Paris, the Third

Now, having spent the previous night rolling around on a dirty French hotel floor and muttering delusional-ly to myself for several hours, I wake up the next morning feeling 100% perfectly fantastically never-been-better fine.

What.

All right. So I wake up, and after not really having much to eat over the past week or so, my stomach decides it wants one, and only one thing: McDonalds.

Yes, laugh if you will. Call me an ignorant stupid American if you must, but I'm not going to be 10.50 for some more chicken liver, okay? Thanks.

And you know, there's something very telling about France when, instead of a goofy looking clown with a big red smiley everywhere, in a Paris McDonalds they have pictures of poverty stricken children and revolutionaries.

"Well, that explains that," I say to myself.

The next few days were pretty normal. I met up with our totally awesome and rad friend KC and proceeded to wander through the Louvre and all of its insanity. We drank awesome hot cocoa and listened to some Chinese tourists try to converse with the French waiter... in English, then debated the legitimacy of the Mona Lisa and the Venus D. Milo as art. I remained skeptical and unconvinced.

I did, however, manage to stumble into a gallery in the very back of the top floor of the Louvre that had about a dozen paintings done by my favorite painter ever, so that was pretty fantastic.

But after one enough nights of vomiting in Paris, I had decided that that was enough for me. One Big Mac later, and I was ready to head on over to Amsterdam to see the windmills... among other things.

The Great Paris Debacle, Part Deux

So where we last left off my stomach was stubbornly against all things Paris, and after eating chicken liver, I couldn't particularly blame it. Since I was completely unable to consume anything alcohol related, and because I wanted to get my friends pretty trashed, I insisted that they drink while I photo-document the whole thing.

Now beer in Paris -- actually I take that back -- everything in Paris is about three times the price any sane normal person would expect it to be, meaning to spend a lot of time looking at the menus at restaurants and thinking to yourself "They're kidding, right?" So after passing on a bunch of the bars to get less than a regular sized can of beer for 7 euro, we stumbled into a grocery store where they have "Amsterdam Maximator" in a tall boy for 1.50.

Yep.

So they split a few, I snap a few pictures, and then we split up so they can go buy some more, and I can stop by the post office. Well the post office is closed, and now my two drunk friends are stumbling about Paris god knows where (See? This is why I do things like keep the keys to the hotel room.)

An hour or so later I realize I have a text on my phone. "Where are you?"

"Back the hotel. Where are you?" I respond, to which I receive...

"eigh twr"

I...what? Oh. Ooooh. They are very, very drunk.

I metro my way over to the Eiffel Tower, and wander around for a while before I give up on searching for them. Well, I'm sure they stumbled to a bar, they're both 23 and can take care of themselves, so I'm gonna climb up this here Tower and check things out.

The view, of course, was fantastic. Not to mention that the thing lights up a bright, brilliant blue at night and on the hour the entire thing sparkles bright white. It's really pretty awesome to see. I mean it's Paris, at night, and you're on the Eiffel Tower. What could possibly go wron--Oh, oh God. Oh God, no, no no no no no.

And thus I flee from the tower clutching my bum in a race against my stomach to get back to the hotel room. The flu has moved south. Thanks flu.

The next several hours were -- and I'm not exaggerating here -- probably some of the most painful of my life. The only way I can describe it is by the saying that it was like someone had taken razor wire, wrapped it around my intestines, and was PULLING as HARD as they POSSIBLY COULD. Had someone been there with me I probably would have found some way to get to the hospital, but considering I was on my own and the metros were going to close soon enough, I decided to stick it out through the night, writhing on the hotel floor and clutching my stomach, for the remainder of the night. If I felt just as bad in the morning, I would get to the hospital.

I drift in and out of sleep for the next few hours, usually it's broken up by me running to the bathroom and expelling things out of orifices I didn't even know I had, but at around 5 in the morning my phone goes off. Low and behold, its a text from my friend saying he's outside the hotel. I stagger down to let him in, but... wait. There were two. There were definitely two friends that I left to their own drunken devices in Paris.

"Nick's at the hospital" was the only explanation I got.

Are you kidding me? Well. All right. If he's in the hospital, my logic dictates to me, that means someone is looking after him. Its five in the morning, the metro doesn't open for another hour or so, so we'll get some sleep and if he's not here in the morning we'll go hunting for him.

Several hours later, Nick stumbles into the room.

Now, from what I understand, the last thing both of them remember is having consumed a total of 7 Amsterdam Maximators (11.6%) and walking towards the Eiffel Tower. One of them seems to remember vomiting into a trash can and "people not being very happy about it," but he said himself that that could've been anywhere. Who knows, he was drunk.

The other remembers being hauled into a police wagon where some French chick laughed at him for a while. He was thrown into a cell and cops woke him up around 4 to kick him out. The other was taken to the hospital because "he was too drunk" where he woke up in a bed, in a hall way that was lined with other drunken bums.

And that's how we spent Christmas.

Here I Come, Paris!

Man, it has been months since I've posted in this thing! Logging on today I realized that the last entry is dated December 18th, which means I haven't even written anything about my trip to Paris and Amsterdam. So, of course, that sounds like a fantastic place to begin where I left off.

Well, December 22nd I'm schedule to travel to Sevilla by train, and then hop on over to the airport to fly into Paris. The flight's only about two hours, so I was pleased by the thought of not having a miserable traveling day of death of chaos.

Little did I know...

Cut to several days before I head out of Córdoba. I'm teaching my cute little five years olds and we're all sitting down to do some worksheet. One of them, Paula, is sitting next to me while she colors, and asks me a question to clarify exactly what she should be coloring in the first place. Up until now I was very excited about the steps I had taken to remain healthy. Up until now was the first time I had been feeling solidly healthy since I arrived in Spain in the first place. But up until now, I had not had little five, germ filled five year olds cough directly all over me.

Thanks Paula.

That Saturday I spent the day in bed shivering. You know that shivering where you're laying under about 30 of your heaviest blankets, freezing your bum off even though your brain seems to acknowledge that something is warm, but it surely isn't you? Yeah, that's about how I spent the two days before I had to leave for Paris. But thank God it was just the shivers and a bit of a head flu and it hadn't migrated down to my stomach. If only I had been so lucky.

I wake up on Monday, travel day, feeling fantastic. HA! All those antibiotics I had been diligently been taking must have worked and I felt peachy-keen amazing. A quick shower, some breakfast, gather up all my stuff, and off I go, ready to see Paris!

All is going well, I make it to the airport safely, manage my way through security (although for some reason they viewed my face wash and shaving cream a threat to the airplane. Not my shaving razor, mind you, just my shaving cream), and sit down to wait for my flight with a bit of coffee and a book. That's when I hear it. The grumbling. The grumbling of an angry organ deep inside your body that is severely displeased and wants to make sure you know it, and organ that, no matter how much you beg, plead, and pray, will feel free to expel its contents whenever it deems necessary.

This, of course, is pretty inconvenient when you've got a window seat and you're waiting for take off and "MA'AM YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND I NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM AHORA!"

So the flu had migrated, and my hopes of a chaos free day of traveling were dashed away with my wind.

Of course, the very pleasant frenchman and his girlfriend didn't fault me, and after the third time of disturbing them I gathered my things and found my way to an aisle seat. Of course by then my stomach had settled down.

Cue arrival in Paris. The Bonjours, the Faire les Bisses, and even an occasional Beret. My life would have been complete if right there and then someone had been playing the accordion.

Yet, nonetheless, I had arrived and had not died in the process. Bryan 1. Paris 0. Stomach 10.

Thankfully my friends had already found their way to the hotel without a hitch, and I met them there and promptly ordered that we go find a restaurant and drink delicious wine while discussing poetry, politics, and the social implications of Sarcozy's cabinet. Or, you know, instead we just talked about how wacky Europeans are and how, frankly, they don't make any sense. In any case I had an... interesting meal of chicken liver paired with a tasty white wine in a restaurant where all the tables were draped in -- I kid you not -- red and white checkered table cloths, and then the lot of us returned to the hotel for a well deserved sleep.

The next morning I felt fantastic, well enough for a good walk around the city. Looking back on it we managed to cover and awesome amount of distance. We headed straight for Invalides (a hospital built for soldiers that contains Napolean's tomb) , The Eiffel Tower, the Arc, the Louvre, and a couple places, before deciding it was time for a nap. This is how the next few days were spent, idly wandering around the city checking out the sites and grumbling about how the ridiculous cost of beer was preventing us from drinking as much as we wanted.

Not that yours truly would have considering it would be just a few hours before the monster inside of me decided to erupt in an angry, fiery fury...

But I'll save that for the next entry!