Let me begin by saying that I was sort of disappointed in my Paris experience and the fact that I was disappointed continues to disappoint me, and I think it might into perpetuity. I still can't quite put my finger on why I disliked the city as much as I did, but part of it could be blamed upon the fact that our trip started off on a bad foot. After arriving on the Eurostar decently exhausted, we had trouble getting onto the Metro (couldn't figure out how to buy tickets), were "accosted" in the train station by some creepy Parisians and then, try as we might, couldn't help but get thoroughly lost, no matter how closely we attempted to follow a map. Combine these early troubles with the general aloof nature of the French, our lack of language skills and our hotel situated off the beaten path, and our generally poor disposition begins to make more sense.
With this said, you shouldn't be surprised that our bad luck sort of followed us to The Louvre on our second day in the city. It started with a 45-minute hunt for our bus stop, which coincidentally wound up being about 2 blocks away from our hotel and continued with a somewhat harrowing journey where we were squished among a group of Parisian pre-schoolers heading out for a field trip whilst desperately trying to gauge just when we had arrived at our stop.
The great news is that we had a goal in mind, and achieve our mission we did (see how the thumbs up in the photo clearly showcases my happiness in making it to the Louvre in one piece?).
Thanks to my travel-savvy friends, I had been prepped in advance that Mona would be small, so thankfully, I wasn't too disappointed when I saw that, indeed, she is a lot tinier than one would expect. What disappointed me more was the fact that there was a rope around her, holding the crowds back at about 10 feet away (you can see me straining against it in the photo) AND the entire wall that the painting was on was covered in a sheet of plexi-glass. Art connoisseur, I claim not to be, however, I was hoping to at least pretend to be of the haughty-tauty variety and admire the brush strokes of the Mona Lisa from a foot or so away. In this instance, my plot was foiled, so after Melissa and I spent a good 15 minutes taking pictures, we moved on to explore the rest of the massive museum.
TIME WARP to Rome, about a week later, and I am now sick with a cold that Melissa caught in Paris and so kindly decided to share with me :). Despite it all, I am in good spirits and attempting to relish every last second of vacation before the real world comes back into focus. The day that we were scheduled to view the Trevi Fountain was our last in Rome, so we had thrown in some more touristy sightseeing that afternoon as well, stopping by the Spanish Steps and Pantheon, as well as a famous gelato place where I got nutella flavored ice cream that was fantastic!
Interestingly, our map issues that we acquired in Paris continued to haunt us in Rome, so we certainly took the scenic route in getting to our destination, but once we arrived, we were floored with the Fountain's utter beauty and sheer size! If Mona was smaller than expected, Trevi was so much larger!
I can definitely say that pictures do not do this beautiful fountain justice, as the detail gets totally lost, but I can promise you that were I not being hounded by strange Romans trying to steal my camera and/or take my picture with their vintage one (which had I let them surely would have ended badly), I could have stayed and stared for hours. Unfortunately, in this circumstance, it was business as usual -- we were there to take photos and throw a couple coins and then be on our merry way.
Now I just have to hope that the legend is true and that I'll be returning to Rome someday (and perhaps with the husband I wished for, hehe! Oops, maybe I'm not supposed to share that...).
All in all, despite my quacking, my trip to Europe was most definitely a fantastic experience and I'm so thankful that I was able to go and see all the sights I saw. I've learned a lot about the way I like to travel and certainly hope to do a lot more of it in the future, which begs the question...where to next?!?
