Alps bound in the AM

Tonight's our last night in Paris. We were able to get a room in our original hostel, so we moved back there today and it is where I sit currently. Much better than l'hotel.

Paris is a neat place. I mean, aside from the ubiquitous cigarette smoke, body odor, and snobbery, it's hard not to appreciate the attention to detail this city puts forth in its food, architecture, and focus on history/the arts.

If I had a lot more money, and if I knew more French or had a capable guide, then I would want to spend a lot more time here.

But I have neither. So I'm ready to leave. Maybe it's because I know there is more exciting adventures around the corner on the itinerary, or maybe it's just because I'm tired of the big cities. Whatever the case, I'm ready to head to the mountains. I can't imagine Turner feeling any differently.

A quick recap of today before I quit writing about Paris completely....

First thing, we went to the goliath train station, Gare du Nord, to book our Int'l high speed rail tickets and validate our Eurail pass. That took longer than expected, so we decided to eat at the McDonald's adjacent to save time (and so we could compare...we were curious). Got a couple of the Royal Cheeses. If I would have closed my eyes (and I guess my ears), I could have taken myself to any dirty metropolitan mcdonalds in America. I loved it.

From the station we went to the Musee D'Orsay (maybe 1/2 a mile along the Seine from the Louvre). The structure of this museum was incredible. Maybe some of you have been there, but if you can't remember it is a renovated train station. Very impressive. More impressive, however, was the collection of Van Gogh, Monet, Renoir, Rodin, and hundreds of other works of art from about mid 19th century on I believe.

My absolute favorite was Van Gogh's self portrait (one of many he did of himself actually). It's a pretty powerful portrait up close. You would need giga pixels to -maybe- capture the colors digitally. There were lots of others that were pretty amazing as well, but this one really sticks out in my mind.

We spent so much time at the Musee D'Orsay that we decided to just take a walk and head back to the hostel early since our train leaves at 7:30 am tomorrow morning. We stopped at a store and bought some French edam, some kind of smoked sausage, and some kind of melba-toast-like crackers. Found a bench alongside the canal that runs by our hostel and ate it there. Some guys were playing bocci (?) ball right in front of us. They were professionals I assume...I would have gotten smoked if I picked up with them. The food was good--I wish I knew what the meat was though. All-around a good day.

Before I sign off for the evening, I'd like to state how glad I am that I didn't have to endure the pain of our football game live last night. I did a quadruple take when I saw the score of 3-2 this morning. Then I saw our total offense was 116 yards. That's really all I needed to read to get a perfect picture of how the game transpired. Can't really win if you can't score points. Oh well, I've got plenty of distractions here to keep me from wondering the what-could-have-beens with this team.

Switzerland update and hopefully pictures soon to come.

p.s. I know blogspot kind of sucks...but I'd love to know who (if anyone) is reading. Post a comment and make me laugh. Turner and I both would appreciate it.

kirby