris, and only 8:40 in the morning at home, which means that most people should still be asleep. My stomach is telling me that it's foodtime, but the time of day disagrees. xD [McDonald's is basically downstairs. Disgusting fatty food, anyone?]

Since it is now Day One of my Grand French Adventure, I have observations to share! YAY! (Oh, and pictures. Mostly taken by my dad, despite my protests.) This post is "Day Zero" because the day we left is a different day than when we arrived... being at the airport can't be considered Day One since it's not in France. In case you were a bit confused there.

We left at 12:20 (LATE!) from our house yesterday, and magically we made it to Charlotte on time. I had to leave the HUGE jar of gumballs in Dad's car, which means they'll be going back with him to New Orleans rather than to Molly, who would appreciate their deliciousness fully. Whooooops.

(above: plane to Pennsylvania)

Anyway, I slept the entire plane ride from Charlotte to Philadelphia; the airport in Philadelphia is HUGE, which made hauling my bursting-at-the-seams laptop bag (blame all the secret chocolate) and awkwardly-shaped "Europe bag" (it's not actually called that; we just happened to buy bags like this two years ago for our Europe trip in '07... thus, "Europe bag") really frustratingly painful.

I watched Pink Panther in the airport until it was time to go again, and Dad insisted on taking pictures of the plane and me.

That is definitely a dolphin-shaped travel pillow. *is cool*

I watched Julie & Julia; unfortunately, that was the most interesting thing I did the entire flight . We actually noticed when we flew over Great Britain, and attempted to take pictures through the windows when we spotted France, which didn't work that well due to the fact that we were (as always), near the wing. I'll put one in here anyway, since I don't know what else to do with all these pictures. =P

(See it? Right there? That's France. It's snowy!)

After we arrived in Paris, we had to find a photobooth ("photomaton") to take passport-style pictures. The machine said to have a "neutral" expression, and I was looking really rough after all the traveling, what with the awkward sleeping positions and such. I SHOULD put a picture of the AWFUL pictures on here, but that would just be embarrassing, so you'll have to live with a picture my dad took of me on the train to Gare d'Austerlitz; you can still tell that I'm a mess.

So, onto the less-boring stuff! :D [There aren't many pictures yet! YAY!]

Mass transportation is pretty cool. Other than the expected smell-of-gross that permeates the underground in every city, it's still an easy way to travel. There are so many people on the train; I felt really obviously not-French, dragging around far-too-heavy bags and trying not to trip on the stairs.

There are some really interesting characters on the Metro; in our car, there was this guy that was placing little keychains (or were they bottle-openers?) on empty seats with these tiny cards written in both English and French: "Je suis dourd(e): I am dumb and deaf" that asked the occupants of that seat to buy the trinket for 3 euros. Another guy just stood up from his seat with an accordion and started playing. It was pretty cool; I felt really bad that I couldn't give him any money (don't have cash on me), because he was quite good and as he moved along to the next car to busk (British term, but I like it), he just looked really disheartened.

The tracks are surrounded by cement walls, I guess to keep the noise contained (the trains are LOUD), which are coated in all sorts of graffiti. There's some that's stereotypical; the huge, blocky letters and such, but many are quite artistic-- we saw some that were splatter-painted, colorful, or have a message of love. I think that's really cool; I like to just sit and watch it all go by, trying to read the letters and figure out what it says, or the type of person that would write each spray-paint message.

Last time I was in Europe I did the same thing; I always find myself fascinated by what I would call "beautiful" ruins. They're not necessarily ruins, but there are these areas of town that are so grimy and dingy, so old or forgotten, that they have this charm to them. I like to imagine that somebody will see the beauty in the building or the area and make it as beautiful to everyone as it would have been originally.

There are advertisements for "American" products everywhere! Companies I didn't know where French have these HUGE factories along the Metro lines; LG, Samsung, Siemens, Sanyo... I'm often surprised by such things. There are posters EVERYWHERE for Pas si simple, which is the new movie with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin. I think I'll try to go see it while I'm here, though I know it'll be REALLY WEIRD seeing familiar actors "speaking" in French. I've noticed from the few American movies with French voice-overs that are currently playing on TV that they do a good job with that, so we'll see.

WELL, THAT'S ALL. (Sorry about not-interestingness.)

BYE!
-Aly

P.S. I can assure you that the rest of the day was not that interesting, either. We walked around, ate food (of the cheapest-we-could-find variety), and didn't actually find me a cell phone or a bookstore that had the books Dad and I are looking for. It's REALLY COLD here!

Parties and a Puck

Hello!

I'm currently sprawled out on the floor of my room (which I just cleaned from all the art supplies that Molly, Matt, and I managed to get all over in the process of making Noelle's birthday present), surrounded by roughly a third of my closet. I'm packing, but right now I'm in the stage of "Sorting".
[It's really not that exciting, and I'd much rather be bowling with Molly and Claire right now.]

Yesterday was amazing. Despite the foul weather, a fair number of people managed to make it to my birthday party. I'm really sad that some of my really close friends couldn't make it for some reason or another (being offered a job by the CIA? Okay then. See ya next July?), I plan on going out to lunch on Monday if anybody's around and wants to come join in.

I have to find time to write thank-you's to everybody for their wonderful gifts, but I must admit, I don't remember who gave me what. Probably because I was consuming a lot of sugar and was a bit rushed through that entire process. So, if you were there and brought food/soda/presents, then PLEASE remind me so I can thank you properly. (Note: that = fail)

Besides my own party, I went to Noelle's surprise birthday party with Molly and Matt. We went to see Avatar, and although I wasn't paying enough attention to enjoy the beginning fully (didn't help that I was talking), I did enjoy it quite a bit. Let's go to Smurf Space-Africa!

[I'm one of those terrible people that talks and laughs obnoxiously loud in movie theaters. Whoops. I can't help it that I was reminded of a lot of random things, like Disney songs, and I was between two people that had funny things to say. Grrr...]

Après ça, we ended up at Noelle's house (awkward moment: when you say goodbye-for-six-months to somebody and then you see them a few hours later). We ate another funfetti cake (so sugary. so yummy. also quite delicious as partial-breakfast), played Never Have I Ever, and I guess that was about it.

OH! That reminds me. The art supplies in my room went to decorating a duck that Margaret, Alex, and I were trying to use for our physics project. We covered it in puff balls. It is now named Puck, and Noelle loves him. :)

I could say a lot of really awkward things about yesterday because they're quite humorous, but the idea is that yesterday/today was a lot of fun.

Now I'm home; going caroling with Tori, Molly, and Kat later (maybe Claire, too, since I couldn't go bowling). My brother and mom decided to be awesome and got me DVDs-- Blu-ray Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (unexpected move on his part; we don't buy each other presents, much less with our own money :P!), Les Misérables (if you don't get why that's so awesome, read this, although that doesn't help that much. mostly, happy thoughts), and The Aristocats (I'm working on getting all the Disney "classics" on DVD, since I only have them on VHS).

RIGHT. Now that I've updated you will all sorts of insignificant details and anecdotes, here's the OTHER motive for this post.

If I haven't gotten you a card with my address, skype, and email on it, then I'm sorry! I kept forgetting to hand them out. I can give you all that information, you just need to email me at alyinfrance@gmail.com. (well, fine, that's my email right there. SKYPE AND ADDRESS, THEN.)

Since I don't have most people's email/skype/address, if you want to keep in touch with me by any of those means, please EMAIL ME your information (PLEASE remember to include your name!). If you give me your address, I'll definitely try to send you a postcard/letter from France! (I know you want to. Everybody loves snail mail, yeah?)

If I haven't gotten to see you and you want to hang out ONE FINAL TIME before I leave, please let me know and I'll find a way to get you details about the plans for Monday (lunch).

-Aly