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Paris: Part 3
This is the third and final part of my Paris review. In this part, I’m just going to address whatever has been included in my experience that I have left out, in no particular order.
The photo above is one of the entrances to the Louvre, which sadly, I did not get to see on the inside. The photo alone can give you a small peek at the crowd surrounding the area, which kept us from going in. The line wasn’t the biggest problem, but we would have had to wait in line in the rain. We opted for finding a place to go eat lunch, which allowed us to return to Opera, the area that had Starbucks, the Apple Store, many other shops, movie theater, and a delicious pizza place we visited.
Pizza in Paris and Brussels (another place I visited) seems to be more similar to American pizza than Italian pizza. Although there was one really delicious looking pizza with cheese, an egg, and a hamburger patty on it.
While we did not get to go to the Louvre, we did get to go to Musée de l’Orangerie and see Monet’s “Water Lilies”. Photography wasn’t really allowed, so I don’t have any photos of my experience there. Monet’s series of paintings were amazing. The strokes and colors would seem almost impossible to copy. These paintings are huge and panoramic, arranged in a circle so you are completely surrounded by them. I’m an art student, but I’m not really interested in painting, but that really made me appreciate painting more.
Public transportation is one thing you have to get used to if you are from Georgia or another state where everything is far apart. Everything in Paris is more condensed and closer together, traffic is terrible, so naturally the subway is a quick and easy option. If I lived in Paris, I wouldn’t even own a car. There are quite a few subway (or metro) lines, so figuring out which one to take gets a bit difficult until you get used to it. I felt like I was really developing a good sense of direction in the 3 days I was there.
Paris a very busy city, and I feel like it’s hard to fully experience in just 3 days. It’s a beautiful city with beautiful architecture and so many things to see and do. I would love to be able to go there again sometime, and hope that I’ll be back.
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Paris: Part 2
This is Part 2 of my Paris review. You can check out Part 1 here.
I did quite a bit of walking in Paris. The Champs-Elysées alone is a couple miles of walking. The people who live in Paris seem to be walking with shopping bags in their hands, going from one store to another. With all of the beggars and gypsies around, there is a lot of poverty not only in Paris, but also Europe as a whole. One thing I don’t understand, is the large amounts of money people spend for designer clothes. All of the stores that had huge crowds were the big name designer brand stores. People spend money like it’s going out of style. Granted, Japanese tourists spend tons of money on designer clothes, but anywhere I’ve been in Europe has had locals spending a bunch of money on expensive shopping. One store that was extremely crowded was NOT a clothing store. However, it was expensive and high-end. Can you guess what it is?
That’s right, the Apple Store. It was three stories, Genius Bar on top, main products on the main floor, and accessories on the bottom floor. It’s probably the nicest Apple Store I’ve ever been to, but also the most crowded.
I bet you can guess what one of my favorite parts of Paris was (and no, it wasn’t the apple store). The food. The food was fantastic. Their omelets are absolutely huge and amazing. For breakfast one morning, I had an omelet with ham, cheese (seriously real paris cheese), and potatoes. Also, for dinner one night, we went to what my dad called French “Denny’s” and got crêpes.
There are cafés all over the place, so there’s always a place to stop for a quick espresso. Starbucks is also in all the big shopping areas of Paris, so if you are missing America, you can always go there. Good luck finding a seat, because like most places, Starbucks is also packed out.
The cheese stinks, but the stinkier the better. It’s not cheese that most Americans are used to, so the smell bothered me a bit but not enough to stop me from eating it. Also, the Coca-Cola (or Coca as the French call it) tastes better since it uses real sugar rather than the high fructose corn syrup and all the crap in American Coke.
More to come.
Paris: Part 1
That’s right. I don’t mean a movie, book, or song; I mean the place. I am reviewing Paris. I haven’t done a Blind Review for quite a while, so I wanted to end this hiatus with a big one.
Where do I begin? Paris is the most densely populated city in Europe. It is crazy, crowded, and hectic. People are everywhere you go, tourists are constantly forming lines in front of anything historical. There are so many things to talk about that I’m going to break this review up into parts.
Things to See:
There are so many things to see in Paris that you can’t actually see them all unless you stay there for a while. The Louvre alone is so enormous that it would take months to see the whole thing. Unfortunately, the Louvre will be left out of this review because it was too crowded to get in. The first day we got there, we saw the Eiffel Tower. It was nighttime, so it was all lit up. There were tourists and gypsies surrounding the place, but it the crowd was light enough to walk under and around it it. Every hour on the hour, the tower blinks with white lights for ten minutes, which is really amazing looking. (the picture at the top of the post is one i took) Everyone has seen the Eiffel Tower in a photo at least, so you can pretty much imagine what it looked like. Before we saw the Eiffel Tower, we walked to Notre Dame before it got dark. It is an architectural wonder. Here’s a photo of it next to the Seine River:
It has so many little intricacies that it is purely mind blowing. This is needs to be on your list of things to see in Paris.
Notre Dame runs along the Seine River, which is a super long river that runs through Paris. We took a boat cruise along it at night, and despite the cold weather and the creepy guy following us around, seeing Paris at night along the river is breathtaking. You go under famous bridges, see the Lourve, Eiffel Tower, markets that are only up during Christmastime, and many other things.
On the Champs-Elysées, there were a lot of places to shop. It was so crowded that it was a battle to get all the way to the end. This was probably the most walking we had all done at one time in Paris. Most of the time you take the Metro from place to place, but this time we just walked all the way to the Arc de Triomphe.
To get across the large roundabout, you have to take some steps down to walk under the street. Once you get out, you can walk all around and under the huge Arc. I wish we went to it a little earlier in the trip, because by this time we were all super tired. I think that hurt our enjoyment of it. Those are just a few of the places to check out in Paris, more to come in Part 2 of the review!
Unstoppable
Took a break last week in honor of Eat-Your-Weight-In-Food day. I did get to watch a couple movies though, and I got this one on Netflix. It looked cool, so I popped it in the queue. I didn’t really know anything about it; I don’t even remember it being in theaters. These are my thoughts:
I wasn’t disappointed by this movie, but it’s hard to be disappointed when you have absolutely no expectations. I usually like Denzel Washington, and Chris Pine is pretty good as well. It was a good movie, I enjoyed it. It wasn’t too long, in fact, it was surprisingly short.
Basically the storyline is this: A stupid dude does something stupid in a stupid way that causes a train to move unmanned. Therefore, becoming a runaway train. It gains speed and must be stopped. The lowly workers of the train company want to stop it in a nice, low-casualty kind of way, while the evil suits of corporate just want to avoid losing money. That causes the two groups to clash about how this situation should be solved. The train workers are on the side of the two loose cannons, Denzel and Chris. Chris Pine’s character is new to the job, with Denzel’s character as his “Mr. Miyagi”. The work together to solve the problem themselves, against the wishes of their corporate overlords.
Two interesting things about this movie: There are a lot of technical train terms, which really gives you a peek into this part of America that not many people know about. I thought it was kind of interesting, and it made the movie a bit more realistic. There were a few parts that got a little too technical, but it didn’t ruin the movie.
The second interesting thing was how almost all the trains were blue, except for the runaway train, which was red. Every time a scene would cut to the runaway train, there was a sort of growling sound effect. I thought it was kind of cool how they portrayed it as some kind of untamable beast. The sound effect wasn’t completely obvious, they tried to incorporate it into the actual engine noises of the train. It was just a cool little effect.
The movie was good, not great, but good. It was entertaining, and if you see it as that, you won’t have any problems. One day, when you have nothing to do, give it a watch.
The Walking Dead: Part 2
This week has been a crazy one, but I finally found some time to finish my review of Season 1 of the Walking Dead. It’s only six episodes, so it wasn’t a huge commitment. I didn’t think that I would, but this is the first Blind Review that I enjoyed every minute of. (I’ve only done 3 but still, this is an awesome show.) Without further ado, here is the review of the rest of Season 1:
I was afraid that this show wouldn’t be what the first episode set it up as. I was afraid that the audience would have to go through the show without questions answered. I was afraid of all the zombies. As I’ve said before, the whole zombie craze isn’t really my cup of tea, but this show made it interesting. The world is in shambles, there seems to be no hope left at all, and the future for the cast just seems bleak. By the way, did I mention there’s a cast now? See, in the first episode, it was the story of one guy’s realization that the world he once knew was gone. He eventually met up with a group of survivors who formed a camp. You begin to get to know each character a little bit more; there is even a LOSTesque flashback which explains how Rick Grimes (the main character/sheriff deputy if you didn’t remember) survived in the hospital.
Speaking of LOST, The Walking Dead shows us what LOST should have been. You get to see these people’s journey through this new world, but it also answers questions along the way. In LOST, the show would take you through this journey, but would ask more questions as you would go along. The character development is something that LOST excelled in, and this show isn’t as good at it, but remember: this season only has six episodes, so I’m sure there is more development to be had. Survival seems to be more the theme than the zombies themselves, which is also reminiscent of LOST.
It is hard to write this review without spoiling anything, so I’m sorry if this review just seems a bit like a repeat of Part 1. Long story short, the farther I got into the Season, the more I loved it. It has suspense, action, and plenty of guts. I recommend the show, but it’s definitely not for the squeamish.
If you have the choice, check it out. Go check it out even if you don’t like zombies, because that’s not all it’s about.
