Vatican City

Rome, Italy - Day 3
Monday, June 23

The next day we went to the Vatican. We paid 40 Euros for a tour that bypassed the 4 hour line and that also covered all points of interest inside the sovereignty. Given that admission was 15 euros anyway, we thought the 25 euros to be well worth skipping the line and getting a guided tour. One of the first, and famous, carvings we saw was a reproduction of “La Pieta” (Italian for “pity) by Michelangelo.

It depicts Mary holding Jesus, and was made by Michelangelo at the age of 23. It is also the only piece to bear his signature, as a result of breaking into St. Peter’s Basilica (the main building in the Vatican) after hours. Since it was illegal for an artist to put his name on his art at the time (on the grounds that the art was meant to uplift the status of the patron, not the creator), it took a pardon from the pope at the time, to free Michelangelo from a death sentence. The pope pardoned him, because he wanted more work by him (a la Sistine Chapel). Our tour guide, an American girl who had been living in Italy for two years, was very knowledgeable about the stories behind the various artworks but also about the prevailing themes and movements of the time.

We walked through the catacombs in the basement, where lay all the past popes in coffins like this one. Some tourists shamelessly took pictures of Pope John Paul despite a sign, a security guard, what one would presume to be shared sense of respect forbidding it.

We then randomly saw our friends that we bumped into at Paris (and Keone at London too). Afterward, we did the infamous, 520 step climb up St. Peter’s Basilica, a climb which was well worth the visual treat that awaited us at the top. After walking down, we headed for the special points in the middle of Piazza di San Pietro (the circular area in the picture above), from which the 4 layer of columns, comprising the arcs on the border of the Piazza, all line up perfectly. We then went inside St. Peter’s Basilica to see the original “La Pieta,” which sat behind a few layers of bullet-proof glass.

This took us through the evening, after which we then went to Piazza Navona where a street artist sketched a caricature of me for 10 Euros. As we were about to leave the square, we were stopped by two men who proceeded to tie black, pink, and gold thread wristlets on us and demand 10 Euros. We then walked Fontana di Trevi, a famous fountain that has apparently made cameos in quite a few Hollywood movies.

So ended our sightseeing adventures around Rome.

Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum

Rome, Italy - Day 2
Sunday, June 22

That morning (Monday) we went to see the Colosseum. On the way we stopped at quite a famous Gelato place whose name escapes me now. Given that there were 34 flavors, you can imagine our joy and drool.

We then developed an understanding for the toga’s use in Rome as we trudged through the excruciating 100 degree, incredibly humid heat at the Roman Forum, the center of Roman government and religious activity, Palatine Hill, the site at which the emperor’s palaces once stood, and the Colosseum, which needs no introduction. OCD fueled our desire to listen to every historic point at the Roman Forum and Palatine hill.

The Colosseum was the first historic site at which I chose not to get an available audio tour, and I still regret it since those are actually quite instructive. An exhibit of various adornments of the Colosseum covered the second floor. We walked around the periphery of the center field, a twenty feet deep stone labyrinth that, back in the day of the empire, was covered with a wooden floor dotted with trap doors through which lions, trees, and gladiators themselves could be added to an ensuing fight/execution.

My Garmin GPS, affectionately named “jeeps”, navigated us through small residential streets and alleyways, far out of the reaches of the peddlers hawking goods to tourists, allowing us to see Rome in a way we hadn’t been able to see Paris or Barcelona. Jeeps guided us to the Pantheon, a former major Pagan temple that was then converted into a Catholic church.

The Pantheon’s interior dome is an architectural wonder. It has an oculus, a hole in the center. You probably know that arches are deceptively hard to construct, because of the fact that the entire weight of the structure rests on a critical point of the top. A dome, which can be seen as a number of arches rotated around a central point, puts even more structural emphasis on this center point. This critical point is, however, exactly where there is an oculus in the Pantheon. The way the Romans accomplished this feat was by using concrete (they had that back then in a more rudimentary form) of varying densities. The structure gets less and less dense as you go from the outside of the circle to the inside, thereby eliminating the need for a solid central point on which to rest.

After the Pantheon, we walked over to the Piazza di Spagna, home to the famous Spanish steps on which young adults used to sit in the 18^th and 19^th century in the hopes of being picked by the passing by artists as models. At the top of the Piazza, we encountered a traffic jam, which we soon found out was caused by the filming of “Angels and Demons,” the prequel to “The Da Vinci Code.” I asked a portly man with a beard, two traits which I presumed to be indicative of power in the film industry, whether they needed extras, but he, misinterpreting what I said as a request to be cast in the movie, shot back, “You’re going to have to go through a talent agency for that.” They were filming a car chase scene, and given the narrow width of the road, we figured that the protective rock ledge at the side would be included in the shot. We went and sat on the shot through about 5 or 6 takes. We think we saw the actors who we think are Tom Hanks’ and Ayelet Zurers’ doubles.

Afterward we walked through a giant park that sat the north of the city, a park which also housed a villa, now museum, of an old cardinal. After coming back, we were moved into a different room, one not inhabited/haunted by Ostello.

First night in Rome

Rome, Italy
Saturday, June 21

Having arrived at Rome a day earlier than anticipated, we immediately called our hostel, Hotel Acropoli, to make a reservation for that night. The number listed on the Hostelworld.com reservation, however, belonged to a hotel booking agent who instructed us to meet him at a particular Piazza, whose name remains unknown to this day. We did not immediately realize, however, that this man was not a member of our hotel staff, but two big clues led us to an Encyclopedia-Brown-like resolution of the mystery – the man’s screams at when we told him it would be easier if we just met him at the Hotel and the fact that the Hotel receptionist told us that we had probably spoken to a “conductor.”

For dinner we went to a pizzeria with a menu identical to that of the first two restaurants from where we’d been booted for being late, and for only ordering one pizza, respectively. We watched Italy lose to Spain. A chocolate cake bought from a baker across the street turned out to be a rum cake, each bite of which tasted like a shot, making me then wish I had chaser.

Shortly after we got back to the hotel, we were greeted by who I am sure will be one of the most memorable characters’ we’ll have come across this entire trip – Ostello the 80 (+/- 5) year old man who, upon dropping his bags onto the floor after entering our 6 bed room, greeted us with a hearty “Buono Serra.” It’s important that you understand how the room is laid out, if you’re to fully appreciate the horror and hilarity of that night. There were 6 twin beds lined up next to each other, with a half-wall partition the length of the beds, in between the first four and the last two. Keone and I took the farthest two, in the set of four, by the window as the room was unbearably hot. Ostello, took the bed that was farthest from us on the opposite side, a bed we couldn’t see because of that wall partition.

We heard strange croaks and gurgles coming for the first hour or so, and Keone admonished me for suggesting that we might wake up next morning with a dead man in the room. About two hours into the night, at around 1:00am, we were jolted awake by a blood-curdling scream, dripping with anger and pleading – “Bella! Bella!” – that was coming from the other side of the wall partition. These screams/cries/sound emissions were then quickly followed by thumping/slapping. We had absolutely no idea why he was screaming the Italian word for beautiful, and we had even less idea as to how he was making the slapping sound. This continued throughout the night. In the morning, Keone couldn’t take it anymore, and went to see what was going on. He was apparently, in his sleep, crying out “Bella!” and slapping his black leather shoe against the wall over and over. I kid you not, it was terrifying at the time.

Cruise from Barcelona to Rome

Cruise from Barcelona, Spain to Rome, Italy
Friday, June 20 - Saturday, June 21

Our cruise from Barcelona to Rome turned out to be an experience whose price rapidly escalated from the initial 40 Euros per person. It also served as a good lens, and an opportunity to brace ourselves for unstable, ready to explode concoction that is the post-menopausal Italian woman. On the shuttle ride over, Alicia and Nikki, our two new friends from Chicago and Scotland, respectively, along with the two of us were loudly and forcefully herded to the back so as to preserve four Italian middle aged women’ incredibly inefficient arrangement of luggage. I had never seen anyone so concerned with, yet at the same so inept at managing their bags.

The pleasant surprise that was the relatively low cost of our tickets for an 18 hour cruise faded as we saw that we had seats on the ship. Imagine a partial cross section of a Boeing 747, and you’ll have the room in which we were assigned seats that were not next to each other. We gladly upgraded to a cabin with beds, air conditioning, and a private bathroom for 15 Euros. The ship was decently large with a number of cafes, bars, restaurants, a casino, an arcade, a club, and a computer lab. The pool which got us excited at the time of booking, however, turned out to be a square with each side measuring about 5 meters long.

After dinner in the overpriced, on-board restaurant, we watched the end of the football match, and then went to the club. The awkwardness of seeing a swarm of 13 year olds dancing in a sea of sexual frustration/ignorance was heightened by their fathers drinking at the bar. With our books in hand we quickly marched out, and proceeded to walk on the deck for about an hour before calling it a day.

Greeted by an industrial landscape of cranes, barges, and scaffolding instead of grand, old Roman ruins, we soon found out that our destination port, Civitavecchia, was a city located few hours from Rome, not a Roman port (these turned out to be a figment of our geographically handicapped imagination).

Barcelona

Barcelona, Spain
Wednesday, June 19 - Saturday, June 21

I arrived in Barcelona on Thursday, June 19, and, I eventually managed to exit from the main train station, with the assistance of an incredibly friendly old lady. The people of France and England had not been this warm, and, further fueled by stories I’d heard from fellow travelers, I couldn’t help but think that kindness must be a zero-sum game – if there’s people here quite eager to help me out, there must also be people quite eager to, put it crudely, screw me over.

The hostel sat on top of a long, steep hill whose climb was not pleasant. I found out that I had achieved a considerably level of notoriety around the hostel owing to the spread of my passport story. Our roommates, two Spanish girls, did not speak a word of English, but, oddly enough, the mutually acknowledged language barrier made for a comfortable détente.

Keone, having arrived a day earlier, made friends with a Spanish couple, Alvaro and Lorea, who just saved him from being fleeced for 50 Euros for a ten minute taxi ride. We met up with those two, along with their two Scottish friends, Bobby and Andy. Cynthia, our Californian waitress of Argentinian descent, added to what would be one of few nights of merriment with the pleasure of conversation in English. Toward the end of the night, the owner of the bar, a 45 year old play-boy from Venezeula, stopped by to help clean up. A former architect, he designed the bar himself, particularly proud of the gold and black design of the bathroom – a Dolce and Gabbana accent, he claimed. His appreciation for such fineries was lost on us

Barcelona is probably the second most widespread city we’d been to at that point, after London, and the stupidity of our ambitious plan to walk back home quickly came to light. No longer under our two Spanish friends’ protective gaze, we were ripped off by a taxi – 15 Euros for a four block ride.

We had to switch to a six-bed the next morning, Friday, June 20, where we met Ryan, a junior at Carnegie Mellon that was studying art, with whom we discussed what were most definitely not mutual fortes - Barcelona and art.

I should note that the “siesta” culture which middle-school and high-school Spanish culture repeatedly mention to spice up the normally bland, conjugation ridden classes, is quite absent in the larger cities in Spain, and, from what we gathered from speaking with locals, is becoming a relic in the smaller towns as well.

That day we walked down Las Ramblas, the most popular pedestrian boulevard in the city, which dotted with souvenir shops, restaurants selling paella and other Spanish delicacies, and what is possibly the most creative street performers I shall see. Las Ramblas street performers don incredibly intricate costumes, ranging from GI Joe to Satyr to Anger, and perform a small act for and take a picture with those who pay them.

Halfway through the street, stretching to the right side, was El Mercat Boqueria, the famous Barcelonan marketplace with vendors showcasing any and all type of fruit you imagine, vegetables, sausage, goat legs, and what seemed to be an endless variety of fish. In effort to find reasonably priced Paella, we began walking on the side streets of Las Ramblas, only to find ourselves lost in a three block long alley lined with no less than 20 hookers. Spreading around to stand in the middle of all possible exits from the alley, thereby forcing us to pass them on our way out, we made a mad dash for the last open street. We had lunch at the noodle restaurant “Wok to Walk,” that was half a block away.

We then made our way to the harbor to check out the beaches, piers, as well as to book our cruise to Rome. In our three hour wait until the booking office opened, we sat on the pier, throwing almonds, that proved to be not only inedible, but incredibly foul tasting for our new Spanish fish friends.

That night we went to the beach, walked through the garden in the middle of the city, and saw the Arc de Triomf, which was considerably smaller than its Parisian cousin. We had dinner at a small eatery – pork sandwiches, a young, fruity Spanish red wine, and Estella, the national beer. Although we were somewhat drunk by the time we got back to the hotel, we decided to take showers being dirty form walking around all day. We took two of the three communal showers, which were arranged one next to another in a line, and the antics that followed – squirting each other over the wall with cold water – was frowned upon by the occupant of the third shower – an Asian guy across from whom I stood in the mirror for a good 5 seconds before I realized that I was wearing nothing but crocs on my feet.Keone’s adopted an extreme version of the Barcelonan “lisp” pronunciation, which normally makes “c”’s with an “s” sound into a “th.” Keone, however, has taken to pronouncing all “s” sounds with a lisp

Tours

Tours, France - Monday, June 16 - Tuesday, June 17

I’m sitting here quite concerned about what only appears to be a thin, plastic sliding partition, one that doesn’t close all the way, as the door to the bathroom. The reason for my concern is that Keone just walked in proclaiming that he was “about to drop bombs like nobody’s business.” In fact, because the toilet is tucked into a corner of the bathroom, he just slid open the partition now, revealing only his knees and face, to show me how to operate the shower – a knob that switches water flow, controlled by our sink’s faucets, between our tap and shower head.

When we got off of the train to Tours, we were a bit lost as to how to get to our hotel. Thirty minutes and a 5 Euro map later, we realized that we would be staying a little ways out of the city centre. We boarded a bus headed in that direction, but, out of our increasing worry that we would pass our stop and then be whisked away into bumblefuck France, we exited a few stops too early. I now realize that our map only contains large streets. We maneuvered our way to the main highway by a one mile U-shaped path, a path which we then found out was entirely unnecessary owing to the existence of intermediate streets. As the intermediate street path involved a few turns, it wasn’t immediately apparent to us just by looking at them, that it would lead to the main highway.

Regardless, we walked on an unevenly poured tar path on the side of a freeway, passing a car full of French guys, about our age, who yelled “Bienvenue a Tours,” in the direction of our hotel. We must have walked nearly three miles with packs on our back and front (we started wearing our smaller day bags on our stomachs – in essence we looked like pregnant people) along with that cardboard box, mentioned earlier, whose contents had now dwindled to grapes, carrots, half of a bottle of water, and three bananas.

The hotel wasn't even in the proper town, so we ended up staying at a different hostel, Hotel Terminus, that was right next to the station.

We then did our laundry, which was a fiasco. Because of some poor laundry machine design, if the knob used to set type of wash – whites/colors/permanent press/woolens – is turned 360 degrees, the machine locks and doesn’t run. Being industrial washers, we couldn’t pry them open. Essentially, my nice hoodie, polo, towel, and all of my underwear would have to be abandoned if nothing could be done last night, since this morning at 8:00am, the store’s opening time, would be well past our train’s departure. This happened at 5:30pm after the manager had left for the day, trusting an automatically locking door to shut at 8:30pm, closing his store. We called him at the emergency number posted in the store, but he spoke fast French which Keone couldn’t understand. We asked some random person walking by on the street to speak with him and translate to us, but we couldn’t figure out the machine, still. In a one mile run back to the hotel to use a bathroom, I decided on a whim to ask our concierge to speak with him again, and this time, the manager agreed to come in (at 8:15pm) and fix it. For nearly 3 hours, I thought I would have to abandon my underwear and towel in a rogue washing machine in Tours, France. We spent the better, and what would have been an enjoyable part of the day, 5 hours to be precise, in a Laundromat.

Saumur

Saumur, France

Sunday, 15 - Monday, 16 June 2008

Saumur quickly led us to realize that the smaller regions of France essentially shut down on Sundays. The station was on the northern side of the Loire, which also happened to be the more desolate side of the town (see Southern side of the Madeleine in the blog entry about Nantes). There was not a soul to be seen on the streets, and the taxi cab stand, which looked like it could easily accommodate up to 15 taxis, was completely empty. We walked across to the city centre to find what was a more packed part of the city store-wise, but equally devoid of people. It was almost like walking into a ghost town.

Walking along the main road, Rue de Franklin Roosevelt (“rue” is French for road), we looked down an alley to find a sign for a “Rouge e Noir”, “black and red.” Wanting to take a sign of what seemed to be either a strip-club or whore-house, I whipped out my trusty Canon. Seconds later, we were approached by a French woman, reeking of alcohol, who happened to be dressed in black and red. I immediately put my camera away, and just as I was about to raise my right arm to defend myself from what I thought was going to be a beating from a prostitute, she asked, in broken English, for two Euro so she could call her mother. We gladly gave her the two Euro, and she left.

We kept walking down the main street. We went inside what seemed to be an upscale restaurant, only to be told by the hostess, who also happened to have a look of shock at homeless people walking into her trendy eatery, that they weren’t open for another few hours. We settled on the only place that was going to opening soon enough, “Boite a la Pizza.” After grabbing our food and deciding to eat it at our hostel, we called a cab – we’d been told at the local tourism office that our Hostel was quite a ways away. The cab-ride to our Euro 40 room turned out to be Euro 50 one way. Equipped with our Harvard skills of critical thinking, we quickly deduced that 50 + 50 is more than what we’d pay for a hostel in the city (the Euro 40 was going to be charged regardless of whether or not we stayed at the far away hostel, since the cancellation was not 24 hours in advance).

We got a room, with one queen bed, at Hotel de Londres. Afterward, we went to a Café des Cloud to watch the Switzerland vs. Portugal soccer match, accompanied by a Saumur Rouge – a red wine from the region.

The next morning we woke up at around 10:00am and left the hotel by 11. We found a Supermarche (even if you don’t speak French, I assume you can figure that one out) and bought a big meal consisting of tomatoes, carrots, pears, grapes, bananas, milk, bottles of water, and a bottle of wine, all for about $12 a person. We then ate half of this in parking lot of the grocery store. While washing our pears by pouring water bottles onto our hands and chugging milk, it hit us with the force of the odor of a sharp French cheese that we were homeless. We got to the station at 1:05pm, just missing the train to Tours which left at 1:03pm. We’re sitting at the train station right now, on a bench on platform C, finishing off our box of groceries. Eating a box of cherry tomatoes proves to be quite acidic in the mouth.

Angers

Angers, France

Sunday, 15 June 2008

The trip to Angers was quite uneventful. As our layover was only two hours, we just had enough time two walk into the city centre, passing a statue on our way of a naked woman wearing what were ostensibly cloth panties. The city must have deemed the statue, which depicted a woman on her knees, legs parted, leaning back so that her hands were on the ground behind her, to be a little risqué, even for the French standards which go so far as to permit nude women, with only the poonani veiled in shadow, to advertise for moisturizer in “pharmacie” windows.

We bought sandwiches from a “boucherie” (French for butcher shop), of which we ate one at the station waiting for our train to Anger. For note, we ate the other one at Gare de Saumur (“gare” is French for station), waiting for our train to Tours, but, given that it contained one-day-old, unrefrigerated meat, the first bite was quickly followed by a near immediate reversal onto the train tracks. We then boarded our train for Saumur, on which Keone befriended a tough looking fellow sporting a broken front tooth-line; assuming that he must have fashioned himself this mouthpiece in a French, underground cage fight, we adopted and realized the popular saying – “If you can’t beat them, join them.”

Nantes

Nantes, France
14 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/Nantes20080614

As I’m starting to write this on the train to Angers, our next stop, Keone appropriately comments that “this computer doesn’t have enough memory to capture Nantes.” Excusing his n00b failure to distinguish between memory and storage, I will continue.

Nantes, in short, is a town with a Madeleine River-induced split personality disorder. On the North side, we found what may have been not only Walt Disney’s inspiration for Disney World, but also the very locale that he sought to outdo with his theme park. A shopping district with fashionable designer stores, collectors items, bakeries, ice cream shops, and many “bar a vin” all connected by a cobblestone maze, and interspersed with many “places” and beautiful churches comprised the first part of the town we saw. Keep in mind that the city is quite small, and that to walk from the main train station to our hotel, a distance which spanned the entirety of the main part of town, took no more than 20 minutes.

In the middle of the city, adjacent to the shopping district described above, sat a castle, or a chateaux, that had its own drawbridge and a moat. On the outside of the moat was a elliptical patch of grass, stretching around the entirety of the castle, littered with couples engaged in activities that were sure to eventually lead to the next wave of babies in this tiny town, nestled in Western France. Expecting to find some sort of historic tour inside the castle, we walked across a tiny little metal bridge (what we later found out to be the back entrance - the peasant’s entrance, if you will) to enter the main courtyard.

Inside, we were astonished to find a stage, with a complete, high quality sound system set up for what seemed to be a city-wide children’s musical talent show. As we walked up the stairs to walk around the periphery of the castle (i.e. where the archers stood at Helm’s deep), a number of men dressed in pink pirate costumes, one of them sporting the canonical pirate moustache, ran by. A number of women, dressed like pirate wenches dressed in matching pink outfits, ran by moments later. We are quite sure this was some sort of gay pride parade that they had planned at the castle, but had just then come to realize that their plans were at the same time as a children’s musical concert.

We left the chateaux about an hour and a half after, ambling around the castle at our leisure, and headed toward the Madeleine. That this town was some sort of dream-like paradise was apparent when we were walking along the pavement, rollerbladers and groups of cycling racists passing us, the previously mentioned castle towering on our left, and a very modern tram system speeding by on the rails to our right. There even seemed to be light din throughout all of the areas we had walked, making the town seem even happier.

The Madeleine was quite a ways away, and we had to cross a bridge over a smaller river to get to it. As soon as we crossed this first bridge, we were struck by how quickly the general noise of merriment had vanished. We kept walking through this side of the street only to find every restaurant, pharmacie, and store closed. There was no one walking about, and the few characters we saw seemed quite shady. Keone admonished me for wanting to take out my camera to get some pictures for fear of giving ourselves away as tourists, although I’m sure that our American accents and dress had already done that. We walked for about a kilometer over to the river, but what we saw was far from the idyllic landscape that I had built up in my head – instead of restaurant boats floating down with many people gently strolling about the banks of the river, we saw only an empty parking lot on the other side, one side of which entirely covered with graffiti, overlooking a murky, ominous looking river on which there were no ducks, let alone restaurant boats. Scampering over to the nearest tram station, we breathed a sigh of relief as we made our way back to the happy part of town again. Nantes seemed unreal.

We milled about the shopping area some more, picking up two bottles of wine – a local Muscadet White for Euro 6.50 and a Coteaux D’ancenis Cabernet Red that was about Euro 4.00. The last thing I would expect from a trip to the Loire Valley, in which the town of Nantes sat, was to be drinking from a plastic cup in a hotel room watching a “Les Simpson” marathon, but that was exactly what we did, and the experience was not depressing, as it may sound.

We woke up at 9:40am, missing our train ticket that was for 9:00am. After eating as many fruits, dried fruits, and jams from a breakfast (fit for a King) for which we had unwillingly paid Euro 8.00, we walked over to the station, and boarded a train for our next stop in the Loire Valley – Angers.

Louvre, Eiffel

Another delayed post...

Paris Day 2 - 13 June 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/ParisDay22008613

We had grand plans of waking up at 7:30am to go stand in, what we thought would most definitely be (from the movie Eurotrip), an incredibly long line at the Louvre. We hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before, as our train from London was at 7:30am, and we ended up sleeping until about 10:00am. At the Louvre, whose majestic courtyards, turrets, and castles make you almost forget about the masterpieces housed within, we were pleasantly surprised with a very efficient ticketing system. We then proceeded to get our audio tour devices, essentially Palm pilots with pictures and narrations of the notable pieces and maps of the entire museum, whose size is not to be underestimated.

We first went on the “Masterpieces Tour” on which we saw, in this order, the “Venus de Milo,” “Winged Victory of Samothrace,” and, finally, the “Mona Lisa.” The narration was very helpful in not only helping us appreciate the various aesthetic qualities of the works, but also explaining why these works have reached the exalted position in which they comfortably sit today. The captions on the pictures, which I’ll put up soon enough, will hopefully get at some of this.

After this tour, and the “Antiquities Tour,” whose estimated duration of 1.5 hours in reality became 4 hours, we went back to the apartment, legs aching from what must have been a few miles of walking in the museum. We met up with another group, consisting of one girl from Harvard whom Keone had met earlier in the year, and her two friends from St. Mary’s College. We went to meet up with our host, who was watching the France vs. Holland match, the unpleasant outcome of which would be the cause large volume of trash in the streets in Nantes, our next stop. After getting unbelievably lost, we found our way to the pub, minutes before the match ended. Walking within the throng of dejected French men and women, we went to get some drunk food – greasy kebab sandwiches at a Middle Eastern restaurant in Montparnasse. At about 11:30, we headed toward the last major tourist attraction, and arguably the most famous one, we had left to see in Paris – the Eiffel Tower.

While we were too late to go up the elevator, the dazzling light show, of which we got a small glimpse on the metro ride, along with the iridescent golden glow in which one’s bathed when standing at the foot of the structure more than made up for it. I’d be doing the description a great injustice if I didn’t mention Keone’s artistic emotional response to standing under the tower – “It’s like looking up a really big girl’s skirt. The shock and awe of it – c’est magnifique.”

We were back in the apartment at about 1:00am, and so ended our Paris adventures.

Getting into Gare De Nord, walking around Paris

As you can tell by the date of this posting, this entry is three days overdue. My internet access, when in Paris, however, was spotty, and, as such, I haven't been able to update pictures and/or blog for a while.

Paris Day 1 - June 12, 2008

Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/ParisDay12008612

We took the Eurostar, via the Chunnel, from King's Cross in London to Gare de Nord in Paris. Upon getting to Paris, we realized that we had no idea how to get to our friend's apartment which was located on Rue Pierre Leroux. A 2 Euro map, along with perseverance and patience guided us on a walk out of the station area, which was incredibly touristy, through a part of town which was incredibly non-touristy, into Place Vendome and, eventually, Place de Concorde.

From Place de Concorde, after being dazzled by gold-gilded lamp posts, an obelisk, Arch de Triomphe, and views of Pont de Alexandra III, the Louvre, Musee d'Oorsay, Jardin des Tuileries, and National Assembly, we walked down the other side of the river to the Musee d'Oorsay, an art musuem. We had our backpacks on this entire time, and realized, after spending about 40 minutes in line, that it was highly unlikely that they would let us in to see delicate paintings by Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. with lumbering packs hanging off of our back. After getting out of line, we took the metro, which we found out to our great surprise had doors that needed to be manually opened, we went to the Notre Dame, only to be faced with the same dilemma regarding our luggage.

Somewhat dejected, we went to a cafe right across the Seine from Notre Dame, where we paid far too much for a cup of coffee (more than 4 euros/6 dollars), a cup which ended up being about 1/4th full. The sandwiches, however, consisted of a great baguette, Swiss cheese, and ham; although it sounds simple, it tasted amazing to two tourists, rejected from two national landmarks and then questioned by their waitress, on account of their oversized packs, whether they had walked from the United States and were planning on "sleeping in the forest."

We dropped our stuff off at our friend's apartment located in 7th district, and then went out to explore further. We did a quick run through of the masterpieces in the Musee D'oorsay, saw the light show in the Notre Dame, and then ate Subway (our budget was aching at this point from the expenses earlier in the day) on the banks of the Seine, merely 20 meters from the cathedral itself. We then headed off to a pub, advised by our Lonely Planet guide, and proceeded to meet up with two would-be juniors from UNC Chapel Hill. One of them gave us the run down on how to have a great time in Prague, a city whose (almost sure to be incorrect) perception of being cheap had been enticing us since the day we left for Europe.

The day was filled with so many different events, from almost missing the Chunnel on account of a slow Victoria line, navigating through suburban Paris, walking around the Louvre, Notre Dame, and Musee D'oorsay with backpacks, and then drinking spicy sangria in a shady, offbeat pub, that we thought nearly four days had actually passed.

Bonsoir.

Hampton Court Palace

Pics from today:
http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/LondonDay320080611
All with captions
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We went to see Hampton Court Palace today. It was a short drive from Southfields station on the District line. Laura's mum was nice enough to drive us there. Hampton Court Palace was the part time residence of Henry VIII, William III, and George IV. They all built their own separate sections within the palace grounds. The pictures do more than I can ever do describing the place.

I then came back by the Tube again. I fell asleep and woke up to realize that I had overshot the station I would have had to get off at to correct myself to the correct train since I had, in my sleepiness, gotten on the wrong train to begin with. I leave for paris in about 4 1/2 hours. Should finish packing and try to catch a few winks.

Trafalgar Square, British Museum, St. Paul's Cathedral, a long nap

You can see the pictures from today here: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/LondonDay220080610

I put captions this time, since looking at a series of a hundred pictures, taken over only one day, must be incredibly boring without knowing what you're actually seeing.
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This morning, I decided to walk over to the British Museum to meet up with Keone and Laura. I walked past Buckingham Palace, where people had gathered in a great throng to see the changing of the guard. I couldn't be bothered to wait 30 minutes to watch this though, so I decided to plan another day around this. I walked down "The Mall," the road with a reddish hue, half-jokingly referred to as the red-carpet for the royalty, that leads up from Trafalgar Sqaure, starting with quite an imposing stone gate, down, about 3/4 of a mile, to Buckingham Palace. Its quite a site to see trees lining the side of what is literally a red road lined with trees and Union Jacks leading up to the beautiful palace.

Trafalgar Square is nearly exactly what imagines when one thinks of what a proper British town square ought to look like. Imposing statues of General Nelson, some lions, and another military general, whose name escapes me now, that was responsible for managing the British appropriation of India as a colony. From the direction I entered, the National Gallery served a backdrop for a complicated intersection of no less than 6 roads, all of which were teeming with double decker buses and other quaint cars that I had formerly associated with the "Bourne" series. Keone, Laura, and I came back here after the British Museum but, unfortunately, my camera, by that point, had run out of battery and I don't have any of those pictures. Keone should have those though.

After being pointed in the wrong direction by a local in an attempt to then walk to the British Museum, and after also learning the hard way that the Briton is hard pressed to admit ignorance when it comes to travel directions, I eventually found my way over the course of an hour. Not having heard of the museum, apart from a less than glamorous mention in my "Europe on a Shoe String" guide, I walked in with low expectations of the objects in their collections only to encounter the Rosetta Stone (see pics) as the first of many remarkable artifacts in the audio "Top 50 Highlights Tour." If you've never experienced a museum with an audio tour, I highly recommend it as its quite another experience to passively listen to a commentator, especially if he/she speaks in a British accent which automatically commands
unwavering legitimacy, and being able to walk around and concurrently look at all the aspects of the object being narrated.

I then went over to St. Paul's Cathedral to meet up with Keone and Laura. Those two left the Museum before me as they'd gotten there a good deal earlier. We ate lunch on the steps and I saw the first, and what I hoped to be the last, of another guy wearing camo shorts, Keone's favorite bottom-wear. Unfortunately I saw another guy wearing even more intimidating looking camo shorts walking outside Riya's apartment. I didn't get a chance to go inside St. Paul's because the last tour was at 2, and I had stayed at the museum well beyond that.

We then made our way back to Trafalgar Square on the very front seats of the top deck of a Double Decker Bus. We bummed around there for about 30 to 45 minutes, taking photos in various compromising positions. At around 5:30 we left, and I walked back to the apartment. My nap, intended to last for 20 minutes, went for 2 hours instead. Walking around is tiring (my glass half full way of saying "I'm so out of shape that walking is tiring."). Been here writing emails, intermittently reading my current book ("Moral Minds" by Marc Hauser), meeting people who've come by to see Riya (I got to see Gayatri today), and just lounging around. I've realized that I have yet to be weaned from compulsively checking Gmail.

Was a good day, but I'm going to try and get more sight-seeing packed in tomorrow, seeing as how I'm leaving the day after.

Buckingham Palace

I got into London at around 9:00am. I fumbled around the Tube station and got yelled at by a Sardar for "taking too much the time" when I was indecisive about how much money I should put on my Oyster card. I think it was when I was sitting on the train, and the computer announcement, in the voice of a sultry British woman, told me that this train was going from Picadilly to Cockfosters, that I realized I was in a new land. I got into Riya's place about 10:00am. Just got my T-mobile SIM card. Then we went to Starbucks and Subway. Looks like easing into the prices of the European cafes and sandwich shops is going to be a slow, painful process. Living in Westminster right now, Buckingham palace is only a 20 minute walk away. I checked that out, along with the Royal Mews and the Queen's gallery. Was pretty tired from the flight, so I passed out at 6pm, only to wake up at around 8am the next morning.

The pictures from today: http://picasaweb.google.com/dipak.chaudhari1/FirstDayInLondon