paris

Ah, Paris. City of love.

Is it the city of love? I don't actually know. I may have made that up.

Either way - after Dublin, we cruised our way into Paris, and oh, was it wonderful. The city is huge, sprawling, like a picnic blanket draped over a rocky terrain; viewed from above, it is a checkerboard of black and grey. Our first night there, the city is hugged by a tight gray mist, cramping but cool. Our hotel (not a hostel this trip - we went up one step to a one star hotel. very classy.) clings to the base of Montmartre, a huge hill that rises up out of the flat buildings and winding streets. Endless stone steps clamber up; we climb like mountaineers. I huff and puff by the end, hunched over and clinging to my knees. It is at this point that I realize I should work out more.

A towering white basilica by the name of Sacre Couer tops the hill, guarded by two green statues of horsemen. Three enormous domes protrude from the ceiling, tiled in the same white stone that the rest of the basilica is construced from. At night, tourists and locals alike blend on the steps, sipping wine and eating bread; two children fight with wooden swords, jumping and swinging, an adventure of imagination set against the Parisian skyline. Paris lays down in front of us, wide open and lit up. The Eiffel Tower shines like a beacon in the distance, blue light knifing its way through the mist from the very top.

We retire to our hotel with its fading pink and yellow wallpaper and crumbly brown carpet. The windows peer down upon a busy street, cars zipping by. Buildings light up with neon, and we clutch glasses of cheap, delicious wine and lean over the railing, breathing in cool air and exhaling our breath into spirals.

Our first real day in Paris is a whirlwind of The Sights, capital T, capital S. We begin the day on the Paris Metro, loud and rumbly. We embark on a walking tour of Paris beginning at the Bastille Monument, a tall phallic stone tower that gleams with a golden statue on top; we realize that nothing of the Bastille itself remains on this spot, the only record being this towering thin pole.

"Sorry guys," Katherine says, "Guess it's not here anymore."

We wind through Paris, two baguettes sticking out of Greg's black backpack providing sustinence throughout the day. We keep a bottle green canal to our right most of the time, its sparkling water glistening in the early morning sun.

Destination One: Notre Dame. As in, Hunchback of. I was getting Disney flashbacks the entire time, picturing emerald-clad deformed gentlemen swinging from bell ropes and singing "I Want" ballads.

The ceilings of Notre Dame, inside and out, are positively gravity defying. Stone vaults so impossibly high, and I try to picture people in the Middle Ages carving and creating, and I can't do it. Everything is so perfectly supported, and it is all smooth like glass, even though it's hard and heavy stone. Windows that evoke rainbows and flowers are everywhere; I count fifty before I stop, realizing how futile that effort is.

People, tourists, whatever they are, mill around us. Nine out of ten hold cameras up to the ceiling, despite numerous NO PHOTOGRAPHY signs. Flashes keep going off, illuminating dark corners and making it all look so fake. I don't understand this. A picture cannot capture the immense glory of this place. Notre Dame catches your breah, takes hold of it, and twists it right around. The atmosphere should be serene, but buzzing cameras bring it down. They can try to capture the preciseness of it all, the exactitude of placement. I fixate on the windows with petals of every color, blinking wide and facing the sun. It is stunning.

We move outside and begin our trek across the city. Next stop - the one and only.

That's right, boys and girls. The Eiffel Tower.

Mind you, to get there, we have to pretty much walk across the entire city. That tower is such a tease, because it's so enormous that you can see it from so far away - I'm almost there, you think, when you see it prodding up over the horizon.

No. You're not. It's just really big.

We wander and wind, our feet aching the whole time, but then there it is, a monumental digit scraping away clouds from the blue skies above. It is better in person than in any picture I've ever seen; more solid and real. It has a lace-like quality to it, crossing iron beams forming an intricate pattern of x's and spirals and arches that the eye can't quite fully grasp. Four solid pillars slam into the ground, supporting the obelisk that is the central tower. It is all the same color - they paint it every ten years, someone tells me - a mustardy sort of brown that is most clear when the sun hits the tower in just the right way. It is a soothing, calm and pleasant color.

We climb the stairs halfway up. There are informative placards every few hundred stairs, but we plow on by. I wonder if anyone really stops to read those things. The journey up is almost as harrowing as the journey accross the city to get here, but finally we reach the midway point, where a steadfast elevator pulls us the rest of the way up.

I have realized, being here, that I really like views from high places. Standing on top of the tower, I feel effortless, wind whipping around my head. The view is magnificent, of course, but there's something more than that that keeps me up here. Being so high up on such a creation feels powerful somehow,

French people aren't as bad as pop culture portrays them, at least at first - we run across a language barrier or five, but beyond that, people tend to be rather genial and helpful. But then, I suppose there are stereotypes for a reason, I note, as a family jostles by us, not even looking where they're going. The road around the Arc De Triomphe seems to personify the French - it is a circle of death, with an absurd seventeen roads converging into one roundabout (or so I hear). Pedestrians like us are resigned to crossing through a dank gray underground tunnel, which seems unfair for some reason.

The Arc itself is - well, an Arc. At this point in the day, we are all tired and want to retire for dinner and some more wine. But Napoleon's monument is certainly impressive, adorned with sculpture and inscriptions of France's great victories, now buried in the past behind stereotypes of those damn defeatable French. It figures.

The next day is dominated by the Louvre, which I find myself without words to adequately describe. It is a labyrinth - I half expect a minotaur to plow by. It is a child's maze, each hallway leading into four more hallways, half of which have stairs attached. Every room is ornate - gold doorframes and sculpted wood carvings in every wall and paintings on the ceiling of angels with speckled wings and massive yellow halos.

(The Mona Lisa is quite a letdown, by and by - the crowd around it is so massive that it is about the size of a postage stamp from where we stand, and honestly - I don't get the big fascination with that painting. Thanks a lot, Dan Brown.)

We pass by the inverted glass pyramid - I know people objected to the modern architecture smack dab in the middle of the courtyard of this ancient palace, but I like it. It glows with the sunlight and has a sort of quiet majesty to it. A little boy walks by, pauses. He can't be more than three. He reaches up, straining his arms to reach the point, but it evades him. He lets his arm fall and stares up at it, eyes sparkling and curious.

"Whoa," I hear him mutter.

That pretty much sums up the entire experience.

Paris draws to a close as we board a high speed train, green and brown whistling by the windows. It is a long way home; my eyes waver and shut. I doze for a lot of the trip.

In retrospect, I've realized that I wrote this one in present tense for some reason. I don't know, mixing things up a little bit, I guess.

Next blog: Berlin. This weekend: Back to Ireland.

Luck of the Irish. Allll right.