Fried Egg

I want to start this edition of my blog with a few observations Jody and I have made since we’ve been here. First and foremost is the hairstyle guys wear here…seriously it’s like when we boarded the plane we went through a time warp, that or Europe’s clock runs slower than in the States because the guys here still have mohawks, rat-tails and if you keep your eyes peeled you’ll see a combination of both, I call it a motail. Some even have the dreaded mullet…strangely, none of these ‘dos’ are unpopular, wherever we turned, there one was, starring us in the face! Ok, I’m done with that tangent. On with our misadventures…wait, one more thing completely unrelated to the hair issue Europeans should see a thearapist for, this is about the room we are currently staying in. Jody had the forsight to get a hotel pretty darn close to where the bus stop is for the airport we flew into and will be flying out of…however, we are on the 4th floor. Not so bad, great view and all but one thing has gotten us EVERYDAY…on average I’d guess we probably walk about 8-10 miles a day. When we first checked in, the woman directed us to where the lift (elevator) was located. We pushed the button, no elevator. No worries, we’re young, we can handle it. And at first, it wasn’t a problem walking up 4 flights of stairs…no problem Jody. Thanks Jody. Anyways, that lift that is in this hotel, that could take us up 4 flights of stairs after a long, long day of walking…we have yet to see the inside of it yet (HA this is Jody stepping in for a bit just to let Kris know I used the lift today! Ahaha… however he doesn’t know that yet and yes it was wonderful not walking up all those stairs! )…tonight, walking up the twisting spiral staircase, I pretty much had to push Jody UP the stairs…slightly tired. Ok, so now that I just talked about the end of our day, I guess I should fill you in on what we did right? Right.
The first place we thought to visit today was the Patheon which is a giant (as they all seem to be here in Paris) building with a large basement that housed many famous dead people…for some of you educated people, that’s what you might call a crypt. Joan of Arc was in there, as was Saint Genevieve, and the writer Voltaire along with other famous individuals who were dedicated Frenchmen (women too) and dignitaries. The Luxemburg was close by so we decided to…you guessed it, walk to it. Through the maze of streets, being distracted by shiney objects (Jody) we didn’t quite make it…however we did find a small internet café that offered a good story to tell that I’ll start right here.

We entered the café, paid for an hour of internet and walked to a computer towards the back of the room. Little did we know, these had the French version of what they call a keyboard and towards the front were the keyboards that everyone else in the world uses….but we didn’t figure that out until it was too late…good thing we chose an hour of internet because that’s how long its going to take to type. Ok, so there I was sitting while Jody used the computer first, I started to notice this smell…and just as I was going to say something, I looked at Jody and I could already tell she noticed it too. Let me try and describe what horrible price our nostrals paid today. Imagine, if you will, 4 college-aged guys who decided they wanted to Sumo-wrestle and called a place that rents out those giant sumo-suits. Now this rental place is the type that when a suit or suits are returned, they simply take a bottle of Fabreez and spray the entire suit twice, call it good and toss it in an air-tight sealed locker until the next person who dares rent from them. Imagine these 4 frat-guys taking these suits, sparring for 6 hours straight in them, who then take the suits off, dump them in the middle of their living room with the rest of their week old gym clothes and proceed to turn on the television, crack open a beer and watch the game. Can you smell it yet? Fortunately for Jody and I we are both deep-sea-freestyle divers and were able to hold our breath for the full hour we had the computer for.
After we inhaled again, we headed out to the Statue of Liberty, the French version. Here’s a bit of trivia for you, how many of you knew that the Statues of Liberties stood facing one another from across the ocean. Now you know! So we took the train there and once we arrived, we noticed something slightly different than the one we have in NYC…she has a ponytail! What is WITH this country and having hair where it shouldn’t be???Made our way to our final place for Paris, the Arche De Defense. For those of you who have seen The Bourne Identity and tons of other movies, this is the giant hollow white cube shaped building. It’s pretty cool, it has lifts going up the center of the open hollow space and into the open bottom of the top section of the cube…did that make sense? Probably not…oh well, it’s a pretty sweet building. Finally we made our way back to the hotel and due to shear exhaustion that I described at the beginning of this posting, we ordered pizza, or tried. Called the pizza place, didn’t understand a word the guy was saying and he didn’t understand a word we were saying so Jody headed down to the front desk and had the guy order for us. Hearing him rattle off the order, it was realized that we never would have been able to order the pizza without help. However, when it came we were a little uncertain if the clerk downstairs was playing a gag on us, you know, when he ordered he told the pizza guy that it was for Americans…I say this because it came with a fried egg smack dab in the middle. Yummy.