Off to Paris

June has come and gone, which means my time here is nearly complete. But of course, I couldn’t go out without a bang. To assist me in this, I had cameo appearances from my brothers Robbie and Matthew. They made their first voyages over to Europe to make our own “O’Doyle rules”-style Euro trip.
The first one to arrive was Robbie, who made it to Madrid on June 14. He was in Spain while I worked my last week of school. Let me just say, it was sad to say goodbye to my teachers and students. They were a great group, and made my job both fun and easy. And my favorite class of seventh grade hellions even gave me a little going away shirt and flag that they all signed. I’m really going to miss them.
But anyways, back to the brothers. Robbie got here, but of course my last week of work was also one of my busiest. In my downtime, we were able to explore Madrid, see Santiago Bernabeu stadium, catch many-a World Cup football match (including watching Spain play with thousands of others outside of Real Madrid’s stadium), say goodbye to the great Rebecca Westlake, and enjoy a little Madrid life.
By the end of his week in Madrid, it was time to move on. And move on we did. All the way to Paris. We boarded a plane early Friday morning headed to Paris, where we spent the next 5 days. When we first got there, we took a free city tour (NewEurope tours, highly recommended, in many European cities), walked around the center, then settled in to watch some World Cup action. The next day, we walked around our hotel area before I had to leave to pick my little brother Matthew up at the airport. After getting to the airport and waiting for about an hour, I collect call my house in the US to find out Matthew’s plane from Louisville to Memphis was cancelled and he wasn’t going to arrive into Paris until Sunday morning. Sucks, but I made it back into the city and Robbie and I set out for Notre Dame.
When Matthew finally did arrive on Sunday, we hit the ground running. We bought these museum passes that gave us 2-day access to all kinds of museums in the city, and you bet we put them to use. The first day, we went to the D’Orsay and Orangerie art museums where we saw a lot of great impressionist work, Napoleon’s tomb, Rodin’s museum where we saw his famous thinker statue, and of course the Paris Sewer System museum. Yes, there is a sewer museum. And yes, it did smell terrible. We were also able to enjoy some fine French cuisine along the way, too. Many croissants were eaten. Many a baguette were also consumed. Needless to say, Matthew was extremely worn out after traveling and a full Parisian day.
The second day, we didn’t let up on the museum hunt. We woke up early, grabbed a croissant and coffee, and headed to the Louvre. We got there right when it opened, made it right in, and spent about 4 hours exploring the massive structure. In my opinion, it wasn’t as cool as the D’Orsay museum, but still nice. We got to see the Mona Lisa (which is a lot smaller in person) and many other masterpieces. The sheer size of the museum was overwhelming, so I was proud of us for making it as long as we did. After that, we made our way back over to Notre Dame, but didn’t brave the long line to climb the tower to the top. Instead, we made our way by metro over to Montmartre, an area of the city that is not only the Red Light District, but also one of the shadiest/dirtiest areas we visited. We got some good views of the city from the hill with the Sacre Coure church, saw some pretty bad breakdancers, got asked for money about 85 times, and got to see the Moulin Rouge. From there, we made our way (walking, of course) back into the city centre to go to the Pompidou modern art museum. Weird. It was one of the strangest museums I’ve ever been in. But hey, it was free. We called it a night after that.

Me in front of the Louvre.

Tuesday was our last day in Paris, so we again made the most of it. We took a train out to the Palace of Versailles. We were able to tour the palace, the gardens, and everything else on the premises. It was a huge complex, but we had perfect weather so we saw almost all of it. Oh, and a small Asian woman with a bedazzled neon pink visor almost get pickpocketed in the palace, at which point she started yelling and punching the pickpocketing woman.

Us in Versailles' gardens.
The gardens were awesome, and this is one of my favorite pics I've ever taken.

From Versailles, we made our way back into the city to the Eiffel Tower. After taking a few pictures from outside and taking a break to watch the France soccer match with about 2,000 other Frenchmen on a big screen outside the Eiffel Tower, we made our way to the stop. By stairs. We didn’t actually go all the way to the top because it was a really long line, but we went up to the second of three levels. It provided great views of the city, and allowed us to say that we had climbed the Eiffel Tower. We called it an early night because we had to catch an early-morning flight to our next desitnation: Prauge. But more on that later.

Of course I had to jump here!
All the brothers in front of the Eiffel Tower.

In all, Paris was a great place. It was a lot more expensive than Madrid, and of course we didn’t understand the language, but we still had a great time. There were so many famous sights and amazing experiences we were able to have here, and I’m glad I was able to have them with my brothers.