cuponoodles

July 30, 2006

The next day we decided to walk up to the top of Montmartre to the Basilique du Sacre Coeur, an old Roman Catholic church on top of the hill with a great view of Paris. After ascending a number of steps through a quiet part of the neighborhood, we found ourselves suddenly in the midst of a crowd of tourists vying for the best views.

We wandered through the church admiring the beautiful mosaic on its ceiling and then came out and sat on the steps of the church to admire the view.

A Taiwanese girl asked me to take her photo and afterwards we struck up a conversation. Her name was Georgia and she was traveling solo, which seems to be uncommon for Asian females as we've usually seen them clustered in groups of three or more. She had already traveled through the U.S. at one point and was headed all over the rest of Europe. She said she would be headed to the Louvre the next day and we said we'd do the same though we all doubted that we would cross each other's paths in the huge museum.

Hiro and I headed down the numerous steps to the main streets of Montmartre, but we were stopped by a couple of African men. One of the men asked me to hold a looped piece of string, and not thinking about it, I did as he asked. The next thing I knew, he was braiding the string while asking me where I was from and talking about friendship and other things. Once the yellow, red and green bracelet was on my wrist he said he's give it to me for 10. For an instant I thought he meant 10 cents, but obviously he wanted 10 euros for the bracelets now worn by me and my brother. Firmly, I told him no and began to take it off. He asked me why I wasn't being cool and motioned for me not to take it off. Repeating "no," and shaking my head, he took the bracelet off. Turning to the guy selling the bracelet to my brother, I told him to take it off and he refused saying that my brother was cool with it, but obviously he was not. The man took it off and said something like, "You are not American, you must be from China." Brushing them off, and checking our pockets, we were glad to be out of their presence.

Using advice from Georgia, we bought a couple of cheap 3.20 euro all-day metro passes (only on Sundays) and took the Parisian subway to the Arc de Triomphe.

The sky started to pour and we took cover under some trees and admired the Arc and the crazy traffic that runs around it. Getting under the Arc and then walking up to the top would have cost us 5 euros each, so we decided to head back down to the metro.

Once in the metro, I thought about the weather and figured that spending a few hours in the Louvre and out of the rain wouldn't be a bad idea. We could then see more of the Louvre the next day. However, once we got outside of the museum the rain had let up, so we walked down along the Seine and toward Notre Dame.

We stopped for a Big Mac and a Royale with Cheese because we had little time for a very long meal as the afternoon was coming to a close and the cathedral would be closing in only a couple of hours. We then headed for the nearly 800-year-old Gothic structure. Though I liked the mosaic interior of the Sacre Couer more, the Gothic architecture of Notre Dame was amazing and the stained glass was beautiful. Organ music played as we walked along with the other visitors, while the faithful sat on pews in the center of the cathedral.

We looked for a ticket booth to pay for admission to the top and mistakenly paid 4 euros to walk through the cathedral's treasury, which displayed a number of crucifixes decorated with gold, crowns of French monarchs, and busts of former archbishops.

Once outside we saw a long line and found that for around 7 euros each we could go to the top. After a half-hour wait (where we watched a gray tabby lounged on a chair outside a cafe while patrons ate nearby) we marched up a very long flight of spiraling stairs and, after wheezing for a minute or two, found ourselves with a nice view of Paris and some picturesque gargoyles. After taking a look at the famed bell, we went up even more stairs and got an even better view of the city.

Once we were finished we came back to the hostel and feasted on some wonder pasta with vegetables (vegetables can be noticably missing on a backpackers diet, which usually consists of bread, cheese, meat, fried potatoes and the occasional piece of fruit) cooked by the wonderful Tiffany and finished the night by drinking even more cheap French wine.