Christmas in Paris

Friday night I packed up and headed to Paris for the night so I could be at the airport in time to meet Al bright and early Saturday morning. That night I met a very nice, very interesting Australian named Jackie, and had a fun talk with her about all sorts of things over a bottle of wine. I only mention this day at all because it leads to a "funny" story about the start of my Christmas Eve. I woke up about 6am to get ready to go to the airport, and decided to be really nice to my roommates and use the communal shower instead of the one in our room so I didn't wake them all up. At that time of the morning, I had the place to myself and everything was going great. As I'm almost ready and brushing my teeth, I see someone else walk in but don't think anything of it. Then I see the same person try to leave, and he can't open the door. Finally he says "Am I doing something wrong here?" and I try to open the door and the handle just kind of flops around like a limp fish. Crap. So because I had seen him the night before and he kind of creeped me out, I decide to act quickly and pull out my recently purchased (thank God) cell phone to call the front desk. First try, disconnected. He decides this would be a real great time to try this one on me: "Well, I can think of worse people to be stuck with in here for the rest of eternity." What? Did you seriously just lock us in here and then try to pick me up? I quickly dialed again while watching out the window and thankfully someone came by just then. I frantically knocked on the window and the guy opened the door. I escorted Rico Suave out, quickly finished, and left as fast as I could for the airport. I suppose it makes for a Christmas Eve I won't forget anytime soon...

After I met Al at the airport and we caught up a bit, we trekked around to some of the local sites like Sacre Coeur, l'Arc de Triomphe, and Notre Dame. We actually attended Christmas Eve service at Notre Dame, and while it wasn't the most moving service I've ever been to (it's pretty hard to listen to a service in French, translate for the person next to you, and feel moved by the birth of Jesus while there are little kids and tourists poking around you. Why they don't close the church to tourists during big services, I don't know) it was pretty cool. We followed that with dinner in the Latin Quarter and a stroll up the Seine to the Eiffel Tower. The next day, Christmas, I was up early and caught part of a morning service at Sacre Coeur. After that we ventured all over the city, finishing with a nighttime boat ride on the Seine, which I highly recommend to anyone going to Paris. Seeing all the monuments lit up along the river is quite an experience. We also managed to make it over to the Champs Elysées to see all the lights on the trees along the avenue. The day after Christmas we made it to the Louvre, and tried to go to a few other things that were closed. All in all though, I think we made it to all the highlights, and had a pretty cool Christmas to boot. My summary can't really do it justice though, so if you want to know more hop over to my picture page and take a look at Paris at Christmastime.