I will post some pictures from Paris later because its not working right now, the rest are on Facebook. I tried to not spend too much time taking photos. The city is just unbelievably pretty and spending half my time trying to do it justice would be useless. Anyways, so just some snapshots really.
But, I hadn't planned on going at all, but I just happened to see an add for cheap tickets in/out of Paris online Thursday morning and felt really compelled to go. 3 hours later I was on the plane. I hadn't really gotten too much sleep the night before so I planned to sleep then, but when It came time I was too tingly and stimulated to even try. I actually can never sleep on planes. Even though everyone is silent and the din of the engines is super my narcotic, the energy is too high and I can't stop looking around and I get all mentally jacked up. My favorite part is after landing when the bell rings and suddenly everyone couldn't be in a bigger hurry to stand up. Even the guys in like row 28 are up like the plane is on fire. I just sit and watch, its really hilarious. Full of really awkward maneuvers and people bumping their heads. Also no one really ever knows what order to let people off. The default is by row, but if they people in front of you don't have their things together they only get 3 seconds max to move before others behind can push past and scoff. Everyone looks at the fat people struggling down the aisles and some laugh and some don't and some don't and think they deserve a Peace Prize for it.
The rest of what happened was just too insane to describe. Everything that happened seemed to be super connected and predetermined. I saw most of the big attractions, but I really got tired of charting my days travels at 9 am and constantly referring to the map so after the first day I just got up and walked. I had a rough idea of where I was in the city the whole time, and if I didn't looking up and seeing the Arc de Triumph made things pretty obvious. Even the bad (some bosnian jacking my wallet) , led to some experiences which now back here in Denmark I would call priceless.
I met a handful of really really awesome people and I will remember them all. One was this guy Gabrielle. He was from Argentina and one of the people I shared rooms with the first night. We never really said much to each other, but he had a guitar and so did I and most nights we'd come back from our days travels and sit out on the patio and play guitar and drink wine. He was classically trained and I swear knew every single chord. Listening to him do his own thing became much more exciting than playing myself, but we had some good jams too. The first night after I noticed he had a guitar I just asked him to play one of his favorite songs and he started playing the most beautiful rendition of Pink Moon by Nick Drake, one of my favorite songs everrrr. It was just pure ecstasy he was playing it like nothing and throwing in his own chords and singing with his awesome accent. I just dug it so much. After four or so days of this, when he was leaving he says to me, "You are good friends." Hit ma just right.
There is just too much to say, but hopefully that gave you the flavor of the experience a little bit. Every decision I made was just as sudden as the one to leave in the first place and it was really great living minute to minute.
