Parachute

I'm running out of p words.

I have been hard at work on internship applications all last night and this morning, and my eyes are nearly bleeding from filling out employer information and writing cover letters, so I'm taking a break and devoting it to my readers. Lucky you!

I guess I could have called this post "Paris" since I haven't given an update about that yet. So, yeah, some words about Paris:

It is a beautiful place. Bet you didn't know that, right? Bet that's some really big news to you, isn't it?
Well, yeah. It is. The thing about Paris, though, is that although pretty much every street and alley and view is lovely, close up it is kind of grody. It's just a dirty city. So far in London I haven't noticed a huge amount of trash on the ground or graffiti on the walls, but in Paris that stuff is pretty much everywhere, except for the super-expensive places. Alright, London's no Stockholm, but it's respectably clean. Where Paris beats London though is staying true to traditional architecture, at least in the city. For on thing, many places in London got destroyed in the Blitz, and some of the newer buildings are just really depressing eyesores. That is something I didn't see in Paris, really.

Didn't really notice too much rudeness, either—they say that's one of the worst things about Paris, but as long as you say, "Bon jour, parley vous engles?" (I'm sure I butchered that spelling), they are pretty happy to help you. The first night we were there, we checked into our hostel and went down the street to a cafe/bar (right across from the Moulin Rouge!) and ordered Sidecars (Carolyn and I are both Princess Diaries fans; if you've read them you understand why that's amusing). I don't know why, but our waiter and the bartenders were really tickled that we ordered them. No idea what they were saying, but they were totally making fun of us in French. Whatever. They were delicious, and it is totally my new favorite drink.

Saturday morning, we went to explore the graveyard where Oscar Wilde is buried, along with Sarah Bernhardt, Jim Morrison, Isadora Duncan, Marcel Proust, Moliere and a host of others. We wandered that damn graveyard looking for Sarah and Proust for ages, and we must have passed right by them like 20 times, but we never found them. We did find Jim, Isadora (who's cremated), Moliere and Oscar Wilde though. Wilde's grave is great; its covered in red kiss marks and little thank-you notes to him and stuff. (Jim Morrison's is as well, but I was more excited about Wilde). I wrote a tiny little "THANKS -C" on it. I hope he sees it.

After this we went to eat—French food is DELICIOUS—and had a wander up the Seine past Notre Dame, the Louvre and the Royal Palais toward the Paris Opera.

Carolyn and I have both seen Paris before, which was a really big advantage to this little weekend trip. Neither of us really wanted to go see the Louvre again, or needed to go up the Eiffel Tower, or walk up the Champs Elysees. That gave us a lot more freedom to be relaxed tourists instead of crazy time-budgeting ones. Plus, Carolyn's friend Elizabeth who is studying in Paris was able to take us around and show us some great out-of-the-way places.

The Paris Opera was one thing we'd neither of us seen before, so we paid 5 euro to have a look inside. It is the first place I've seen this term that I would describe as opulent. The Brighton palace came close, but this was still the most extravagant and intricate interior designing I've ever seen. I wish we'd gotten a chance to see Paquita, like we planned, but it didn't end up working out. Seeing inside the place was still a treat, though. I had Phantom of the Opera stuck in my head for a long time, because you can totally see Andre and Firmin freaking out on the entrance hall stairs, or imagine a ghost haunting the back rooms on the sides and stuff. It was so cool. I wish we could have gone down to see the lake underneath the stage—it's real; it's there for acoustics—but I get the feeling access to that is pretty exclusive.

We spent the rest of our weekend window and flea market shopping, pub crawling and chocolate buying. On Sunday morning I went to Mass at the basilica on Montmartre, where our hostel was, and where I went to Mass last time I was in Paris. Last time though, it was a Wednesday evening, and no one was around, and they shuffled out all the tourists before they started the service. This time, not so much. It was weird to have this constant stream of onlookers wandering past as Mass was going on. But, oh man, I wouldn't have been surprised if the organist had been the Phantom of the Opera himself, he was so good. And he played all this ridiculous dramatic organ music pretty much all throughout the ceremony. It was so neat.

Anyhoo. Paris was awesome, but what was even more awesome was the feeling of relief to be able to come home to London. I can't believe it's even possible for me to write that.

Plus, I've had a fantastic week here so far. Monday I started filming the interview and other footage for my first film for video journalism (Carolyn's story about her first time going to the Globe) and I think it is going to be excellent. I can't wait to get started editing when I get back from fall break. Tuesday I ran errands in Kingston, but then went up to London to meet up with Peter and have a drink. It was awesome to get to see him—I have really enjoyed being around him and Tara, people who know what I'm talking about when I talk about McFarlin or the Schroeders or poor Igor. It's refreshing in a way. Plus, we went to this excellent pub, the Cheshire Cheese, which looks like the Leaky Cauldron on the outside and is where Charles Dickens wrote books. Also, it sells pints for £2, a price unheard of pretty much everywhere else in the greater London area, except for Wednesdays at the Berry. I think I am going to be frequenting it a lot this coming month, because I am crazy and am going to try to do National Novel Writing Month (write a 50,000-word novel in November), and I think it will be a good place to go and be inspired.

Yesterday I finished filming Carolyn, and we went for fish and chips at the great pub by the Globe. She went to go see a show, and I went to find an independent bookstore I found online. Turns out Charing Cross Road is like London's bookstore capital, so I had a lot of fun looking around at all the little places. The first place I went to, the one I was trying to find, is called Foyles, and it's like an independent version of Borders. What makes it way cooler than Borders is that it has a far wider selection, and I had a lot of fun browsing titles. I purchased a Hungarian phrasebook and another book (a surprise) for Meredith and a collection of Seamus Heaney poems called District and Circle. I love that I'm enough of a Londoner to understand that title. On the next corner there was a tiny little discount bookstore, crammed with stacks of thrift-edition classics for just £2. I bought Anne Bronte's second book, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

And so we come back to me filling out internship apps. I am almost done with the State Department and am working on the Washington Post, St. Petersburg Times, and Seattle Times. I still have to call the Denver Post to see if I can submit my stuff electronically. Basically all I need to do still for these places is write a couple of cover letters, but filling out the damn apps online is so time consuming and boring. I'd much rather be writing long and rambling blog posts about the random things I do in the U.K.

Ooookay. Back to the grind now I guess. I'll probably update when I get onto the ferry to go see Tara.

Peace.