Righty, get it together!

We actually got up early this morning. Before lunchtime. Hooray us! Had to, busy day planned.

We went to sleep LATE last night cause outside our hotel they like to do drag racing. And have Latin dance par-tays. And I'm pretty sure city officials in the trash department are working on the "dumpster emptying" techniques, as they emptied the trash outside our hotel 6 times during the night. A truck. Lifting a squeaky trash can. While beeping. 6 times.

Now, this morning. LW placed our order at the bakery in French. Sucar or chocolat? And we bought our fruit at the market, before he even opened. Bear in mind this is what I affectionately refer as the "Fruit Stand/Discotheque" (source of Latin music last night), so a little slow opening is to be expecting.

Now, we're fed and off. Train to Montemart. No missteps getting there. Basically train experts.

1st things 1st- saw wall of love. We're girls. So sue us.
2nd things 2nd- climbed Mt. Everest. Couldn't figure where anything was, but we figured we'd see it from the top.

Sacre Couer was up there. Google it. BEAUTIFUL mosaics. No dead people. They really hide their dead here, it's weird. And a crypt isn't cutting it. Next stop, some square with tons of artists. They draw you- with pens, pencils, chalk, paint, markers. Caricatures, aged photo, whatever you want... for a tidy sum. Took a pass to haul ass to St Chapelle. Come to find out, that opens at 1, not closes at 1. Language issue there, I suppose. We were a little frustrated that we rushed away from the accordion players, harp player (with a pop-&-lock dancer friend), and a guy standing on a table showboating with a soccer ball.

Since the line was TOO long, we moseyed to McDonald's for our French burgers with "deluxe potato" and frites with creamy sauce. And Coke Lights (no ice). If I hear one more French person call Americans fat, I'm gonna question their "Golden Meal" which is a Big Mac, fries, Coke (Light if you must) AND 6 CHICKEN NUGGETS! Sheesh.

Went to Notre Dame for the 2:30 English tour. After a "Who's on 1st, What's on 2nd". Get ready:

LW: Where do we go for the tour?
Notre Dame Lady (NDL): You want to see the tour?
LW: Yes. Where do we get in line for the tour?
NDL: Up or inside?
LW: Inside. (Still not in on the joke, obviously)
NDL: Then go inside.
LW: It's in English, right? At 2:30?
NDL: I don't know.
LW: Well, what's this line for?
NDL: The tours.
LW: Wait. What? We want to go on the tour at 2:30.
NDL: You want to see the tours?
LW: Yes. We want the tour. At 2:30. In English.
NDL: You have to get in line for the tours.
LW: What?

We looked at the sign, directly behind her and realized tours means towers in French.

Ummmm... all that. And the English tour was canceled. So, back to St. Chapelle. Stood in line, but it was only half of what it had previously been. Geniuses, we know. Inside the church is painted. Impressive enough, but then you go upstairs.

Unbeleivable. Breathtaking. Unimaginable... but we paint with words, so we got this.

Imagine all the stained glass in the world. Ta-da. It's 75% of the church (accurate, not an estimate). It was built cause they received the robes of the Virgin Mary. Lovely has a video of it. Once we figure how to do that, we'll get it on here.

The cafe time. It's tough being us... drank coffee and wine. Stared at the Parisians. Thought deep thoughts. Solved world issues.

S-H-O-P-P-I-N-G TIME. Amazing. The end of that. Except note that we walked from Notre Dame to the Eiffel Tower... which is like going from The Varsity to Columbia, SC. On foot. With 1 leg. And shopping bags. It's tough.

Then we rushed, rushed, rushed to miss our boat tour. :(

So, we got tix for the next one. :) It was SO much better than the Budapest boat tour we did. 1. It was Paris at night from the Seine. 2. It included more than a listing of hotels.

Then we had dinner @ the cafe and now we're tucked in... ready for bed and our early-ish flight.

Hark! The Fast & the Furious are gearing up outside our window for the sequel from last night. Ahhhh... Parisian lullabies.

Restriction

People, we are not blogging for our health. You are on blogging restriction until we see some comments.

Relationships take work from both sides. I can't love you enough for both of us.

The end...(at least until we see some more comments.)

Who needs enemies when you have friends like Issy?

Okay, so two guys walk into a bar, the third one drives a toyota to the gas station. Sound familiar? Before we talk about finishing our bus tour, here's how we started the day:

1. Somebody slipped us a roofie, cause we could NOT get up this morning. We finally dragged our tired butts out of bed at 10am (for those of you who know us, this is quite late) to shower and get ready. It takes a while to fancy ourselves up properly for the Paris streets, but we were out and looking for a bakery by 10:30.

2. Bakery found. Accidentally passed on a "frommage" pastry (CHEESE!!! who knew?), but got some delicious "pommes" (apple) pastries and fruits. Luckily they also sold sandwiches, so we bought some of those for later even though Lovely almost ate hers for breakfast. (It was chicken salad with a delicious curry sauce...who can blame her?)

3. Ate breakfast in park under observation of creepy homeless man/woman. Who collected our trash bag for undisclosed reasons. Almost left with souvenir French child. WAY too cute to pass up.

4. Direct quote from Lovely "With expert Metro skills arrived immediately, without fault, at Musee d'Orsay. Not ONE misstep. Begin embellishment." Apparently that last part was for me. So, the Musee d'Orsay is AWESOME!! It looks like the world's LARGEST and most BEAUTIFUL train station. Inside are all kinds of famous and important artworks including these highlights: several pieces by Seaurat (Lovely's favorites), lots of pieces by Degas (Lady Whitehouse's favorites), and a bad-ass model of the Paris Opera House that the architect constructed to convince people to let him build it. It's basically a tiny model that is to scale and cut in half BUT (the best part), under your feet is a replica of Paris showing how BEAUTIFULLY the Opera house fits in with the surrounding architecture. Too cute.

5. Tried to get a cup of coffee, ended up with half a mouthwash cup of "espresso" and a can of Coke Light. Total sum: 5 Euro. Bitch, please.

6. Ring situation to be discussed later.

7. Decided it was time to eat again, so we stopped to eat our sandwiches in the Tuilleries (sp?). Basically the gardens behind the Louvre. They had lots of potential, but it being cold as the inside of Mama Ayres' deep freezer, nothing was blooming. We think there was a bronzed tree though.

8. En route to the Orangerie (another museum behind the Louvre), a man "found" a gold ring right next to us. Second time that this happened in the last hour. Very tricky. It's not a pretty gold ring either. It's a big ol giant man gold ring that they look utterly shocked to have found. And then offer to you like you dropped it. Because Lovely and I wear men's gold wedding rings all the time. Weird how it doesn't fit them either (which they show you repeatedly). Obviously they did not take a look at Lovely's tiny circus hands. BUT it's 24karat gold which they also show you repeatedly. Not sure how this trick gets me seperate from my money, but we knew it was going to happen somehow. So we held tight to the bag and walked quickly away.

9. The Orangerie: circular Monet's, CHECK. Museum pass: finally scanned. We basically got into the Louvre twice for free, since they barely glance at the thing. We are thinking of re-selling them.

10. Next: back to the Louvre. It's basically like trying to get into the Pentagon (NOT). You walk up into a glass security room where there is a walk-through metal detector and bag x-ray machine. Also 2 security guards. Everyone before is scanned HEAVILY. As we walk in the door, one guard leaves. Lady Whitehouse proceeds to put the bag (GIANT bag full of pipe bombs) onto the xray scanner, at which time, security guard two pops his head out the door to ask someone for a smoke. Bag scans through machine as Lovely sets off metal detector, totally unnoticed. No one even turns their head as we walk into the world's most IMPORTANT museum. Why are we so obviously not terrorists? Next time, I'm wearing a Berka.

11. We decided to wander a while, and during our wandering, stumbled upon a delicious bakery and a beautiful church: St Eustace. The bakery provided us with a chocolate and pistachio pastry and some gourmet chocolates filled with things that were explained to us by a friendly French person. St Eustace was a better experience for us than Notre Dame. It was more genuine and obviously loved. There were beautiful pieces inside the church (including a Keith Haring triptych..weird), and one interesting chapel with a sculpture that looked like puppets in a French market. We also POTENTIALLY saw a dead appendage in a glass box. We're not sure because we couldn't find a good vantage point.

12. Waited AN HOUR for our bus to show up outside Notre Dame to finish our bus tour. Which we still didn't do, but whatever.

13. Jumped off at Arc de Triumph to climb to the top. It was a mere 248 steps to the top, totally worth the views.

14. Dinner at Le Petite Ozio, an amazingly friendly and delicious Italian resturaunt. Wined and dined for 3 hours on Pinot Grigio, Bruschetta de Prusciutto, Gnocchi Gorgonzola, and Pasta alla Victoria. AMAZING. Even more amazing was the bathroom. Here's the situation: you walk down a hall covered walls, floor, and ceiling with astroturf. Immediately before the kitchen, take a right into a black door. Once inside, you flip a switch to find that said bathroom is lit SOLELY by a spotlight hitting a mini spinning disco ball. That's right. Not a typo. The remaining decor is black subway tile from floor to ceiling and 3 blue candles. Lovely's convinced George Michael was bussed in to decorate.

15. Left the resturaunt singing "Faith" by the man himself. Continued to sing alternating Disney princess songs and show tunes until we found ourselves at the Eiffel Tower. Our favorite Metro stop. After taking some photos (and being solicited to buy tiny Eiffel Towers about 100 times), we took the metro home.

The End.

Goodnightersons.

Where's a Wendy's?

Oh today. It started off a little rough, but we have since figured out that we probably deserved it because our travels had been so smooth up until then. Here's what happened:

1. On the plane. Our 3rd seat partner got shifted to the front (YES!!!) only to be replaced by a woman who was rude and not a polite space sharer (noooooo....). This exclusively bothered Lovely because she was next to her and the lady was encroaching on her leg space.

2. Despite sleeping pills, could not sleep because plane was the size of a pea. Never been on such a small plane for an international flight. I'm pretty sure it's the same model we flew to Raleigh-Durham several years ago. We think it was a Puddle Jumper 747. Terrifying.

3. We are pretty sure that Charles de Gaulle airport is set up in the shape of a Nautilus. We were trapped in there with revolving doors that only occasionally revolved and despite SEVERAL attempts of friendly French people to instruct us, we still didn't understand due to the fact that they were speaking French...weird.

4. Finally we try to buy tickets which we could not buy with the denominations of money that we had, so we had to get in line in the office. We then approached the WRONG ticket lady because she did not sell tickets to Paris (even though we were in Paris) and were instructed to the ONE person selling tickets to Paris, who then sold us a ticket to Issy (NOT in Paris as it turns out). She was WRONG.

5. Welcome to Issy. NOT PARIS. It was a lovely town. Not so many people. Not so many buildings. Not a lot of art museums, but hotels looked cheap. We approach the ticket lady with the innocent statement of "Can you show me how to get to this address?" (being the address of our hotel).
Ticket lady in Issy: "Do you speak French?"
Us: "No"
Issy Welcoming Committee (formerly known as Ticket lady): "(huff...puff...sigh) WHY YOU ARE HERE?! YOU SHOULD BE IN PARIS! WHO TOLD YOU TO COME HERE?!"
Us: (insert looks of terror here) "We're not in Paris?"
Issy Welcoming Committee : "THIS IS ISSY!! THIS IS WRONG!! (sigh...huff) Give me the map."
(Lady Whitehouse tries to fold the map so it will fit through the slot)
Issy Welcoming Committee : "DO NOT FOLD THE MAP! JUST GIVE IT TO ME!!"
Us: "How do we get here (pointing to our hotel on the ever so broad and terrifyingly general Google map)?"
Issy Welcoming Committee : "YOU HAVE TO BE IN PARIS!! SEE, THIS IS PARIS. YOU ARE NOT IN PARIS, YOU ARE IN ISSY!!"
Us: "Ummm...ok, so how do we get to where we need to go?"
Issy Welcoming Committee: "Give me the map...NO, DO NOT FOLD IT!!"
Us: "I just want it to fit through the slot..."

The rest of the conversation did get us to where we wanted to go, despite the Issy Welcoming Committee almost ripping our map in half because it did not fit through the slot.

6. Starting at that point, Lovely & Lady Whitehouse ceased communicating. We know how to stay friends. So, we do what any smart tourist does at this point... took the Metro to the biggest tourist trap you can find (Oh hi Eiffel Tower) and get a cab. Hotel finding achieved.

Starting here, things got much better. We showered off the disappointments of the morning (and 25 hours without sleep for the most part) and hit the town. First on the agenda was FOOD. We had Croques. Mine was Croque Madame (basically a ham sandwich with an egg on top) and though Lovely ordered a "country sandwich," it was my sandwich minus the egg. Still the most delicious food items we'd had in a long time. Oh, and of course we had wine. Which was red AND cold, apparently the French are with me on that one.

We dared to take the Metro again and surprise!! we actually ended up at the Eiffel Tower!! Yay us! The first item on the agenda was finding a bus tour. I know, I know. It's like the cheesiest thing ever, but they are SO helpful in establishing the lay of the land and giving us a basic background of major sites. Plus it's our tradition and they are typically narrated with poorly translated history jokes. Doesn't get much better than that.

SO, we got on the bus and about 4 stops later...we woke up and decided the rocking lull and the beautiful Mozart in the background was too sweet of a lullaby so we got off at Notre Dame. If you break out your map of Paris (NOT ISSY), you will see that we really didn't sleep through too many important points. I mean, you can always find the Louvre again right? Notre Dame was quite lovely although we only found 1 skeleton sculpture and no dead people. To be completely frank, we've seen prettier churches. With more dead people. But this one does have a lot of history and they do confessionals in glass booths RIGHT by the door. Hey-oh.

We tried to go to the top of Notre Dame, but she was closed for the night (rats!) so we headed towards the Louvre. Lovely had basically sworn off going here cause everyone said it'd take too long and you'd feel rushed on our schedule. Wrong. My dogs were barking, but we walked every part of her except the top floor of Reichleiu. BAM people! We saw the biggie things:

• Mona Lisa (what nothing-special painting),
  
• Winged Victory of Samothrice,
  
• Code of Hammurabi,
  
• Venus di Milo (sculpture unknown--did yall know that?),
• 2 sphinxes
  
• Colossal Statue of Ramses (colossal is an overstatement--above average)

AND A DEAD PERSON. A mummy really, but sweet. Overall, very nice.

Also, there was a lot of performing artists everywhere. We saw 4 shows. Didn't speak to my soul, but stupid unenlightened Americans.

Took an evening stroll through the streets of Paris, stopped at a grocery store for some dinner makings (most delicious sandwiches-- prosciutto, mozzarella, tomatoes, and soft brie-like cheese, and pesto all on crusty bread. Wipe that drool.), and headed back to our hotel. TA-DA.

Time for bed times. More tomorrow.

Ps - this post was co-authored by Lady Whitehouse and Lovely because Lovely has been kicked off the blog. We're not sure how this happened, but we're working on it.

Paris, who knew?

So, we're in Paris. Yay!! We just got to our hotel, which took no small amount of maneuvering. The metro/railway/subway system here is confusing (to put it nicely) so we've seen most of Paris through a train window thus far. There is some EXCELLENT graffiti here...that's about all we've seen of it, but more is to come.

Next stop: FOOD!! (Preferably prosciutto sandwiches on crusty bread).

Write more later.

I can't work like this.

Krakow Day #2:

We split up today. I went to Auschwitz/Birkenau.

LW and Hom went to Wawel Castle.

We met up in the afternoon and did the Wielecka Salt Mines as our typical trio.

So, I can only talk about my day. No funny, no jokes, no insight. It's sad. Just like you'd expect. It took about 2 hours roundtrip busride and we toured for about 3 hours. 2 hours at Auschwitz I and 1 at Birkenau. I won't go in to details on here, since some people are more tenderhearted than others. Just know I did it.

Salt Mines on the other hand. Quite a different experience. Not so heavy.

Tomorrow is our last day and we are planning on hitting up the monastary. Have I already said it's only open to women 12 days a year and tomorrow is one of them?!?! AMAZING timing.

Btdubs... anyone want some amber. We're apparently in the capital of it. Sheesh.

He tried to convince the state offiicals to care about the country. He failed; it crumbled.

Quick update... internet cafe closing soon.

We’re in Krakow and talk about totally different from our other destinations.
Prague Day #3: This was planned to be a kind of “lazy day”. We walked around a bit and saw some last minute items. More Cerny sculptures. At some point we hooked into a free walking tour. I mean, he was describing the story of a severed arm in a church. Yes, please. I’m in. We took it until the end, about 20 minutes, which ran us through the old Jewish ghetto. Strange, sad note: it’s the oldest Jewish quarter in Europe because Hitler saved it planning to make it a museum after the Jewish race was extinct. Told ya—strange and sad.

We took an overnight train out of Prague to Krakow. When we were leaving the guy in charge told us to be sure to lock the door and keep our money on our persons because of “banditos”. We shared the cabin that was built to hold 6 European (skinny) people, with 2 British gals. Made it to Krakow, 1 ½ hours after schedule (at 8 am)… no banditos. No sleep either.

We’re totally exhausted, but we persevered and took a 4 hour bike tour of Krakow. It’s not as historically uplifting as the others… nothing is really “old” here because they’ve been owned, ransacked, tortured, rebuilt, etc. by everyone. Including the Hapsburgs! Everyone’s (in this travel trio) favorite monarchy. Saw basically everything, including Oskar Schindler’s factory… and churches... lots of those.

OK, more update tomorrow. Too tired/stupid to do more now.