Day 2: Paris strikes back

Alex:

Kenneth and I hit the city today with high hopes, starting with some innocent loitering near the Paris opera. We may have been immediately identified as tourists when Kenneth tried to take a picture of the building without glare by putting the camera lens behind my sunglasses... At that point we were asking for trouble. We were soon accosted by someone in a moldering chicken suit who tried to throw his arm around me. Assuming that this was just a mascot for some new fried chicken joint nearby, I responded with tentative cordiality until the chicken-man stuck out his hand for money... Now let me be clear: I find anonymous, intrusively jaunty, but eerily mute, mascots to be bizarre and offputting to begin with... But random vagrants and hobos masquerading as mascots takes the sketichiness to a whole new level. Where's the accountability? Who do they represent? Where did he get that chicken suit and where has it been? And, of course, does this mean there's no fried chicken joint?? All these questions and more led me to shoo the chicken-vagrant away with a tirade of selected items from my French-Canadian vocabulary. Kenneth and I stormed off, looking back in time to see the chicken man tussle with some irritated coeds.

Kenneth:

I obviously have other priorities on this trip, namely, the trains. Unfortunately, my concentration was not focused on the trains themselves, but the half-hour delay from the strike. Thank goodness we had a delay to figure out which platform our train was on; we were told it would arrive on no less than three out of the three available platforms! With about two minutes to spare, we got on the proper train, and at the same time the strike finally paid off: all rides were free today (Alex: except for mine, of course, because I was in such a hurry to get my ticket stamped, clipped, or otherwise invalidated by the machine before we heard the news).

Little did we know this would be the first of the free passes. Upon arriving at the Louvre, we noticed the lines were surprisingly short. Though we did not think much at the time, it later turned out that all paintings could not be seen today. Thankfully, the Louvre is still enormous, and after sputtering about our International Student Identification Cards for ten minutes, the bored attendant simply let us in for free. We <3 strike day! Napoleon III's chambers were incredible, and after some more strolling we set out for l'Arc de Triomphe.

Alex:

Champs Élisée, l'Arc de Triomphe, etc... You know the drill. But the real gem of the day was the Sacré Coeur cathedral in the slimy Montmartre neighborhood (famous for the Moulin Rouge)--essentially a church that looks like it was stolen from Candyland and parked on the highest piece of ground in a cesspool of debauchery and sin. We went up to the dome on the cathedral and looked out over the city for a while. I love Paris.

We came home tonight and had a great dinner with the Lauriol family--old friends from Larchmont who have been our hosts these past 2 days. After two bottles of wine, we had a blast watching home movies from my childhood.

Tomorrow's our first real day of biking, but all of this marathon tourism has cerainly prepared us for long, hot days on the road ahead.