Paris. Museums. Pancakes. Parks. Sunshine. Long walks

Time is the one aspect of life I am sure to never understand. One week ago I was sleeping in a cheap hostel bed in Montmartre, and now I am lying in the best bed in the world in a little town in southwestern Norway, preparing myself to get up early to go to work tomorrow.

After wasting a rainy Sunday afternoon on being grumpy in a hostel room, I had to catch up on lost time the following days.
And in Paris there are a few things to see.

I started early Monday morning, and at 08.30 I enjoyed being number 26 in the queue in front of the glass pyramid of Louvre, filled with curiousity and excitement over finally being at this famous place myself, and very content about being early.
When they opened the doors half an hour later, the queue was around 200 meters.

 

Famous sight in the early morning hours

Musée du Louvre. What to say?
The building(s) itself is, without exaggerating, overwhelming.
Big.
Enormous.
As the old royal palace for a number of megalomanic kings and emperors, who all wanted to show their people and the world their greatness, it is richly decorated in any possible way. Statues, carvings, gold, grandness everywhere.
And it is seriously too big. I am sure the building is around one kilometer long from one end to another.

It isn't without reason the most visited museum in the world. Big, well organised exhibitions with interesting contents.
The big problem is the size.
I got lost in the suspiciously big Egyptian section (why does most of the Egyptian heritage happen to be in a museum in Paris?...), and both my back and legs hurt when I finally reached the paintings.

Venus de Milo

 

Egyptian book back then

 

The best description of my interpretation of death I've ever seen.

Doors

 

AHA! I found where they hid Hogwarts! Genius, seeing that huge numbers of Muggles go there every day.

 

Reflection

 

Exaggeration realised

Impressive use of light

 

Tourists

 

Painter painting painting

 

I have seen Mona Lisa.
She is not that big, and around 150 Asian tourists were trying to get a picture with her at once, so I didn't bother joining them.
Loads of paintings.
Very nice, but a bit too many - now I barely remember which ones I saw.
I liked Napoleon III's apartments a lot.

 

To the left: Mona Lisa by L. da Vinci.
To the right: 150 or more Asian tourists

 

Her fame ruined her

 

Vive la France!

 

Grandeur

 

Letter from famous person

I am not physically trained for large museums, so my back and legs forced me to throw in the towel after 3 hours, and skip the upper floor.
It was only Dutch, English and Scandinavian painters anyways.

Out in the Parisian spring.
Statues.
Parks.
A french crepe on Champs Elysées.
Sunshine.

Paris

 

Place de la Concorde. This obelisk is 2500 years old and tells the story of Ramses II's life. The French claim to have received it as a gift from Egypt - the Egyptians say Napoleon stole it...

I did the brilliant move to join New Sandeman's free guided tour - the same as we did in Paris.
This one too was great. So much fun facts and information about the city.
Some well spent hours!

 

Pont Neuf, first facebook-album in the world. One of the kings arranged a big party once, got all the important people of the country drunk, ordered his artists to portray them, and tadaaa, terrible faces on the bridge.

 

 

Eternal love on Pont de l'arte.
Or at least until some keepers come and cut them off.

 

Arago, the meridian of France - or the Roseline as Dan Brown put it

 

Palais Garnier, Opéra de Paris in the end of the road.
The phaaaaaaantom of the opera is there, inside that hooouse!

After finishing the tour, I headed for the most famous monument of Paris: The Eiffel Tower.

Big iron construction which you have to pay 13,50 euros to get into.
Nah.

 

Just because I was there!

 

Eiffel Tower

 After walking, and walking and walkiiiing to the Arc de Triomph and down Champs Elysées, I was close to total fatigue, and chose to turn my face back to Montmartre.

 

Street

I was really tired, so I decided to relax, and just take a look at the city after dusk.
Because of stupid guys trying to hit on me, I once again considered getting really fat and cut my hair and dye it brown, and went back to go to sleep.

 

Sacre Coeur by night

Something strange got to me in Paris, and I woke up automatically around 06.00 in the morning. Nothing to complain about, as my days had a tight schedule. Tuesday it was time for one of the most extreme and exaggerated places made by man in the world; Versailles.
Louis XIV was not mentally okay I think. Completely lost the grip of reality.
Pretty obvious as he considered himself the center of the universe.

 

Château de Versailles in the first sunrays of the day

 

How to show off in the 17th century: get a stuffed rhinoceros

 

Important French

 

Louis XIV had a double-digit number of expensively decorated thrones

 

The sun king, the center of the world

 

Chandeliers

 

I heard a guide say that 19 children were born in this bed

 

The coronation of Napoleon - not even God's representatives on earth was worthy of crowning him, so he did it himself

 

I found Voldemort! I swear, it IS him. Using scientist Suger as cover

 

Green

 

Just fixing something on the sunkings palace

Somehow (and luckily) you can't see the dark mass of tourists and Asian girls making traffic jam in the corridors because they just have to take a picture with every little statue or window or piece of curtain they can find, but they were there in large numbers.

I got really annoyed after a while because it makes it impossible to enjoy the artwork.
I therefore moved out in the gardens.
Which are just as insane, just in a different way.
You see, old Louis was so great that he controlled everything - even nature.

So the gardens of Versailles are an enourmous park system of squarekilometers. 

Hedges, lawns, pools, statues, bushes, paths, fountains, roads, canals, forests and even a part only for Marie Antoinette when she needed to feel like a "normal" person - with an Italian-inspired constructed village and her own "small" refuges.

They had small golfcars for rent, and I ended up regretting so hard that I didn't pay for driving instead of walking.

 

Queen's room

 

Park behind Marie Antoinettes mini-palace

Staircase.
No reason to be humble

 

One of numerous objects for self-worshipping

 

Pathway to the Queen's hamlet

 

Because this is how life was for normal people 400 years ago

 

Longest alley I have seen.
And I have to walk ALL THE WAY to just get out of this crazy place.
I remember I was almost crying

 

Cutting bushes in funny shapes is the way Louis XIV controlled the nature

 

There he is, crazy old man. 

After walking more or less a marathon in the gardens of the sun king, I gratefully sat down on the stairs in the overcrowded train back to Paris.
Half an hour of rest was enough to give me my energy back, and I headed for the splendid gothic masterpiece Notre Dame.
I am impressed that a cathedral with such fame still can keep some of the holy atmosphere. St. Marcus in Venice can't.

 

Okay mosaic

 

The treasures of Notre Dame

 

A piece of the True Cross, ladies and gentlemen. 

(Does wood really not rot after 2000 years?) 

I also visited the crypt of Notre Dame, but not the towers. Stupid me.

And Musée d'Orsay, a very pleasant surprise. Perfect size of an art museum, and with a big collection of Monet, including the famous waterlillies. I found out that I like impressionism after all.

That night I had, despite soar legs and sleepy eyes, decided to join the pubcrawl of Montmartre (like in Amsterdam - I like repeating myself). Again we weren't that many, and a Tuesday night is not the big party night in Paris, but the people there were great (even though I was the only one without English as my maternal language), so I had a good night.

Moulin Rouge

My responsibility puts a stopper for my fun, because even through a light mist of alcohol in my head, I understood that it would be better to take the last metro at 00.30 than walking back on my own in Paris' red light district (and there it is not clean, legal and well-organised). 

But the next morning I didn't regret that choice.
I had dark plans.
The catacombs of Paris.
Some of the creepiest I have ever done, and especially because it was early, so sometimes I would be the only thing moving in a dark, 500 m long corridor with low ceiling and moist dripping from the walls, far under the city where no one can hear me scream...

I must admit I had to suppress some claustrophobic fits, but it was really worth it!
I like scary stuff!

 

Many meters underground, you walk and walk. One way out, and it is ahead. Who knows what lurks in the dark?....

 

To honour a worker who died during the creation of the catacombs

 

Arrête! C'est ici l'empire de la mort
I can't understand what made me enter there voluntarily

 

They are not fake

 

I read that there are around 8000 skeletons in there. When the cemetaries were full, they needed to put them somewhere else. Very neatly organised in patterns and all, but a heart made of skulls could take away the nausea from being surrounded by skeletons.

 

Silence, êtres mortels

I am convinced I could feel the presence of ghosts or lost souls down there. Like an annoying, very high pitched sound that you can't hear, but you feel it.

They didn't attack me, so 45 minutes after going down, I was back up in the sunlit streets.

 

Panthéon

 

Lunch in 20 + degrees and sunshine in Jardin du Luxembourg

 

Summer

My last afternoon was dedicated to explore Montmartre - the "real" Paris.

 

One of many bookshops

 

Pastel colours

  

Yay, another Space Invader

 

Art in the street

 

Montmartre

 

From the top of the hill

My last artistic experience was the visit to Salvador Dalí's museum in Montmartre, where the crazy drughead loved to stay and create crazy things.

 

Say no more

 

Because time is not fixed or solid

 

I must say I was so charmed by his mustache that I bought a book about it

 

Montmartre II

 

Stairs in front of the Sacre Coeur

I had a musical- date with myself that evening, so the only thing I had to do before dinner was seeing Paris from above.
L'Arc de Triomphe smells like old socks on the inside, but apart from that, it is beautiful. Napoleon had some of the same problems as Louis XIV.
The city is actually designe around the Arc, so Napoleon could walk home from war through "arches of victory" and all the way down Champs Elysées to the castle that used to be in front of Palais du Louvre.

 

Montmartre seen from Arc de Triomphe

 

Paris. Two of twelve avenues going out from the Arc

 

The biggest roundabout in France. Ten lanes, no separation marks, twelve entries and exits.
Palermo, you lose

 

The grave of the unknown soldier.

After a nice dinner, I made my way to Theatre Mogador so see "Mamma Mia".
Excellent musical, excellent ending to an excellent trip. 

Only thing left between Paris and this:

 

was a day of lots of waiting, airports, security controls, sleeping. 

I was picked up in the cute little airport in Haugesund by a very happy mother, and two of the longest and most rich of experiences months of my life so far were over.

I arrived to grey weather and lots of snow left, but I must have brought some of the southern weather back with me, because the spring has finally arrived now.

Sunshine, snowmelting, flowers for the first time in 6 months. 

I spent one night in our little paradise - our cottage - with my mum, just to enjoy the first real day of spring this year. 

We also did some of this:

 

but that we don't talk about. 

My hands and arms still hurt. 

Good weather, good food, good wine, good books.

Paris might be big and splendid and overwhelming, but when it comes down to it, I am not sure if it can compare to this:

There is nothing like spring in Norway.

 

Or tea and waffels with brown cheese and homemade jam.

Highway to heaven

Bella Sicilia

I live in a country which is mostly untouched by human hand, and the wilderness of nature is overwhelming.
Still, I can't help being impresesd by this piece of land the rest of Italy forever will be kicking mercylessly.
There is something old and wild about the island even though it has been civilised in a lot of different ways since ancent times.

Thousand years ago when Scandinavians still lived in caves, big politics were going on in Sicily. Everyone wanting the place gave it a big cultural diversity and a development we didn't even have big enough brains for understanding.


It is hard to tell what happened, but it seems like it somewhere along the way lost track of time and ended up like a stange mixture of wild nature, highways, olive groves and castle ruins.
In a way it doesn't seem to fit together. You see modern cars navigate in and out of sandycoloured cities from before year 1000 and blinking commercials hung up on Byzantine city walls.
There is a castle about every kilometer along the road, unkept and left to their own, but they will remain. They look like they have grown up of the red, rocky ground, and are a part of the landscape just like the neon yellow flowers, the olive trees and sharp cliffs cutting into the blue crystal surface surrounding the island.

Wednesday we went on a roadtrip along the northern coast with Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto as the goal.

That's how we roll. Sicilian highway, me being unresponsable and mapreader at the same time.

They say that over half of the cars that drive into Palermo will be damaged. Even though the highway goes outside the city center, it was a traffical mess I can't compare to anything. A miracle that they even get anywhere.
We didn't crash, luckily.

Time was killed by playing games like "Who is X" (including accusations about confusing answers because I answered "Yes" to the question "Is it a real person?" about Santa Claus), studying the map and enjoying the shifting landscape.

Enchanting sky, but my camera didn't really understand

Capo d'Orlando. Once again, check out the colour of the water...

 

Fancy stones. The stripey ones look like some expensive design

After a few distractions along the road as a walk on the beach or looking for food, we came to Terme Vigliatore, a town near Barcellona where a friend of Sergio's family was kind enough to lend us his huge, empty villa for as long as we wanted.

 

A sunny street in Terme Vigliatore on the way to the supermarket

 

 

Not an unusual sight in Sicily. Simply abandoned

Then he took us to a friend's house in a nearby village, Castroreale - a beautiful town clinging to a mountain top. And that house was something to talk about. Like a medieval castle of 600 square metres including rooftop terrasse and roman bath. Whoa.
Nice to know people with money.

And very nice indeed to have a house all by ourselves. And a dark bedroom, and no salesmen with megaphones shouting out their amazing offers outside your window at 8.30 every morning. I slept like a baby. We had a late Italian breakfast - biscuits - and went to Barcellona Pozzo di Gotto to meet one of Sergios friends, Davide.

150 years of Italy

This great guy showed us a bit of the area around the city, and it is so beautiful.

 

Capo di Milazzo into the Tyrrhenian sea.

 

Guardians of the chapel

 

A small, empty chapel in the mountainside

 

No one there, but the candles are still burning 

 

Stairway to the chapel. What a way to praise your god

 

Friends

 

My absolute favourite.
Stairway to heaven

 

When I am alone, when I am at home. When I go training.
It always seems like something is missing.
The trust is that in every moment,
I'm missing you.

 

Perfect place for a love declaration

 

Wow.

 

Everything is yellow in Sicily now

The western Sicily is very different from the area around Castellammare di Golfo, where I have my base.
In the east, it is more dry, with sandy, rocky ground and a bit harsh vegetation. In the west, is it green. VERY green. The landscape is a bit softer and reminds me of Toscana.
I have a feeling that this part of the island is richer, because houses are more fancy and wellkept and you don't see that much of the abandoned buildings just falling apart.

 

Sergio was ecstatic to find his first four leafed clover.

 

I topped it to find one with two. Naturally!
Have you seen that before?

After a beautiful afternoon we returned and had dinner and went to bed.

The next day just disappeared into nothing. We were planning on leaving early, so we could visit a lot of places on the way, but after having heart shaped chocolate biscuits and milk for breakfast out in the sunshine, we kind of got stuck. It was an amazing day. Hot sun, splendid blue sky and a fresh breeze.
We stayed on the terrasse for hours.
Just feeling the sunshine and listening to cars and birds, still feeling all alone.
Well grilled we finally managed to move and hit the road back home.
For a change, we took the strada statale (state road) instead of the highway, as this winds up and down the hills along the coast and through all the cities on the way.

 

Coastal cities

 

 

Modern castle

 

Green and blue and sunshine

Eventually we found out that we had spent three hours to get nowhere on the map, and we could have been almost home.
At Capo d'Orlando we bought bread, meat and cheese (ooh, il formaggio italiano, what a wonder), and headed for the beach.
I said "hey, I just had a déjà vu! I feel I've been here before!".
That was true.
We recognised the place when we parked on the same parking place as two days earlier, and went down to sit fifty meters from where we first had a break.
And we didn't plan it!

Dinner in the sunset.
Then highway back to Castellammare.

 

Our dinner table at Capo d'Orlando

Saturday was nice. We got up, had breakfast and went to the beach.
A bit chilly still, so almost no Sicilians out, but way warm enough for me. I even got fairly sunburned.
IN APRIL.

 

Shy Italian? No, just kidding, those don't exist

 

Good life

 

Despite my facial expression, I was loving my life in this moment.  

Great lunch with handmade, fresh pasta and swordfish. The food might not be the best, thinking of my weight, but it is so good. Yum.
We took a stroll along the harbour, watching people - kids playing, young girls who think they are grown ups, group of boys encouraging each others to do something (probably not reasonable) and old men with hats sitting in their cars reading a newspaper, probably to get peace from their wives.

 

Castellammare del Golfo

There are very few women in the streets of Sicily after a certain age.
You almost never see old ladies out, and if you see a woman, she is mostly with her husband or boyfriend.

I was in extreme need of something yummi and unhealthy, so we picked up Matteo, friend, and drove to Alcamo, a nearby city, to have a frozen yoghurt and consume it in a park while watching old men playing check or cards as the sun went down.

 

Castle in Alcamo before they threw us out

Then my last supper and some weird discussions at the dinner table. I think I disagreed with almost everything (of course), but I was happy, because someone had slipped a Babelfish into my ear and I understood every single word that was said.
Mi piace!

In 7 weeks I've passed five languages, and I can understand at least 40% of all of them. Yuppi!

Early to bed and even earlier up.
4.35 my alarm went off, and I got dressed and had a quick breakfast, and Sergio made me a (really amazing, I found out in the plane) sandwich.
Highway to Birgi, which now is partially reopened, then time for goodbyes and check in and a lot of boring waiting time.

The rest is nothing to tell about.
I slept on the plane, and it took me exactly four hours to get from Beauvais airport to my hostel in Montmartre.

 

First impression of Paris: CONFUSING.

And it was cloudy and chilly and raining sometimes.
My mood wasn't too good.
I hated myself for only staying on Sicily for six days.
It is the best period to be there now (for me, as I am allergic to high temperatures), and I already missed Sergio more than what was pleasant.
And then I went out to check out the area. Sacre Coeur was crowded, it started raining, tourists everywhere, nasty glares from men.

 

Tourists and rain.
And Paris in the back ground

I had to shout "Shut up!" to a stupid salesman who wouldn't leave me alone with his stupid bracelet.
That made me feel slightly better.

Then I got lost and hated my Lonely Planet book for saying that "central Paris is not very big". Not true. At least not yesterday.

All in all, I was in a bad mood, got home and made some food and went to bed early.

 

My wonderful hostel bed. 

 

This is how sunburned I was yesterday.
Today I am worse.

Today was much, much better, but I'll tell you that later.