Sept. 15, 2006

You know that famous tower in Paris. The one in all the pictures and postcards. That one image that's synonymous with France.

Well, I've been to the Eiffel Tower now. And I've pissed from the top of it. But I'll get to that in a minute.

Daren and I stowed our bags at the hostel this morning then headed out to see Paris.

Seriously. We're in Paris now. Not Twinkie Flats, Idaho.

Wow.

But a quick word about last night. As we were eating those yakisoba noodles and drinking our humongous beers -- did the lady not see the extra 20 pounds I'm packing around? -- a fight broke out at the door of the restaurant. Then, magically on cue, the heavens opened up and the rain came pouring down.

I mean, this was the most awesome downpour or rain I can remember seeing in a long time. One of the guys in the scuffle had somehow talked his way back into the restaurant by the time we left, and he gave me a random high-five as I exited the restaurant. "Nice guy," I thought. "Probably not part of the wait staff here."

Five seconds after leaving the restaurant, I was soaked. And by the time our sprint back to the hotel was over, it had seeped down to the bone. I wish I could describe how intense this rain was, or have caught an accurate depiction on video. I'd say it was raining like cats and dogs, but we haven't seen a single cat since we arrived in Europe.

So the next morning, we headed out around 10 a.m. to see Paris … on foot.

There's a metro here, but Daren decided he didn't want to chance it. He didn't like the idea of trying to navigate through a subway maze where everything's in French.

We had three destinations we intended to see. The Louvre where they keep the Mona Lisa, the Eiffel Tower and some catacombs Daren had read about in his travel book. They were all spread out pretty far, so we knew going into it that we were in for a long walk.

As we set off, I began scanning the street shops for a new shirt. I got those jeans in Glasgow, remember, but I desperately needed something for my torso. My one whitey undershirt was starting to get gross and disintegrate.

I thought I saw a shirt I liked, so I snagged it and tried it on in the dressing room. I wasn't quite sure it was a good fit for me, but Daren was acting like he was anxious to get going, so I kept it on and paid the 6 Euros.

By the time we'd eaten brunch at the Kebab House a little ways farther, I came to a stark realization about the shirt I was wearing. Then I started thinking about that conversation I'm going to have when I get home:

Friend: "Hey Troy, I see you're wearing a new shirt. Where did you get it?"

Me (arrogantly): "Oh, in this cute little shop in PARIS! Where did you get YOUR shirt?"

Friend: "Wow. I didn't realize people in France dressed like total fucking morons."

I hated my shirt. It was horribly ugly. And it accentuated my love handles and the extra 20 pounds I'm packing.

We stopped in another street shop where I tried on another shirt, size XL. Guess what? Too tight. Way too tight. Europeans are not fatsoes like us. An XL fits nicely back in the states, but not here.

"Don't you have anything bigger," I asked the tailor guy.

"No," he said emphatically. And then I sensed we were no longer welcome in his store.

So we left, and I walked around for another hour with a shirt on that said. "Hello, I'm a fat American tourist with a crappy shirt." It was the worst shirt I have ever slipped over the top of my body. What was I thinking?

I finally corrected that horrible action by purchasing a black, long-sleeved XXL shirt with "Petroleum Forever" written on it. Whatever that means, it's a cool shirt. I find it odd, though, that 99 percent of the shirts here have English words on them. So much for having a cool, foreign shirt from Europe. And so much for that conversation I was going to have when I get home.

We arrived at The Louvre probably around 2 p.m.. We got lost once on the way there, and also were distracted by a place called "Palais Royal" that had stunning ambiance. I've got lots of pictures to prove it.

I won't bore you with mundane details about the inside of the Louvre. It's one of the most famous museums in the world and there's lots of cool art shit and pretty stuff. The big attractions are the Mona Lisa and that statue-thingy of a woman with her arms cut off. La Venus de Milo.

You can take pictures of nearly everything -- and I did -- but you cannot take pictures of the Mona Lisa, so I did. And as I was doing it, a Scottish woman caught me and said this in that cockney accent of hers: "Some people have no respect." And some people are better speakers with a mouth full of marbles. Or maybe even a fist.

Seriously, though, it was more like a 4-second video I took, not a picture, let alone a flash. Not that big of a deal. I'll attach the video.

Before we left The Louvre we encountered one more bump in the road. We couldn't actually find our way out of that place. It was about 3:45 by the time we were ready to leave. We had quite a distance to cover to reach these catacombs Daren wanted to see. So it was time to bail The Louvre, even though we'd probably only seen only a fraction of it.

Well, we ended up seeing probably two-thirds of the place just trying to find our way out. There are exit signs everywhere, and we followed them until they took us to an area that had been cordoned off for remodeling. I think it was the secret place where they keep the holy grail -- you know, that one chick that Jesus really digged.

We actually started to get angry about not being able to get out, but in the process breezed through the entire collection of Egyptian artifacts. At one point we turned a corner and headed down a stairway into an exhibit we'd already been to. It's a creepy feeling when you walk for 15 minutes and realize you've somehow gone in a complete circle. I thought that only happened to characters in horror flicks.

It was about 4:10 when we got out of The Louvre and headed for the catacombs. As Daren and I were walking past an outdoor restaurant in the enormous park that leads to The Louvre, we decided to stop to eat instead. And give up our quest for the catacombs.

As the fancily dressed waiter approached, I began speaking to him in French.

"Je ne parle …"

"I can speak English," he said abruptly.

I had probably the worst meal of the trip so far. It was some kind of tiny sausage baguette. It was like ordering an orange and getting a tangerine (and expensive, too). Daren got some red wine so he could tell his friends he went to Paris and drank red wine. He's a poseur.

We didn't tip the waiter. And it wasn't because he was mean (he was indifferent to us, actually).

If you think about it, every American who's ever been to France has some kind of horrible story to share about some asshole waiter. "Oh yeah, we were eating at this restaurant in Paris and this Pierre guy was such a jerk!" I think I've heard 10 versions of that story.

Actually, this Peirre guy wasn't a jerk. We didn't tip because we learned something very, very interesting from our friend Julian on the train yesterday. Under most circumstances, YOU DON'T TIP in Europe. It's supposedly already included in the price of your meals. Interesting.

So we ventured onward, and for the first time could see the top of the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Because my tangerine-sized baguette didn't satisfy me, I stopped at a snack shack and ordered a "crepe" along the way. Big mistake, and I should have already known this from seeing that ridiculous movie "Talladega Nights." A crepe is a French way of saying "pancake." I am too prone to wandering off on tangents, so I won't indulge here. Just let me tell you that I like bin Laden more than I do pancakes.

It took us probably another two hours or so to get to the Eiffel Tower. Once again, Daren and I got a little distracted as we wandered our way there. We stopped at a French military history museum but weren't able to stay long. There were as many exhibits as there have been French military victories.

I don't know too many people who've been to the Eiffel Tower and gone up it. Most people say they didn't feel like paying for the ride to the top (even though they spent thousands getting to Paris). So Daren and I forked over 8 Euros apiece and purchased the damn elevator ride. Let me recommend this to anyone intending to visit Paris.

It is a bit frightening heading up the elevator to the top of this thing. It literally scared the piss out of me.

Oh yeah, didn't I mention at the beginning of this long ramble that I pissed from the top of the Eiffel Tower? Well, yeah, that's true. But if I implied that I pissed over the side then maybe I was vague to embellish a little bit.

So we get to the top of the Eiffel Tower, right. It takes two separate elevator rides past two platforms to get there. It's been drizzling rain all day and it's overcast, but you can still see for miles, or kilometers if that's your preferred standard of measurement. What fascinates me the most, though, is that there's a bathroom at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

There's not much room to wiggle at the top of the most famous tower in the world, but they managed to squeeze toilets up there. Fascinating. Of course my mind immediately wanders to our LOG book and the potential bragging rights I could have every time the Eiffel Tower comes up in conversation.

So I open the door to the restroom at the top of the Eiffel frickin' Tower. There's a men's area to the left, a woman's restroom to the right and a woman sitting at the smallest desk you've ever seen in the middle.

She eyed me with both suspicion and indifference. There were no doors to either restroom and little privacy, I observed. There were two pissers in the men's room and a door to what I assumed was a toilet, but it was locked. Maybe it was occupied, but it ruined any chance of recording the most historic entry ever in our LOG book.

I don't know for sure why there were no doors at the entrance to either bathroom and a woman sitting right there in the middle, but I have my suspicions. I'm sure she's there to guard against any attempts to smoke dope or pull off an Eiffel Tower version of the Mile-High Club.

So I recorded an honorable mention entry into our LOG book, we took our token pictures and then headed back down to the second platform. From there, Daren and I walked down an enormous set of stairs to the first platform, then down the last leg of the elevator to the bottom again.

When we were safely on the ground, I couldn't help but wonder one thing.

Who had reached the bottom first? Me or the piss?

(Photo of Daren at the Eiffel Tower):

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j130/troyfoster/100_4183.jpg

(Photo of me at the Arc de Triomphe):

http://i79.photobucket.com/albums/j130/troyfoster/100_4194.jpg