Paris: City of the Beautiful and Sketchy

From the minute we arrived at the Paris train station, I had a very scary realization: I can´t speak a word of french. Although most people (supposedly) speak english, from the very beginning our lack of vocabulary left Cecily, Ryan and me with invisible "TOURIST" badges plastered across our foreheads, attracting all kinds of unsettling situations. As you will see, in so many ways Paris was the beautiful, artistic city I imagined... I just learned very quickly to keep my eyes open, and not let the city´s romantic facade distract from the very real dangers of being female and American in a foreign country.

The taxi ride from the airport to our hostel was Cecily and my first lesson in being aware, as our taxi cab driver pretended he didn't know english (he did, we realized later) then overcharged us 4 euro because he "couldn't find" our hostel, and drove an extra four blocks past where we were supposed to be dropped off. Luckily, our hostel itself ended up being a good choice; it looked more like a hotel than a hostel, and was centrally located and full of international travelers. Despite being put in a ¨mixed¨ 10 person dorm where Cecily and I were the only females, our room was big, and nice, and the hostel had all kinds of fancy amenities like an internet cafe, a restaurant and bar, and brightly colored lounges buzzing with people.

The Beautiful Eiffel Tower and The Scary Paris Metro Situation

Our first night in Paris, Ryan, Cecily and I decided to start from the top of our list of things to do, so we grabbed french pasteries and fresh crepes, (see picture) and headed out to see the Eiffel Tower. After getting off the Metro I figured it would be a bit of a walk - but surprisingly, as soon as we turned the corner, there it was in all of it's glory: THE Effel Tower, all lit up and sparkeling in red and white colors like a giant french flag.

Standing benath the lit up tower at exactly 1am, the three of us ooooooh-ed and aaaaaah-ed with a crowd of tourists and cuddling couples as we watched the last glittering lightshow of the night.

After the lights went out we started walking back up a hill toward the Metro station, and suddenly became engulfed in a crowd of chanting Turkish teenagers who were celebrating the country´s futbol victory earlier in the night. As we walked into the echoing metro hallway, their chants got louder and louder, and a crowd of about ten African men who had been selling scarves and token eiffel towers started following our group closely behind. As the Turkish teenagers turned one corner we turned another, and the crowd of men followed - speaking in a language I didn´t recognize, and laughing in our general direction. Cecily, Ryan and I walked faster, trying to move away from them, but they kept following us. Suddenly, I felt a hand go to grab my butt from behind, then proceed to move further into my pants. Even before fear, my immediate reaction was that of furious anger, and aggression - I swung my arm behind me and hit his, then turned around to see one of the men standing there a couple feet from me with a scared, bewildered expression on his face. I was livid. How the hell could a strange man think it´s okay to touch a woman like that? To make an object of me in a crowd of men, and to treat me like some piece of ass that would just submit and not fight back? I realized subconciously that it was a very dangerous situation I was in, but in that moment, all I wanted to do was kill the guy. And I´m pretty sure he knew it, because as I turned around and looked him straight in the eyes, we stared at each other for a brief second, and he slowly began backing away with his hands up in the air, saying "ohhh, it´s all good, no problems here, no problems here" with his friends following suit at his side.

As soon as they started backing away, my fight intinct wore off, and all I wanted to do was run. Cecily and Ryan weren´t completely clear on what had happened, but they knew it wasn´t good. So the three of us ran - just looking back to make sure we weren´t being followed - and caught the next metro back to our hostel. I shook it off, and thank God for Ryan being there or it might have been much worse... but it made me pause. What if it had just been me and Cecily, ten guys, and 1am in an empty metro hallway. What could we have done? I don´t even know how to say HELP in French. Would there have been anyone there to protect us? For the first time ever, I felt completely vulnerable, realizing that my fighting instincts can only go so far, and even though my aggression scared the guy off, I was really lucky.

The Beautiful Bike Tour and Sketchy Arc du Triumph Riot

Sticking with the theme of Paris being both incredably gorgeous but also at times dangerously unpredictable, our Friday in the city was quite an adventure. We started out the day with a baguette covered in nutella, (my new favorite condiment) then headed to the Eiffel Tower to meet up with our bicycle tour.

Seeing Paris by bike was a great idea - it's a very bike-friendly city, (they have "rentable" bikes all over the place that you can use for free as long as they're returned within 1/2 an horu) and despite it being cold and drizzly, we were able to see a good portion of the city's major landmarks in the five hours of our tour. Like our experience in London, instead of describing each place we visited, I'll refer you to my facebook album for pictures and descriptions of the highlights.

That being said, here are a few fun little stories:

-When we stopped for lunch, we asked the waitors to take our picture at the table. They were goofy and hilarious, and ended up just taking a bunch of pictures of themselves, then handing us the camera back. See below.

- Paris was constructed in a way that is very aesthetically appealing - all the streets are designed parallel to one another, and they all lead to major landmarks and central parts of the city. Our tour guide told us a little anecdote about how this was annoying for the man who funded the building of the Eiffel tour, because at the time it was built, the French people (he included) hated it and thought it was ugly. Even still, every day for months on end this man would go to the Eiffel Tower, and would spend hours sitting on the first floor and eating lunch there. As the story goes, one day a waitress asked him why he bothered to visit so often if he hated the structure so much. His response was "well this is the only place in the city I can enjoy a good meal without having to look at this eyesore." (Because you can see it from everywhere in the city.)

- More than anything, what makes Paris such a striking city is the overwhelming presence of aesthetic beauty. Everywhere you walk (or bike in our case) there are delicately carved statues, huge gardens filled with bright colored flowers, bridges and museums covered in limestone and gold. Every picture we took could have been a painting at another angle - the dramatic clouds, vivid colors, and intricate architecture of the city is every bit as romantic as I imagined.

Our final night in Paris, on our way back from Disneyland (which I'm dedicating a whole post to :) we thought it would be a good farewell to Paris to see the Arc du Triumph all lit up around midnight. You would think that our first post-midnight experience with the Paris metro would have taught us that this wasn't the best idea, but we figured it was harmless.

...That is, until we walked out of the station, and straight into an Algerian riot. Apparently, Algeria qualified for the semi-finals in futbol, and several thousand people came to (happily?) riot under the Arc, which turned into one big, chaotic mess. We walked a couple hundred feet out of the station, and nearly got run over by a car full of people - a guy driving and three ladies in burkahs - who were standing up through the sunroof and waving Algerian flags out both sets of car windows. Naturally, the French police were annoyed, so a couple hundred feet away they started throwing tear gas, and a crowd of people began rushing toward us from across the street. At that point, all three of us looked at each other, and promptly began running back toward the enterance to the Metro station.