St. Pancras International, the Eurostar station in London
As soon as my classes ended on Wednesday, I rushed back to the dorm to pack my things to go to France! After studying French for four years, I was eager to practice ma Francais with the locals and maybe order myself a baguette or two. During the whole train ride I was trying to refresh my memory of all the French I had learned and muttered the ones I knew for sure under my breath.
Je voudrais un croissant. Je voudrais un croissant. Je voudrais un croissant.
Je vais aller à Paris.
La crêpe. La crêpe. La crêpe.
Bonjour! Merci! Pardon!
The old lady next to me must have thought I was crazy. I have never seen anyone more engrossed in her newspaper than she was.
La Gare du Nord, the French Eurostar station
La Gare du Nord
From here, I ventured to walk from the train station to the apartment my parents had rented for this trip by myself. I did my research; I printed off directions from GoogleMaps. With only ten Euros to my name and my ATM card stolen by my parents in London (I cannot believe they didn't make sure their ATM cards worked internationally), this was the only option I had. And so I walked, 40 minutes in a foreign city that I had never been before. I didn't get lost, thank goodness, although I ran into a little trouble when I got to the apartment. I was stuck right outside the door, because in my excitement to get to Paris, I completely forgot to check the apartment number! I was supposed to buzz in so that they could let me up, but instead I was faced with eight buttons to choose from. Fortunately, my dad for some reason decided to poke his head out the window at that exact moment and let me in.
The apartment we stayed in
After dinner, we took a cab to go to the Eiffel Tower. Once I got to Paris, my dad forced me to do all the talking because I was the native English speaker, and I "knew" French. First of all, English is only useful about half the time, and second it had been two years since I used any French at all.
But at least I was better than my dad. Already, he distrusted the French taxicab drivers because earlier that day he had asked a taxicab driver to take him to La Musée d'Orsay. Since he didn't know French, it came out as some weird Korean French English babble. At this point, I'd like to take a step back and let you know about the difficulties Koreans have in pronouncing English (or French) words. Korean people cannot pronounce their "l's" and their "r's" to save their lives. My dad struggles with pronunciation problems even in English, so add this problem to a language he doesn't even know that also puts heavy emphasis on their "r's" and you've got a situation. Korean people's tongues just cannot curl; so when my dad told him to go to La Musée d'Orsay, it probably came out sounding something like "Le Mewzae d'Olrsay". He supplemented his deficiency by pointing and grunting at his tourist map so things should have been fine, but for some reason the taxi driver took them to L'Arc de Triomphe instead! My dad could sense the driver was trying to rip him off. In the end my dad got him to go to the museum and got the cab driver to cut the fare in half. Even still, the damage was done; for the rest of the trip, whenever we took a cab he was always suspicious of the driver and constantly muttered under his breath, "I think he is taking advantage of us."
This time the driver was honest, and we were able to get to the Eiffel Tower with no problems. Unfortunately, it was a little foggy that day, but once we got to the top we could hardly notice it.
La Tour Eiffel, from under
L'Arc du Triomphe, view from La Tour Eiffel
La Seine, ferry ride
Paris, city streets
La Seine, view from La Tour Eiffel
Shout-out to New York!
La Tour Eiffel light show
La Tour Eiffel from afar
End of day one.
Additional Pictures, the entire trip
-Emoinacloset
4 COMMENTS:
cool beans!
keep posting, fool.
-Robocop
I'm Jon's "friend"---
this really looks like a p&s camera, what kind is it?
yeah.. cab drivers aren't that cool anywhere. it is better to rent a car there?
how's the metric system over there? USA has to be different and use crappy system than the rest of the world.
Hi Godzilla,
The camera is a Canon SD780 IS.
I can't say if it's better to rent a car there. You'd have to be able to navigate the roads and know where all the places you want to go are, not to mention the difficulties of finding parking. Personally, I would use the metro to go places, it's a lot cheaper than taxi.
The metric system is alright, but the sodas are smaller than in the US. That takes some getting used to.
-Emoinacloset
smaller is better for soda. it's just carbonated water, you don't even need it for your body and helps you get a muffin top. (: juice isn't that great either apparently.
that camera is nice if i were ever going that route for a camera. (:
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