A Blog Post to Rival War and Peace

I have good news everyone!  I'm not dead.  I blame my past week-and-a-half's absence on the good ol' "need a vacation from my vacation" syndrome.  It has been quite a busy week since Michael left, what with all the important things I had to do, like putting off signing up for next semester's classes until absolutely the last second, trying to help co-edit a literary magazine across the Atlantic ocean, designing a currency for my make-believe yet totally legitimate and not at all childish online country, watching the entirety of season three of Battlestar Galactica so I could understand the season four premier on Friday, and battling the strongest case of homesickness/depression/melancholitude (to coin a term) I've experienced thus far.  Clearly, I have been taking something of a break from the all-Europe all the time channel and have been spending most of my time on the hermit channel this week.

 

But that's all boring and depressing, which is why it's in my introductory paragraph.  I still have adventures yet untold from Paris and London!  When we last left our heroes, they had been scurrying through rain-sodden Paris like drowned rats, occasionally taking refuge under a bridge on Michael's whim.  We saw the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo at the Louvre, were awe-struck by the Notre Dame cathedral, and drank coffee in a corner café along Quai St. Michel in order to get out of the rain.

 

On our second full day in Paris, we decided to motivate ourselves to get up early and travel to Versailles.  Thankfully, the rain had abated, which made the hour-and-a-half-long waiting process a lot more pleasant.  When we finally got our tickets, we had no idea where to start, so we just picked a entryway and went in.  As it turns out, Versailles is quite well furbished.  If you like gold - or if you have an inappropriate obsession with gold - then you might want to get in contact with a real estate agent in Versailles.  Great location too.  There was seemingly no end to the rooms gilded, bedecked, encrusted, embroidered, and even slathered with gold.  Of course there's a lot of velvet, crystal, and artwork to be had if the gold isn't impressive enough.  The decadence was overwhelming, and, as Michael pointed out, after a while it actually became underwhelming.  Oh yeah?  More gold?  Been there, done that.  The whole time we were there, I just kept trying to imagine what it would be like to think that you were so great that you needed to be surrounded by such obscene opulence.  In fact, Tommy, Michael, and I were in agreement that the most pleasing part of our time at Versailles was spent in the massive gardens that, while clearly decadent and out of touch with reality, were also very peaceful and pretty, even with no leaves on the trees.

We returned to Paris and walked down the Avenue des Champs Elysees in order to round everything out with a little modern-day opulence.  It was actually quite a nice walk during which the beginning sunset made up for the previous day's rain.  But the real cherry on top was the Arc de Triomphe, which was nothing if not a testament to one's problem solving skills.  For a while, we were convinced that you had to dodge death in the form of 5 lanes of oncoming "roundabout" traffic in order to get to the arc, but as it turned out, you just had to access it through a sort of super-secret underground passage way.  

 

When we finally emerged underneath the Arc we had the opportunity to see some sort of French military memorial service featuring French soldiers from all walks of life, some of whom looked like they may have served in dubya-dubya-one.  Tommy opted not to come with Michael and I to the top of the Arc, and boy did he miss out.  The view from up there was tremendous since the Arc is already on what seems to be one of the higher points in the city.  It definitely made up for missing out on the Eiffel Tower.  I got many a lovely picture of the rooftops of Paris sitting in the haze of the setting sun.

 

The next day was a travel day that nevertheless contained a little adventure of its own.  Once we arrived at the dreaded Charles de Gaulle Airport, we were duly confused by the fact that each gate has its own security checkpoint.  Once we had that figured out, we just had to sit around munching croissants and drinking tasty Orangina in a nearby café until we were assigned a gate.  Everything was peachy until we reached the security checkpoint where my backpack was singled out and a French guard yelled at me what I thought was a French word, but what turned out to be "carabiner."  Our following conversation went a little something like this: "My, what a big carabiner you have..." "Yes, all the better to bludgeon you with, my dear."  Yeah... as it turns out, the French seem to be of the opinion that a carabiner of the kind I use to keep my water bottle attached to my backpack can be used as a sort of makeshift brass-knuckle.  I tried to explain to the guard that the carabiner had sentimental value, that my dad had given it to me out of the blue on my 17th birthday, but I'm not really sure how to convey that to a native English speaker either.  In the end, I shed a tear or two as the guard deposited my beloved carabiner in the box marked blatantly, TO BE DESTROYED.

 

With all hopes of my becoming a Francophile tossed out with the carabiner, we arrived in London after only a short puddle-jump.  In fact, the ride aboard the Underground, which lasted at least an hour, may have been longer than our total flight time.  Maybe it was because I left France on such a bad note, but something about London immediately struck me as warm and inviting.  It may have also been as simple as the fact that this was the first English-speaking country I had been to in almost three months.  Either way, I dug London as soon as we got there.

 

We checked into our hostel and promptly decided to make the most of the remaining daylight by questing for the fabled Fish and Chips!  This turned out to be a far more difficult task than we originally figured, and after at least an hour without even a whiff of vinegar, we settled for meat pies and a cold floor at a train station instead.  Of course, we did see Big Ben and Trafalgar Square along the way.

 

The next morning we got up early in order to avoid London all together.  This wasn't without good reason, of course; Michael and I had decided well in advance that since we had both wanted to go to Legoland so badly as kids, we couldn't pass up the golden opportunity to visit the one only about a half-hour's train ride away in nearby Windsor.  We arrived in Windsor only to ignore what most tourists go to Windsor to see: Windsor Castle.  No, we hopped on the bus headed for Legoland and with each passing stop, it soon became clear that we were going to be the only adults there without a child to accompany us.  That turned out to be right on the money.  We were either the youngest adults or the oldest kids in the park (I prefer to think of myself as the later, at least as far as it relates to Legos).

 

Undaunted by how blatantly creepy we felt amongst all the youngsters, Michael, Tommy, and I proceeded to wander aimlessly around what soon became clear was a theme-park aimed only at the 12-and-younger demographic.  We rode two roller-coasters that were pretty limp by Michael's standards, but which thrilled me as a newcomer to the roller-coaster scene just about as much as it did the little 6-to-10-year olds all around us.  Plus, you got to feel like you were actually sitting inside a lego, which is pretty sweet.  All was vindicated, however, when we reached "Miniland," which is what my perception of Legoland had been prior to coming to this one.  Miniland, at least at the Windsor Legoland, is just a gigantic miniature recreation of famous landmarks in England, Scottland, France, America, and a few other places in Europe.  We saw all of London... made of Legos, all of Paris... made of Legos, and even the Kennedy Space Center... made of Legos.  There was even a miniature soccer stadium made of Legos with a miniature streaker made of Legos being chased across the field by constables made of Legos.  It made my inner-ten-year-old go nuts.  I can die happy now.

We returned to London for the afternoon in just enough time to stroll through St. James' Park, make friends with the squirrels, and see Buckingham palace in the sunset.  We were disappointed to see that not only were the stern ceremonial guards not wearing gigantic silly black fuzzy hats, but they were behind a big gate, so we couldn't even test their tenacity by making silly faces or inappropriate gestures at them.  At least the average police officer in London still wears a silly helmet like the kind I remember from Mary Poppins.

Our last day in London was spent actually seeing London.  We headed first to the Tower of London and got to, amongst other things, see the Crown Jewels and marvel at some more ostentatious affluence.  After the Tower, we finally got our fish & chips at a nearby stand, but it didn't live up to Michael's particular standards of being served in a rolled up newspaper.  Maybe they just don't do that anymore and maybe Londoners just finally got sick of fish and chips.  I imagine that would be like New Yorkers getting tired of hot dogs or falafel... whatever... it's a mystery.

 

Around that time we got our London dosage of rain.  We pulled out our umbrellas to cross the Tower Bridge and then hurred on to a bus in hopes that it would keep us a little dry and deliver us to a Underground station (lord knows there's enough of them), but as it turned out we were being driven further and further into London's suburbia and had to get off the bus and back on going the other direction.  Eventually, we made it over to the National Gallery and the National Portrait gallery, the later of which I found particularly interesting, but which was cut short by Michael and Tommy being tired nincompoops.  The Tudor portraits were pretty dull, I'll agree, but the more modern paintings and photographic portraits we simply fascinating.  We ended the evening by visiting a bar in the same neighborhood as our hostel called "World's End," which looked like ye typical British pub, but which turned out to be full of death metal and the kind of people I like to call "over-the-counter counter-culture."

 

That would seemingly be the end of my Easter Break adventures, but it was not.  No.  No, it was not.  The Saga of Terminal Five actually began during our stay in London.  On our first morning we noticed in the free papers that were shoved in our faces at the Underground stations the wellspring of articles bemoaning the monstrosity that was London Heathrow's new Terminal Five.  The basic facts are as follows: T5 has been in the works for something like 20 years; it was opened for the first time the day after we arrived; it now handles all British Airways flights; it is a behemoth; tons of baggage was lost on the first few days; and it started its carrier with some catastrophic amount of canceled flights like 60 a day or something like that.  

 

Needless to say, though we woke up to catch a taxi at 4 in the morning and had an excellent conversation with a very well-traveled taxi-driver, we were soon dismayed to find that our flight had been canceled and that there were clearly not enough or well enough trained employees on staff to handle the number of people with cancelled flights with any speed or grace.  We did finally get a new flight for 10 in the morning along with a £5 meal voucher, which is pretty good if you think about it in terms of being $10 American.  Thus began our long wait in the very shiny, very commercial, very structurally interesting Terminal 5.  At least I got a few more pictures for my "Michael Can Sleep Anywhere" album.

 

That's all for now.  I have to go treat the blisters on my fingers.  There won't be any pictures with this post, but I will be posting a few new links to whole albums in the next few days.  I'll leave a small post when they're up.