The Paris Marathon

Paris, France

So as I get farther into this adventure the keyboards keep getting weirder and weirder. Anne just left me to go back to geneva, and I'm hanging out still. At 6:30 tomorrow morning I'm getting on a plane to go to Cairo...and I thought going to Italy was like jumping off a cliff. And by the time I get there I will have had less than 12 hours of sleep in 3 nights

The Paris Marathon (no running involved)
I had the ticket time wrong, so we got to the station at 6:45, for a 7:51 train. I think I slept most of the train ride. Then we figured out the metro system and got to our hotel only to find out that the web site is crap and they had overbooked. At least they reserved us a room in another hotel. First stop...the eifel tower. We couldn't go all the way up because it was overcrowded, but we did get to the second floor which was high enough for me. Next the arch de triumph where they were having some kind of parade thing. It's way hard to find the tunnel over to the arch instead of ending up back in the metro. We went to ile st. loius and walked around and had yummy french crepes and galletes. There was a funny mix up when seperate checks became green salad. It was a very good green salad though.

We went to notre dame and it was still open which was odd and there were lots of candles light and a picture of the pope, and there was some kind of mass going on. It's a lot nicer and it feels more like a religious spiritual place with a ceremony going on instead of hoards of tourists shoving. Take a deep breath before continuing the marathon. Then hike up to the top of momortre and get harrased by scary guys and go to mass at sacre cour. They said the pope's name a whole bunch of times and kept talking about his message. And so it turns out I went to mass on the day of the pope's death (in case you weren't sure, I am not catholic).

But it's not over yet. Today we got up way early and went to the louvre and had the best pain au chocolat I've ever had. Since it's the first sunday of the month the louvre was free. We saw the mona lisa which has amazing eyes. It makes me so mad, almost everyone looking at it felt like they needed to take a picture, and they couldn't even turn off the flashes on their cameras. Buy a postcard...you're damaging the art and the picture won't be great anyways. Turns out there's more to the louvre than the mona lisa (shock). We saw a lot (this is marathon) including stuff by rafiel, michelangelo, el greco, rembrant umm I forget. Oh yeah, and hamarabi's code which is so so cool. It brings me back to Gilgamesh and the english class of Ms. Brooks.

Anyways, now Anne is on the train and I am in the internet cafe. I wonder what the keyboards in egypt will be like.