Day 1 - Paris... Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower

September 11, 2007 Hehehehe....I love being who I am. I chose this day specifically for traveling, September 11! Nobody seems to want to travel on this day - I FOR ONE LOVED IT!!! The morning after I came to the airport was just spent on the internet. With all the e-mails I have to finish and couchsurfing friend requests and planning my trip and contacting couchsurfers that I'll be staying with and people facebooking or myspaceing or, or or or.....If I have not answered your e-mail or anything like that please do not be offended....just have a lot of them to answer! The flight was great. Came in, sat down, put a blanket over me, fell asleep, woke up in Paris (woke up a lot of times but I always thought it was a dream and only for a few seconds). Wonderful! A train later I'm sitting at a resteraunt with the Notre Dame as a view, eating snails as a starter and frogs legs as a main course! Hey, when in Rome....or Paris for that matter! Then I went inside the Notre Dame church itself and it is awesome. I really enjoyed it and I prayed at one of the alters but I had such a strong experience there that I had to do more. So I went in for confession and it was a really really good experience. It was so not as I thought it would be. I had to wait 15 minutes for the confession "booth" and it really wasn't a booth at all but a room with glass doors so everyone could see you. Inside the room there was a table and he sat on one side and I on the other and he could see me and I could see him. I thought he would just listen to me and be quiet while I spilled my guts (so to speak) but it was actually more like having a conversation with someone and knowing that he had the understanding that was needed to hear all these things. I didn't go into detail but I did talk with him about a lot of the things that were on my mind at that time and that I had in general done through my life (stealing, lying, stuff like that). It was really good to talk to him and great to hear his comments on what I had to say. He said that since I was 27 that I should consider settling down soon enough. He said that I would still be young though until I was about 40 so I have time ;) The best part was that he knew I wasn't Catholic and he said that all I needed was faith. He told me about the first confession according to the Catholics, it was Jesus who did it. Jesus was with a crippled man and he said: "Your sins are forgiven" and then he told the cripple to stand up and walk...and he did. The priest said that confession was not just about forgiving sins but that in confession there is always also healing, like there was in the first confession when Jesus healed the cripple. And he said that I didn't have to believe in his power to forgive my sins but that he could act as a representative of God and that God would forgive my sins and heal me. I thought that was really really really cool. And when he said receive his forgiveness I could really feel it.

The interior of Notre Dame is really cool and if you go there you should really take some time to check it out. On the outside to the right (left if you are coming from the church) is a toilett and to the left (right if you are coming from the church) is the entrance to the tower. It's free to go into Notre Dame but it costs to get into the tower. In the line I of course met some people (hehehe) and they were really wonderful, Chris and Melissa from Canada. They were in Paris on their honeymoon and it was real fun to go with them to the tower of Notre Dame. If you want to travel abroad and still do your workout just go to Stairmaster Notre Dame, who needs a Stairmaster 2000 :D The Stairmaster Notre Dame boasts of more then 400 steps and the corridor is small so you have to continue walking even though you are tired as not to hold up the other people. It's great fun and if you want to make it harder just do what I did, have a 12 kg backpack on your back ;) I didn't know that the Gargoyles would be so cool. I've always loved them, the idea of them to say, and now that I've seen them I'm even more in love. And the view from the top of the top was amazing. I love Paris...I really do.

Me, Chris and Melissa stayed together through Notre Dame and then we decided to go on a boat trip on the Sienne. I love some French people, I went up to someone working on one of the boats cause I wanted to get on the boat before it left and I asked: "Do you work here" He said: "No" and held up the insignia of the boat on his shirt and smiled sarcastically. Then I asked: "Can I buy a ticket from you or on the boat" then he said "of course not...why do you think we have a ticket office" and stormed off. Hehehehehe I love some French people ;) Gotta love being in the service sector...

The ride down the Sienne was amazing and talking with Chris and Melissa was great. He's a lawyer and told me some really interesting things about his business. So great to hear about Canada and the lakes there and their interaction with the USA.

We ended up at the Eiffel Tower and they took really crazy photos of me where I'm standing on a ledge with about a 10 m drop or something on one side ;) Then it was time for THE Tower. I couldn't walk up the Tower since I was there after 6 pm (go before that if you want to walk up to the 2nd floor, have to take an elevator to the 3rd floor) so I took the elevator and went immediatly to the top of the top. It was amazing, this is one of the few monuments that I've seen that is actually bigger then I thought it would be. It was so high that at one point even I got a little Vertigo... :S But I bounced right back. At the top the view was amazing and soooo romantic. I saw the sunset, the sun was so dark orange and beautiful...it was great. At the top I met a lot of different people. The funniest without a doubt was meeting my close cousin at the top. I heard some guys speaking Icelandic and I asked them like everyone else if they wanted to have a picture of the 2 of them together. But my cousin was there with a Glasswork exhibit, he is one of 100 artist from around the world that was invited to come to this exhibit and I'm so proud of him. He's the son of the daughter of the sister of my grandmother (did you get it??) and his mother is also doing Glasswork. A close second were the 2 Australians and 2 Englishmen (3 boys, 1 girl) and we were always meeting each other around there. Then finally we ended up walking from the 1st floor down. But from the 2nd floor to the 1st I walked down with 3 Scottishmen who were there for Scotland vs. England and that was funny. One of them, young guy, was snorting some speed and the older guy was trying to stop him. I talked with those Scottish guys and a lot more Scottish people all around Paris and they were so psyched for the game tomorrow. All around Paris you could see Scots in kilts and singing songs. I talked to so many of them and I gotta say...love the Scots.

At the top of the Eiffel Tower I received an sms from the couchsurfer that I am staying with tonight. He told me to meet him at home. Small problem was that he had told me where home was in an email that morning and I had not read that email. Then my phone ran out of batteries. So I was standing at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower with no batteries on my phone and no idea where to go and tooo many French people that couldn't speak English. Had a great 30 minute walk to an internet café and on the way tasted a real French hotdog. I finally got to his place around midnight and even though it had been more trouble it would have been worth it. This man, Auréllion (I think I'm spelling it right), is one of the most wonderful persons I've ever met. Words are just not enough for this man. Before I left on my trip I had only booked one flight, and that was the flight to Paris ;) He showed me a wonderful website, www.skyscanner.net that shows you the cheepest flight available for the way you want to go. I saved 340 euro's on staying at his flat, that's how much more I would have payed if I would have stayed somewhere else. He was so much fun and great to talk to that we talked and talked long into the night...it was 3 am the last time I checked my watch. A GREAT end to an amazing first day!!!