Welcome to the blog of a Stanford CS major. Please give me feedback on the new design, and ideas on what to call this blog .
I hope that at least one person who reads this blog got the Zoolander reference in the headline. It does not refer to my cousin, whose name also happens to be Paris, but to the city I'm currently in. It is soooooo hot, yesterday it was 38 degrees Celsius, which is definitely a record for this part of Europe. Today was more acceptable at around 34 degrees, but still really hot. To get Fahrenheit from that, multiply by 1,8 and add 32.
To answer some of your comments, yes I will post pictures, but only after returning home. For now I'm blogging from a paid account, and the rates are quite high, so I have to hurry, at least I have an English keyboard for once.
We arrived yesterday at around 5pm, and somehow managed to survive the way till the hotel in the terrible heat with two heavy backpacks. Our hotel is in Montmartre, where Amelie was set, and which used to be the former artist quarter. Now it is one of the poorer areas of Paris, but the hotel is OK and right next to the awesome Sacre Coeur. We only walked around in Montmartre yesterday and thought that Paris was the dirtiest and most chaotic city in the world. It seemed like 90% of Parisians were black, which turned out to be a mistake, once we saw the other areas of town. Montmartre, apparently is where most immigrants live, but it is still great to see that Africans have been moderately well integrated into society in a European city. That is definitely not true for Vienna.
Today we went walking along the Champs d' Elysee, which started a day of extreme sight seeing. We definitely walked more miles than I have ever walked in a day inside a city. That street is one of the nicest in Paris from my first impression,, but all of the stores are hopelessly overpriced, and all of the store clerks have egos that are just sad, they act like they are millionaries. After that we walked towards the Louvre and took pictures. We went shopping and then to McDonald's because of the aircondition. We then went to the Latin Quarter, which had very nice shops. We found a small bookstore called Shakespeare and Company, but I will blog more about that places tomorrow. Time is running out, I will write more tomorrow.
I definitely got the Zoolander reference--nice work! Sounds like you're having fun on vacation, and that you weren't one of the thousands of heat-related illnesses and deaths in Paris. Too bad you couldn't be in Italy when Tammy was there--I wonder if the Pope was actually unscathed, or if the Vatican is covering up the scandal of Tammy trying to seduce/assassinate him?
Posted by: Swamp at August 18, 2003 04:15 PM