Paris, France

So everyone told us that the French were complete assholes. The first day we got there, we learned that this was just not true. While exploring a menu board outside a small cafe, one of the waiters came out, bestowed kisses on all of us, held our hands, and walked us to a table inside.

We then learned that this was due to the fact that the French government had actually done an ad campaign telling the citizens of Paris to be nicer to tourists. They even sent police officers around to enforce this niceness. Interesting way to promote the tourist industry.

Our first stop in France was at Versailles. It was...justifying to say the least. This was where the French Revolution came to a head. After walking around Versailles for an entire day, I completely understand their motives! Kaare and I estimated that if one was to rebuild the palace in this day and age - including the grounds, the architecture, the paintings, the carvings, and the bloody gold - it would definitely be somewhere in the trillions of dollars. No exaggeration. The revolution happened because the people were fed up with the amount of money that Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were spending. Antoinette had her own village on the grounds of Versailles, put aside for those days that she wanted to feel like a "peasant". She actually had an entire village built for her whims. If the revolutionaries were worried about their justifiability, I'm sure that the march through the grounds of Versailles on the way to the palace swept away any and all doubts.

I'd also heard that the Louvre was just too big to see in one visit, and that you needed at least three days to see it properly. "Pfft," I thought, "people just don't know how to manage their time!" Having now been there, I can safely say that the Louvre is about the size of Canada. A couple of the paintings there were actually two stories tall. It is one of the most amazing museums I have ever been to, and I would suggest that everyone put it on their list of things to see before they die. Because it would be very easy to get lost and die inside the Louvre.

The traffic in Paris is ridiculous. This one time, we watched seven lanes converge into one without the use of road lines, traffic lights, or street signs. The Arc de Triomphe is encased with a twelve lane roundabout. And pedestrians? You must be joking. Or at least the highways department of Paris must have been joking when they put crosswalks on the road. It's just a way for drivers to hit more people all at once. We call it violence, they call it efficiency.

Finally, to sum up, I saw my first dead person in Paris. Well, at least what we thought was a dead person at the time. She was in fact a drunk in the subway that had somehow managed to pass out head first through the bars of the chairs. But I definitely thought she was dead for a solid ten minutes.

Quote of the Day:

In Kaare's guidebook for the Middle East, there is a section on Iraq. In this section of Iraq, there is a heading that says "Solo Traveling". The advice it gives on solo traveling in Iraq?

You must be mad.

That is all it says.