Thursday, August 24, 2006

Slacker Continuation - Vacation Part 3

Okay, so I'm a serious slacker. I wish I had a normal schedule like the rest of the world but well I work at the commissary and it sucks. One week I was working days and now for the next 2 weeks I'm working nights. I mean it isn't really late at night but I go to be WAY earlier than I use to. Those of you that knew me in college knew that if I was getting to bed before 2 a.m. I was doing good. Anyways by the time I get home from work the last thing that I want to do is get on the computer and when I'm up in the morning before I go to work, I'm trying to do chores that should have been done the night before by Tim. But its okay, he is in school and he did most of the housework when I was doing school. So vacation right. Still trying to get caught up there. So here we go...

Day 6 - We got up the next day and ate breakfast at the hotel (since we paid for it). So where was the first place you go to on a fresh day...the Eiffel Tower. This time we went up. We got there around 10 a little before the crowds arrived. They had 3 of the 4 legs open to go up. Now if you want to take the lift (elevator) you have to pay, obviously. We saw the lines and Tim said, no we can walk it. It isn't that far.....YEAH RIGHT!!!! To the first level it was like 420 steps. I think we went up a 350 when we were in Rome to the top of the Vatican. So we get to the top, it was a nice day, we took pictures, etc. and started our way up to the 2nd level. This one wasn't as bad, in total it was 680 steps from bottom to second level. After this we had to pay for the lift to go to the top and the line was crazy so we opted not to. We don't feel bad either, I mean it is an amazing sight and all but....well it was great. Rome was better in my opinion. Anyways, we go back down and sent postcards from the 1st level and made our way back down to the bottom. We walked across the street and set up our tripod and got our Christmas card picture for this coming holiday season.

After this we went down to the Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, and other various sites. They were all nice but well not great like I thinking they would be. We were going to go in Notre Dame and it was free to get in there but the line to get in was around the building and well once you have seen one cathedral you have pretty much seen them all. They all start to look the same. They all have old flag hanging, really pretty glass windows, and graves that you walk around in various places around the cathedral. They get boring rather quickly actually.

We did do some shopping this day as well. Paris is known for their fashion and of course it was way to expensive for us to afford but we both did by new watches from Swatch. Mine is silver and blue and Tim's is a really thin watch, not what I thought he would get but it looks good on him.

We had dinner at the Hard Rock and got our normal things that we get when we got there. We got 2 Hurricane glasses, t-shirts, a shot glass, and a magnet. I have learned that, obviously, the food is different from country to country and have not decided when I go to the Hard Rock in various cities that I'm only going to eat a cheeseburger. I had a roast beef sandwich and well it didn't taste as good as it sounded in the menu. Maybe it was just me, who knows. We went back to our room after a very long tiring day and took a shower in our tiny shower stall, if you want to even call it that and then laid in our extremely hot room with a small fan rotating in the corner, can you picture it?

Day 8 - Today we went to the Louve. We walked by it the previous day to get our pictures outside because (*Note) the Louve is closed on Tuesdays. We knew this because we had friends that made this mistake the previous year. You know, it is amazing how technology is taking over our world. To get our tickets to enter you didn't pay a person at a ticket desk, you paid a machine. It looked like a change machine that you would find in laundry mat or video arcade. So we paid and went in to one of the 3 very large branches of the Louve.

We picked the one that had a lot of statues in it. Interesting but got boring real quick. Afterwards we headed towards the Mona Lisa. When we finally got close to it there was a huge mob of people gathered around it with like 4 security guards standing next to it. It was smaller than I thought it would be. It was on this like 12 foot wall in the middle of the room and was protected by about 4 inches of glass. I saw it and again I was unimpressed. Nothing really great.

For those of you who have seen the Da Vinci Code you know that they did film in the Louve. The Louve actually had a tour called the Da Vinci Code that you could take yourself. We wanted to see the inverted pyramid from the movie and so I don't spoil it for those who have not seen it you know why. We looked and looked and couldn't find it. Finally after leaving and walking towards the exit did we finally find it. It was impressive. Tim was excited to see it, it was one of the main things that he wanted to see.

We left the Louve because we were getting really bored. I mean you can only look at so much art in one day. We walked around Paris for the rest of the day and we bought dinner and ate it in the park as we people watched. People watching is interesting. We both were about to throw up because there was this couple that were making out right behind us, I just wanted to turn around and say get a room. I mean she was pratically on top of him and the sad part was is that she wasn't even all that good looking. Anyways we left and went back to our hotel for another night in the sweat box.

Day 9 - Now it took us about 2 hours to get to our hotel in Paris and about 25 minutes to get out of Paris. Of course Tim was driving this time and he only had to make about 6 turns and we were done where as I had to go through the giant "round-a-bout" 4 times before I even found the right exit. So we head to Brugge for chocolate. We got there in the afternoon, parked the car and headed out. Brugge is a nice town, lots of shopping. We took a few pictures and ate some lunch. We both had Belgium waffles which were excellent. We then again were getting bored. I mean you can only do so much shopping. I was ready to go home at this point, I was tired, we had been driving for many days and well I was ready for a nap. So I asked Tim if we could go home early and he seemed to be thinking the same thing, but first we had to buy our chocolate.

We finally found a chocolate store. We had about 20+ stores to pick from. We were in there for about 40 minutes picking out different chocolates. It was crazy. We spend about 40 euros (about $65) on chocolate. It was now on to France for our ferry ride back. We caught an early ferry and were home around 10 or so that night. What a trip! It was great.

The highlight for me was Germany. What a pretty country. Neither Tim or I were very impressed with Paris. It is nice to say that we have done it but we wouldn't go back again. The people were mean and the city was dirty. All in all it was a good vacation. I want to go to Egypt next year but we'll have to wait and see.

No comments: