Dear Diary, France

(Excerpt from my travel journal; 18 years old; London to France; if you see == within parenthesis, they are comments I'm making while typing this up. If you haven't yet, feel free to check out the London post which was the first part of the trip, or the intro.):

2018 June 14

Paris, France, later in the day from the post before

Mrs. Richey with her mouth wide open, Erin, Mrs. Bond in the back behind her, me... I've gone blank with who is on the far right. Clearly, none of us were prepared for this photo!

Right now, I'm sitting on the bench at the Louvre. I was walking around with the guys, but I can't really walk around with them in the bathroom, so I decided to fly solo. I'm not supposed to be alone, but I don't care. It feels nice here. People speaking in a language I'll probably never understand, birds chirping. A slight breeze. I can see the two pyramids from where I sit if I look over my left shoulder. On my right, there's a man with greying hair playing futbol with some kids. There are clouds, kind of dark. It may rain. In about fifteen minutes, I'm supposed to meet my group near one of the pyramids, the convenience of having it in view. There's a mother angel with her daughter and son at the corner of the roof of the Louvre in front of me, blowing a horn.

(<==Insert incredibly awful sketch.)

From here, right now, it looks like she's calling out toward the sun, toward God.

(<== what happened with the guys: I went into the girl's room and came out to find the hall empty. I waited a moment but got scared, because I thought they'd abandoned me. I'd never get out of the bathroom before guys before. That just didn't happen. So when it did, I freaked out and left. Later, I found out they'd waited for me, poor guys, but I wasn't there.)

(A little later)

It's night and I am sitting at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. I've had a chocolate-banana-whipped cream crepe, I've bought my cousin a postcard from here, I've bought stamped envelopes, I've found alone time for myself, I've listened to music, I took a picture of me talking on the phone with my cousin with the background... I got Mr. Skully from the Tower in London and he has proven to be a great model so far. If only he would sit properly or stand. He just needs some practice. (<== Mr. Skully was a small toy skeleton replacing Mr. Gnome, a miniature gnome that my bestie, Ayesha, and I used to go around taking photos of on the days we skipped in our senior year... I feel like I can admit to that now that it's been over a decade.)

The Eiffel Tower is beautiful. The architecture is simple, awe-inspiring. The lights make its beauty glow and when the other lights start blinking, it's more beautiful than fireworks. Inside of it isn't much, though the view is pretty cool (and I mean that both ways, burr.) But the way the lights shine on it makes it look just like it's supposed to, gorgeously antiqued. Alyse is singing almost like opera. She has a rose she found on the ground, which I used as a crop. Now we just need Monsier Perfecto to come around.

I got a Paris shirt. The guy there just made my day. He kept mixing English, Spanish, French, and intentionally confusing me.  I knew enough of all languages to understand what he was going on about, but it was great to have somebody pick on me. Somebody with my kind of sense of humor.

2008 June 15

Last night, instead of Erin, we had Maya. Everybody was afraid she'd try sneaking off. (<== anybody else find this ironic since I had just talked about doing that same thing, twice already?) We also lost Alicia. She went back to sleep with her mom. People here are way more... social... than people in London, even if you have no clue what they're saying, vice versa. On the street, a group of guys (around our age? younger?) seemed to act like hyenas. I didn't wake up to another voicemail, bummer. But last night, the guys (Andy, Jimmy, and Christian) had apparently waited for me after the bathroom, left for seven minutes, waited again. How sweet! I probably would've tried to hug them, but I'm not really into that kind of thing. It's a wonder how I end up with all the softies. (<== I felt so bad about this!)

Breakfast wasn't too bad. I grabbed chocolate spread to give to Victoria to try. They also had honey, which is what I had.

So, then, also last night, there were two men in a car that yelled something and quickly drove off. In French, Erin yelled, "Show me your butt!" So then, they backed up, in the road, all the way to us. They spoke in French, but Mrs. Bonds (Erin's mom) got them to speak English. They were VERY.... horny. (<== I remember this! They were trying to get Maya to go with them, and kept saying something about aren't Americans sexual like that.)

We're on another tour thing. Time to sleep.

Holy crap, Andy was a tall mfer.

George Bush apparently just rode by with tons of security. We had to stop because they blocked the roads. We can finally move now. I only have, like, 19 minutes left on my phone. ugh. I also have only about $299 left. Hopefully, that's how much, if not more, I'll have left.

Also, today is Father's Day. Hope Dad finds his card.

(Near the end of the day)

We're on the train to Rome. 

(==> End of excerpt. I am "publishing" this around the date I wrote it, but the real date is 2019 June 18. Other locations of the trip: London which was the previous post, Italy which is the next, Greece)