Anyway, we last left me in Nice with Madison and Ashton. I enjoyed my time with them immensely (this is an incredibly popular word in Britain, by the way, and incredibly misused), but alas, I had to leave them on the south coast and train all the way to Paris alone. I also spent my first night in Paris alone because my next travel partner, Bill, missed his plane. That is typical of Bill.
Bill arrived in Paris on Sunday, April 12, which was Easter Sunday! Bill and I spent Easter morning here:
That's Notre Dame. I love Notre Dame.
And that's Bill. He's a goofball that has a penchant for Dungeons and Dragons, philosophy, and being late.
We spent the Easter service inside Notre Dame, which looks like this:
The service was in French, so I understood a bit of it (words like "Jesus," "Christ," "God," and "Amen"), and it was mostly beautiful, beautiful music. There were also a bunch of guys in white doing mysterious sacred-mediating-between-the-people-and-God-type things:
So here's a little-known fact about Notre Dame: the back of the church is way cooler and prettier than the front:
I know, right? Why do they keep showing pictures of those two really-kind-of-boring towers (seriously, most of their interest value comes from imagining Quasimodo saving Esmerelda from the flames of death and shouting "SANCTUARY" as he hoisted her above his head whilst standing between the towers. Anyway.) when the back of the church looks like this?
I know, right? Why do they keep showing pictures of those two really-kind-of-boring towers (seriously, most of their interest value comes from imagining Quasimodo saving Esmerelda from the flames of death and shouting "SANCTUARY" as he hoisted her above his head whilst standing between the towers. Anyway.) when the back of the church looks like this?
After church, we went to the Eiffel Tower:
There is not much to say about the Eiffel Tower that you don't already know or can't look up on wikipedia. I mean, it's huge, and there are some really impressive views:
Like this view of the French Parliament. Sorry the photo is crooked, I took it myself.
That night, we went back to the Eiffel Tower:
Those white lights flickered on and off, which may sound seizure-inducing but was, in actuality, magical. Like Harry Potter was having Christmas in Paris or something.
Bill and I spent the next day at The Louvre:
The Louvre is a gigantic, gigantic museum that is vaguely overwhelming. And by vaguely I mean completely. There are four wings with about eight billion rooms each (for those of you who like math, that's 32 billion rooms). I visited some rooms that were new to me, and some old favorites, like my second-favorite statue ever:
The Winged Victory. So cool.
Bill and I also stopped by the Sacre Coeur, the Church of the Sacred Heart. After visiting this church, I have absolutely no insight into what it is or why it was built. I'm not sure if it's Christian, or inter-religious, or what, but one thing it was: busy.
After this, Bill and I left Paris and headed to a small island off the coast of Spain to join up with our friends. Our journey there was...awful. The night of Monday, July 13, and the whole day of Tuesday, July 14, were the worst 36 hours of my whole trip. It's way too complicated and awful to talk about the gritty, tear-inducing details, but let's just say that what we thought was going to be a train ride from Paris to Barcelona and then a plane from Barcelona to Mallorca (all in one day) turned into an overnight train from Paris to Irun, a train to San Sebastian, a bus to Madrid, a frantic call to my dad who bought us new plane tickets, a surprise overnight stay in Madrid, and finally, a day late, a plane from Madrid to Mallorca. However, I have to remember to praise God for all the incredibly nice and helpful people we met on our no-good, truly awful day.
There are pretty much only two things to say about Mallorca: it was beautiful, and we did nothing but relax.
This was a sunrise:
This was our daily view from the beach:
There is not much to say about the Eiffel Tower that you don't already know or can't look up on wikipedia. I mean, it's huge, and there are some really impressive views:
Like this view of the French Parliament. Sorry the photo is crooked, I took it myself.
That night, we went back to the Eiffel Tower:
Those white lights flickered on and off, which may sound seizure-inducing but was, in actuality, magical. Like Harry Potter was having Christmas in Paris or something.
Bill and I spent the next day at The Louvre:
The Louvre is a gigantic, gigantic museum that is vaguely overwhelming. And by vaguely I mean completely. There are four wings with about eight billion rooms each (for those of you who like math, that's 32 billion rooms). I visited some rooms that were new to me, and some old favorites, like my second-favorite statue ever:
The Winged Victory. So cool.Bill and I also stopped by the Sacre Coeur, the Church of the Sacred Heart. After visiting this church, I have absolutely no insight into what it is or why it was built. I'm not sure if it's Christian, or inter-religious, or what, but one thing it was: busy.
After this, Bill and I left Paris and headed to a small island off the coast of Spain to join up with our friends. Our journey there was...awful. The night of Monday, July 13, and the whole day of Tuesday, July 14, were the worst 36 hours of my whole trip. It's way too complicated and awful to talk about the gritty, tear-inducing details, but let's just say that what we thought was going to be a train ride from Paris to Barcelona and then a plane from Barcelona to Mallorca (all in one day) turned into an overnight train from Paris to Irun, a train to San Sebastian, a bus to Madrid, a frantic call to my dad who bought us new plane tickets, a surprise overnight stay in Madrid, and finally, a day late, a plane from Madrid to Mallorca. However, I have to remember to praise God for all the incredibly nice and helpful people we met on our no-good, truly awful day.
But once we finally got to Mallorca, it was great! We met up with Jacque (you may remember her from Italy and Greece), Erin (from Prague), Sabrina (an Oxford housemate), and Nicole. The first order of business was to bury Erin and me in the sand and then draw a yin-yang around us:
There are pretty much only two things to say about Mallorca: it was beautiful, and we did nothing but relax.
This was a sunrise:
This was our daily view from the beach:
And this was the last sunrise:
And thus concludes April 12-April 18. Coming up next: the final stages of my trip. Join us next post as we gape at more big buildings, admire more statues, and visit more museums.
No comments:
Post a Comment