The Mona Lisa & I

Today we didn’t get off to a good start, everything over come me. The pain in my hip was bad, I felt like I'd ruined the holiday by hurting myself, we now can’t climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower, can’t go on the rides at Disney Land and a few other things were now off limits.
I cried over breakfast and all I wanted to do was curl into bed and watch movies all day, but we’re in Paris, how could I justify doing that!

Luckily, my beautiful spouse got me out of the hotel and on a spontaneous adventure around Paris.
Unfortunately, we are shit with directions. We missed the turn down to the train station adding an extra half an hour to our walk/hobble. We also missed a train station on our detour adding an extra 10 minutes.
It took us a good 20 minutes to sort out tickets, the woman at the office spoke very little English, so we stood there cussing to each other, trying to figure out the impossible ticket machine.

Finally, we were on our way to Opera,(The E in Opera has a little accent over it but I can’t figure out how to do it) where we planned to catch the Hop on Hop off bus for the day. That didn’t even come close to happening.
Oh, and did I mention that the train stations look like magical portals here?! There underground with a green swirly gateway looking thing randomly placed on the pavements around Paris with “Metropolitan” above each portal. They’re fantastic when you get the hang of them, even if they only give you 0.5 of a second to hop on and off, which was almost mission impossible on crutches.
When we came up from magical portal Opera we were confronted with a magnificent building, ‘Academie Nationale De Musique’. With gold statues on top, beautiful carvings out front, and moody looking clouds behind, it was a great sight to see, there was also a very talented busker out the front which set the scene.

Just around the corner was The Galeries Lafayette, which is a French upmarket department store. In our eyes, a French Myers. The most stunning part was the ceiling of the building, stain glass windows with beautiful French architecture. It had a lot of high branded stuff, but we were mostly excited for the stationary and book section. We spent over an hour there. We walked out with an English to French language book and two cute French postcards.

The worst part was how rude and lazy people were, although I was on crutches I still had to move out of the way for people and it was as if no one had seen crutches before! I thought I was paranoid but Nathan saw it too. Everyone was staring me up and down, it was very odd. Whilst waiting for the elevator we had to wait for many capable people to get on and off, even though the sign said it was for disabled and elderly people only. I even contemplated walking, with a fractured hip, up the stairs. Very frustrating.

We stopped off at Starbucks for a quick coffee and some delicious freshly squeezed orange juice. *Drool*
We had a quick glance over the English to French language book, and opened the book to a random page. The first translation I noticed was ‘J’ai ete viole’ - ‘I’ve been raped’
Followed by ‘J’ai perdu mes valises’ - I’ve lost my bags, quickly turing the page getting away from that scary section (I don’t want to use either of those phrases, ever) I came to ‘Je vous offre un verre’ - I’ll buy you a drink.
So now Nathan and I, and I guess you reading this, know how to say, I’ve been raped, I've lost my bags and I’ll buy you a drink.
Great. Well, spent 5 Euros....

We tried to get on a Hop on Hop off bus, they came through very frequently, but every time we hobbled close to one they drove off. So we moved on.
Our next stop was the Musee de Louvre, which we stumbled across accidentally, there was a pretty looking building at the end of a road. By that I mean about 500 meters away, which was a mission on crutches. By the time we got close to the building we realized it was nothing more than a hotel. Not very exciting, but we saw a sign leading to the Lourve, so we followed it.
Best idea we had all day, because I was on crutches we got to miss the massive line of people and go straight in, saving us at least an hour of waiting. We were escorted down an elevator and given a wheel chair. At this point of the day my hands were swollen and throbbing so it was a god send being able to sit down and pushed around.
We headed straight for the Mona Lisa. Along the way I was saying ‘Wow, that is beautiful’ and ‘Oh my god thats amazing’ whilst my lovely spouse was saying, and I quote ‘You can see the horses testicles’ and ‘That guy has no penis’ and ‘Look, she’s popped a tit’.
Charming. haha

We quickly found the Mona Lisa and went to the back of the line, a woman came up to us and said ‘No, no come with me’ we both immediately panicked thinking we’d done something wrong, but she escorted us to not only the front of the line, but behind the safety line, we were a meter away from one of the most famous paintings in the world. Closer than anyone else there. The security even came over and offered to take a photo of Nathan and I in front of it. That alone was worth the pain in my entire body from spending a day walking with crutches.
Not only that, but the next room was the end of the section, a security came up to us and told us to go through the no entry section and that his buddy would let us through the doors. Not sure what he meant but we went though.
A tall man came up to us and started talking French, I don’t remember a lot of French from school, but I can pick up some words in conversation and read a bit. He asked Nathan if he spoke French, now Nathan knows two things in french, ‘qui’ - ‘yes’ and ‘Bonjour’ - Hello. So his answer was ‘qui’. The man continued to speak in French, Nathan had absolutely no idea what he was saying, fortunately I managed to pick up that he had told us where the door was and came over to open it for us.
We spent two hours walking around until we became tired and started looking for an elevator, half an hour later we stopped to take photos of the courtyard and so Nathan could rest, because we could not find an elevator.
Scanning the map, we realized we had stopped literately two meters away from an elevator, it was hiding around the corner!

Leaving the Louvre we saw two men in police uniform, fly by on rollerblades. It was hilarious! We also walked past two young, possibly English or Australian girls, who said, and I quote ‘It’s Americas fault there’s so many ugly people around.’
- Delightful.

We decided to head home after a very long day. After an hour of hobbling slowly, by this point we were both in a lot of pain, we finally found a magical portal home. We did catch the wrong train, and had to make another detour, but we made it back to the hotel safely in the end.

Now to try the pizza from the Pizzaria downstairs!