The End of Paris...

Finally, time and quality internet at the same moment! I’ll try to make up for all the boring text only posts now!

Lets see- Paris was an eye opening experience, on one hand you have beautiful monuments

And then there are parts that are absolutely disgusting. The street our hotel was on smelled of things that you really didn’t want to think about. Drains all over the city overflowed on a regular basis, and trash was truly everywhere. Now, I don’t know if I feel this way because our neighborhood was so gross, and since it took almost an hour to get to the ‘nice’ part of town so we didn’t go there much, or if that’s how it really is. However, despite some cool photos, I can’t say I’m a huge fan of Paris.

We did see a group of skaters doing vaults(?!) that was pretty impressive.

And if you look closely at this guy’s shirt, it reads “Michigan Hornets, Grand Valley State”. Is Grand Valley ‘The Hornets”?

The Arc de Triumph is pretty cool looking- but now I see why any time there is an accident in that circle, the insurance companies just go 50/50, no questions. I couldn’t even count the number of times people almost got into accidents, not that they were driving badly by any means, just that it was TONS of cars, and not much space for them, and nothing painted on the ground for non-locals to follow!

Btw- those tiny things down there- those are the pillars! 

There was a police presence EVERYWHERE in Paris. I never could make up my mind if I thought that was comforting, or terrifying. As soon as we got off the train we saw 5 police officers with huge machine guns. ~gulp~.

The good news was that around the major tourist sites, if the police were there, the gypsies weren’t that bad. I feel so mean saying that- but it was horrible to have them around. They’d grab you, blatantly try to reach into your pockets, yell, scream, badger. Ugh! Thankfully, as long as there was a group of us, it wasn’t TOO bad.

For my captain obvious statements of the day:

1. The Eiffel tower is a lot bigger than I expected.

2. The Eiffel tower was a lot HIGHER than I expected.

Obviously I don’t appreciate the ground as much as I should, and I am working on appreciating it more. I was so scared by the time I got off that thing! It was an amazing, and yet terrifying experience!

I also got to visit the Rodan museum.

I met the Thinker. We’re friends now.

And saw the Gates of Hell. And if that doesn’t scare you straight- Nothing will! Yikes!

There are more photos of everything on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2751107&id=2332258&l=cd214c271b.

I've got some photos from Prague up there already! I'll get them up here with real explanations soon!