The Aerie
This entry brought to you by: Insomnia. Insomnia, for times when exhaustion just isn't enough!
A very brief cell-phone update to pass the time and assure everyone of our continued existence. Can't post any pics yet: there are two DOZEN wireless access points in range of my laptop, and every one that isn't encrypted is a fee-access municipal wifi point. I'd PAY to use the danged things, but their instructions are both in French, and utterly non-intuitive. So maybe no pics till the weekend unless I get lucky or French web designers get smarter.
Having fun in Paris, although the city seems dirttier and the Metro much more confusing than 18 yeats ago. Went to a big Star Wars exhibit at the Museum of Science on the Villette today, and holy smokes is that a big museum. At some point after the Star Wars exhibit and the other exhibits started to blur together (was Darth Vader responsible for continental drift?) I simply got museumed-out.
We left the museum and encountered the Geode (a giant mirrored ball that will raise the hackles of anyone who has read Vernor Vinge), and the giant public park that is the Villette.
We made our way across Paris to Montmartre and visited the Sacre Coure, which was more crowded and less impressive than I recalled. This may have been due to the fact that the only thing I could think the entire time I was in there was 'where's the bathroom?' (The answer 'far down the hill and half an hour in the future' was unfortunately not revealed to me in a flash of divine knowledge.) The predatory portrait-artists are still there, or their children, waiting to shame tourists into parting with 20 Euros for a bad charicature.
Dinner was some odd manifestation of my spouse's desire for an authentic Parisian experience smashing headlong into starvation. First we bought some pop and apples at a grocery we found growing out of a crack in a wall, then we bought-out the entire stock of fly-blown French 'hot dogs,' two dubious pale sausages welded into a split baguette with gelid cheese, aged half a day in a window, and microwaved to turgid softness. Hunger served as a condiment, and we ate crammed into a windowledge in a corner, drawing curious stares from the mostly Algerian neighborhood residents as they shouted into their cell-phones. I stared right back, having watched enough of their dashiki-clad neighbors gnaw roast corn on the metro to know that these French gourmands weren't above eating food bought out of a bucket on a rail platform themselves.
We then staggered down to Gare du Nord, a train station where we hoped to buy a discount rail pass. We were led a merry chase and by the time we found the right place and learned the cost would be 10 Euros more for having to buy photos to put ON the rail passes, we were baked. We headed back to the hostel and watched a movie on my laptop.
Tomorrow we're due to visit the Louvre, after that we shall see.
Well I don't feel any sleepier, but at least now I'm hungry too, so I'll sign off and observe the battle between hunger, exhaustion, insomnia and boredom to see who wins. I'm rooting for exhaustion. Gooooo Lethe!
Posted by Albatross at August 15, 2006 6:26 PM | TrackBack