Bonjour!

I did not want to go to Paris. I wanted nothing to do with Paris or pareeeshans or phrench phries. I wanted my trip to be all Italy all the time. But Mr.P loves him some Paris. He'd been to Paris a few times - not for the food or the wine or the leisurely stroll down the Champs-Élysées...oh no…you see, he’s a DisneyPhile and he loves him some Disneyland Paris. So if we were gonna to go to Europe, then we were gonna have to go to Disneyland Paris. Fuck-king shit! Since he let me have my Italy, I had had to let him have his Paris. So arrivaderci Italy, Bonjour Pareeee!

I gotta say, just walking thru the Charles de Gaulle airport kinda made me feel underdressed - it was exactly like the French: perfect and gorgeous. We made our way to the taxi stand and naturally we found the one cab driver who was about as familiar with Paris as we were. Literally after driving around and around for over an hour, Mr.P started to give HIM directions!

Look what we saw driving into Paris 

Hotel Muguet was located near the Champs de Mars and Rue Cler. It was another example of cliche European charm: a tiny little building with tiny little windows on a tiny little back street. Our room was on the 3rd floor and it had one very tiny, windy staircase to get to it (it wasn’t until the last day that we found out they had a fucking elevator!) And quell shock, our room had another freakishly weird, tiny bathroom. Europeans are the masters of food and wine but us Americans have the market cornered on bathrooms.

Inside the metro station

We were starving so we thought we’d get out and find something to eat - how hard could that be - it was, after all, Paris! Naturally Paris was as hot as Italy so a nice little walk thru town was like being continuously slapped in the face with a heating pad. 

We let the iPhone do the directing and it led us to a hospital and then a parking lot (I never knew Paris had parking lots). We finally put the phone away and wandered around until we found a little cafe and picked up a sandwich. It was awful! The French are supposed to be the masters of food and wine but this was so bad, it made Subway taste like it had Michelin stars. Thank fucking Jesus the french love an ice cold drink (Hey, Italians....you could learn a thing or two from these guys). 

Jackpot! This laundromat was down the street from our hotel!

So we sat outside to soak up the local color when BLAM! we saw a scooter get hit by a van. The scooter was lying on its side and the poor bastard riding it was trying to pick it up....so the van stops, the driver gets out, looks at the scooter, shrugs his shoulders, gets back in the van and drives away. Then the cops come (complete with that hilarious French siren) they get out of the car, see the scooter on the ground, see the guy who was riding it, shrug their shoulders, get in their car and drive away. Et voila the french justice system at work!

This was Paris? This fucking sucks.

We walked back to the hotel and realized that if we'd made a right instead of a left, we would have hit the motherload of french fare: a boulangerie (bakery), a fromagerie (cheese shop), a boutique de chocolate (chocolate shop), a boutique de vins (wine shop)….Sacrebleu! 

Locks on the Pont des Arts Bridge

Our first major stop was the Eiffel Tower. I mean shit if you’re in Paris, you’ve gotta see Le Tour Eiffel. As we walked up to it, I began to realize just how massive this thing was. In my mind I knew it was huge but I didn't get the scale of it until we got right up under it and then I was like “Mother fucker!” It is a serious jaw dropper. 

The park around the Eiffel Tower was crazy packed - it was like one big sandbox filled with dirt and dust and everyone from tourists to locals were either walking around or laying on blankets, drinking wine or eating dinner. There were guys selling cold wine and champagne out of metal buckets and street venders chasing us with all kinds of Eiffel Tower trinkets screaming “One dallah! One dallah! One dallah!” It was like a fucking carnival. 

We could only get tix to the second level (who knew it had levels) and I was pretty pissed off about that - I really wanted to go to the top! But it actually turned out to be le blessing in disguise because even at 10pm, the top level was packed! Not to mention it was still super hot and that little, tiny, Willy Wonka elevator they have to take you to the top, was crammed with all kinds of moist, sweaty, tourists. When we got off on the second level, there were hardly any people there. It was cool and breezy. I felt like I could breathe again. 

From the Eiffel Tower

The view from the other side

And the view...WOW that view. It was crazy amazing - I mean you could see all of Paris! And there were tables and chairs......and a bar up there! So we sat down, ordered some champagne and kept slapping ourselves to make sure this was real. I mean shit...here we were, on the fucking Eiffel Tower, drinking fucking French Champagne, looking at fucking Paris. We got there right as the sun went down and the lights on the tower went on. It was Fan-tass-teek!

The Metro was the most amazing thing about Paris. Us Americans look like “le douche bags” next to the french and their public transit system. Even in fucking French, the metro was easy to understand - and cheap....do you hear that MetroRail? One ticket can take you anywhere - literally. 

French Fries - oui!

We took the Metro to Disneyland Paris. Three Metro tickets were cheaper than parking at Disneyland proper! And it was so great......no waiting for a tram, no folded stroller crammed into your thighs, no screaming 3 year old with his balloon up your nose. 

When we arrived, I immediately got the feeling of DejaVu. It was almost exactly like the Disneyland in Anaheim, even down to the outrageous prices for food! We went on Le Pirates of the Caribbean, Le Space Mountain, Phantom Manor (Haunted Mansion), Le Pays des Contes de Fées (Storybookland) and of course, Le Small World.

Le Big Thunder Mountain

The Disneyland Paris version of the hot dog -
a german sausage on a baguette

One night, as we walked down the windy staircase of our hotel, the desk clerk, Martine (pronounced Mar-tan) asked in his crazy French accent, “Ahh yooo looooking forrr a goot plasss to eeet?” and before we could say yes, no or maybe, he jumped up and said “Ehhhh vwolllah, follow me!” and ran out of the hotel, down the block and around the corner. We found him in front of a little place called Le Florimond. 

Le Florimond was very tiny, about the size of our living room and was amazing. The owner, Laurent, was a young man wearing a Tweety Bird tie (ok, the last person I expected to see wearing a Tweedy Bird tie would be the owner of a Michelin Star nominated Parisian bistro). He showed us to a little table in the back and then proceeded to read us the menu. He also didn't give us shit for not knowing French. Merci!

Laurent - check out the tie!

We had an amazing meal of stuffed cabbage, beef stew, lobster ravioli, salad vert, mussels (I thought they were pistachio nuts!) and….wait for it…..escargot! Don't make the eewwy face! It was fucking delicious! It was cooked “en coquette” - baked in a small pot in an herbed cream sauce. Laurant suggested some wine (we drank 2 different bottles!) and for dessert we had pistachio cake with peach soup, a HUGE napoleon and a plate of cheeses. We felt like royalty. And la peece da resistance......an older, French Grande Dame walked in, dressed to the nines including a big hat and a feather boa and she had her her poodle in her Louis Vuitton bag. C'est magnific! 

Le Escargot. YUM!

Le peach soup and pistachio cake. YUM! 

Le über-tall Napoleon! YUM!

Le dessert cheese and wine plate. YUM!

Paris was so crowded, we soon realized we wouldn’t be able to do a lot of the things we wanted to do - we also realized we didn’t want to spend what limited time we did have waiting in line. 

Hey, there's the Mona Lisa!

So instead of waiting 4 hours to see the dead in the french catacombs, we hung out with the living......at the bar across the street. We drank french beer, ate french ham and french fries. We had a great time trying to communicate with the old guy who owned the bar. I can't tell you how much fun that was - sometimes the unplanned can be so much more enjoyable than the planned.

We were able to do some touristy stuff. We took a boat ride on the Seine, brought padlocks with us to attach to one of the many bridges that cross the Seine, we walked around the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa (along with every other fucking asshole in Paris), we checked out the Apple Store in the Louvre (because there’s a fucking Apple Store in the goddamn fucking Louvre!) 

The fucking Apple Store in the goddamn fucking Louvre

Ate fresh crepes from a little street vendor, did our laundry while eating croissants and drinking coffee (I was asked while ordering, “Do you want real coffee or that Americaaan stuff?”), and walked around our neighborhood buying wine and cheese and chocolates any chance we got. Even at midnight our neighborhood was packed with people, eating and drinking at outdoor cafes. 

It's midnight and it's still packed

We did not see Notre Dame….we’d gotten our fill of churches and naked guys and Jesus in Italy. We didn’t see Versailles either - I’d been to the Liberace Museum in Las Vegas so I was set on my gold leaf quota for the next few years. No shopping at Hermes or Chanel. We had more fun exploring our little neighborhood. Thankfully the RedHead was totally up for anything and enjoyed it all. She found Paris to be her favorite stop and I must confess, I fell in love with it too. 

Ok, so the biggest shock we had about Paris was that the French were actually quite nice. It was probably some fucking loudmouthed American who started that crazy bullshit that they're rude - it couldn't be further from the truth!

It was time to go home and we were ready to go. But going back to the states was not as easy as leaving the states. It took 3 hours of waiting in customs - it took that long because Europeans don’t understand the concept of waiting their turn in line: they cut in front of you, slide in, push you out - it’s fucking crazy. We thought we were going to miss our flight. But we finally got thru, boarded our plane and were off. 

10 hours later and another hour in customs at LAX (because they can) we hailed a cab - yes, we took a cab - I wasn’t going to sit on the Supershuttle (aka: the smelly shuttle) after a 10 hour fucking flight. Unfortunately we happened to hail the one cab where the driver must have just eaten a head of garlic like an apple. Nice. He kept rolling the windows up every time we rolled them down...."Too loud" he would say. Good god!

We finally got home.....ahhh home! While I loved the way the Europeans lived, I am, after all, American at heart and I was eager for the laziness of my American life: the plain sitting of it all, the relief of air conditioning, my washer & dryer at the ready and naturally, my car. I think Mr.P was excited to finally use a shower that didn’t give him a crick in the neck. 

So Adieu Paris! Arrivederci Roma! Vaarwel Amsterdam!
Until we meet again!