The Clock Ticks, Yet No Clever Titles Occur!

Location: Leaving Dublin, Ireland

Why look––it's me again! I'm not sure how often people check this blog, but I imagine at least some of you were wondering at my five-day absence. Well, first I had another paper due in my World Literature class, so I was up half of the night last Wednesday finishing that. And then through some fluke the ship's internet apparently doesn't work around the port in Dublin. No idea why that area would be a problem, but within two hours of the ship embarking the internet was back and I could use my email again. We were in Ireland for four days, during which time I explored both Dublin and a little town/region to the south called Glendalough (glen-dah-lock.) I will now endeavor to finish off my posts for France (can't believe I'm so far behind!) and then later move on to the last four days in Ireland.

Before I do that though, I would like to once again thank everyone who has been following along with the blog––seriously, I love knowing that you're out there (and I had no idea how many of you there are!)

France, 9/15 & 9/16: Paris to Le Havre

I awoke on the morning of the 15th to my ever-pesky alarm clock, and to the quirky little room of my hostel in Paris, France. The sun was streaming though the windows, and all but one of my roommates were already down at breakfast. The Aloha hostel is one in which breakfast is included in the price, so not wanting to miss out on that I scuttled down the staircase and into a cozy basement room packed with tables and benches (and people more awake than I seated on those benches chatting animatedly over their breakfasts.) After finishing a satisfying meal of jellied pastry, cereal, and tea, I grabbed a Paris map from reception and set off into Paris!

The way I figured it, there were two options for my partial-day in Paris: #1) I could take the metro and spend the day whizzing around below the city, popping up from time to time at some attraction and then descending back down into the depths to jet on off to another. #2) I could start walking, resign myself that it really isn't possible to see everything in a single day, and just enjoy the scenery (in the sunlight!)

Guess which one I went with?

So during my leisurely stroll through the less-touristy part of Paris on my way toward the Eiffel Tower (which was apparently only a 15-minute walk from the hostel), I passed many shops with flowers, pastries, fruits, and assorted meats before stumbling upon a decently-sized street market under a bridge. It was in this market that I witnessed the first stage of the price mark-up process: it was a basket at one of the first booths, full of relatively cheap little Eiffel Tower trinkets in a variety of colors. They were 4 for 1 Euro.

After snapping a few pictures (and purchasing a few pastries!) I kept making my way toward where the map said that the Eiffel Tower was located. Then I turned a corner and I could see it! Part of the street was sectioned-off and crowds of onlookers were cheering at a steady stream of pink-shirted runners who were raising money for a cause of some sort (never figured out what exactly––everything is in French, remember) and through the trees, rising up in the distance, was the Eiffel Tower framed against the horizon.

I pass a small booth perched on the side of the road, selling souvenirs, and I am met with the second stage of the price mark-up process: more of the little Eiffel Towers, and this time they are 1 for 1 Euro. The cost is four times higher now that the Tower itself is in view. Hmm...

So I finally make it to the base of one of the Tower's legs and look up at the enormous structure indecisively. Do I pay and take the time to climb up into it, or am I happy taking pictures from the ground? After all, it's not like you can see the tower itself while you are inside it (well, you know what I mean––you see parts of it up close, but not really in a photo-op kind of way.) On the other hand, which kind of person comes all the way to Paris and doesn't go up in the Eiffel Tower?

I sit and munch on pastries at a bench in the nearby park while pondering this. A ragtag group of very desperate pigeons nearby are chased by a gleeful grade-schooler. They then set their sights on my pastries, and one of the huddle actually doesn't notice when I reach out to touch it. Definitely feeling a bit pet-depived: I'm starting to turn to pigeons. Okay, okay, back to the Eiffel Tower!

So I made up my mind, got up, plunged back into the swarms of tourists milling about at the base of the tower (did I mention that there were tons of tourists around? Because there were!) and parked myself decisively waaay at the back of one of the lines. Then I waited. It really didn't take that long, and I amused myself by trying to eavesdrop on the Spanish-speaking family in front of me (I understood some of what they were saying!) I had decided that I would take the lift up to the second floor, because I wanted to do more than just walk to the first floor, and the top floor was closed (and I didn't really want to pay to go all the way up there anyway.)

There is actually a little security check point that you have to go through before they let you up into the tower. I nervously scanned the list of prohibited items, knowing that I really had no way locking up anything that I couldn't bring with me into the Tower. Fortunately the only thing relevant was no glass bottles, and mine was metal. I did run into a bit of a problem when the security officer tried to clarify something and I had no idea what he was saying (he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any French.) He waved me on though––I guess I don't exactly scream "big threat to monument security."

The view was neat from the second floor, and I probably took more cityscape pictures than was strictly necessary. I also become the unofficial Eiffel Tower photographer when I offered to take pictures for a couple of people (you know how it is when you go someplace with only one other person and you both want to be in the picture, but instead you each take turns getting a photo of the other person? Well I tend to take pity on people I see in that situation) and then a small queue of others jumped at the chance to have me take theirs as well. One of these individuals was a middle-aged Asian man with his wife, and he handed me an ancient film camera which I had to struggle for a moment to figure out how to work. Another was a couple from China who had just gotten married and were there on their honeymoon; they wanted pictures with me in it too. I probably interacted with more tourists than actual French people, but I guess that is inevitable with how little time I got to spend in France, and how much of it was in tourist areas.

Anyhow, I realized that I should probably move on if I wanted to have time to do anything else before catching my train, and as I stepped down out of one of the legs of the Tower I encountered the third and final stage of the infamous price mark-up process: right at the base of the Tower was yet another souvenir stand, and sure enough, sitting in an identical basket were the miniature Eiffel Towers... now 1 for 2.5 Euro! That is a whopping 10x more expensive than the first ones that I had seen. Obviously this makes sense, and isn't a particularly new concept to anyone––I just had never seen it laid out in such tidy steps before, so I had to share.

After separating myself from the throng of tourists at the foot of the Tower, I set off to go see the Louvre! This involved quite a bit of walking (I was still stubbornly avoiding the subway), especially since the Tower is a decent distance away from many of the other attractions in Paris.

But I made it there! You know how often times you see a lot of awesome pictures of someplace you are about to visit and then when you actually get there you think "This is it?" Well, I was expecting to feel that way (especially since I knew I didn't have time to actually go inside the Louvre to look at anything, and would be mostly taking pictures of the outside), but I am pleased to note that I was surprised at the area around the museum and how nice of a walk it was to get there. I was sort of expecting it to just parked in the middle of the city somewhere (hey, the Hermitage in St. Petersburg was!), but it actually has its own area right next to the "Jardin des Tuileries," which I entered from the west side and walked along all the way to the museum itself. I did stop briefly to pick up the least expensive food that I could find at one of the park's outdoor restaurants (butter and powdered sugar crepe, yum!) and to sketch some of the expansive gardens out front. Then, all of a sudden, I walk up some steps and there it was!

I realize that it's a bit silly to say I went to the Louvre, when all I really did was stand outside and take some pictures of it and the glass pyramid in front. But I figured that it would be better not to wait in line, pay for a ticket, and then be there for like 20 minutes before having to leave. I would rather come back some day and actually have time to walk around. (Plus, don't tell anyone, but I'm starting to get a bit tired of museums.)

Speaking of time, I was almost out of it! As it so happens, Paris is pretty big (no, really?) and walking around the city takes a while. I did wish that I had gotten to see the Notre Dame and Sainte Chapelle, but I didn't regret not spending the day rushing around on the subway. I toyed with the idea of spending another night and then catching the train to Le Havre the following morning, but quickly nixed that plan––one really shouldn't mess with on-ship time, and I wanted to make sure that I was in Le Havre staying close to the ship on the last day rather than having to worry about a train getting delayed and the ship leaving without me (I don't even want to think about how that would play out!)

So I caught a bus to the train station (which took a bit of doing, because I wasn't sure how to pronounce it to the bus driver), waited in the ticket line because the automatic machines did not want to cooperate, and managed to get myself a train ticket from a helpful lady who spoke a little English (I pointed to the word "Le Havre" this time, instead of trying to pronounce it, which I think helped that process.) After a bit of a wait I was on a train bound for the coastal town of Le Havre, where hopefully I would find the M.V. Explorer waiting for me!

The ride took a while, and the girl I was sitting across from was non-communicative, so I mostly slept on the way there. It was dark when I arrived, and as I stepped off of the platform I realized that French railway stations are not nearly so liberal with maps of the surrounding city as Belgian ones are. Which posed a problem, as I had absolutely no idea where I was or where the ship was (well, I did have a name and a direction, and I maintain that I could have found it on my own eventually!) Fortunately, almost as soon as I got off the train I encountered a massive group of about 15 other SASers who, like me, had come overland and just arrived in Le Havre on another part of the same train.

So we all set off the direction we thought the ship was, huddling in our jackets against the crazy coastal winds which buffeted us on our way through the dark and empty streets of Le Havre. Then we saw it––the little string of lights atop the M.V. Explorer glimmering way in the distance. By the time we actually made it there I was so happy to see the ship; I think that was the first moment it really felt like coming home.

This has become yet another very long post, but I did promise at the top that I would be providing an overview of day five as well as four, so I'll just say that on day five I felt I'd had enough adventure in my life, and decided to just stay in Le Havre and hang out in a cafe with internet. So that is what I did! I had another crepe and some tea while planning what I would do in Ireland and Skyping my mom. Then I grabbed some groceries from a small store nearby and made it back to the ship about an hour before on-ship time.

Okay, next post: Ireland! I can catch up before we reach Portugal!