MKNonline Blog

I’m getting an art degree, y’all. I’m at the point of no return. I have to start my thesis. I’m taking a class this semester devoted to conceiving a brilliant thesis proposal to present at the end of the semester. Throughout the semester, I’m supposed to chronicle my progress in a journal.

Since no one reads this blog anyways, why create a new blog for my thesis project journal? I’ll throw it all in here so my one random reader every two months can see how little artistic and design talent I possess. I’m scratching my head how anything I come up with will be worthy of a Masters in Fine Arts in Computer Arts New Media. But hey, too late to turn back now.

P.S. Yes, the “Long Overdue Vacation” series will finish as well. I’m not giving up yet. I figure I have until February 3rd (exactly one month from when we returned) to document the rest of the trip before it all goes irrelevant. There’s Amsterdam, Brussels, and lots of video I’ve been too scared to even look at let alone edit and post. But it will happen.

We made plenty of bad decisions throughout the trip, but today’s itinerary might have taken the cake. It was our last day in Paris, and none of us had gotten anything for the people back home yet (Confession, in Barcelona, we got all our souvenirs at the Girona airport as we were waiting to board for France). Since we pretty much checked off our must-see list and then some in the past week, all we had left to do was shop. Ezeibe was still recovering, so I decided to go with Alan to Galeries Lafayette, which was a few bus stops from our apartment.

This was a horrible idea, to go to the biggest, most luxurious shopping complex in Paris only a few days after Christmas. We should have learned our lesson at the Champs l’Elysee a few days ago, where the sidewalk was overflowing with shoppers. The sidewalks were twice as small, and the crowds were ten times bigger. It was a mess.

Somewhat undeterred, we ducked into Galeries Lafayette to find the food section. There was some type of butter my family wanted that I never did find, but the food part of this mega-store was out of control. Imagine a Whole Foods in a department store, but the selection is fancier. It’s true, there’s a fancier grocery store out there than Whole Foods, and it’s in Paris. This place had an aisle devoted to gourmet jams, multiple chocolate and dessert kiosks, and a spice aisle that was neverending. Aisles devoted to just olive oil. It was crazy. It seemed to have every type of butter made in France EXCEPT the one I was looking for. I won’t hold it against them, the food section was amazing. I got lost multiple times trying to find Alan amongst all the food and ingredients. There were multiple mini-restaurants where you can sit down and just eat the food from the kiosks around you: sushi, chocolate, bread, meat, everything. Then I found Alan together we proceeded to get lost and claustrophobic in the rest of the store. Again, this was a bad day for two dudes to attempt shopping. Some notes in our journey:
- This place was selling some high end fashion. I don’t know how you women do it, but I could never pay that much for a LV bag.
- There was an art gallery in the department store. Because why not?
- You know at the mall how you can look up from the ground floor and see everyone shopping about on the other floors? Imagine a department store the size of a mall with the same effect and you have Galeries Lafayette.I felt like I was in the middle of an ant hill, except the ant hill is made out of gold.

After that, Alan and I quickly retreated home very exhausted, shell-shocked, and unfortunately, a bit empty-handed. Ezeibe was in a chippier mood, as he was heading off to dinner with a friend from work who just happened to live in Paris. Whatever Ezeibe.

Since it was back to my day, I made the decision to go eat by the Latin Quarter, as it was one of the main districts/neighborhoods we kind of ignored thus far. This would give us at least a passing glance of Notre Dame as well. Alan decided on a vegetarian restaurant closeby to the cathedral. Before you accuse of being all yuppy, this place was divine. I don’t even like tomatoes, but I downed my entree which was a tofu stuffed tomato. This was some pretty spectacular food and it was a full three course fancy meal for only 17 euros. While we kind of missed the mark most of the other days of the week, at least our first and last dinner were exciting, affordable, and memorably delicious. This restaurant nearly made me want to convert to vegetarian. The only not-so-cool thing about this restaurant was that it was again tiny, and very, very, intimate. You would think this place was couples-only, as there were only couples and seating for two per table. This made Alan and I extremely uncomfortable. A nice restaurant and ambiance to take a girlfriend, certainly not a dude friend.

No real pictures from today, except for Notre Dame Cathedral. I thought this was a pretty good nightshot.

The Latin Quarter was as expected. Just lots of narrow alleys and streets full of restaurants and souvenirs. As we strolled the streets, Alan and I were happy we decided on a restaurant and ate dinner before going into the Latin Quarter, because we would’ve wandered aimlessly and passive aggressively for DAYS in that area trying to find the right restaurant. We were prepared for the pushy restauranteurs because of the practice from the pushy sex shop owners the night before.

Notre Dame was still pretty awesome. We couldn’t go in or anything as it was already closed, but we got our requisite blurry night shows of the place.

Other than that, we retired early that night. Alan and I, rather than being sensible and buy nice wine from Galeries Lafayette, decided to stop in the only open bodega nearby our apartment and buy some cheap bottles of wine to bring back home.

So looking back at what I just wrote on how we spent the day, I just realized I totally had a full-on date with Alan…That’s kind of uncomfortable to think about.

And dick never did call me back. I thought we had a connection too…

God, you’re probably tired of hearing about Paris. As travelers, we were getting tired of Paris ourselves. But there was still plenty to do in this city. Ezeibe was still taking it easy for most of the day.

The Good Surprises:
- Museum du jour was Rodin. I was pleasantly surprised at this small museum. All we knew was that The Thinker was there. Wiser from yesterday’s ordeal, we made sure to hit the museum early. While we didn’t have to wait in much of a line, our plan backfired when half of the museum was actually an outdoor sculpture garden. And yes, we froze our asses off. Nevertheless, the gardens were pretty, had sculptures, and lacked any vegetables or bees that can sting you. Just the way I like it.

Probably due to the cold and early morning, but all the sculptures were pretty much alone for us to admire. There was maybe only three or four other people with us at The Thinker, Rodin’s most recognized sculpture. I got to admire a masterpiece up close, without 20 million cameras and tourists surrounding it. That was pretty breathtaking for me, and a moment I had been yearning to have at each museum since the Louvre.

The rest of the museum was pretty cool too and gave a good glimpse into how Rodin created his sculptures. In hindsight, I probably should have done the museum first where it went over Rodin’s process and drafts of some his most famous works, and then seen the final products out in the sculpture garden. When we left, the line to get in and crowds were definitely building. A pat on our back for finally being smart and planning ahead.

He's not thinking, he's silently judging me...

All the single ladies...wuh oh oh...

- Sunday Brunch. Now hungry and with no other options for blocks around, we settled on the cafe restaurant right across the street from the Rodin museum. It was bound to be a pricey disappointment, but we were again pleasantly surprised. The prices were not unreasonable at all, I had an amazing potato and ham omelette for Sunday brunch. Our waiter was the surliest, stereotypically French waiter we had ever met. Upon entering the restaurant, he made some sarcastic comment in French that was clearly mocking the two American tourists who just walked in the door and his waiter buddies all har-har’ed at the sight of us. This oddly felt inviting.

- Hotel des Invalides. We kind of went here on a whim because the Rodin museum didn’t take up much time and we still had the entire afternoon to kill. It was just down the road from Rodin Museum and it had Napoleon’s tomb. And you know how we feel about dead people. What we didn’t expect was that the Hotel des Invalides included an overwhelmingly comprehensive war museum and a medieval history museum to boot. What we thought was an hour-long distraction turned out to be five-hour French Military class. 10 things I learned:
1) For what is assumed to be a very small guy, Napoleon sure has a big ass tomb.
2) Note to self: Get buried in a mausoleum after death.
3) If I had more of an attention span and patience for crowds, I would’ve read the description of the 60+ letters in order written to get an account of Napoleon’s personal life and his military strategies. Can you believe at one time, people communicated and fought wars through written correspondences?
4) It still feels weird to be snapping tourist pictures in front of a tomb. It didn’t stop me, but I’m just saying.
5) World War I and World War II were some pretty devastating wars for the Europeans.
6) I didn’t realize Risk was as true to life until I saw the military museum and their visuals on major World War battles.
7) The French have a very different history of the World Wars than the Americans. For example, Pearl Harbor and the Holocaust are just notable footnotes in their history. But the invasion of Paris, invasion of Normandy, or African colonialism…don’t get me started.
The Hotel des Invalides have a ton of suits of armor. Weapons too.
9) I have no idea why the three-barrel split hunting gun (three gun barrels pointing at different angles) disappeared. Because that was a fuckin’ hardcore gun.
10) Gun existed way further back than I expected. Medieval times. Why use arrows and crossbows then?

Whatever could they be looking down upon?...

The tomb of Napoleon!

Alan looks for ways to kill me...

Two guards in a glass box. How this helps keep the place safe, I don't know. Plus, what happens if one of them farts? Instant death.

- Baby bottle bar! The name of the bar is actually Zero de Conduite, but it’s real name is “Awesome Hipster Bar for People Who Want to be Five Again.” It’s run by a pretty mellow dude, and the bar, like all places in Paris, was tiny. It draws a mostly college/university crowd. All the drinks were cartoon or comic book characters and you were given a whiteboard to DRAW your drink requests. I drew Babar (an elephant face), Aladdin (a stick figure on a magic carpet with genie), and Nemo (a generic fish, circle plus triangle for tail). So our drinks came in baby bottles. And to top off the cake of awesomeness, you play games while you drink! We were given Uno. I think we messed up the rules, because it took forever for one of us to win. I didn’t win, so it’s not worth mentioning who did.

A toast with the big babies.

- Crepes! We had one drink at the baby bottle bar (see bad surprises for why) and went to eat crepes at a restaurant next door. Ezeibe and I were craving them. Alan had given up on being disagreeable. The crepe place was really good. They had a mixture of both dessert crepes and dinner/breakfast crepes. All equally appetizing. We ate as the restaurant was closing. It was a quiet end to the night…

- Paris Red Light District. …except for Alan and I, our night didn’t end there! You know the clubs we were looking for by our apartment? Well, we happened upon them this night, and then realized, those clubs and bars made up the Red Light district of Paris. That’s also where the Moulin Rouge is. We were harassed by strip club peddlers trying to get us to enter. What was odd (and really, it shouldn’t be), but there were a lot of regular couples, middle-aged, that were just casually strolling down this strip of road, entering and shopping at the various sex shops. It’s like catching your mom and dad here, it’s awkward to even witness it. It was getting to the dicey part of the night, so we just did our passive-aggressive “Where should we go” walk around the area and decided to just call it a night. The Red Light District wasn’t quite our vibe, I guess (their vibe being sexy, hip, and club-banging. Our vibe being lame, beer, and anti-social).

The Bad Surprises:
- It was Alan’s day for picking dinner. If you thought Ezeibe’s dinner choices were questionable, Cheapskate Alan wanted a homemade pasta dinner. As with everything we do, this was easier said than done. All the markets and shops were again closed because it was already Sunday evening, including the grocery stores. So we went to a bodega at the corner of our street at the end of our day and ran into Ezeibe who had hobbled out of bed to buy some more tissues. And together, we bought a box of thin spaghetti. Nothing else. So for dinner, we had a plate of spaghetti and olive oil. Because although we talk a big game about a luxurious vacation, we’re all just starving college students at heart.

- Unfortunately, when you’re already having cocktails with low’ish alcoholic content, sucking it out of a baby bottle isn’t conducive to getting drunk. Someone should’ve warned us.

- My karaoke bar…we found it in the Red Light District! I’d been researching it all week. Unfortunately, at midnight, it was sparsely populated with a kind of sad mix of middle-aged folks with a crazy ass white woman singing on stage. Unfortunately, not the type of crowd I was shooting for. But for the record, I would’ve still joined had Alan not talked me out of it.

Our bread today was poor quality. We woke up too late and all the local shops and bakeries had closed down. We had to settle for supermarket baguettes, which was kind of hard and crunchy like Shaw’s brand baguettes. Not fresh, warm, and soft. Except a Shaw’s brand baguette in France is still 10x tastier than a Shaw’s brand baguette in the US.

Ezeibe was mostly out of commission today. Poor guy tossed, turned, and moaned all night in his sleep. Waking up and hearing him struggle to breathe in his sleep was somewhere between fascinating and horrifying. With Ezeibe still in bed fighting the bug, Alan and I did what good friends do…we left him alone all day. Sickness during a trip is kind of an awful thing. It’s also inevitable. One person always falls ill when traveling in a group of more than two people for some reason. There are a lot of ways travelers deal with “the sick one,” none of them convenient or less awkward from the other. Leaving Ezeibe at home seemed to be the most mutually agreeable option. Ezeibe was getting tired of our museum obsession. Alan and I were tired of Ezeibe’s complaining of the cold and walking too much. Plus, Ezeibe was content being glued to his internet and phone. So hey, to each his own. I guess everyone was happy, except maybe Alan, who was still stuck with me all day.

So our museum du jour was the Musee d’Orsay. We had a rough start to this museum. Our day started late which meant we got to the museum during peak tourist hours. Unfortunately, the security lines for the Orsay are not quite as efficient as the Louvre. Alan and I waited a good 45 minutes outside in the freezing cold to even get into the building. Worse for me, there was a school group of Japanese tourist children one row behind us. Japanese tourist children are one level up in the irritating scale from Japanese tourist families, just slightly below the worst of all evils, Japanese tourist teenagers. I couldn’t fathom why they had to take pictures of themselves throughout the entire wait in line outside in the freaking cold. There was a separate, shorter line for groups, I don’t know why they were in our ticket line. I nearly popped a vein on my forehead every time we were adjacent to them in the queue. I wish I could’ve punched the chaperone or something to lower my anxiety and blood pressure. Sorry to make you uncomfortable with my race-hating rant, I just had to get that off my chest.

Me amongst the Japanese-tourist-children posse. Don't get it twisted, that's the smile of a psychopath who has been pushed too far.

Musee d’Orsay was Alan’s and my favorite art museum of the bunch we visited. First, the museum was a former train station, which is inherently cool. Second, the art is much more relatable. The art in the Louvre is far too biblical and academic for the normal person. And modern art pretty goes over the head of everyone as well. Orsay holds art between mid-19th to mid-20th century art, which includes the Realism, Romanticism, Impressionism, and Naturalism movements. Essentially, the time period where everyone chucked out the Bible but before they started painting surrealist, whatever-pops-up-in-my-disturbing-dreams phase. The Impressionism wing is worth the price of admission. Any Impressionist painting or poster that hangs in your house is probably in that museum (mine is Monet’s Nympheas).

So cold outside, even the polar bears went indoors.

The main area of the museum. The exhibit rooms were along the side.

The clock that sits on top of the Orsay museum. A really cool view

When we were done with that, we went back to the apartment to grab Ezeibe for dinner. Since he was in the apartment all day and was sick, we decided it should be his day to pick the restaurant we would go to. And that’s how we ended back in Japantown, sitting on stools eating Udon noodles in the corner window of a tiny hole-in-the-wall noodle restaurant. I’d rather not say any more.

Alan and I still had some juice in us after dinner. After about nine days being lame, it was about time we went out for some drinks. Alan’s girlfriend had recommended a bar where you drink out of baby bottles. Good enough hook for me, so off we went to the quiet 6th district. If I ever move to Paris, I am living in this neighborhood. This place was hipster central. We wandered a bit trying to find the bar. Unfortunately, when we found it, baby bottle bar wasn’t taking walk-ins (more on that tomorrow). Luckily, there were plenty of other decent looking cafes and bars in the neighborhood. First, we stopped in a Taschen bookstore, which is the very definition of a hipster bookstore. You may be thinking, aren’t bookstores by nature hipster? Apparently, not quite. It was amazing that this place was open at 10:30 at night. I guess they have these in the major cities in the States as well, but this was my first experience in it. I contemplated dropping 100+ euros for the Big Book of Breasts.

We went to a hipster lounge called Cafe Jade. It was a really well-designed interior, with names of famous people decorated all over the walls. There was a DJ playing techno music and plenty of cute college girls all having girly drinks. The beers we had were kind of pricey (my hipster wanna-be downfall), and I think the ambiance made Alan more uncomfortable than he led on.

Hipster bar! I mean, Oscar Wilde is tagged on the wall. You can't get more hipster than that.

We had one drink, took in the atmosphere and caught the metro back to our area before the last train ran. We figured we’d just drink by the Montmartre area where we had seen some nice cafes and bars earlier in our trip. The issue was we made some poor navigational decisions and ended up nowhere close to the nightlife. We gave up and went back to the apartment and called it night.

A somewhat forgettable day in the grand scheme of the trip, so thank god for writing this all down.

Today was my selfish day. Actually, every day of this trip was a selfish day, since this was my idea and all, but let’s pretend there were two other people with me for a second. Finally, I got to check off my list of things I didn’t experience the first time I was in Paris.

Cool Things
- The Catacombs. Alan and I were looking forward to this months before we even left the States. Ezeibe…not so much. We had to wait outside in the freezing cold for quite a bit to get in (as there are limits to how many people can be underground at once). Ezeibe was not pleased. Then we took about 800 or so steps way way way underground. This was like beyond sewer level, it felt like we were walking down to Earth’s core. The stairs were on this tiny spiral staircase that just never ended. Not for the claustrophobic or old, for sure. You walk a good quarter mile or so of tunnels without ever seeing a skull or bone, but it’s still pretty cool. There are sculptures built into the rock, for example, and just being underground going through a tiny narrow tunnel is pretty awesome. But then, the bones. Oh the bones. The catacombs are no joke. It goes on for miles. And it is COVERED in bones. There used to be a time where they didn’t really lock up parts of the Catacombs and visitors would actually get lost amongst the miles of bones down here. Unfortunately, they now provide a pretty clear path you follow. The feeling of being deep underground surrounded by, essentially, dead people, was kind of fascinating. You could touch these bones and skulls. It felt unreal, like I was examining a model skull, not that of an actual person. When I realized that these bones belonged to real people, I went through phases of disgust and guilt for being so disrespectful.

Back in olden times, Sunday worship service was actually held down in the Catacombs to pray for the souls of the deceased.

For obvious reasons, the Catacombs are not very well lit, making it extremely difficult to take photos without flash. That wall behind the pedestal...all dead people.

Not sure how PC this is, but a close up of one of the walls of bones.

- Pompidou Center. I still don’t know how I feel about the Pompidou Center architecture, but I can say it’s at least fitting for the art collection it holds (modern art). I went to the Pompidou Center when I was here in high school, but we never went inside. It’s a good thing we did this time. The collection was pretty spectacular, Man Ray, Dali, a ton of Picasso. It felt like it had the majority of the modern day masterpieces. What I enjoyed vividly about this museum was the description cards in each of the rooms were written out in English. When it comes to modern art, that context was pretty vital. Each of the main exhibit rooms went in chronological order from early 1900’s to today separated by art movement or artist. And the view of the city from the top of the Pompidou was again spectacular.

Modern art at its finest. This was considered a masterpiece of modern art. People actually stared at these three paintings (yes, it's a painting) as if they knew what the hell was going on. Yuppies.

Cool view from the top of the Pompidou Center.

My kind of art

- Dans le Noir. We ate in the dark! If you talked to me before I left for this trip, you know the castle and this restaurant were the two things I was most looking forward to. I got to say, no matter how much research I did on this restaurant, nothing prepared me for this dining experience. In good conscience, I can’t even say we ate in the dark, we ate in pitch black. This isn’t the type of dark like when you leave all the lights off your house but can make out slight shadows of the light switch. This is the dark where you close your eyes but never open them, without peeking. Now, after a really really really long day (see below), maybe this night wasn’t the greatest bit of timing. I felt so bad, I did offer to pay for dinner, this was my dream after all. Ezeibe and Alan at least respected me enough not to deny me of my lifelong dream (you had to book a table days in advance), even if they were slowly melting down. Interesting tidbits about this restaurant
- All of the wait staff are legally blind. Ours was an awesome lady named Sarah who could speak a crazy amount of languages. I felt so reassured every time I heard her voice in the restaurant (since you know, we were in pitch black and couldn’t see her). It’s crazy how they know where all the tables and chairs are in the restaurant.
- That night, we only had the Surprise menu available. The surprise theme du jour was “Orange.” You don’t find out what you ate until afterwards, which unsettled Ezeibe greatly.
- Pouring water into a cup is not easy when you can’t see anything. First, reach for cup without knocking anything over. Dip finger in said cup. Pour until your finger gets wet.
- Things get very loud in pitch black.
- Eating in pitch black must save you a lot of money on decor.
- From what we could gather from echolocation, it was cafeteria-style dining, with one or two long tables and all parties getting seated along the table. I was in between a Spanish-speaking dude and what I think was an empty chair. Ezeibe and Alan were across from me. I was so tempted to poke them in the face.
- Marshmellows are most delicious when you’re not expecting them.
- Upon seeing the photos of what we ate, I’m fairly certain I missed a good third of my main course.
- The “Orange” was mostly pumpkins. Unfortunately, I hate pumpkins.
- I offered to pay for a 300 dollar bill. Sweet.

Dans le Noir restaurant - Isn't the decor lovely?

Not-So-Cool Things
- Douchebags in the Catacombs. Like those that steal skulls and bones and then get caught when they exit and get their bags searched. Who the hell steals a dead person’s bones?! Also, people who are obnoxiously loud and giggling in, essentially, a cemetery. I don’t care how long ago these people died, show some respect!

- Remember those 800 steps down to the Catacombs? The only thing more never-ending is 800 steps back up to ground level. Alan and I had lost Ezeibe in the tombs. We assumed he was taking his time. Turns out, he ran through the Catacombs because of his “fast metabolism” (i.e. enlarged prostate)

- The most miserable walk ever. At this point, we still hadn’t seen the Champs-Elysee. Ezeibe really wanted to see the Arc de Triomphe and go to the top. Unfortunately, I don’t think we could’ve picked a worse time to go, the day after Christmas…on the Champs-Elysee. Think about it. First, we misshot our metro stop and had to walk a good half a mile to get to the Arc, through crowds of people all over the Christmas market. It was suffocating. Imagine the amount of people buried in the tight spaces of the Catacombs, except alive and trying to return all their Christmas presents, and you had the chaos of the Champs Elysee. The Arc du Triomphe could not have been more crowded either. And it was bitterly cold and windy. We decided to not wait in line to attempt to go up top, but did get our pictures from ground level as quickly as possible.

A closeup of the Arc. You guys know what the rest of it looks like (Click the photo to see more photos if you don't)

So, given the shitty conditions, what is the best thing to do after the Arc? Take the metro to the Pompidou Center? Ridiculous. We were going to walk…all the way down the Champs Elysee. I can pinpoint this decision as the exact moment Ezeibe’s spirits died. Refer to the Downright Disasters section to see the result. Yes, we walked, what was probably a good two to three miles down the shopping street of the Champs, across the Tuileries Gardens, past the Louvre (again), and then a couple more blocks to Pompidou. That was a long, cold, crowded, miserable walk.

Halfway there! Note the setting sun...

Suffice to say, a museum was not the most ideal destination, where we would have to continue to stand, stare, and walk some more. I saw Ezeibe just sitting, looking dead as one of those Catacombs bones, in one of the exhibit rooms at one point.

Downright Disasters:
- Today was the beginning of the end for Ezeibe. Alan said it best when he described his body balancing on a fragile combination of germs, viruses, bacteria and healthy immune cells. I think we all felt this way after beating up our bodies so brutally in the past week with the awkward sleep schedule, weird food, and new environments. A slight passing wind would’ve knocked our sensitive bodies into full-on sick mode. Germophobe Ezeibe lost his battle this day, and it really took until the last day of the trip to recover. Poor guy…

- The end of the honeymoon phase is typical on any trip. No one ever escapes it if they travel long enough (any more than 3 days together). I think it really began on this day for us. Before you go off thinking that we all hated each other and the trip was miserable from this point on, it wasn’t. It couldn’t be further from the truth. But exhaustion was setting in, patience was wearing thin, quirks became annoyances, change of scenery became homesickness, and stubbornness became outright rudeness. Being lost and cold and indecisive all of the time was wearing thin. And then to stick us in a tiny apartment to boot. But honestly, we all had the decency to suppress our emotions like the introverts we are. I write this more as a footnote, not as a memorable event. We had been arguing throughout, they just began to last a little longer. People got a little crueler or huffier. Some solitude was just a little more cherished. Even so, I don’t remember any discussions, fights, or disagreements (I can’t even call them arguments) that didn’t end in a joke or laughter.

Bonne Fetes! This day could not have been more awesomely lame, and I mean that in the best possible way, to me. For Alan and Ezeibe…not so much.

I should add that we got back to our apartment from the Eiffel Tower the night before (see Day 7) exactly at the stroke of midnight Christmas Day. It was cool to me, at least. Then we all slept, for a really long time. This day I’m about to describe started around 1PM’ish.

I’m going to flip the script a bit on this post. Today is what I refer to as “Alan’s Day.” Alan had a few things he wanted to get out of Paris, and today was his day to do it. It’s not like Ezeibe or I were opposed to any of his suggestions. In fact, we were equally enthused or at least indifferent enough to not tell him otherwise. Unfortunately, Alan maybe reached a little bit in his expectations of Paris. We’ll go through it event by event.

A visit to Sacre-Couer
- Alan’s expectations: See the beautiful cathedral on a bright sunny day and call his love from a phonebooth at the base of the hill that Sacre-Couer sits on.
- Alan’s shattered reality: There were no phone booths in front of Sacre Couer, just a LOT of aggressive street peddlers. And it was pretty cloudy and cool on Christmas Day. And it being a church, the only types of buildings open on Christmas Day, the visiting tourists were essentially mobbing this area. I still found the cityscape view from the top of Montmartre pretty inspired. The sun peaked out a few of its rays onto the skyline which was pretty cool to look at. Also, there was this awesome French street musician who had amassed quite a crowd. He was really good, and sang fun singalong classics like “Stand by Me.” Alan and Ezeibe were too fed up to let me sit on the steps and listen to the dude play his guitar and sing all day though.

How do you tell a hundred people that they're in the way of my shot?

The heavens shining down on Paris on Christmas Day

Alan’s traveling buddies
Alan’s expectations: That he traveled with two sane and sensible co-workers who wouldn’t fall for the tourist pitfalls.
Alan’s shattered reality: Are you kidding me? Ezeibe and I totally fall for the tourist pitfalls. I bought a santa hat with flashing lights that read 2009. 2€. I still justify this as a reasonable expense. Alan hated this hat and hated that I embraced it, wore it, and rocked it so adoringly. Ezeibe and I wanted crepes, so rather than walk a few blocks to the local street stands and restaurants, we settled for crepes at the Haagen-Daaz in front of Sacre-Couer. To be fair, we were hungry. And secondly, even though it was a chain and overpriced, they were damn good crepes. Alan just wandered around in disgust while Ezeibe and I (now in a flashing santa hat) waited a good half an hour to order our crepes. There was only a woman in front of us, but she apparently had like 20 kids to feed, because homegirl ordered a bunch of crepes and waffles. One her kids sneezed onto the ordering window and left quite a messy booger trail. Ezeibe, the germaphobe, freaked out. This would prove to be horrific foreshadowing.

Alan's worst nightmare.

Onto Pere-Lachaise Cemetary
- Alan’s expectations: Visit the famous cemetery and pay his respects to Jim Morrison, who is buried there.
- Alan’s shattered reality: Ok, yes, we spent Christmas Day in a cemetery. It’s not like we had a lot of options on Christmas Day in terms of open attractions. And as far as cemeteries go, this one is a big deal. It was actually quite peaceful and quiet. And the cold, dreary day just made this cemetery the perfect place to be at. The three of us started off walking together, until Ezeibe’s fast metabolism kicked in and he wanted to find a bathroom. Alan, ever the beacon of patience, popped a blood vessel and decided we should split up and meet back at the entrance at the specified time. A few hours later, the poor guy never found Jim Morrison’s grave. This was a big-ass cemetery people. You could probably walk about a mile and a half in any one direction and still not be at the edge. Of the famous people buried here, Ezeibe and I found Balzac’s tomb and Gericault’s tomb (painter of Raft of Medusa! Talk about full circle). There were a few other famous French people I’m sure we passed and saw, but none that were famous to me.

Ezeibe does his best zombie expression.

Raft of Medusa! The Tomb!

Christmas Evening
Alan’s expectations: A nice home-cooked dinner with friends in a cozy, warm atmosphere.
Alan’s shattered reality: Three dudes in a tiny apartment playing Scrabble and figuring out how to heat up our store-bought, pre-cooked pork. I should back up a bit to explain how we got to this point. When we got back from our day at the cemetery, it was starting to get dark. Most of the local markets and street vendors at this point were long closed (if ever open at all). All we had was the big supermarket up the street. Now sure, a supermarket has everything, and we probably could have made a nice fancy 4 course Christmas dinner, but…1) We were cheap. 2) No one trusted each other to cook such a meal. 3) No one was sure what we had back in our kitchen. 4) We didn’t have a real oven, we had this weird oven/microwave combination machine that slightly concerned us. 5) When everything is in French, you tend to doubt your ability to identify what you’re buying. It’s best to stick with the basics.

So, we went with pre-cooked lasagna, delicious salty chips (the kind you know wasn’t made with the healthy corn oil shit they’re using nowadays in the States), a package of frozen carrots, and, as a Fuck You to to those who said we weren’t adventurous, we bought this weird stuffed pork log. A giant log of pork is the only way I can describe it. All of which were ready-to-go or only required a microwave/toaster oven heating.

Ghetto Christmas dinner, just like home.

Don't worry moms, we ate our carrots.

The Scrabble Incident
Alan’s Expectations: Alan found a Scrabble board game in our apartment in one of the drawers. He expects no one else to find it. And even if one of us did, who would want to play Scrabble while we’re in Paris?
Alan’s shattered reality: “NO WAAAAYYYY!!!!!! Our apartment has fuckin’ Scrabble!!” I yelled. The dining room table was cleared in one fell swoop, and gameplay immediately began before either of the two realized what was about to happen. Three grown men were about to sit down on Christmas evening and play…wait for it…Scrabble. If that’s not a Christmas miracle, I don’t know what is. This would soon become a sensitive subject for me though because I felt robbed of a victory. Cava is a legit word, people. Unfortunately, we defined legit words as landmarks we visited thus far or words found in The Official Scrabble Word Guide, written in 1957. And for the record, Ezeibe does not know how to play Scrabble properly…at all. Anywho, Alan ended up winning, his one redeeming moment of the day. Otherwise, Paris really raped Alan this day.

“Way to forget about how you and Ezeibe still went to dinner that night” – Alan in response to my Day 4 post

This is how he decided to comment on my blog. His snark will be forever immortalized on my blog like the puke stain that’s forever on my bedroom carpet because my dad decided it was a good idea to feed my dog an orange.

Well thank you Alan for the catch. Let’s take a moment to go back to Barcelona and finish off Day 4 so I can spend every other sentence mocking you in petty and immature ways. After being ripped off on paella, Alan felt physically ill from spending any more money. Our 75euro “snack” turned out to be quite filling, but Ezeibe was still determined to eat dinner at this fancy, expensive restaurant called Bar Mut, because the New York Times said so. Ezeibe claims he is an atheist, but he really worshipped two gods: his cell phone and The New York Times travel section. The only way he was convincing me to go was if he offered to pay for it, which he did. This wasn’t enough incentive for party-pooper Alan, who decided to skip out and spend the rest of the night presumably closing his eyes really tight and opening them until euros magically appeared back in his wallet.

Ezeibe and I walked a good mile up the Barcelona streets trying to find the restaurant. Meanwhile, Alan probably took a shit, hoping euros or a sense of a good time would come out of his ass.

When we got to the restaurant, Ezeibe claimed they screwed up our reservation time, which they had written down for earlier in the night. What probably really happened was Ezeibe screwed up again because he didn’t understand what they were saying when he called the restaurant. Ezeibe basically dropped the ball again…just like the New York Giants, right Alan?

It was probably good that Cheapskate McGee didn’t go, because this restaurant was small (probably a fire hazard to fit any more than 20 people in there at once) and cramped. The service was friendly, and the food was probably great, but a little over my unrefined palate. You basically ordered from a menu of fancy tapas, except it was all in Catalan, and we had forgotten what everything meant after our waiter meticulously went through each option on the menu, poor guy. Speaking of poor guys, fun fact, Alan clips his nails on the bathroom floor and doesn’t clean up the clippings, much to Ezeibe’s disgust.

Here's a godawful picture of some tall guy caught smoking pot on a Barcelona castle defense tower. I hope this picture embarrasses him enough to never point out my shortcomings again.

In conclusion, you’re cheap, Alan. Now, where was I?

You can’t do Paris without spending a few hours in the Louvre and going to the Eiffel Tower. Heck, I’ve already been, knew it was going to be crowded and unreasonably expensive, and I still did it anyways because it’s fuckin’ Paris. How can I go home and say I didn’t see either of those attractions? I don’t think we explicitly decided this, but we ended up getting these major tourist traps out of the way at once. And honestly, unlike other tourist traps, these attractions are so spectacular that it’s still worth the hassle the second time around.

Cool Things That Happened:
- Christmas Eve in Paris! It doesn’t get much cooler than that. After 22 Christmases spent with the family, this was a refreshing change from the routine, not that I don’t love my family or anything. I was a little bummed my brother turned 21 without me there, but it was short-lived.

- Les Baguettes et Fromages! The great thing about staying in an apartment just outside of the touristy part of Paris is you get to live life exactly like a local…if that local never worked and ate bread and cheese every day. Pretending to live the stereotypical Parisian lifestyle, I would take a stroll around the block to Avenue de St. Ouen every morning to purchase an armful of baguettes (1-2euros) from the local boulangeries. Avenue St. Ouen is just a street full of local cheese shops, fruit stands, butchers, and other small specialized stores. Streets like these should exist in the States. It’s so relaxing walking amongst the locals and shopping every morning for the day’s meal. Am I in the mood for fish? Let’s go to the seafood stand. How about fruit? There’s a fruit stand on every block. There was at least one shop devoted to each food type. Maybe I embraced French life too much, as I began to find supermarkets excessive and disgustingly American. Anywho, on this day, I bought a gift basket of different French cheeses to go with our daily breakfast of baguettes. While Spain had its zen moments at the cliffs and rooftops of places, zen in Paris was achieved right in our apartment every morning eating our delicious, warm, freshly baked baguettes at our tiny dining table in our tiny Paris apartment. This was good bread people. And this was a good life. The three of us devoured three giant loaves (one each) every morning. The bread was good just on its own. We would try a different cheese from the gift basket a day. They ranged from creamy-and-familiar to putrid-aftertaste-and-what-the-hell-are-those-spots-on-it. If this was the relaxed morning the French have each day, I’m moving out there ASAP. Yes, I would absolutely move to France just for the baguettes.

- The Louvre. The art museum to end all art museums. This place is gigantic. You would think all pre-19th century art exists inside of this museum. The complex itself is a work of art, with the I.M. Pei pyramids, the fountains, and the wings of each building. Organized chaos is a good way to describe this museum. Even with the thousands of visitors there that day (apparently, everyone had the same idea to visit the Louvre on Christmas Eve), we still got in and our tickets quickly, unlike other museums we would visit. The three of us split up and spent a good four hours exploring. This would be not-enough-time and more-than-enough-time all at once. Favorite spots in the Louvre were anywhere that didn’t have a million people looking at the same thing. For anyone going to the Louvre and want an less-visited but under appreciated section, Napoleon’s apartment is pretty spectacular. There was also a really crowded, but great special exhibit on Picasso. In Barcelona, we passed on the Picasso museum, and I think we sort of regretted it because at least Alan and I were Picasso fans. Turns out, all the good stuff was in Paris anyways.

Peekaboo. I see Louvre.

Géricault's Raft of Medusa. I just had took a class where we analyzed this painting, so this one had significance to me.

Napoleon must have hosted some rockin' potluck dinners in his time.

A room full of gigantic paintings. My happy place.

- The Eiffel Tower. Still as awesome as the night before. We took one of the last elevators up to the top, because it took so long to walk from dinner to the Eiffel Tower. What you may not know is that to get to the top of the Tower, you have to take two separate elevators up. In an exceptional example of Ezeibe’s “fast metabolism,” he nearly made us miss the last ride to the second elevator to the top because he had to use the bathroom, again. On his return, “How does it feel peeing in the Eiffel Tower?” Alan asked in his kind-of-sarcastic-but-actually-irritated tone of voice. I chuckled, but then I nearly missed the elevator when I misplaced my elevator ticket. Wouldn’t be the first time (foreshadowing). Up top, I forgot there’s a very creepy room with wax figures of the people who used to live on top of the Eiffel Tower. Otherwise, the view was great as usual. It was really frigid and windy up there at night, but the lighted city are worth the mild discomfort. The clock hit 11PM, and the tower went all sparkly again, which nearly sent me into epileptic seizure.

City of Lights lives up to its name

Tall man on Tall Tower.

Not-So-Cool Things That Happened:
- Let’s go back to our apartment for a second. The name of the apartment was “Cozy Carpeaux.” And boy was it extremely cozy. The bathroom was probably the size of my closet. You only had room to stand, either in the shower or in front of the sink. Otherwise, you had to sit on the toilet next to the sink. The shower was too small to sit in. Words cannot describe how small this bathroom was. Barely functional, and far from comfortable. I have no idea how Alan used it daily. The rest of the apartment was pretty small too, but still had all the nice amenities, guidebooks, dvds, kitchen supplies, a decent (if smaller) kitchen. The couch pulled out into two single beds. You know I hate futons, but this one provided a good night’s sleep. There was a roomy’ish bedroom that Alan had, but I had to share the armoire in there with him. So yeah, we bumped into each other frequently, but still, the price couldn’t be beat and we were all fairly comfortable for our seven days.

- The walk to Avenue St. Ouen was full of dog poop. Landmines everywhere, everyday. Pick up after your dogs, French people!

- Alan and I argued about how to get to the Louvre. Uncomfortable with new modes of transportation, Alan wanted to stick to what he knew, the metro. I argued that the bus line, whose stop was closer than the closest metro stop, took us directly to the front of the Louvre. I won the argument. We got confused as to how we pay for the ride, and ended up not paying. So we shrugged and rode for free. Huzzah for the honor system! We would continue to play dumb the next few times we rode the bus until we “discovered” there was a ticket machine. I might have won the argument, but then our bus went ahead and got stuck in crazy Parisian traffic for 30 minutes. I stared out the window and quietly ignored the shit talking from the two fellow travelers behind me.

- If the Louvre was Hollywood, the Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, and Venus de Milo would be Angelina Jolie, Paris Hilton, and Kim Kardashian respectively. They’re surrounded non-stop with paparrazzi, except their paparazzo may have had a higher ratio of Japanese. I have a new dream to be in a room alone with the Mona Lisa, which is about as likely as being in a room with Angelina Jolie. You may be thinking “Did he really just type that?” But until you see the clusterfuck that is constantly in front of the Mona Lisa, you will never understand.

Wasn't even going to attempt the crowd manuevering.

Leave Venus Alone!

- Ezeibe needed to get the typical outdoor Parisian cafe experience out of the way, and felt he needed to do it at a cafe right by the Louvre. This was a visibly bad idea, but for whatever reason, we were all too thirsty or exhausted to fight this battle. So out comes the GPS phone, or, as I now refer to it, my mortal enemy. We circled around the block a million times looking for this supposed amazing cafe where we could get some hydration. Never found it that day. Two or three days later, we would discover the cafe was IN the Louvre plaza, not outside of it. We instead settled on a similar looking cafe that had seats, heated awnings, and a decent people-watching view. My tea costed 6 euros. We paid 21 euros for a hot chocolate (Ezeibe), tea (me), and a cafe au lait (Alan).

- Ezeibe also picked our dinner spot. He was missing some home-style African cooking and decided that Japanese food would be the next best substitute. So we had Japanese food on Christmas Eve. This was only slightly less disturbing than having Vietnamese food on Christmas Eve every year. What’s worse, I’m pretty sure we went back to our apartment all the way uptown only to settle on this restaurant, and go back to just a few blocks behind the Louvre. Efficient travelers, we are not.

Near Disasters/Meltdowns:
-My ankles. Museums are painful. Standing, walking, and staring up does a number on your back and feet when you’re at it for four hours. And then we made the genius move to…you guessed it…WALK…from Japantown to the Louvre. I think the justification was that we could see the Eiffel Tower, how far could it actually be? Pretty damn far, for the record.

I wish he was my friend.

So we’re off to France! Halfway through writing this post, I sensed a recurring theme of the day: my inability to be a functional human being when traveling. Most of my close friends and family have come to this conclusion well before I started this trip, but now, in chronological order, I document the evidence to prove their point:

#1. I sleep through Catalan sunrises.

This day was one of those crazy travel days that looked kind of exciting on paper, but was pretty brutal in reality. We woke up ass early (5 or 6AM) to leave our castle and get to the Girona airport, one hour outside of Barcelona. I think after we cleared the black ice going down the narrow roads of the castle, I was out like a baby. The Audi A4 is pretty smooth, what do you expect? I did catch a bit of the sunrise, I think I have pictures or video to prove it. Otherwise, this road trip only existed in dreamland.

I would fall asleep soon after.

#2 I can’t carry luggage properly.

Apparently, pounding a cheap, overstuffed, 50-pound rollaway suitcase down flights of stairs and through bumps and curbs rather than, as I learned, lifting the suitcase, puts a lot of stress on the two wheels at the bottom of my suitcase. One wheel decided that it had had enough with my abuse and fell off as I rolled it into an elevator.

#3 I can’t carry broken luggage properly.

Like the true Darwinian failure that I am, I shrug and proceed to continue dragging my now one-wheeled bag to the terminal (which, I might add, was nowhere close to where we parked). Dragging it across pavement would create a harsh scratching sound that was kind of like nails down a chalkboard, except 10 decibels louder. It didn’t sound too bad to me, but I apparently got a lot of looks, from curious to threatening. This would cause all sorts of embarrassment to Alan and Ezeibe.

#4 I get easily confused.

Our drama for the day was in the form of shuttle bus tickets that we had reserved online pre-trip. Alan, the organized dude that he is, created a perfectly reasonable checklist of reservations and confirmations we needed to print out before leaving for Europe and who was responsible for what. Now, this was 100% Ezeibe’s ball drop as he had reserved the shuttle tickets, but I had it in my head that this was my responsibility, thus leaving us confused as to how we all could not handle the simple task of reading and checking off a checklist. This sounds mad minor on retelling, but this was pretty aggravating in reality. And to Alan and Ezeibe, I did NOT check off something I wasn’t supposed to. It was always Ezeibe’s item and he checked it off.

#5 Come to think of it, I sleep in any moving vehicle.

I missed a good 80% of the French countryside on that shuttle.

#6 I can’t hail a cab.

Things went from bad to worse when the shuttle dropped us off on the outskirts of Paris. Now we had to find a way to get to our hotel. Simple enough, we’ll call a cab. There was a taxi stand right in front of the bus area. We hailed a good 5 or 6 empty cab drivers and they all just pointed at us and drove off, leaving us perplexed and really annoyed. We would later learn they were pointing to where they were required to stop. We instead gave up and decided to take the metro (much to the frustration of our apartment landlord, who rushed to the apartment to meet us). We first had to find the metro stop. I would lead us to a public restroom (it had the Metro logo, I swear). Alan was getting offended because i kept calling it the T. I secretly tried to see how long I could call it the T until he figured out the ruse or I feared he would punch me in the face. Inappropriate after a long day of travel? Definitely. Entertaining to at least one person? Sure was. As was becoming routine, we hiked another quarter mile with luggage, this time a swanky mall to get to the real metro stop. The metro would be crowded and in the middle of rush hour. This would further aggravate Ezeibe and Alan greatly.

#7 I still can’t carry broken luggage properly.

SCKZZZWEKLERJLRNJKGERTOR!#@HOIEEJ)D.…That’s my best interpretation of the sound of my one-wheeled suitcase being dragged another quarter mile downhill to our apartment. Except I only made it halfway before a thoroughly fed up Alan snatched the luggage from me, and huffily proceeded to carry it all the way to the apartment. I felt like a toddler who just lost his blanky that he’s been drooling on for weeks. It had to be done, but I was a little sad.

#8 I have no wine etiquette.

Let’s fast forward to dinner our first fancy French restaurant later that day where I was offered the first glass of wine we ordered. Apparently, you’re supposed to go through the motions of sniffing, then sipping, then letting the waiter know that you accept the wine. Whatever…I was thirsty, so I drank it.

#9 Technology hates me.

This restaurant also had these awesome electric salt and pepper shakers that doubled as flashlights over your plate. Pretty ingenious. But for a guy who can barely operate luggage, you can guess how this ended. I tipped extra for the amount of pepper that was strewn across the floor.

So, now that I’ve publicly humiliated myself, some other thoughts on the day:

Cool Things:
- Lui L’Insolent. This was the restaurant we had dinner in. It was a 25 euro fixed 3 course menu for dinner and it was worth every penny and then some. Even including the dinner mishaps, this was one of the best meals I have ever had in my life. No joke. I will never forget the salad starter, duck main course, and dessert of THREE souffles. Words will never describe the heaven all three of us were in. On top of that, amazing small restaurant ambiance and a waiter/chef who was so friendly and stereotypically French.

- Eiffel Tower at night. It was lighted up all blue. Alan and I couldn’t really wait to see the Eiffel Tower, so we went down after our amazing dinner. It sparkled on the hour. This really is a city for lovers. Unfortunately, I only had Ezeibe and Alan. This dilemma would put us in many awkward moments in Paris.

What a view...

Not-So-Cool Things:
-We took a Ryanair flight that would get us to Beauvais Airport, an airport hour north of Paris. I liken Ryanair to those Fung Wah Chinatown buses. The stops are always out of the way, you rarely feel comfortable or safe during the trip, but it is so incredibly cheap, you take your chances and spend the ride wondering if your life was worth the cost-savings. Ryanair did its best to swindle you at every step to get more cash out of our pockets. Only Ezeibe really took the bait, checking in two bags (25€ for the extra bag) and then ordering a Sprite mid-flight (5€ or something ridiculous). We had to walk onto the tarmac and into our plane, there was no notion of assigned seating, and don’t expect a Skylines magazine to peruse. The main pre-flight drama was at the boarding gate. They told us one gate, so we parked ourselves and did some last minute souvenir shopping. When we got back, the gate had changed, without our noticing. We go over to the new gate, and a line had formed to get good seats. We were so far back, To be fair, other than a bit of a hard stop on landing, the flight was too short to be considered miserable.

Disasters:
- I already listed nine of them. God, you can be so needy sometimes.