Portugal, England, France, Me.

Portugal was really, really nice-- warm, sunny (usually), full of friendly people and hills.

I flew into Porto, in the north of the country. Three nights there meant lots of time to explore the generously sloping roads all over the city, and admire the view from our hostel. It looked over the valley where the river cuts the city off from the port factories just across the way. Straight across was a view of the castle fort (Sé) and it lit up at night with a beautiful effect.

There was a lot of seafood eating and port wine tours-- everything was much cheaper than London and Paris, so it was easy to do everything we wanted without paying a ridiculous amount.

The people I travelled with are extremely chill and fun to be around. It felt like we went from one meal to the next, just using sightseeing as an excuse to kill time before more spicy chorizo sausage and vino verde.

Portuguese was definitely a problem for me-- understanding it was basically impossible until the very end of the trip. It sounds like a cross between Spanish and Polish, with soft slurred sounds that are really hard to imitate. Luckily, most of the people in Porto and Lisbon speak English, and all the restaurants in the center of both towns have multi-lingual menus.

We took the train from Porto to Lisbon, much of it sweeping past the coast. We got into Lisbon around dinner time, and dragged our bags over the cobblestones (but no hills, thank Deus).

Lisbon is much bigger and more centered around the ocean. It also happened to be a solid upper 60s and sunny for most of the time I was there. One day, we went up around the hills and ended up walking around in tee shirts, sweating and worried about sunburn. It was glorious.

My one qualm about the Portuguese (and Iberian) lifestyle is the fact that everything happens so late. We would hold off on eating dinner until 9 or 10, but then were forced to kill time until midnight to go out for a drink. Then, if you want to hang out at anything club-like, it doesn't get interesting until after 3am. I am quite used to my local closing at 11, and then going to a bar until 1 or 2 and then crashing and getting up at a reasonable hour the next day. The club we went to in Porto was really cool but basically dead when we left at 3am. SO bizarre.

The flight from Lisbon back to London was uneventful, thankfully. I just stared into space, listening to music, or read my book for most of it. With public transportation and the usual small things that add up, I didn't get home until midnight. Then I had to pack my bag, through my disgusting dirty clothes from a week of constant wear in the hamper, and sort through packages and letters from the fam. Understandably, getting up at 3:45 am after two hours of sleep was NOT fun.

The Eurostar to Paris was extremely chill. I rested my eyes and listened to people chatter in French and English.

Getting in to the Gare du Nord was exciting-- I really feel like I'm coming home, by being in Paris. After a long struggle whether to bring my bag to the Mère's and then run off to stalk the Chanel show, I decided to drop in on her and be rude about leaving after 5 minutes. But of course, the Mère topped me immediately.

She opened the door in her robe, faire la bised, and then told me she was going back to bed. "Make yourself a coffee!" she murmured down the stairs, and then her bedroom door shut. Okay.

It ended up being nice that she didn't want me to sit and chat, because I made it to the Grand Palais with my trusty camera with plenty of time to get situated for primo Chanel fashion show stalking. I struck a friendly but aloof friendship with the professional paps and photographers-- I didn't get in their way when someone famous was coming, and in exchange I was allowed to stand behind them. I actually saw a photographer physically block a girl and then yell at her in French because she was trying to stick her dinky little point-and-click in his shot. Which I really understand, frankly. That chick had NO business screwing up his money shot.

Celebrity checklist:
Claudia Schiffer
Rhianna
Kanye (obviously)
Anna Wintour (coming in with the glasses on, and then leaving with them off and a HUGE smile on her face... unsettling)
Mary Kate Olsen (Olsen sighting people!!)

Plus some French celebrities I didn't know and dozens of models still wearing the makeup. It was GORGEOUS-- their eyelids were heavy with golden iridescent shadow, and they had gold powder paint all down the center parts of their hair. It looked like someone (probably Uncle Karl) had gone hogwild with some gold paint and just accidentally gotten it all over his models. But it was cool.

It is both extremely weird and insanely right being back here. The gyspies are gone, replaced by little kids doing the "Is this your ring? Give me reward money for finding it on the ground" trick. I was almost offended that a kid tried in on me when I was walking to the Place de la Concorde. The big ferris wheel in Concorde is also gone. WTF? I will get the story from Madame later. They are doing construction on Le Bon Marché, and the Zara across the street has disappeared. At my apartment, the hotel across the street is renovating, the empty store next door has morphed into an awesome-looking flower and furniture place, and two very good-looking men have moved in. They chose to show up at the same time and breeze past me waiting to be buzzed in by the door. Of course some hot men moved in right after I left. Of course.

At the same time, nothing has changed. Some of the posters I remember are still up in the metro. One of the lines is perturbé because of a mouvement sociale (code for grève). The guy at Bon Marché with the black eye and enormous swollen jaw (from a fight? Moto crash?) is still not completely healed. I didn't acknowledge a homeless guy begging for money on the street and got called a slut. Madame's Gentleman Friend brought oysters for the weekend.

I need a bit of a dodo now, and then I will go walk around some more. I've already covered Concorde to Grande Palais, walked through the Tuileries to Saint Germain and then to Le Bon Marché. I also have not forgotten French, which is a plus. In fact, I was pretty damn proud of my amazing accent when I got to the station. I was asking questions left and right about the cost of the luggage storage, buying packs of metro tickets, and ordering food without stopping to worry if the français had left me. It hasn't!

Tonight I'll sleep in my old bed, and I'm typing this on the "new" Anna's computer that she graciously told Madame I could use while she was gone for vacation. (I probably shouldn't spread this around, but the rumor from Madame and Gentleman Friend is that Anna version 2.0 doesn't speak French very well and isn't even half as nice as me. I admit I needled, but I definitely didn't expect so much flattery. Hee. Madame moved her stuff to a bottom shelf in the fridge, telling me I was the "dame" and had seniority in the apartment.)

Tomorrow, I have a very ambitious plan that involves being all over central Paris for most of the day. Perhaps I will check out the Chloé show, perhaps I will get some espressos and go into a people watching coma near the Hotel de Ville. Nothing is ever certain.

I thought coming back here would make me absolutely dread going back to London, but that's not true. It's becoming what I told Jess at the beginning of the year-- Paris and London are like your kids, and you will love them both for different reasons. At first, I had a really hard time adjusting to life in London, simply because it's so EASY. Everyone speaks my language, the customs aren't terribly different, and the people are usually mild and polite. The opposite of the French. However, deciding what to do tomorrow, Saturday, made me a bit sad that I wouldn't be able to shop at Borough Market until next weekend. Also, being by myself during the day here is completely normal. I am a bit of a loner when it comes to sightseeing and during the day stuff, but I miss my friends that are in London now.

It's also extremely easy to remember the time I had last semester, and wish I could go back and keep living that life. The kids in the program with me are all (except for Jess) back at their respective schools, and I don't even talk to some of them anymore.

One more thing I find hysterical and also strange as hell-- I left so much stuff in "my" room here, and I'm going to try my damndest to get it back to London with me. Pens with purple ink? Check. Huge advertising coffee table book that was a present from work? Check. I might even steal back some CDs I downloaded onto my computer and then decided not to worry about.

Pictures will be forthcoming, starting on Sunday night. I start my internship on Monday though, so we'll see how this all goes down.

Ohh Paris.

Rhymes With "Dead"... Almost

The false grève, the shadow grève, the grève that is not and will not be grève, did slightly affect my life. But in the long run, this mini grève-like thing is not really a big deal. Yesterday, for example, I had to switch trains at Kléber because mine was suddenly taken out of service. Last night, Jess waited for one at Saint-Denis for at least 20 minutes and then couldn’t get to dinner on time so she grabbed a cab.

I’m, of course, being realistically optimistic about the whole experience— I would prefer to not have to deal with stopping in tunnels for extended periods of time, or completely missing stops I need to get off at. But, being a realist, I am prepared for it when it will happen. Because, uh, it probably will.

And now, for something completely different, my mom and uncle are coming tomorrow! I am making lunch reservations, planning a strict museum-and-shopping schedule, and looking forward to showing off the city. I feel like I know what I like and where I like to go now, so there won’t be any aimless wandering. And there definitely won’t be much “touring”, at least not in the traditional, Eiffel Tower-climbing sort of way.

I also printed out a thick, 62-page draft of my final rapport de stage. Thank goodness I’m almost done with it! But that also means I’m almost done with this, and it makes me sad.

I’ve been buying tickets for shows and events in London, so that’s getting me excited for this coming semester. It will be so fun to go home for a few weeks, eat Chipotle and see my family and crazy friends. And then it’ll be even more fun to jet off to London for 17 weeks. Wee!

Gah!

Tomorrow there might be-- might be-- a grève. What no one can seem to tell me is what Le Monde is talking about online. Apparently, the unions won't be striking, but will be implementing "perturbant activities" (is perturbant an English word? Probably not... my spell check hates it right now. It's totally on my spell check's shit list).

What the hell are perturbant activities? I think it's time for the unions to stop fucking around, excuse my français, and go back to doing real work like the rest of us.

In the meantime, I'll be the one plodding through the cold and the rain for an hour at 8 AM, looking for any way to get to work that doesn't include the 1 line. That metro line during time of grève really brings out the worst in humans.

Wish me luck.

I'm So Observative

Last night, I left work at 6 as usual and stepped outside, tired and hungry. I crossed the street, casually checked out the Arc de Triomphe, and then stopped stone cold in the middle of the intersection as people thudded into me from both sides.

The Christmas lights were on!!

They must have been checking the lights on the Champs-Elysées before they go live in the near future. I only had about a minute to enjoy before they turned off and the road went back to normal. I also managed to cross to the other side of the street without getting hit by a car or a motocycle.

But the lights were so pretty! They're white, almost blueish. There's also random long ones that shoot lights down their length, which are tied in among the normal-sized strands. They make it look like the trees are bleeding sparks, or melting into giant, fiery pyres. It's cool but a bit overdone, I must say. I would have been just as happy with boring old white lights.

Le sigh. I can't wait to see the whole thing lit up at my leisure.

[ETA] Oh, and the grève is pretty much over. No ceremony, or big annoucements-- the RATP just sort of shamefully acknowledged that everything is back to nearly normal. I think there should be a parade down the Champs-Elysées, and every person who was here for the whole thing should get 2 weeks paid vacation. That would be sweet.

Two more things about the grève...

...and then I promise to try hard to stop.

One of the women at work said there were people riding the metro BETWEEN the cars yesterday-- meaning they grabbed onto the wires and small footholds and just "prepared themselves to be all James Bond and shit," as she put it in French. Apparently, the conductors of the train were less amused: they stopped at the next station and sternly announced that train riders were only permitted inside the trains.

Then this morning, after a seriously hazardous ride to Etoile, I noticed cops regulating the number of people on the platform. The upside? You no longer have hundreds of people rushing forward, trying to get on a train with 5 spots open. The downside? Now I have to wait in line to wait in line to board a train.

I Can Feel It Coming In the Air Tonight... Oh Lord

Grève. Again. I feel like there should be something more creative, but this damn strike has destroyed my poetic nature.

I left my apartment at the usual time, but today was the worst day so far, in my opinion. I couldn't get a bus (several went blowing past the stop, completely full. The bus drivers were practically laughing and mooning us as people next to me tried to flag them down), and I didn't even want to think about the metro. I sort of gathered myself up, fixed my gloves and my pants, and WALKED across half the city to get to work. It took about 90 minutes before I gave up and called my boss, because I had a meeting at 11:00 across the river which I needed to be on time for. He graciously let me show up for work at 12ish.

On the way home, I decided not to spend another few hours traipsing through the semi-rain and total dark, and instead forced myself onto a metro.

There was a totally creepy guy on there-- I, of course, got forced against him by the hordes of people pushing. Instead of doing the usual, decent thing (ie. looking away and trying to breathe his foul breath in another direction), he took the opportunity to size me up, grin, and then keep his face uncomfortably close to mine the whole way back. No dude. Your Risky Business sex train fantasy is NOT finally coming true.

Grr.

I got some Indian takeout to cheer myself up, and then watched The Life Aquatic on my computer. Same strike bullshit tomorrow.

Magic Bus

You know the bus you're on is packed tight when... people literally stop walking to stare, and children point and laugh. Seriously.

Ma Vie en Merde

Ever been mowed down by a Parisian biker in the bike path, coming at you with the dinky bell ringing, little light flashing menacingly, and with screams of "ATTENTION!! BORDEL!" sounding in your ears?

Nope, me neither. But that's because I am SMART. I stay far away from the bike path. Some other folks, not so much.

Especially now, with the time of grève upon us, I know waay better than to trespass on sacred ground. I pity the tourists who see a long, smooth, empty bike path and think, "Hey! This is great! More room for my enormous suitcase to coast! No cobblestones! Neat!"

Because, inevitably, the tourist gets forced off the road by a crazy bike rider. I don't really blame the bikers: they have to deal with some serious shit from the motorcyclists and scooter(ers?) who park on the sidewalk and then roar off into the open bike lane until they can dismount onto the street. It makes sense bikers would take out their frustrations on people who stray onto their turf.

My only problem with bikers is when they can't decide whether they belong on the road or the bike path (ex. like in Boston, where bikers will run into you while you're crossing the street, because they bike on the road but don't stop at lights or signs like drivers do). Also, during this time of grève, the bikers have started overtaking the pedestrian sidewalks. Not cool, dude.

Stick with the buses, is what I say! I didn't wait for any today, but I still managed to get on two. The one this morning went speeding past me as I was on the way to the metro, so I basically flat out sprinted back to the bus stop and got on, no hassles. Then, this afternoon, I finally got off the 1 metro at Bastille and took the 65 bus. It was slowly approaching as I got outside. Nice.

I also have to say that, even though this strike is seriously killing my will to be a full-time worker, it's the only time I've ever seen Parisians smiling at strangers. Weirder still, there's much more talking and laughing with strangers than I would have imagined. People know this strike is ridiculous, and they also know what they are forced to do (ex. standing spooning with everyone around you) is stupid. So most of them make light of it. I think it's making my commute a bit easier.

That being said, if one more asshole jams behind me as the doors close, I might cut a bitch. That is all.

Social Movement...

... My arse. All I know is, when it takes me two hours to get to work because some lazy dudes don't feel like doing their jobs, I don't really feel like supporting their cause.

The grève is on again, blah blah... I walked for 45 minutes after the initial hour-long wait for the train that got me that far, because I couldn't bear getting smushed into another metro. Worse is waiting for three to pass by before I could get smushed in. Both things happened today, of course.

New plan of action: buses. I don't know what it is about the buses, but every time there's a strike, I seem to find one within 20 minutes or so (not unreasonable), and I am usually able to sit or at least stand comfortably. The metro is full of heinous people, like men who aren't afraid to elbow women in the face (really! I saw it happen!) for two square inches of room on a cattle car. Bof.

I can't wait until this damn "social movement" is over... and quit with the euphemisms, guys. It's a glorified vacation from reality.

When the Grève goes Merde

The grève. At first I was sort of excited for it, because my class got cancelled on Thursday. Then I was sort of amused by it, because I watched the news with Madame and saw screaming citizens waving flags in the air because they think their retirement is threatened. Then today, I was seriously pissed about it.

I was supposed to go to Disneyland Paris; ticket was bought and ready to go. It was a special "Francilien" price, meaning it was 30 euros because I "live" in Ile de France.

After setting out 45 minutes before I was supposed to meet Caitlin, I (optimistically) decided to take the bus to Chatelet. One actually came after about 15 minutes, and it wasn’t super crowded and the bus driver was rather nice. Most of the people riding with me were pretty tense—they all seemed to be determined to try and be nice, and to not sweat the small stuff. Because getting mad at the entire staff of the SNCF and RATP is not very useful.

There were a lot of terse conversations on phones—"Oui. Je suis dans le bus. Oui. Je sais. Oui." When we got to Chatelet, I ran down to the RER and joined about 100 other people there. The only (cheap) way to get to Disney is to take the commuter train. Private shuttles or taxis run in the 100 euro range, and I couldn’t think of anything else at such short notice. Eventually, there was an announcement that NO train—the man was sure to pronounce AUCUN very carefully—would be coming to my RER line today. So.

Caitlin and I gave up and I decided not to head home and sleep. Instead, I walked to the Pompidou (closed), and then across the Ile de la Cité to the Musée de Cluny.

I’ve already been once, but I remember loving the museum of Medieval art. It houses the extremely famous "Lady and the Unicorn" tapestries. And best of all, it’s free to me (thanks to my art history student ID).



I walked around for a while, taking pleasure in the almost completely empty place. The building itself is beautiful, and the museum has a ton of really interesting things in addition to the usual sculptures and fabrics. I enjoyed the pilgrim tokens, the shoes, and the stained glass from various churches in England in France. Of course, the best part is seeing the "Lady" tapestries, and I’m glad I went back. I got a copy of "Tristain et Iseut" in French on the way out, because I was in the mood for something Medieval-y.

After walking around in circles for literally another hour, I finally ended up back at the CGP and bought myself lunch inside. The chicken tandoori sandwich? To die for. I decided to skip the actual museum (too crowded), and tried to walk home.

I tripped into a cooking supply shop by Les Halles, where I bought mini tarte molds and a dough cutter thing. When I finally got home (I tried to take the metro, which didn’t come. Then I realized I was right around the corner from the Porte Saint Denis, from which I did the long, straight walk back to the Gare de l’Est), I made tomato tartes. And? They are deelish. So I guess everything worked out.

En Grève

Today, during class, I found out the transportation services of Paris (the RATP) will be having a general strike on the 18th. What does that mean?

As far as I can tell, I won't be able to take the metro (which is bad, considering I live 30 minutes away from my classroom building), I won't be able to take a bus (even if they are running, they will be completely impossible, with all the other commuters), and taxis are trop cher, and will most likely be impossible. So.

I guess I'll figure out a way to rent a bike, or just leave suuuper early and plan on walking across most of the city. We'll see.

It just strikes me as bizarre that these organizations would go to the trouble of announcing a strike nearly a month in advance (I think the press release was issued the 28th of September), and not just try to work something out between then and now. Or else just, uh, strike right away.

It is kind of considerate, to give us all some notice.

Thanks?