A couple of years ago, I won a grant to be used to study the parts of Europe that were centrally responsible for historic European conflict and for European unity today: France, Germany, and the Low Countries in between. The trip for that grant began on August 5th. In order to maintain my marriage, Laura went as well, and we left from Michigan following the Girard reunion in Caseville. I’m writing this blog mainly so that I can remind myself later all of the things that slipped away from my old man memory as we navigated through Europe; consequently, this entry is a bit long, which may be a good thing if you are in need of some bathroom reading.
Having travelled to Europe before, we had some exerience navigating through cities and planned to see Europe mainly on our own, without a whole lot of guides. If you haven’t been to Europe before, or if you are one of those people who avoids big cities altogether, you probably want one of those “on rails” tour where someone will handle all of your transfers and such. Since neither Laura nor I really like to be told what to look at, a self-guided tour was ideal, and we understood European transportation enough that disagreements would not be of the marriage-ending variety. Hopefuly.
Our flight across the ocean left at 8:00 pm and arrived in Paris at around 8:30 am; the key to avoiding jet lag was to sleep as much as possible on the plane, a task for which Laura is uniquely suited. She slept an amazing five out of six and a half hours on the plane, barely remaining awake until the plane took off. Once in Europe, continue to combat the jet lag by staying active all of the first day, only going to sleep at night. To carry out this plan, we hustled to the airport taxi area, managed to get a cab to our hotel near the Eiffel Tower, had the hotel hold the bags (check in wasn’t until the afternoon), and went to a late breakfast.
Laura had slept through most of the meals on the plane, and had now reached the point of ravenous hunger. However, finding a random restaurant in France that met her dietary restrictions from colitis was tough. We were able to find a place that was kind of a tourist trap closer to the Eiffel Tower that would work. The giveaways for a touristy restaurant in Paris are:
- The default menu is in English with giant color pictures
- There are multiple burgers/cheeseburgers available
- They advertise “American” breakfasts. This was the clincher for us because Laura can actually eat eggs.

We added our selfie stick to the garden of selfie sticks that had sprouted around the Arc.

“Secret”
Then we bought tickets to go to the top of the Arc and began the ascent. There were even more stairs than at the Hatteras Lighthouse. My neice Tabby would never have made it.

284 stairs later…

This dais is great for selfies!

It was like someone had built Rodeo Drive on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC

The sight of people waiting in line here caused Laura to remark for the rest of the time we were in Paris, “I can’t believe people were waiting in line at Louis Vuitton!”

Abercrombie and Fitch. Naturally.
- Americans REALLY like to advertse on their clothing that they are from America. For the French, those shirts must seem like some kind of tourist warning labels.
- Paris isn’t as bike friendly as a lot of other places in Europe, maybe because the mass transit system is so good.
- In America we have a cultural norm where I might think a stranger is an idiot, but it is “impolite” for me to show that I think a stranger is an idiot. This norm does not exist in Paris.

Walking all the way from the Arc was easier than walking across this square.
By this time, we were ready to check into the hotel, so we hopped on the metro by the Louvre and made our way back to the hotel. Most European hotels have tiny elevators, and this one was especially tiny. It could barely fit Laura’s enormous suitcase plus one human being, so I carried my suitcase up the equally tiny staircase. Then we headed off to dinner at the un-European time of 7 pm, which is hours before most Europeans eat. In fact, many restaurants in Paris don’t even open until 7 or 8.

Even random buildings in Paris are awesome.

Cheers to cooked beef!

Laura’s comment on walking through here: “I still can’t believe there was a line to get into Louis Vuitton!”

On second thought, let’s do that when we come back next year.

The view from our hotel window.
We finally gave in to the jet lag, and we planned to get up fairly early to go to the Paris Catacombs in order to beat the line. We didn’t count on the jet lag combining with the super effective shutters on our hotel windows helping us to sleep about 12 hours straight.

Oops.
Having aborted the Catacombs plan, we went to plan B, eating at a outdoor cafe and people watching. Laura was delighted that Parisian cafes served plain hardboiled eggs (something that fit the diet); she was less delighted by the people near us smoking, which seems to be much more common at European cafes than at restaurants in the US, where the smoking laws are much more restrictive. One of the guys near us was actually rolling his own cigarettes, which was novel since people in the US seem to use rolling papers for mainly for something other than tobacco.
We took the Metro to the Louvre, which we had only seen briefly on our tour of Paris two years ago.

Al the cool peopl are doing it.
While photographs are allowed in the Louvre, selfie sticks are not due to the high number of visitors.

I wish I knew how to quit you, selfie stick!

With 2000 of our closest friends.

Law and order broke down the closer we got.
- Time your approach to the painting so that you go in between the large, obnoxious tour groups from the United States or East Asia.
- Keeping your center of gravity low, ram though the people in front of you.
We weren’t interested enough in a Mona Lisa selfie to ram through, so we went to see other awesome paintings.

Like “Liberty Leading a Young Abraham Lincoln.”

Although cleaning that chandelier seems like it would not be worth it at all

Time to hop in the rental car

Or by taking the trolley of shame
I feuled up with some ice cream from the shop across the street and we made our ascent. The stairs were actually fine; the street vendors, not so much. They were the most aggressive we have seen in Europe, with one grabbing me and one grabbng Laura in order to get us to “buy” something by putting a bracelet on us. Once clear of the street vendors at the botom, the visit was much more enjoyable.

At the bottom….

…and at the top.

One of the things I love about Europe is how often we have turned a corner to find something cool by accident.

Like the last windmill in Paris
After dinner, we walked through some of the bordering neighborhoods.
The neighborhood was so nice that I was wondering why more student tour companies didn’t feature the area as part of an overall tour of Paris.
Tour companies, good call. I’d rather not have to explain to high school sophomores what the latex arm in the shop window with the suction cup at the bottom and balled fist at the top is for. I’m not even sure I COULD explain it. Visiting the Champs Elysees and explaining the mystery of why people wait in line at Louis Vuitton is much easier.