I Was a Free Girl in Paris…Nobody Calling me Up for Favours, Nobody’s Future to Decide

How much did I love Paris?

Oh my god. I ended up spending an extra day in Paris: so five days in total. On the morning I was supposed to leave, Manu and his adorable girlfriend Claire set me off with a little lunch bag for the train that had in it a chocolate sandwich (they actually do that here I guess: stick a chocolate bar between two pieces of brown bread) and mashed up fruit in a tube that one can suck down (which have been buying every time I go grocery shopping here, and maybe they are in Canada and I just don’t know about it). So I set off towards the station and I just couldn’t get on the train! I didn’t want to leave. So I spent an extra day and night in Paris and took in the Paris Jazz Fest and an excellent temporary exhibit on John Lennon at the excellent though out-of-the-way Cité du Musique.


First, here's a picture of Manu and his girlfriend (mostly for the interest of Jen, who knows him but who hasn't met her yet.)

Check out these pics from the Lennon exhibit.

Here’s the installation of Yoko’s that she and John Lennon met at. You know how he met her at one of her shows in front of the piece of art with the nail and you could hammer a nail in and wish for peace? That little story has somehow been in my head since I was maybe thirteen. And he was impressed because she wasn’t all that impressed with him? Yada yada. Anyways, it was neat to see it.

And did you know that the debut of Lennon’s Plastic Ono band was in Toronto? I didn’t. Yoko Ono did him no good at that concert, though, screeching and making needless and annoying avant-garde noises along to his songs. I watched a good part of the concert in this private surround-sound room. The whole exhibit was really well done because it was interactive and sound-based.

Another one of the videos was of the creation of “Imagine,” which was played on a white Steinway, and then just off to the side where the video is there is another white Steinway with earphones attached to it and the music on the stand so you can play it.

Check out the lyrics of Instant Karma on the hotel paper:

Anyhow, all my other raving about Paris will be stuff you already know, like how huge and fantastic the Louvre is, etc, so I’ll just show you a few pictures.

But yet I have to show a pic of the Louvre:

And after, when everyone rested their exhausted feet in the fountain outside the Louvre's exit (can you tell it was student night: I got in free! Always going for the deal...)

You've all seen pictures of Notre Dame a million times, so I'll just show you close ups of some of the gargoyles.

I guess I 've got to include a photo of the Eiffel Tower, so here it is, from it's base (I descovered the yellow to blue option on my camera this day so most of my photos are amateurly taken in brown):

The many bridges along the water reminded me of home sweet home. Is it Saskatoon or Regina that is called Paris of the Prairies? I don't know which one because either suggestion in preposterous. But anyway, this one had art on it.

I know I will go back to Paris soon, hopefully with friends. Start lining up.
By the way, a huge thank you to Manu for putting me up. I’d just known Manu for less than a week when my friend Jen and I had hung out with him in our hostel in Montreal almost four years back, so it was amazing of him to put me up. And not only that, but he treated me like an honoured guest that he had long awaited.

Now that I think of it, I’ve stayed with tons of people this trip and they’ve all been way nicer to me than they should have been.