Paris and Doctor Who!!!

The last two days have been a roller coaster of good and bad. We spent Friday in Paris. As many of my friend probably already know, I am not fond of Paris. Many of my class members are spending the weekend in Paris, but I opted return home. My single day in Paris did not start well, in my opinion. I was up until eleven working on homework and then got about three hours of sleep before I had to get up again, to catch a very, very early train. Once in Paris, I was immediately greeted with the foul smells, dirty environment, and crowded public transit situation which I can come to associate with Paris. I did enjoy a brief respite from all this while visiting The Louvre, because I opted for spending my entire two hours in the apartments of artifacts areas, and avoided the heavier touristy areas. I have been to The Louvre before, and the sections I visited were areas I hadn’t been able to spend much time in last time, so it was nice to see what I missed.

After The Louvre though, was Eiffel Tower time. I am afraid of heights, but other members of my group convinced me to go up anyway. I now wish I could just forget the entire experience. It wasn’t so bad at first. I didn’t go out where the railing is, just stayed inside where the shops are. But when it was time to leave, the line for the lifts down was ridiculously long and people wouldn’t let us get through to the back of the line, so Liz and I had to walk outside and around to the back of the line. I was clinging to the side of the structure and staring at the ground, and even then I felt dizzy and tearful (that structure feels terribly unstable, and that railing is terribly flimsy looking, and I kept feeling like I was falling), and then I came upon a bench full of people, which I couldn’t walk behind. I felt worse when I tried to walk in front of them, so I had to stand there and wait for them to move, thus I got separated from Liz. Once I managed to get back inside, I was so panicked after my outside exertion that I had to sit down for a good ten or fifteen minutes, and by that time, any hope of finding my fellow classmates up in the tower was futile. That meant I had to venture back down on my own, with my eyes closed and trying not to cry and everything. It wasn’t hard to find everyone afterward, but I never want to repeat that experience. Dominic Monaghan might be able to be enticed to venture up in a gigantic tree for the sake of seeing rare honey bees, but I don’t think there is any comparable reward you could find to entice me to go up into the Eiffel Tower again. The day ended okay, with a ferryboat ride along the channel, and dinner at a nice restaurant, but the Eiffel Tower is what I am going to remember most. I have my photography focus picture (my name) as a memento, but I didn't feel like uploading any other pictures.

Saturday I took a train to Cardiff, Wales, to visit The Doctor Who Experience. However, my day began just as badly (or worse) than the previous day, when I feel down on the escalator going down. Yikes! I still have the war wounds. The rest of the way went wonderfully though!

You can’t take pictures during the actual experience, but you can in the museum, so I took pictures of almost everything. Obviously I can’t post all of those pictures. Not on here anyway. But if you visit my Facebook album, you can see more. The Experience was lots of fun. Basically, you enter this abandoned looking room containing treasures from the series, and then learn via a TV screen, that The Doctor is trapped inside a second Pandorica. You (and the other people with you) then go through a series of rooms/tasks, facing off against The Doctor’s enemies, and as your end reward, you are let into the museum. The life-sized Daleks and the Angels were the scariest parts. But then I was able to go crazy in the museum. And the best part: there were fellow Whovians of all ages, nationalities, country origins, etc. there. I befriended a fellow American girl and a Welsh gal in her fifties who geeked out about everything, took my picture in front of the TARDIS, and said “the great thing about being around Whovians, is that you can be silly and it’s okay because everyone else is being silly too.” I agree 100%. I even got my picture taken in front of a green screen, to have this photo taken. I bought the full experience packet, which contains a T-shirt and exclusive post cards and other trinkets, but I also bought a black T-shirt with “the crack” on the front.

 

Then, after The Experience, I went down to the lower bay, below the Mermaid Bay, which is the upper wharf. Basically, the Cardiff Bay is two tiered with steps leading to the lower level. Remember those steps from Torchwood (I took a picture of them too), those lead to the lower tier. And the lower tier is where Ianto’s memorial (or shrine) is. It’s this huge wall covered with tokens of love from the fans. Not going to lie, I cried a little bit just standing there, looking at everything. I do miss Ianto. It was a sobering but fitting end to a wonderful day. And I returned home without incident. Well, unless you include seeing this guy on the Euston Station Underground that looks remarkable like Matt Smith, if Matt had blondish hair. How weird….