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Day 1-2 - March 13th, 2004
Orlando to NY to Chitown to Zurich to Paris
so heres the plan. go to paris, have a great time w/ the chickee and see lots of sights of the old world. so to do this, i have to get up at 6 a.m. fly from orlando to NY, then fly to chicago. then lay over for a while with the girlie. we used this time to combine our bags and carry on only one bag. so i give her a pair of underwear, and she's like, what is this for? so i'm like, i heard once that you should always carry on a change of underwear. she thinks this is stupid, but take the drawers. so 4 hours later, we fly forever to zurich, switzerland then fly to paris arriving somewhere around 11:30 a.m. Sunday into CDG airport. the flights went according to the shitty plan. you get free booze on the flight, and i also go to see lost in translation again, but i couldnt sleep much. let's just say that by the time we get to france, my body is freaking shot. i am not known to be good w/ no sleep. so we try to get our luggage, but it turns out that our luggage was still in chicago. so now, kristin looks like a dummy because she's gonna have to wear dirty drawers till our luggage get there. so this actually turns out to be a good thing though because we dont have to carry our luggage back to our hotel. so it's time for me to bust out the french and get us back to the hotel, but my nerves are so shot that we are lucky to get to our hotel. after a while, we stumble upon our hotel on the opposite side of town just in time for me to get a nap. in the evening, after some grub, we did some site seeing, including the place du nation and place de la bastille. both are places that they used to cut off heads when they did that shit. basically they are these big monuments all over the city from the past 1000 years, and pretty much all of them are phalli. Bastille is a neighborhood that is very young and reminiscent of capital hill in seattle. it has more bars and plenty of more restaurants and stores of all different flavors. eventually, we go back home to bed as tired gringos in a foreign land.

Day 3 - March 15th, 2004
Notre Dame and Latin Quarter
So on monday, we set the schedule for the rest of the days of our travel. we would get up around 11, slowly get ready for the day and roll out around noon to start the touristing. then we would pick up sandwiches on the street. for the first day, we went to Notre Dame. It is in the heart of the city, so it would give us a good feel for the old paris. after a quick metro ride, we were right there. Walking around down there, you can just feel how old the city is. We eventually found the cathedral. It is pretty damn big, but not bigger than you'd expect it. like all of these old-ass buildings, it is incredibly ornate. I can't imagine how many masons musta worked their butts off to do something like this. we eventually circled the inside and went back outside. then we paid some cash to go up in the towers. we were pretty high. the most interesting thing up there was teh belfry. i never realized that the belfry was made outta wood because if the large bells were too close to the masonry, the vibrations would crack the masonry. it makes sense, but it's just interesting to think about. so then we circled around to the back of the cathedral. it turns out that the view from behind the cathredral is so much cooler than the front because you can see the buttresses and gargoyles and a really cool spire. after that we walked over to the latin quarter, which is another district with a ton of bars and cafes. then we used kristin's french translation skills. she pointed to this bar and a sign said, "happy hour." she's like, "does that mean the same thing?" and i'm like, "i dunno, but i think we should explore." so after two beers, kristin sees a dead bug on the table, and she thinks it's the coolest thing ever. in my opinion the coolest thing was this hot water pint cleaner that they use on your glass. they turn the glass over and press down on this thing and hot water jets to clean the glass. anyway, we eventually catch some dinner and head home. we went to a cafe to get dinner, but we forgot the dictionary. so i figure, no big deal, i know french. we look at the menu and without a english speaking waiter in sight, i order beef tartar. little do i know that this means i'm going to get raw beef. turns out tartar means not cooked. it literally looked like raw hamburger with a little onions in it, and that's all it is. it reminded me of canned cat food on my plate. after dinner, we get ourselves some cheap ass wine and drink it, mostly just to kill the E Coli and mad cow in my stomach. eventually we cashed out around 2 or 3.

Day 4 - March 16th, 2004
Musee d'Orsay and Invalides
next day we start with the musee d'orsay. it holds a lot of important impressionist and post-impressionist works. kris didn't know much about art history, but i tried to help her out. she was more interested in some of the ornate furniture and stuff like that they have there. there also was a bunch of cool busts and statues. the building was really sweet. it actually is a converted train station, but the lights and design is damn cool. next we walked through the government district. of course their buildings are all fancy, old and ornate. we actually stumbled upon the musee de rodin. basically it is a bunch of gardens w/ fancy sculptures. we didnt even realize that this was the home of le penseur(the thinker). it was pretty cool. this just points out how much more stuff we coulda missed, but i think we got a lot of it. next we went to the hotel des invalides(hotel of the wounded). it is a huge military facility equipped with an enormous courtyards. these courtyards have lots of old canons all over the place in addition memorials to all french conflicts. it also has a really cool chapel, or actually 2 chapels separated by a glass divider. there used to be 2, but they are totally different achitecture, so they split them. the first has lots of old flags and is dedicated to great leaders. it is big and ornate. the second is even bigger and marblier. it is almost eerie and it contains 6 tombs. This is just one of the examples of something incredibly big and ridiculous that napoleon built for himself. all over the city, there are tributes that napoleon built to his own greatness. the funniest thing is that most of them are long and pointy with a gold top. after the amazingness of the invalides, we walked out to the courtyard and picked out a restaurant from the guide. we trekked across the city and finally found the place. now the nice thing about france is that 12% gratuity is already added into meals, but the bad thing is that means the waiters dont give 2 shits about you. they never come back to check how your meal is. we sat down at a restaurant and found ourselves an english speaking waiter. we order some roasted chicken to avoid the tartar debacle. the wines are cheap, so we wanna take advantage of this. i ask the waiter for advice, and he suggests a 20 dollar bottle of wine. so i'm like, "i'll just take the cheap house wine." from then on, the waiter spoke in all french and was clearly pissed off. this seemed to be our only time of pissing off some frenchies, which wasnt bad. after this, we made our way home and drank some beers and went to bed.

Day 5 - March 17th, 2004
Versailles and St Paddy's Day
so to go to versailles, it was at least an hour ride from our hotel. so after a long trip, we walk our way to the chateau du versailles. lets just say it's the biggest damn house in the world. it may not be, but it is a big damn house. walking on the cobblestones, it is so hard to imagine what it felt like to live there. this is when kristin started waxing intellectual with some deep thoughts. she says, "i bet the guy who built this said, 'i'm really important.'" later in the day after after seeing how many rooms each person had and all the extravagant paintings and murals, woodwork, gold everything, she says, "i really would like to be one of the people that lived here." you can tell that we designed the white house after something like that, but ours is so much weaker than theirs, but i'm glad because all of this ornateness is just too much. anyway, in addition to the big-ass house, there were huge gardens and forests, along with 2 other big houses for foreign dignitaries. i think the most interesting conversation k and i had was guessing how many wenches the king would have. my guess is w/ the size of his house, let alone all the huge side-houses, he could have at least 12-15 wenches without each wench ever seeing any of the other ones, or the queen. another interesting thing is that the king would not actually sleep in the same bed as the queen. kristin eventually switched the convo to how many studs the queenie would keep. my guess is no more than 2. i'm guessing it would be a pretty bold move to do that for the queen because if big man found out about, you're ass would be grass. at any rate, she thought it'd be a lot more, but i doubt it, plus chicas really wouldnt need as many dudes, or i wouldnt think so. well, this convo eventually got old. the coolest part eventually was to go in the king and queen's chamber with audio headset playing explaining how many ceremonies the king would go through every day. in versailles, there also was a huge chapel that the king would go to mass in. also, it is interesting that the king wouldnt eat dinner till 10 pm everyday. after everything shut down, we returned home for dinner. that nite was st paddy's day. we got some road sodas, which arent even illegal in paris. drinking a beer isnt any different than drinking a coke in paris. so we got kinda drunk and then headed to a pub. we bumped into some americans and parisiens, but the most notable thing about bar was how it put harry's to shame in terms of smokiness. eventually we went home so that we could make it before the metro shut down.

Day 6 - March 18th, 2004
Louvre and Arc de Triomphe
the next day we went to the famed louvre. now i thought that this was just an art museum, but in reality, it is just a big ass museum, and wehn i say big ass, i mean golf course big. we started out with the egyptian wing, which has so many stolen priceless goods. we are talking 50-60 rooms of this stuff. now what initially struck me as amazing with the louvre was that not only is the crap in it priceless, but the building itself was unbelieveable. it has sculpted, gold plated woodwork and ceilings that are unbelievable works of art in themselves. after egypt and rome and greece, we decided to check out the italian painting wing. now every painting was either based on mythology or jesu chisto. you could tell the difference becauase the mythological paintings had naked people in them. after seeing numerous 15'x10' paintings, we finally saw the mona lisa and about 5 other da vinci's. after walking all this, we decided to take a break. that day, we brought take a break in the tulip garden. this is a nice thing built by napoleon equipped with fountains and beautiful trees and flowers. we sat in front of this fountain and read our books and probably had the best time in all of our trip by just relaxing for 5 seconds. after the museum closed, we walked in a strange way to the champs elysee and eventually the arc de triomphe. this is a monument built by napoleon to celebrate all french wars. ironically it turns out france has fought in wars even though they havent fought in the past 75 years. the view on the top was neat, but after seeing so many high views of the city, it wasnt as cool as big american cityscapes. we then came down the stairs to go to dinner and hit the hay.

Day 7 - March 19th, 2004
Monmatre and Sacre Coeur
with the second to last day, we went to the hilly neighborhood of monmartre. this is an artsy fartsy village in an artsy fartsy town. after getting off the metro, we realized that we were not only in the an arty district, but an alternative distict. the main road of this neighborhood was littered with sex shops and peep shows and everything of low morality. we walked up to the moulin rouge, but since it costs like a 100 dollars to go to, we decided to skip it. we then climbed the hills to go to the beatiful sacre coeur. this is a white cathedral that is almost as breath taking as notre dame. it also provides a great view of the city. before it got too late, we decided to return to bastille for some drinks and a relaxing evening. on the way back, we got treated to music on the actual metro ride. one thing that was very cool was the number of musicians in the metro stations, but this time, the act travelled with us on the car, playing right in front of us. this time, it was a band of 3 accordions and an upright bass. one of the accordion players could really wail and that was pretty cool. it actually scared many of the passengers on the cart, but we liked it.

Day 8 - March 20th, 2004
Catacombs and Tour Eiffel
so for our final day in a foreign land, we did not have much to do. kris really wanted to see the catacombs of france. we took the metro to the area, but after getting to right corner, we spent a half hour trying to find the actual entrance to the catacombs. eventually, we made our way down to them. basically because of mass graves due to the revolution killings and other dead bodies, there were bodies getting too close to rich peoples' wine cellars. so a rat problem developed. so the rich people took the bones and put them all in this one place. so they would take a whole cemetary and organize them into an area under southern france. they however would not organize the bodies by person, but by bone type. so we walked for about an hour seeing all of these bone piles, which I am guessing almost totals 100,000 dead frenchies. the funny thing is that the people that stacked the body parts tried to be artistic with the skulls and femurs, which is morbidly spectactular. after that, we made our way up to the tour eiffel. it cost a lot to take an elevator to the top, so we took the stairs up to the first level. next we didnt wanna pay, so we took the stairs to the second level. we couldnt take the stairs to the summit. since it really wasn't that cool, we stopped our ascent and found some dinner. eventually we made our way back to our hotel to get ready for the trip home.

Day 9 - March 21st, 2004
Paris to Zurich to Chitown to Orlando
so the last day of the trip wasnt an easy one. our flight left at 7:30 from an airport over an hour away. conventional wisdom tells you that you should be at the airport a good 2 hours before a flight. so this already makes it 5:30, which is a half hour after the train system starts. we were easily a 45 trip away. so instead of paying 60+ euros to book a cab or try and catch some weird shuttle to risk it by getting on the first train and hope it works out. one problem with this is that the station we'd been going to didnt have any train lines going through it that started before 5:30, so we had to walk twice as far to one that did. so we got up at 4 am (that's 10 pm e.s.t) to be walking at 4:30 to get to the station at 5. after walking through the rain for a half hour, we found street entrance to the station locked. after 20 mins, we finally went in a different door, which allowed us to board a train at 5:36. after a little luck catching a direct train, we were at the airport by 6:20. after some running around to find our shit, we made it in time to catch our flight. then we flew back to zurich then to chitown arriving around 2:30 eastern. then i had to dump off the girlie for my parents to take her back to school. this process of leaving the chica, especially after a long vacation, is the worst part about the long distance game. we've been doing it for about 9 months now, and i guess the hard part is that there is no foreseeable solution to it quite yet. anyway, i got me a royal w/ cheese at McD's and reported to the terminal. i luckily flew standby on a direct flight 3 hours before my flight, which got me back at my apartment at 7:00 pm. by the time i finally got home, i was so exhausted that i almost couldnt sleep. after a little correspondance w/ folks, i finally kicked it at 10 to be ready for work the next morning.