Paris, avec the Mama: Part Un
Location: Paris, France
Spring: Bloomy
April 19
Since arriving back from a two-week sojourn to Spain with Jen, I've been crashing on Guillaume's couch, a lovely stay lasting 4 nights and full of every necessary comfort save a delicious Jelly pipe organ from which I might sample to while away the hours. Comfort must go on a temporary hiatus, however, as I must rise this morning at the tender hour of 5 AM in order to march my lanky ass to the train station, bound for Paris. Why such an early departure for such a dedicated couch slacker as myself, you ask? The answer is 5'8'' of loveable goofball named Laura Woolam Jones. She happens to be my mother, and lo, her coming is nigh.
In a spectacular flash of excellent decision making, Mom has decided to come visit me in Europe, for obvious motherly reasons. The original plan was for her to come to Montpellier, but it's cheaper just to fly into Paris, and quite sensibly she insisted that she can't go through Paris without actually going to Paris. Thus, I am to go meet her there for the first leg of a ten-day visitation that will encompass Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, and finally Montpellier. The rocking shall be awesome, and we shall call it Jones.
My train ride up to Paris is extremely uneventful, marked only by watching half of an illegal copy of "Babel" and being surprised to find fields of canola growing in central France. I arrive at the airport in only mild confusion about where to actually find Mom, since of course the internet just couldn't tell the truth about which terminal Delta flies in to (to be fair, I blame Delta for this, since the Charles de Galle airport has never wronged me, yet Delta has on several occasions expressed it's throat-rending thirst for my unborn children's pure blood). However, I manage to find her outside baggage claim as planned, and there is much rejoicing.
Now linked by a thirst for adventure, we head to our hotel which I have so cunningly booked on this new "internet" thing. Arrival/settling goes splendidly, and we settle in for a well-deserved nap. To be fair, Mom is working off six hours of jet lag and very little sleep, and I am pretty sleep deprived as well. We wake up in an hour or so and set off. First destination: the Arc de Triumph.
I am unsure here as to whether I should describe the Arc (and other things) in this post, or do so in my post about my previous trip to Paris with Jen, which I have not yet written of, but which took place first chronologically. I think that my solution to this dilemma will show not only my own quaint egotism but my utter lack of regard for any of the poor sods who read this stuff: I shall do both.
The Arc de Triumph (one of many French things that I have no idea how to spell) was built in 1806 by Napoleon to commemorate... well, basically how awesome he was and how formidable his cock was. And let me tell you, it must have been both monstrous and durable, for this Arc is mighty. Seriously, it's huge. Bear in mind that I have seen no fewer than 3 other Arc de Triumphs, and this one is the mostest triumphest by far. It is worth noting that the thing rests in the middle of the world's largest traffic roundabout. So if you've got a $50,000 dodgeball tournament coming up, this is a great place to start training. We head across underground, thus bypassing traffic-dodging death, and view the thing for a few minutes. I impress Mom by translating commemorative plaques in French (which I pretty much made up... I think most of them were recipes for apple strudel). Come to think of it, much of our time is spent split between gawking at the thing and trying to decipher what various names, dates, and carvings mean. I don't think we got many of them factually correct, but we sure had a lot of fun coming up with things. Mom in particular thought it was cute that in one two-times-life-sized sculpture of soldiers going into battle, one man appeared to be wearing armor over his entire body, except for a small hole where his genetalia could flap through. Truly a man who believes that his penis is made of steel.
After that we made our way down the Champs Elysees, the street that is famous for, as best I can tell, overpriced clothing and jewelry. Oh, and McDonald's restaurants that are classier than most Red Lobsters. It's pretty and the weather is flawless, so we enjoy just strolling and soaking up the atmosphere. The plan was to walk all the way down to the Louvre, but Mom second-guesses that along the way and we veer right, towards the Seine River, passing beside the great glass buttock that is the Grand Palais. If you don't know, the Grand Palais was the site of the 1900 World's Fair, and is made in large percentage of glass, in a way that you think of snow globes being made of glass, but very rarely buildings.
We're off across a bridge (Pont d'Invalides, I believe, but then again I'm just an ignorant American), stopping to marvel at nut-tons of gold gilding and statues, not to mention the insanity that is the Hotel des Invalides, a hospital for retards and cripples that nevertheless sports an incongruously awesome golden dome.
We walk back west along the south bank of the river, making our way to the Eiffel Tower, which has loomed oh-so-pointily in the distance all afternoon. It's a pleasant, sparkly half-hour that takes us there, and then we are beneath one of the great tourist attractions of our age.
You have to understand, there are two basic types of tourist attractions: those that live up to the hype, and those that don't. The Eiffel Tower is one of the first. As famous architectural paraphenalia goes, it marks high on all the important points, such as originality, size, distinction, and pointyness. Yes, pointyness is important; sharp things are just more interesting, in the same way that, say, lesbian ham is more interesting. I just want to see that, and to know what it's about.
We lurk for a time beneath its grandeur, walking the lawns of the Champ de Mars to appreciate it from all angles. Were there hot air balloons taking off nearby, I feel sure that we would have Daring Commando hijacked one of them to appreciate the Tower in more three-dimensional glory. It is at this point that Mom points out that all the trees along the Champ de Mars are shaved flat on the side facing the field, while remaining unpruned on the opposite side. So noticing, I dub them Mullet Trees: business in the front, party in the back.
About this time the sun is setting and we're legitimately tired, so head back, passing through Trocadero Gardens on the way. I stop to flip off the Tower, having sillyly forgotten to do that on my last trip here, and we park ourselves at the top of the Garden stairs to watch the Eiffel Tower go all sparkly on the hour. It does that, you know. Some genius rigged the Tower with hundreds of strobe lights that go off Christmas Tree style every hour on the hour after sunset, turning the whole thing into the world's largest producer of bad mescalin trips. After enjoying, we jump the metro back to the hotel, stopping for an over-priced, though delicious pizza, which we ate in the room while watching "The Office." And bed.
Spring: Bloomy
April 19
Since arriving back from a two-week sojourn to Spain with Jen, I've been crashing on Guillaume's couch, a lovely stay lasting 4 nights and full of every necessary comfort save a delicious Jelly pipe organ from which I might sample to while away the hours. Comfort must go on a temporary hiatus, however, as I must rise this morning at the tender hour of 5 AM in order to march my lanky ass to the train station, bound for Paris. Why such an early departure for such a dedicated couch slacker as myself, you ask? The answer is 5'8'' of loveable goofball named Laura Woolam Jones. She happens to be my mother, and lo, her coming is nigh.
In a spectacular flash of excellent decision making, Mom has decided to come visit me in Europe, for obvious motherly reasons. The original plan was for her to come to Montpellier, but it's cheaper just to fly into Paris, and quite sensibly she insisted that she can't go through Paris without actually going to Paris. Thus, I am to go meet her there for the first leg of a ten-day visitation that will encompass Paris, Bruges, Amsterdam, and finally Montpellier. The rocking shall be awesome, and we shall call it Jones.
My train ride up to Paris is extremely uneventful, marked only by watching half of an illegal copy of "Babel" and being surprised to find fields of canola growing in central France. I arrive at the airport in only mild confusion about where to actually find Mom, since of course the internet just couldn't tell the truth about which terminal Delta flies in to (to be fair, I blame Delta for this, since the Charles de Galle airport has never wronged me, yet Delta has on several occasions expressed it's throat-rending thirst for my unborn children's pure blood). However, I manage to find her outside baggage claim as planned, and there is much rejoicing.
Now linked by a thirst for adventure, we head to our hotel which I have so cunningly booked on this new "internet" thing. Arrival/settling goes splendidly, and we settle in for a well-deserved nap. To be fair, Mom is working off six hours of jet lag and very little sleep, and I am pretty sleep deprived as well. We wake up in an hour or so and set off. First destination: the Arc de Triumph.
I am unsure here as to whether I should describe the Arc (and other things) in this post, or do so in my post about my previous trip to Paris with Jen, which I have not yet written of, but which took place first chronologically. I think that my solution to this dilemma will show not only my own quaint egotism but my utter lack of regard for any of the poor sods who read this stuff: I shall do both.
The Arc de Triumph (one of many French things that I have no idea how to spell) was built in 1806 by Napoleon to commemorate... well, basically how awesome he was and how formidable his cock was. And let me tell you, it must have been both monstrous and durable, for this Arc is mighty. Seriously, it's huge. Bear in mind that I have seen no fewer than 3 other Arc de Triumphs, and this one is the mostest triumphest by far. It is worth noting that the thing rests in the middle of the world's largest traffic roundabout. So if you've got a $50,000 dodgeball tournament coming up, this is a great place to start training. We head across underground, thus bypassing traffic-dodging death, and view the thing for a few minutes. I impress Mom by translating commemorative plaques in French (which I pretty much made up... I think most of them were recipes for apple strudel). Come to think of it, much of our time is spent split between gawking at the thing and trying to decipher what various names, dates, and carvings mean. I don't think we got many of them factually correct, but we sure had a lot of fun coming up with things. Mom in particular thought it was cute that in one two-times-life-sized sculpture of soldiers going into battle, one man appeared to be wearing armor over his entire body, except for a small hole where his genetalia could flap through. Truly a man who believes that his penis is made of steel.After that we made our way down the Champs Elysees, the street that is famous for, as best I can tell, overpriced clothing and jewelry. Oh, and McDonald's restaurants that are classier than most Red Lobsters. It's pretty and the weather is flawless, so we enjoy just strolling and soaking up the atmosphere. The plan was to walk all the way down to the Louvre, but Mom second-guesses that along the way and we veer right, towards the Seine River, passing beside the great glass buttock that is the Grand Palais. If you don't know, the Grand Palais was the site of the 1900 World's Fair, and is made in large percentage of glass, in a way that you think of snow globes being made of glass, but very rarely buildings.
We're off across a bridge (Pont d'Invalides, I believe, but then again I'm just an ignorant American), stopping to marvel at nut-tons of gold gilding and statues, not to mention the insanity that is the Hotel des Invalides, a hospital for retards and cripples that nevertheless sports an incongruously awesome golden dome.
We walk back west along the south bank of the river, making our way to the Eiffel Tower, which has loomed oh-so-pointily in the distance all afternoon. It's a pleasant, sparkly half-hour that takes us there, and then we are beneath one of the great tourist attractions of our age.
You have to understand, there are two basic types of tourist attractions: those that live up to the hype, and those that don't. The Eiffel Tower is one of the first. As famous architectural paraphenalia goes, it marks high on all the important points, such as originality, size, distinction, and pointyness. Yes, pointyness is important; sharp things are just more interesting, in the same way that, say, lesbian ham is more interesting. I just want to see that, and to know what it's about.
We lurk for a time beneath its grandeur, walking the lawns of the Champ de Mars to appreciate it from all angles. Were there hot air balloons taking off nearby, I feel sure that we would have Daring Commando hijacked one of them to appreciate the Tower in more three-dimensional glory. It is at this point that Mom points out that all the trees along the Champ de Mars are shaved flat on the side facing the field, while remaining unpruned on the opposite side. So noticing, I dub them Mullet Trees: business in the front, party in the back.
About this time the sun is setting and we're legitimately tired, so head back, passing through Trocadero Gardens on the way. I stop to flip off the Tower, having sillyly forgotten to do that on my last trip here, and we park ourselves at the top of the Garden stairs to watch the Eiffel Tower go all sparkly on the hour. It does that, you know. Some genius rigged the Tower with hundreds of strobe lights that go off Christmas Tree style every hour on the hour after sunset, turning the whole thing into the world's largest producer of bad mescalin trips. After enjoying, we jump the metro back to the hotel, stopping for an over-priced, though delicious pizza, which we ate in the room while watching "The Office." And bed.
posted by Will Jones at 2:06 PM
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