Liz and Laura go to Europe, Part 2

The adventure continues!

After a peaceful few days in the English countryside, we were ready to stir things up. And we knew precisely where to go to do it…

Paris! (cue accordion and smoke machine)

We managed to find a fantastic deal on a nice hotel in the Montparnasse area. Check out our sweet courtyard view.

Entirely free of both gypsies and the vertically challenged, the Notre Dame Cathedral was splendid indeed, and super gothic. It was funny to see people hanging around lazily while such an historic, stunning thing towered in the background. That, and the ever-looming threat of pigeon splatter.

There sure are a lot of churches in Europe, huh? I think this religion thing might be catching on.

Next we trotted on over to one of Paris’ many impeccably manicured parks. Not only a place to lounge with your peeps or stroll with your sweetie, these gorgeous expanses also provide spots for the display of fine art, which we appreciated wholly.

And speaking of public programs, look at them fancy city bikes they have for rent! Just swipe your card, load your baguette and wine into the handy basket, and pedal off to Convenienceville! We pondered the reasons why our fine city doesn’t offer such services, and decided it was poor funding, and bum urine.

Next stop, the Musée d’Orsay! Both having attended the Louvre on previous visits, we opted for this smaller but equally fantastic mecca of Impressionism, housed in a stunning former train station. We saw more than a few paintings that were, like, famous.

“How inspiring!”

“I get it!”

“Très magnifique!”

After a long night of baguette-, brie- and booze-filled revelry, the following day found us at the Centre Georges Pompidou, that awesome-looking contemporary art dealy. They wouldn’t let Liz in because she had a pint of brandy in her bag, but it sure did look kickass from the outside.

A stop at the Virgin Megastore on the fabulous Champs-Élysées proved hilarious as we noticed something peculiar about their DVD packaging.

“Les Griffin”! Makes it sound right dignified.

But in order to truly understand how the French live, we made our way to a certain structure known as the Eiffel Tower. Another fancy park surrounds the thing, so there was plenty of room for the taking of wacky pictures.

This one, just, wow.

Before facing the millions of stairs to the top for the view of all views, we took a moment to rest our weary feet and contemplate the awesomeness of friendship and concealed flasks.

Oddly enough, although we’d soberly passed by dozens of people drinking legally in public, this was one of the few places we really stopped to swig off our brandy, and as soon as we leave the park, we notice the giant “no drinking” sign. Good thing we didn’t get harassed by a sassy French cop.  As the crazy bum in the train station ranted at us, “Merde!”

And then we took the elevator. Stairs are for suckers.

Thank goodness for this helpful sign, because way up there the urge to destroy our expensive cameras grew quite strong. There was, however, no danger of us wasting our ice cream.

We did such a good job of being tourists!

As the sun went down in the city of lights, we noticed a most unsettling sight. At first the Eiffel Tower was just lit a somewhat gaudy shade of blue. Not so bad. But then it started beaming a huge searchlight around, and all of a sudden, disco fever overtook the massive structure as it convulsed with glittering white lights. Hideous!

After three days of Parisian fun, we had to say au revoir. It was time to move on to our final destination…

Continue to Part 3