Failing to Succeed

Contrary to the philosophical title here, what I mean is that I fail miserably at updating a blog, but only because I've been rather busy not failing in my studies, travels, and friendships--theoretically. My deep and justifiable desire to take a break from reading up on nineteenth-century Europe is the root of this first-in-a-week blog post. Also, the fact that stuff actually has happened since I last wrote!

Ginger, Sarah, and I, along with our new friends Hannah and Tala (the latter is one of my roommates) headed off to Paris last weekend for our unique (and five-day!) mid-term break. Wednesday night, we had two 2,000-word essays to be turned in, so none of us had slept in nearly a week (felt like months). We got up Thursday morning and walked to the bus stop, along with the rest of SCIO, to board a coach to London for our field trip to the Imperial War Museum. Many of the students (ourselves included) brought along their holiday luggage (vacations are called holidays here in merry ole England, btdubs), as we were leaving (mostly by bus or coach*) from London after field trip officially ended at 3pm.

Our coach didn't leave until 10:30 that night, however, so Sarah, Ginger, and I had time to tour the BBC and meet up with the other girls at Pret a Manger before reporting (with some difficulty) to the coach station at 9:30. Armed with an assortment of bacon crisps, earbuds, hoodies, and water bottles, we managed to get seats all together. However, as there were five of us, and only two to a seat....Ginger had to sit next to a (very nice female) stranger. No one slept particularly well on that 8-hour coach trip, but we made it to Paris without incident and wandered a bit in the wee hours of the hazy Parisian morning (it was about 6:30am when we arrived) locating an ATM and our hostel. All was then well, so we did what any sane person would do their first day in Paris. We napped. (Soon followed by showers and a picnic in the park under the Eiffel Tower, naturally.)

Picnics, I would say, encapsulate our trip pretty well. We had lunch/dinner/snacks at all the major sites in Paris: Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Arc de Triomphe, outside a random bank across the street from a classy crepe window down the street from Luxembourg Gardens (because they had closed 15 minutes before we arrived :( ), I could go on. So we did indeed see the Louvre (photos on facebook, of everything really), and did some shopping on Champs Elysees. "White Night" was our second night there, and while I'm not totally sure what it is, for us it involved shoving our way through huge crowds around Sacre Coeur and through Montmartre at 11pm, searching random artsy-tourist windows for Coca-Cola that cost less than 4 euros (harder than it sounds). Great view from the top, though. :)

Last day was Monday, so we had to check out of the hostel by noon and wander (again) until boarding the coach back at 11pm. Fortunately, this was before we had made it out to Champs Elysees, so we were able to hit the shopping and the Arc de Triomphe, which involved quite a bit of sitting. This was also the night we obtained our last Parisian crepes (because that obviously had to be our last meal), and the metro trip back was incredibly long, especially considering Paris is very compact. But we made it to the coach, onto the coach, across the Channel (ugh), back into London, onto the Oxford coach, and home to the Vines with very little incident. It was actually a much better coach trip: we go the seats up front, and Tala got two seats to herself (even though a childish 60-something lady was glaring at us from two seats back, since apparently she thought she deserved to sit there more than we did :P).

Favorite things about Paris (in no particular order):

• The Eiffel Tower. Don't care if it's cliche and touristy, that is one beautiful piece of architecture.
• The Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory) in the Louvre. Not only is the sculpture beautiful, but those Parisians really know how to display art.
• The plaza outside Notre Dame. There were really, really random street performers, and it was really fun and exotic.
• The Latin Quarter. Thought it might be sorta sketch, but it's this tiny little network of alleys across the river from Notre Dame, behind Saint-Germain and Saint-Michel, with tons of creperies, cafes, and shops. Really fun and non-sketch at night, so that's always a plus :)
• Shakespeare & Co. Bookstore. The famous English bookstore directly across the river from Notre Dame. The first floor is pretty standard (though very crowded with books--think Dickson Street Book Shoppe), but the second floor is home to old, first edition type books (and the young adult section, for some reason), as well as a reading room (where they were holding a writers group at the time we visited), a nook equipped with a typewriter, a keyboard, and windowseats. I didn't buy anything, but I could hang out there for hours.
• Anywhere that's not Gallieni station. We nicknamed that place the world's toilet. Just don't go. :P

*It was only this Thursday that we learned the difference between a bus and a coach, actually. A bus travels within a city, and a coach travels between cities. So....not that big of a deal, really. They're shaped the same, and equally uncomfortable to sleep on.