Excerpts from France, 2002

I went to Europe in 2002 with my high school French Club.  Below are excerpts from the journal I kept while in France and pages from the photo scrapbook I made when I came home.

May 28, 2002

"We're on the plane right now, approaching Montreal.  This plane is so damn cool.  It's huge and a lot of the people on it are [speaking} French...   This plane (Northwest) has several of its own "radio stations" and a "TV station."  I watched Fraser.  It also has an inflight movie and peanuts.  I've been waiting for peanuts on an airplane all damn day.  We're traveling up to 650 mph and from Detroit to Paris it's 4,173 miles.  The length of the flight is estimated at six hours 56 minutes....that's a long flight and it's no smoking all the way."  

Notes:  I am tickled by my enthusiasm for air travel expressed here.  I was 18 and it was all new to me.  I'd flown only once prior to this trip.  Things like being able to watch TV on a plane were pretty cutting-edge for me at this point in my life.  I wonder how I selected Fraser.  I don't ever remember liking that show.  I wish I had mentioned what they were playing for the in-flight movie.  The peanuts thing made me laugh.  I guess I had a certain expectation about plane snacks.  My dread of not being able to have a cigarette for seven hours makes me grateful all over again that I quit smoking.  

May 29, 2002  

"Well, we're finally here.  We're actually in Paris, France!  How awesome is that?  The flight was over seven hours and really uncomfortable.  ...I met Marj's dad at the airport (Charles de Gaulle).  He even kissed my cheek.  He seems nice and I think we'll get along.  Our tour guide, Mark, is from Scotland...Alli and I have our own room on the top floor of the "Hôtel Arley."  It has a big window with an amazing view of the Eiffel Tower.  It is so beautiful.  Alli and I ate at this restaurant down the street and had Roast Lapin (rabbit) and some sort of yummy fried potatoes.  We just returned from seeing the Eiffel Tower which was really huge and really cool.  We walked the stairs almost all the way down however which made my poor legs into Jello.  But it was incredible.  It blew my mind...I was on top of the Eiffel Tower!  ...Me, Alli, Anthony, and Ben went to the bar tonight.  Alli and Ben had wine and "Americanos" which turned out to be bourbon and orange slices.  I had 1664 and Leffe.  Both very good bieres.  ...it was cool to be able to go to the bar!"

Notes:  I suspect this should have been dated May 30 what with the time zones and all.  Marj was my exchange student that year.  She had returned home to Belgium earlier in May.  Since she had acquired stuff during her year in America, I traveled with a second suitcase from Montana packed with some of Marj's belongings.  Her dad met me to pick it up.  As a young American, I was unfamiliar with the common practice of cheek kissing as a greeting.  This may have been my first!  We don't do that.  I didn't see it coming.  Alli and I ate rabbit and potatoes largely because we could understand the whole thing on the menu and I was a picky eater.  The rabbit was greasy and dark and I wasn't a huge fan.  We took the stairs on the Eiffel Tower so that I could smoke in secret from our chaperones.  It was an addiction-based decision, but the city view was spectacular all the way down.  I'm really glad we did it. The Americano cocktail is not bourbon and oranges as I described.  As my dad always said, "Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable."  I possessed almost zero knowledge of cocktails when I was in Paris.  We drank domestic light beer back home.  Hôtel and bieres are the first smattering of foreign vocab to appear in my journal, but they won't be the last.   We were all still under the drinking age in America and found our new legal ability to drink quite enchanting.  Clearly.

May 31, 2002

"We woke up today at 7:00 and ate breakfast at the hotel.  It was really, really good. We had croissants and French cheese spread and jus d'orange and really, really strong French coffee which was actually pretty gross.  ...We took a tour bus around and saw the Arc de Triomphe, Palace of Justice...the Obelisk ... and the Palace de Concord...then we got dropped off at the Notre Dame Cathedral which had amazing architecture and stained glass.  For one Euro me and Alli bought prayer candles and lit them in the chapel of St. Pierre (Peter). We saw a stone Quasimodo on the side of the cathedral and fed the pigeons in the jardin in the back which was really fun.  I bought a handmade clay flute from this man out front... I later dropped it in the épicerie [grocery store] and broke it in half...  We took the Metro today too.  A French beggar...was so drunk he fell down in the middle of the train...It was very sad.  We saw another beggar and his little boy which was very sad...I saw some graffiti in the Metro that said "USA=Guerre" which means"USA=War."  Interesting.  I almost got hit by a moto on our way to the LaFayette store...we saw some Euro EMTs working on this man who'd been hit by a car.  There was blood all over and it was freaky.  The people here drive like maniacs.  [Our chaperone] Bev is making Mark crazy because she is always a few minutes late.  ...we were sitting on the Opera House stairs and this French woman came up to us with a bag of wheat to feed the pigeons.  She told us the police don't care if the tourists do it, but they fine the French people for it.  She seemed to really love the birds.  The pigeons ate right out of our hands.  It was cool.  ...We climbed Montmartre and saw the studio Picasso worked in and the bar Hemmingway hung out in and went into the Sacre Coeur Cathedral where they made me put on my sweater because my tanktop was indecent in the eyes of the Catholic Church.  ...Then we went to eat and had Roast Porc and Frites which was yummy.  We then took a boat ride on the Seine at night and saw Paris all lit up.  It was beautiful."  

Notes:  This entry is a masterclass in Small Town Montana Gal Having Paris Blow Her Mind.  I'll start with my favorite.  I am certain that the "really, really strong French coffee" was actually espresso.  This cracks me up.  I remember thinking the cups were absurdly small, but then I hated the "coffee" so it didn't really matter.  Espresso was something I hadn't previously encountered.  We did have a coffee shop in town when I was a teen, but I bought froo-froo fruity "Italian Sodas" with whip cream when I went there.  Not espresso.  Neither of my parents enjoys strong coffee.  Again, I was such a novice.  Travel exposed me to so many things.  The traffic was astonishing to me.  It was the first time I had seen a roundabout intersection.  On the serious end of the spectrum, I had never really seen homelessness, panhandling, or pickpocketing before this trip.  My sense of surprise and shock about the conditions in which people were living is palpable to me when I re-read my journal.  It made me really sad and confused.  I had no idea.  I remember that.  I wish I had written more about the boat ride on the Seine.  I loved it--the lights, the buildings, the waterfront, the bridges all gliding by in a parade of urban grandeur--but it got only the briefest mention.  I didn't realize how contemporary Picasso was at the time.  (He only died in 1973!)  My teenage brain lumped him--incorrectly--with the old-time masters like Michelangelo or Leonardo DaVinci.

May 31, 2002 

"After breakfast at the hotel today we took a bus to Versailles.  I slept the 45 minutes it took to get there because last night the cold I've been fighting since I arrived finally got the best of me.  I spent almost the whole night coughing...Versailles was beautiful but unnecessarily elaborate.  The paintings were amazing.  We walked around the palace where everything is covered in gold and the gardens where the shrubs are immaculately kept.  We saw the Petite Trianon where Louis had his mistress and the small village where Marie Antoinette played "peasant." ...they had all these shrubs formed into little tunnels over the paths.  They were like something from a fairy tale.  We walked a lot.  A lot!!  Afterward, me and Alli ate at French McDonalds.  It was nowhere near as good as USA McDonalds.  ...While waiting for the Metro to go to the Louvre we stood in front of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) and watched an international football (soccer) championship between France and Senegal with thousands of French people.  Whenever they came close to scoring the crowd spontaneously went up in a roar.  It was an amazing sight. ...I saw this little boy playing the Beatles on a cello ...We then took the Metro to the Louvre where we wandered about and saw really cool pieces of art.  We saw the Venus de Milo, Mona Lisa, Winged Victory, Psyche and Cupid, and many more.  It was immense.  We then took the Metro to the Bastille where we ate the worst meal yet.  It was salad, fish, apple tart (none of which I really liked) and then rice, potatoes, and ice cream (these were good but considerably smaller portions).  Alli rolled her ankle...so rather than go to the Hard Rock Cafe we went back to the hotel... we have to leave at 5:30am tomorrow to go to Swisse."

Notes:  Clearly I had no idea what day it was as this is the second May 31st in a row.  I gave myself a laugh by describing a palace as "beautiful but unnecessarily elaborate."  Yeah....doy!  It is a freaking palace, Beth!  Though the entry may not sound like it, I did marvel at the over-the-top beauty possible when money is no object.  It was nuts.  The four-poster beds and the Hall of Mirrors and the lush, elaborate painting and sparkling gild.  The gardens were unlike anything I'd ever seen, but the precision plantings really didn't appeal to me all that much.  I did think the fountains were cool though.  I wanted McDonalds for its familiarity.  And yet, it was still a foreign experience.  I found the chicken nuggets disappointing.  In hindsight, I believe they were made with real chicken, not the chicken puree they were made from in America.  I remember the texture wasn't smooth and consistent all the way through and I didn't like it as well.  Food in Europe was hard for me as a 18-year-old.  I was such a fussy eater--had so many dislikes and often we were served collectively/family style.  I find my comments about the food throughout my journal very interesting at this point.  I want to know more about that apple tart.  What's not to like about apple tart?!  I wish I had taken more food photos.  Paris was my first exposure to people busking on the street.  I enjoyed all the music in random places.  The Louvre was probably the first art museum I ever visited, too.  Talk about one heck of a first!  I was in awe of the scale of the museum.  I felt like you could walk around in there for a month and still not see everything.  The huge paintings especially captivated me.   The Mona Lisa was so tiny!  The crowd around the Mona Lisa proved much more fascinating to me than the painting itself.