Paris, France "City of Darkness"

Paris "City of Darkness"

Old buildings, the work of masters
Nature against man
Wind and rain, moss and earth
Battering buildings, eating the stone
Seagulls of the sky
Sparrow and pigeon afoot
Beautiful on the wing, but battered and torn
The city cries of age and growns beneath it's own weight
The people carry an air of depression
Reclusion
They dress in dark colors and scowl at outsiders
They walk beside the ghosts of their ancestors
Which is dead? Which is alive?
They embrace the darkness that surrounds them
The old...
The new...
The city claims them
The weather ages them
They become as one

- Taliahad Oct 13, 2004

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Oct 13, 2004

We left the immigrations area and walked out into the main body of the airport to look for our luggage, then nearly turned and ran back to the counter when we saw two armed guards with fully automatic weapons heading our way!! Thank god they kept on walking, and we realized that security in France was a little different than it is in the United States. Apparently in France the guards carry around enough firepower to bring down any elephants that might try to sneak past their country's customs. Yikes!

None of us spoke fluent French so we had to rely on Robyn’s one semester of French in high school and a travel sized French to English language dictionary. We stood outside on the sidewalk for over an hour trying to use French bus maps figure out which route would take us to the part of the city we wanted to be in.

We at last found our bus and were on our way to the heart of Paris and the true beginning to our vacation. As if to counter our bad luck with the flight over and the airport personnel, we even met a man on the bus who was full of great advice on places to stay and sites to see. He introduced himself as “a Texan from Mississippi” and told us that if there was one pub we had to visit it was a small place located on the Seine River roughly a block kitty corner from Notre Dame. Before parting ways at the end of our bus ride we assured him we’d be sure to check it out.

After another two hours as lost tourists wandering the streets of Paris with heavy packs on our backs, we at last found a hotel with vacancies within walking distance (or short bus ride) of all the major sites in Paris. We promptly dropped our bags to the floor and crashed on the beds for five hours of badly needed sleep.

When we woke again it was already dark outside. We found a little restaurant for dinner, and discovered that if you didn’t speak French and you came to the city in the tourist off season, you were pretty much considered an annoyance that nobody wanted to deal with. Three times we had to send Jason out to find what happened first to our waitress, then our order, then the bill. Parisians didn’t want anything to do with Americans, especially considering the recent events in the middle east.

We headed back to our hotel a frustrated with the snobbish attitude every Parisian we met seemed to have in sixes, and soothed our battered spirits with a little wine and good sleep.

Next: Louvre and Notre Dame >>