Paris, Stairs, and Pride - Oh My

Paris was great. I arrived on Wednesday evening and it quickly became evident what little amount of planning I had done beforehand. Who knew the best way to get from the airport to the city?!? Not me. But as always, I managed just fine (You take the OrlyBus, of course. Everyone knows that!). I met up with my cousins on Thursday morning and we were on the go all of Thursday and Friday. After meeting up, we realized that together we had never really decided on a plan of action. So we headed toward the Eiffel Tower. After climbing the stairs to the first platform, we were all a bit out of breath and the legs were feeling the burn. The sight of steps soon became something we loathed - up and down through all the Metro stations, the Eiffel Tower, the 400-step spiral staircase to the top of Notre Dame, the gazillion and one stairs to get to the Basilique du Sacre-Coeur.... Who needs the Thighmaster when you can visit Paris instead?

The view from Notre Dame was my favorite by far. I had never been to the top and was excited to finally get pics of the gargoyles overlooking the city. Gargoyles are the best. We also got to Champs-Elysees, Arc de Triomph, the Louvre museum, and one of my personal favorites - St. Chapelle. I was looking forward to seeing it again, and we were all in awe. It really is one of the prettiest things I've seen in all my travels. After saying our goodbyes on Friday evening, I headed back to the Eiffel Tower to try to snap some photos of it at night. I'm definitely glad I did because I managed to get some really nice ones. The pressure was on, too, because I only had room for a couple pictures on my memory card, and to top it off, my camera's battery was dying. So I was snapping pics, checking them for quality, deleting them, retaking more, and repeating the whole process as quickly as I could. It was a race against time... A race against a dying battery. And I won :-)

I departed Saturday morning at 9:30am, and after arriving in Stuttgart, decided on a whim to meet up with others in the city for the Pride festivities. So without going home, I headed downtown, locked up my bag at the train station, and killed some time before meeting up with the Freiburg gang. The parade started around 4pm. It was everything one could expect - loud, crazy floats with half naked people dancing. Pointless to a certain degree. Somewhat entertaining at any rate. I spotted the float from the local Reutlingen "bois", and after making eye contact with some of them, was able to get some extra goodies thrown my way. Afterwards, there was a gathering on the palace grounds with some rambling about this and that. Who knows. After hanging out in the area a bit longer, we grabbed some food and headed back to the one couple's apartment to chill. It was a nice evening. The others all headed out later to party, but there was no way I could last until 5am, as I was exhausted from being on the go since Wednesday. So I hopped on one of the last trains of the night and got in just before 1am.

Whew. It's nice to be back home in Germany where I at least understand what people are saying. It had been awhile since I last traveled outside of the country. I think I fell in love with like eight different people in Paris. Maybe it was only seven. I forget. Perhaps France isn't so bad after all. And so ends another escapade in Europe...

<Pics are posted on my website>