An Americans in Paris

Last weekend we conquered England’s greatest defence. What has protected this island for thousands of years, what foiled Napoleon and Hitler alike was defeated with a single ticket purchase. The convenient strip of water that has insulated England from the world for human history, the English Channel, was crossed by three upbeat Americans laughing, reading, and playing games in the space of 20 minutes. What a great age we live in.

The three of us (Lauren, her brother Aidan, and Nick) set off Friday morning catching a train to London and then picking up the high-speed Eurostar train from London Waterloo staion. After an eventful trip through security, with Nick being forced to eat his lunch alone with the security guard since he made the mistake of going through the entrance and couldn’t leave, we were off to France at 190 mph! For parts of the trip we travelled next to the highway, and it was fun to fly past the cars in the fast lane like they were standing still. We made it to the “aromatic” subways of Paris by late afternoon and our hotel just before dinner. Our surprisingly affordable posh-pad was south of the river Seine, which cuts the city in half running roughly west-to-east.

After a dinner out where the waiter spoke like Donald Duck when Lauren ordered duck and flew a remote-controlled helicopter around the restaurant, we realized that Paris wouldn’t exactly match the stereotypes we had. We turned on the TV and found that we got channels in 7 languages, including a very frightening Russian talk show, and an equally frightening Japanese karaoke channel. The best though was the CRAZY show about America featuring interviews with the fringes of American culture including three guys drinking on a dark basement staircase telling the French “how it was” in America. We made it our goal to be the nice, friendly, “normal” kind of Americans for our time in Paris—ambassadors of awesome, if you will.

Over the next three days we saw and did a ton, including a riverboat tour of Paris, trips to the Louvre, Pompidou Center, Luxemburg Gardens, Notre Dame, a Parisian food market, and of course, the Eiffel Tower. You can see pictures of some of these here, but sadly, the 4th member of our team (our digital camera) died after years of exceptional service. Unfortunately, this means that Nick will be forced to get a nicer, new camera with lots of sweet features for the rest of our trips this summer. Too bad.

Generally we were impressed by how relaxed Paris was: the historic center is much smaller than London and the wide streets, cafes everywhere, and great parks make it easy to just lounge. The number of cafes is really amazing, I guess they are there to cope with the masses of tourists but it seems like Parisians must not cook much at home either. We spent an afternoon relaxing in a park, and enjoyed people watching, including a group of men hunched around a table playing speed chess in what seemed to be the “chess” section of the park. They had to tap this timer and games only lasted like 5 minutes, which was amazing - it looked like a highly choreographed 'hand dance'. We totally could have taken them.

The food market was a good experience too, and we had fun pointed at food and then making ridiculous hand-motions and sounds to try to explain how much cheese, or bread, or olives we wanted. English definitely didn’t get you too far in Paris, and we were reliant on Aidan’s French many times. We would point at some things, he would utter strange sounds and then we got those things…it was a good system. One of the best meals we had was our last lunch, on this cool island east of Notre Dame. We did a little walking tour of the island, checked out some of the shops and then found a little crepe restaurant off the main street. There was no English to be had there, but the owner was friendly and made great crepes. Like the rest of Paris, eating a meal there was a very leisurely activity, and our waitresses always seemed surprised when we wanted to pay and actually leave. Though the industrious American in me would find the pace hard to get use to, Paris is a great place to go for a vacation…it’s all just so relaxed. We had a great time taking it all in.

Chewing on a sandwich on the way home and looking out the window as the French countryside sped by I was struck again by what an amazing opportunity this stint out of the US has been. Many things are close to the same…but vastly different as well. The fields looked similar to the ones I had driven through hundreds of times in the States, but I could look out the window as the 180 mph train blurred the heads of grain and imagine generations of farmers who worked these fields as the centuries stretch back. This was the edge of the known world at one time, and the site of so many lives and wars, feasts and funerals. These fields have seen so much, yet still they are here to yield food to the people of France today. The history in this part of the world is incredible, and reminds you how short our 3 score and 10 years walking on it are.