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DAY TEN – Alone Again

Today started off with waking up at 4:30am to see Brittany off back to the US. Then I slept some more until I had to check out. At that point I walked a couple miles to GENERATOR PARIS, a new hostel ’cause the old one didn’t have any more rooms for a new reservation. Generator was pretty nice, really similar to a hotel, just 8 people to a room. Whilst waiting for my check in time, I spent a good hour repairing my shoe, which had a seam bust a few days prior. Many miles later, it has held so far. We’ll see if it explodes in the future.

Once settled into my new bed, I walked back to Notre Dame to wait in line for an hour to gain access to the top of the towers. Like 800 spiral steps later, I was overlooking Paris from a bell tower hundreds of years old. Complete with a robust wind and the (rather mysterious) voice of a lone opera singer, being on top of that huge church was mighty impressive. Once back on the ground floor, I walked out of Notre Dame and immediately saw the source of the opera: unaccompanied, there was a chick standing on a street corner singing her heart out, and man did she have some pipes. After listening to her for a bit, I left the square and got some expensive as fuck but so worth it dinner at a restaurant (as a side note, it seems that all the whiskey in Paris tastes like frogs and cheese. Who knew?), and then walked back to my hostel.

Back in my bed, my thinks of the past few days culminated and, spoiler alert, I decided to cut my trip short and take a flight out of London back to the US. There are a lot of “hardships” that can be said about travelling Europe alone, such as the stress of planning your transportation and lodging on the go, trying to navigate a new city where you don’t speak the language, or the loneliness that often accompanies solo travellers. None of these impacted me in such a way as to make me decide to fly back to the US, though. I just got bored.

Yeah, that makes me sound like an asshole, but after a couple weeks overseas, another museum is just another museum, every building you pass is more than two centuries old (yawn), and drunken nights of debauchery can only keep the fun alive for so long. Coupled with no one to talk to about such things, I’d personally rather watch some YouTube videos and get some McDonald’s with my bros back in AZ.

Of course travel is fantastic and unique and there’s so much to see, but it’s the context that matters, and the context that I like is of the friendly variety. I know I could continue on my travels for as long as my money lasts, and probably experience a fantastic journey, but I also know that I’d simply enjoy my time more if I was around the people that I know and like to talk to. And unfortunately, that Nigerian dude I met and had light small talk with doesn’t make the cut. In a sentence, I’d rather have a conversation with Hector about the really nice beard that guy at Harkin’s had than talk to myself about how important and grand the Vatican is.

I’m sure I’ll come back to Yurop some day and check out the stuff I missed out on this time, I just need to get some company with me first.
Oh, and I also passed a dude playing an accordion today, so I think I can safely say that this is indeed fucking France.

 

DAY ELEVEN – Party Hardy

Ooh boy. This was a time and a half. For the first 75% of the day I just walked to the train station to get my ticket to London. On my way back I grabbed some food and then decided to catch a movie; unfortunately, Beauty and the Beast wasn’t out in Paris yet, so I went and saw Silence. Holy fuck is that a heavy movie. If you aren’t aware, like I wasn’t, it’s about two Jesuit priests who travel to Japan in the 17th century looking for their missing mentor. I had no idea what the movie was about when I sat down, and damn. Big questions. 9/10 would recommend.

Later that night I was invited by my hostel-mates to get some foods and drinks, so the 7 of us went and got some food and drinks. First thing’s first, goddamn, Americans are loud. There were four of us in the group, and the other three would not stop yelling at seven billion decibels in the restaurant. That’s not to say Americans aren’t the only loud ones, but I think we take the crown on that front. Back at the hostel we pre-gamed a bit, and there was this one American chick who had like 4 shots before we even left the room, and that’s the point where I decided this was gonna be a good night. We took the metro to Bastille and hit the clubs there, and I swear, clubs are the worst fucking thing. Some dude came up and literally shoved one of the girls into a wall and started grinding on her and she was like NOPE and we had to tear the guy off of her. One of the other dudes had to pretend to be her boyfriend to get him to finally fuck off. Later, three guys were following us down the street like a bunch of weirdos and we ended up ducking into a club to lose them. Fuck that. Dancing is cool and all, but tbh not the biggest fan, fam.

Many debaucheries later, we got back to the hostel, and then there was some dumbshit drama between this Czech dude and the crazy chick who took a million shots. Guess they both have significant others, but that flies out the window when they meet up during their travels. Okay. Eventually we all went to sleep, still drunk of course, but let me tell you, all those people were pretty damn neat, would party with again. As one of them put it before I crashed “I’m so glad our entire room fucks with each other. Ya’ll are good hostel-mates.”