Skill Czech: The Story of How I Went to Paris and Came Back

The story begins when Callam, a cool British guy, comes to pick me and Megan up from our new flat at like 11 a.m.

We start driving, but get almost immediately lost (in Plzen). We stopped and asked directions from gas station attendant who was sitting on a picnic table outside on break. He immediately offered us marijuana. We declined. He shrugged, finished his break and went to get directions for us.

Then we got to Germany:

Then we were pulled over by German police immediately upon crossing border, forced to produce (expired) passports and sit nervously in car while they deliberated (they were very nice, though):

But that didn't stop us from being mean to them after they let us go:

Then we stayed up all night in hotel lobby in Saarbrücken eating homemade pizza and talking to kindly, stout and French-only night shift clerk. Before we ate the pizza, we went to a bar, and on the way the room key fell out of Megan's pocket. We realized this, but the group was unfazed. Still, we were overjoyed when we found it again on the way back home:

Then we went to sleep and woke up in this room in this German hotel in Saarbrucken:

(that's Callam)

and I watched this on TV:

Then we drove out of town -- Sarrbrucken, that is -- and tried to make our way to Paris. Soon, I turned on the radio because I wanted to hear the song "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" by Beyonce, and then we listened to it because it was the first song on the radio. Also we drove by this:

and it was pretty apocalyptic. Then we got to Frane!

We drove into Paris, though I was napping in the warm back seat when we actually made it into the city. This was the first thing we saw:

Which was pretty cool. Then Callam took us to his friends' apartment, which fortunately was very close to the apartment of the CouchSurfer we were going to sleep with that night. So after a bit, we parted ways, and Megan and I went to Romain's for the night. It was fantastic.

He took us to eat at a restaurant called La Tambour. It was the best restaurant I've ever been to. Here's a few pictures:

That alst picture is of Megan and our waiter, who was so cool. He brought Megan a creme brulee that she bought for me because I had never had good creme brulee before, and when I reached for a bite before she did, he whacked me on the knuckles with a spoon and chastised me for taking her dessert. The proprieter of the restaurant was a huge guy with a huge beard who apparently had lived one of the most interesting lives in Paris. I don't have a good picture of him, and I'm too lazy to go through and rotate all my vertically oriented pictures correctly, so just imagine a guy you'd love. That's him.

This is a shot of the living room of Romain's flat, where we slept. Lots of neat books.

The next day we went to the Centre Pompidou, which you can see from the window of this apartment. It's a modern art museum, and here are several pictures I took of it:

wall of gas masks

cool multicolored room -- very boundary-pushing

view from the top

Then we walked to the Eiffel Tower by way of the Seine. It was nice -- we walked the length of the Seine from the Centre Pompidou down to tower. Here's a video and some pictures:

Then we walked around and found this:

sorry they're sideways -- just turn your head

Then we went to the next CouchSurfing host -- Joseph's friend Clothilde. Joseph was in Lyon, but his friend was using his flat to surf, so we did too. Here's a picture of the room, the guest book we signed (with Asian writing!) and of the Catholic shrine set up in the wall (???):

Then we walked around and wanted to visit the catacombs but the line was too long so we walked to the cemetery instead and saw this stuff there and along the way:

That's Samuel Beckett's grave -- I left a note that you can read if you click the picture and zoom in on it. Megan wrote, on a metro ticket, "I'm waiting..."

Then we got to the final "couch" of the trip -- Frederique's! She was awesome, and she gave us a whole separate room with a bed and an attached bathroom with shower. It was a bounty of domestic treasures. We made very many crepes while living here.

The room:

Then it was New Year's Eve, and we went out to the Champs-Elysees and here's how our night went:

(please make sure to watch the above video all the way through -- just turn your head to the right if it really bothers you that much)

So that was very fun! Happy New Year's!

The next morning we woke up and went to Le Marais -- the historical Jewish and current gay district of Paris. There was a Jewish bookstore that we went into, and found these:

...seriously.

This next section will be the longest -- it's the section where we visited the Parisian Catacombs. This experience was amazing, amazing, really absolutely unprecedented in my life. Seriously -- these videos barely do it justice:

Please do yourself a favor and click each video, load it in a new window or tab, and then toggled HD on

(the line waiting -- it was like a 90 minute wait, and we were MISERABLE but as soon as we got inside we realized it was worth it. There are like 20 minutes of plain stone tunnels you have to walk down until you get to several wider sections where old explorers had carved miniature castles and towns in the rock itself, and then you walk a little bit more and see this:)

Then we went to the Lourve:

That was the end of that day. We came home, and realized that we were in a pickle. Megan had to be back in Prague for work a day earlier than we thought. So her boss agreed to pay for her plane ticket home for the next night. Then we went to sleep. When we woke up, we went to Notre Dame and I took these videos and pictures: