je n'ai JAMAIS couché avec elle!!1!

on monday we went to notre dame cathedral and climbed the towers. this is me with a gargoyle, doing my gargoyle impression:


charlotte was afraid to go any higher but i went to the very top and took myspace pictures of myself with alllllll of paris. but because my hair was apparently mulletting out, i'll just show you pictures of paris by itself.

that night we went to the louvre, where i was so overwhelmed by the layout i didn't even bother going to places one would deem important; i just hung out in medieval art. that was cool too, though.

yesterday charlotte was sick, so i went out on my own. first i went to versailles, where i walked around the palace for half an hour trying to find the special entrance that my pass got me. as it turns out, it was the regular entrance, and i still had to wait a little over an hour, but i still got to see lots of gardens in the process, so it wasn't too bad. the palace was really pretty, with lots of gold plating. i feel like this image of a grand hall and chandeliers explains it well:


later i went to musée d'orsay, which is an old train station, so very deconstructed and big and cool. people were taking pictures of van goghs with their camera phones, but i thought it best to let the paintings be and let you imagine how they were.

afterwards i walked up to the louvre and through the tuilleries, gardens and fountains that face the louvre. after an awkward encounter with a gypsy woman, i got to the far end and got to watch a young norwegian girls' marching band come through. i didn't understand. i then continued around a traffic circle to the champs elysée, where i ended up on a wooded path and stopped to get dinner at a little kiosk, a butter and cheese sandwich and a sugar crêpe. so delicious, as i sat on a bench and watched trees and pigeons.

afterwards i walked up the champs to the arc de triomph, which was indeed triumphant. also took no pictures, because who really needs those.

after publicly pulling out my french tourisme map, i decided on a route and made my way to montmartre, where apparently the tram to take me to the top of the hill was broken, so i got to walk up fifteen flights of stairs. oh, and i was also accosted by some african gypsy men who kept saying "hakuna matata" and trying to touch my hands and sell me macramé.

but at the top! oh, the top. something like the towers at notre dame, but more majesty somehow. i took a slightly better myspace picture of myself there:


and then i went into sacré-coeur, which was of course magnificent. i love cathedrals so much.

after bumming around the area for a while, i finally headed back to the hostel, where i met our new roommate samantha, who is from baltimore and totally cool and WE WENT TO A CABARET TOGETHER. she was accosted by a creepy old man, and i had the priveledge of not only interpreting for them, but also of hanging out with creepy old man's date. i spoke so much french, progressively more and more with each glass of wine and slice of brie. we didn't make it home until the sun was nearly up, but it was completely worth the long night.

then today we got to brussels. lix, this is for you: what i believe is actually a chain of stores:


these two guys sitting next to us on the train, steve and dan, ended up actually being our roommates here, so we all went on a three-hour walking tour of the city together. we saw a lot of really pretty things that i don't remember the names of, but also things that i do. this is from grande-place, which victor hugo described as the most beautiful place on earth, according to let's go!: western europe on a budget.


we also saw manneken pis, which is like a symbol of brussels or something. that is the pis-ing manneken in the background, and me immitating his grandeur in the foreground. look at that poise.

then we walked to the top of a hill, and there was a giant building with scaffolding, and i'm not going to lie, i don't know what it was called. but look at this beautiful view of the city, completely with clouds and pretty sun:



and we saw the e.u. headquarters!

then we got home and made ourselves dinner in the common kitchen, which cost us each three euro and was far more food than we could handle, so we gave it away to fellow hostel-ers. i found a chi-chi's margarita glass in the cabinet, and thought it was a lovely vessel for my four-euro imported chilean wine. DON'T JUDGE ME IT WAS THE CHEAPEST ONE I DRINK FRENCH WINE SOMETIMES TOO.


oh ps i don't feel like changing the clock on this but add six hours to whatever my posting time is. it's more justified that way.