Retour

I'm in Paris again. And I'm leaving tomorrow to go back to England.

I know that that seems like a completely lackluster pair of sentences. Fact is that I'm in the middle of a lackluster trip, part not having enough time to enjoy the things I want to enjoy, part remembering all the reasons why not traveling a lot with my family is, well, a good thing, and part straight up repetition. One day I'll come to Paris and not be required to go to the Louvre; I really don't think that visiting it every time is worth the nine Euro. Truth is it's just too damn big, and too damn hard to get around in. And the crowds are hell.

My family took me going to England as a perfect excuse for them to go abroad as well, which has, at the moment at least, resulted in me having to listen to two people snore at the same time. You would think that they would find some somnambulistic way of synchronizing. My brother, who is 14, is sharing the room with me, and he prefers to sleep on his back, with his head thrown back and his mouth wide open, and he snores with such conviction that either he has a breathing problem, or he dreams of being Laurence Olivier. My father on the other hand sleeps in the other room, above the covers, and his snores are accompanied by clicks with each in and exhale. I know these things because I have traveled with my family before. And I don't sleep very often when I do, you see, I'm a sensitive person when it comes to noise; anything dissonant or continuous (say, a car alarm or the ticking of a clock) is bound to keep me awake until I stubbornly fall asleep, most likely with a frown and crossed arms. And of course I'm sick of doing the whole faily schtick, the hypocritical gesture of being old enough to drive, drink, vote, pay taxes, and keep a job, and yet every summer be forced into the back seat, given a list of chores, curfews, and the pidgeonholing action of making me try to sleep within ten meters of my brother. I love him, I do, but ever since he was four his sleeping habits have been a problem for my sleeping preferences (when he was a kid he insisted that we left the bathroom light on in the hotel room(s) as a nite-light, interfering with another one of my sleeping requirements: darkness), and the more I live on my own, the more pissed getting stuck with him makes me; of course I can't afford my own room, but there must be something to be done. Some sympathy for me not getting sleep would help, which for my mother is just me being dumb and stubborn, and why-not-just-get-earplugs.

So there's that, and then there's the day-to-day life of Brennan Family Travel: my father not being interested in what's significant around us (PARIS) and going on and on about his job that I know all about, my brother not really caring too much one way or the other, and my mother berating everyone else's decisions or ideas if they conflict at all with her's. You should have seen them trying to conduct a car in Britain. Good grief.

So other than that, I spent hardly enough time around my favorite pieces of art in Musee d'Orsay and didn't even get a chance to see Cupid and Psyche in the Louvre, the Opera Garnier was closed, and what hit me the worst, I only got a few minutes in the upper chapel of Sainte Chapelle, because everyone else had "seen enough" and was "about ready to get going", after spending about ten minutes looking at some of the most beautiful stained glass in the world. And I don't even want to start on how everything I tried to say in regard to the art, or museums, or Parisian things in general was either shot down via rolled eyes or completely ignored.

Oh, and I got almost-heat stroke dehydration in the Louvre and blacked out in the entrance hall, then spent forty minuted lying on a cot in the infirm, trying to explain the nurse that I have cramps from hell in French. "J'ai de al mentration....je souffre."

Oh, and the apartment we rented has mildew and roaches.

Good rant post, Meg. Good think I'll be home tomorrow to amend this.