After 5ish hours' sleep the Lincoln girls and I headed off for the Eiffel Tower. I still hadn't seen it up close yet so I was very keen to see it. So we went, got out of the subway and wondered which way to go. How about heading in the direction of that big pointy thing? In our defence we couldn't see it with the buildings in our way. Shut up. But we did eventually find it and it was very exciting in that way that seeing anything iconic and so well known is exciting. I didn't go up it though because I am really lame. Seriously. I'd made the decision years ago not to go up after reading an essay by Barthes about not being able to see the Eiffel Tower when you're at the Eiffel Tower. Makes sense. I kind of figure that my favourite part of the Paris skyline is the Tower so there wouldn't be any point. Yes lame, but that's me.
After the Tower I parted ways with the girls and got my museum on because it was the first Sunday of the month and all museums are free - my kind of entry fee! So I hit up the Museè d'Orsay and the Museè l'Orangerie. Orsay was fabulous. So many beautiful works, plus it wasn't too big so you could see everything and spend as much time as you'd like doing so. The Orangerie was incredibly tiny. I only spent an hour in there because there wasn't much to see, but it's unmissable due to the two circular rooms with Monet's Waterlillies surrounding you.
I met back up with the girls at the hostel and we set of for the Montmartre district to see the Moulin Rouge windmill and check out the red light district. The Moulin Rouge looked a little too new... I don't know how to explain it. I just was expecting something a little older looking. But it was still cool. The redlight district was just funny. Erotic Supermarket, anyone? We tried to find a bar or something to hang out in but we were pretty tired so just went to the pub next to the Moulin Rouge. We bought a coke for 4.50 Euros. Yep, that's $9 for those playing along at home. And it wasn't even a schooner size - midi all the way. So we tried to make that drink last. And it wasn't even coke - it was pepsi!! We couldn't even say we were paying for the ambience - we were stuck between two tables of smokers and had a great view of the road. Oh yeah.
My final morning in Paris was spent quite morbidly (as seems to be a habit of mine) at the Père-Lachaise cemetery. Basically it's a huge cemetery where a lot of famous people are buried, possibly most famously Jim Morrison of The Doors (whose grave is quite non-descript and a little difficult to find).
I basically went to see the grave of Oscar Wilde:
I wasn't surprised by its ostentatiousness, but I was surprised by the lipstick marks all over it:
If those are girls' lips, they do realise that he was gay and (from what I've gained by reading some of his work) held women in contempt? But anyway, his grave had a lot of people around it. People just sitting there, maybe taking it all in? I have no idea. I snapped my photos, read what was written then moved on. Does that make me disrespectful? I have no idea. I don't know what I would have gotten out of just sitting and absorbing his grave. Sit and read one of his plays whilst basking in the grave instead? I dunno.
I also saw the graves of Chopin:
Edith Piaf:
Balzac:
Proust:
I'm still kicking myself that I couldn't find Gertrude Stein's grave (I looked so hard! I wandered up so many rows of graves in the area my map said it would be), but I think my favourite grave of them all is that of Victor Noir. I remembered reading about him years ago - he was a filandering journalist and is apparently the only grave in the whole cemetery to show a full bodied statue of him. I don't know if you can make out in the pictures, but his top hat is off, his pants are unbuckled and his crotch is rubbed worn. Apparently rubbing it gives you luck or sexual prowess or something?
I met up with the Lincoln girls for lunch at the Orangerie museum. Well, we were supposed to eat near there but we really couldn't find anything. We walked up the Champs Elysees which is an expensive shopping street, saw the Arc de Triomphe, then went back to the hostel.
We wandered up and down the canal outside our hostel which had been turned into a makeshift "beach" for the summer. There rowboats you could hire, beach chairs, these great big floating barrel things that kids climbed into and tried to turn to get to the other side... kind of like a wheel in a hampster cage if that makes sense. There was also music playing in one part and suddenly all these middle-aged and older men and women got up and started to dance. Like, properly dance, with co-ordinated steps and things. It was so lovely.
There were even ladies sitting on the side like wallflowers waiting to be asked.
We went back to the hostel later on with our Canadian roomie and played Uno in the bar. We suddenly became the table to be at what with all our Uno playing going on. We were joined by a Canadian hell-bent on going to the Eiffel Tower, "right now. We'll see it lit up, it'll be fucking fantastic, eh," and a few more Canadians, a couple of Americans, and a guy from West Pymble staying in our room.
What a lovely way to end my perfect Paris trip! Oh, but wait. That's not actually how it ended.
I left at about 11 because I had to get up at 4:15 to get to my airport in the middle of nowhere and get my flight. I managed to fall asleep after midnight and was soon woken at about 1:30 by the girl above me snoring so loudly. Guess who was cranky? I finally gave up on any kind of sleep and was on my computer at about 3am when I heard the Aussie guy vomiting something relentless. Naaaaasty. At least, it was nasty when I thought he was vomiting in the sink or bin. When I realised he was vomiting in his bed I panicked a little. So did the girl in the bed underneath. Suddenly the whole room was awake, but not West Pymble, it would seem. He didn't seem to realise that he had thrown up, he was that wasted. He lay in it for awhile while one girl went downstairs to get some new sheets, then he moved his clothes on top of it... It was just a world of wrong. He was just staring into space a lot of the time too. I was there going, "I think you need a shower," while he would dazedly reply, "Yeah. Cool." The whole thing ended with a Korean girl getting up and yelling at us all for waking her (how she slept through the wretching is beyond me), the guy stripping the bed, grabbing his backpack and deciding to go (WTF???), and when we told him not to he replied with, "It's all cool," and left.
Most. Random. Night. Ever.
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