Farewell 2023, hello 2024!

Actually, I was thinking the other day how as the years go on, they sound more and more like "the future". I don't mean that as a dig about me getting older, I mean the sound of the numbers when you pronounce them. 20-20 sounds kind of future-y, but the repetition loses something. I think good candidates to sound the most "future-y" are 2034 and 2078. So let's see if I'm still doing this blog 10 or 54 years from now.

But let's recap the year. It got off to an interesting start, with a trip to a water town and Hangzhou for Chinese New Year. Then we went back to see the in-laws, where it took a bit of a turn for the worse - mom got COVID a week or so before we arrived, and had a heck of a time recovering from it. It took her months to get back to normal, and we spent the holiday taking shifts at the hospital. When we got back, two of our best friends got married and had an amazing wedding.

But then things changed in a big way, with a massive trip around the world. Last year I said I hope we get to Japan and Europe, so, half check. We missed out on Japan, but we definitely got to Europe. It was one of the best trips of my life, so it was very welcome. Or maybe it felt better, after the miserable and stressful time to get Ella's visa. This trip was very important in another way, but, more on that later.

After Europe we visited the US, and unfortunately the trend of health issues cropping up on holidays continued. My grandmother and aunt died around that time, and dad got COVID. But while sad, it was slow-paced, and it was nice to catch up with everyone again, despite the circumstances. Back in China, we took a weekend trip to Nanjing, and Ella got to go to Thailand for 10 days. During that time, I got to be a bachelor for the first time in nearly a decade, which means Taco Bell's stock price rose 5%. But also, this year was one with a lot of reflection. I think I'm still a bit mentally damaged from the DELTA program, where any significant undertaking outside of work fills me with a large amount of anxiety. I guess acknowledging it is the first step, and maybe DELTA isn't actually the cause. But it's something that I need to get better with, because I know that life is going to continue to throw curveballs our way, and I'll have to handle them when they pop up. But at least the end of the year is filled with a lot of time off. Such as New Years Eve, which was pretty chill all things considered. Most of my friends were out traveling on their Christmas holiday, but we had one group that was still around. The 4 of us had a strangely international time, eating some Xinjiang Food, moving onto a Japanese bar, and then a western one. The midnight countdown isn't so much a thing here, but it was nice that the one table next to us was into it as well.

Anyway, let's be a bit more positive for next year. I mentioned earlier about the Europe trip having a big takeaway, and for us we decided to move to Portugal. In truth I wouldn't mind moving to anywhere we visited (especially Madrid!) but Portugal's visa policy makes it possible, in theory, for us to move there. We've started the process, but we're still a little too early to know all what we're in for. I mean, I know what to do, and it seems pretty easy (knock on wood). Actually, it seems even easier than the tourist visa for Ella - but that speaks less to how easy this is, and more to how complicated the tourist visa process was. But as we learned from that, each step can have plenty of "surprises" along the way, where obtaining one piece of paper can be a massive, several-month undertaking. So my hope is, one year from now, I will write about how we've settled in Portugal. That it's been a few months, we're learning Portuguese, and figuring out how to navigate our new home (and maybe finally getting a cat). If Portugal doesn't work out... then I don't know. To be honest, we're pretty over China by now. Though I'm comfortable enough here, I think Ella is itching to leave. We don't really have a Plan B, so let's try our best to make sure Plan A succeeds. But no matter what, I know that my career and our overall situation puts us in a very lucky position. In truth, we can move to nearly any country in the world - it's just a question of how much work we need to put in to make it happen. So, "the world is our oyster", and we just need to find a seafood restaurant we're interested in.

Anyway, let's look back on my favorite photos of 2023. A lot of great ones to pick from - especially Europe, but I tried my best to mix it up.

So cute!

Our most "fancy" Paris meal

Gotta have a cat in here somewhere, for Ella

Very Paris-y

Venice is a really amazing place

Love this staircase in the Vatican

Just a shot of a simple Florence street

A blanket fort that lasted for weeks

Ella getting back to the farm life

When we make a band, this is our album cover

So my last post was about Madrid. And yeah, I'm totally still there! Being all... Spanish, and stuff!

Unfortunately no, so I figured an update was in order. We did go to the US after all. It was an odd time, to say the least. Physically it was relaxing, which of course was needed after walking nonstop every day for 3 weeks. Emotionally it was exhausting. The final day of our trip I had learned my last grandparent had passed away. While not unexpected, it it put everything in a very different light. So our first stop of the US was a funeral, which was book-ended but another unfortunate turn of events - dad caught COVID, amazingly for the first time (no worries, he's fine now). So after warning everyone, the funeral was much smaller than planned. For the rest of our visit, we had to socially distance. Anywho I'm going to take the next paragraph to talk about my thoughts of, well, death, so if that's not something you want to see (which I totally understand), just skip down one:

I guess the privilege of being young is that death isn't something you usually have to experience. I was lucky enough to have one surviving great grandma when I was a kid. She died when I was maybe 7 or so? At least old enough that I understood what was happening, and yes, it was sad. But in my naive mind, this was a very unusual and isolated incident - I mean c'mon, being an adult might as well be a million years away, and being older a million more. Then of course as you get older, it becomes more common. First it was acquaintances, and friends of friends. But since starting my not-US journey, I've unfortunately now lost all four grandparents, a friend, and now, days before writing this, an aunt as well. And of course I knew these things would happen eventually, although not so much the latter two. I think it's cliche to say it's not something you ever get used to, and I'm not sure I agree. It is and it isn't. Even just by looking at my writing from earlier, I could tell that I moved from "I don't know what to do" to "This is awful" to "Oh no, not again.". So I think the hurt is the same, but you also get better at dealing with it. I know as I get older it is going to become increasingly more common, so I guess you're forced to get better at it. But if I can be a bit reductionist, saying goodbye to people makes it easier to say hello to others. It reinforces the idea that life can be fleeting, and that we should try our best to appreciate the relationships that we make.

Anyway, let's try to move on to happier things. Despite the cloud hanging over the US trip, I did get to see some great friends as well as visit Goettafest. I think every time we've been to the US, Goettafest has been at the same time, so it's sort of becoming an expected tradition. At the very least, I think Ella can say she's one of the few, or maybe only, person from China to visit Goettafest or even know what in the world goetta is. But we did return to Shanghai after all, unfortunately as the new semester was starting. And when I think about the situation I was in one year ago, working while simultaneously doing the thing-that-shall-not-be-named, I am so incredibly grateful I don't have to do that. To top it off my kids this year are better than last year. Still, I felt that doing the same thing for 3 years was maybe getting to me, so I came up with a solution this year - there's a supply closet that is opened maybe 5 times a year. I set up a table and chair in there, and now it's my quiet refuge. I like to sneak in there once a day for 30 minutes or so, just to enjoy the silence while I browse Reddit. It kind of reminds me of the year or so I lived in Taipei, which was the only length of time I had where I was actually alone. I think most of my life I run on autopilot, so having some time to yourself really helps to figure out yourself. Or maybe as I age, it is just something that you learn to appreciate more. I actually spent one Saturday traveling around Shanghai by myself, to visit silly places in the city I've always meant to go to, but were too far out of the way and Ella was uninterested in. For example, there's a mall with a slide that goes from the 5th floor to the 1st. Or, the random giant robots. I don't know why Shanghai has life-sized Evas and Gundams, but they're cool photos anyway.

But we did get some other travel in, to the far off land of Nanjing. I've been there twice before, the first time way back in 2012. My first impression of Nanjing was actually not so great. I got scammed, and overall I just did not like the city. I did "like" the museum talking about the Japanese occupation of Nanjing during WWII, although "impactful" is a much better word. My 2nd impression of Nanjing was better, but I thought it was a little dull - granted this was during Chinese New Year, so that's a bit expected as all the cities become ghost towns. This time I don't know if it's because we went to different places, or because we were with friends, OR Nanjing has changed, because this 3rd trip was a lot better. I'd actually even say I like Nanjing, more than many other cities in China. The people were very polite, the things we saw were interesting, and overall it was just a better experience.

 

 

I joke that Nanjing is a "far off land", but in reality there is a new (or at least new to me) direct high speed train from Shanghai which cuts the journey down to an hour. It's nearly 200 miles from Shanghai, so you do the math - that train is going pretty quick. At the very least it's in "weekend trip" territory, so that's what we did. I left straight to the train station after work, and we came back Sunday afternoon. After checking in, our first stop was to get the local specialty for dinner - Duck Blood Noodles. Yes, it is what it is. Blood is actually a somewhat common ingredient in Asian food, kind of like a block of tofu. I like it just as much as I like tofu, which is to say not at all. But of course I did give it a taste, and it gets a solid "meh" from me. But the other food in Nanjing was pretty great. Their bao, or at least the ones we found, were really good. In fact, we got some to take home. Ella is a big fan of mei gan cai dumplings, which are preserved mustard greens. To be honest, mei gan cai is also one of my favorite Chinese foods, so I had no problem eating those for breakfast. We also visited a German and a Thai restaurant, so it was quite the culinary tour.

But for other stuff in Nanjing, our first night there we took a boat ride down the canal. Nanjing is surrounded by a very large and lengthy city wall, which itself is surrounded by a canal. They do a good job of keeping everything very clean and interesting, with some neat lights projected onto the side of it and some things to see when going under the bridges. At about $12 a person for a 30 minute ride, I'd say it was a pretty fair price, and a nice way to get a "feel" for Nanjing. But the next day proper we went to see a few museums. The first was the city museum, which was nice enough I suppose. There wasn't anything that really "jumped" out at me, I guess because it was pretty much like any Chinese city/provincial museum - namely pottery, which I am incredibly tired of. But each of the exhibits were separate buildings in a park/temple complex, so it had a nice, chill vibe moreso than other museums. Speaking of, we also went to a park with a small museum for Zheng He. You may have not heard of Zheng He before, but he was a pretty big deal - for one, he was once the leader of Nanjing, and is buried there. His big claim to fame though, is that he was the Chinese version of Columbus, being good at exploration but without being a trash person. He traveled all the way to The Middle East and Africa, even bringing back a giraffe - which people thought was a qilin (kirin), a mythological creature. Funny to imagine that first impression.

The other museum of note was the Taiping Rebellion Museum, which, I gotta say, more people should be familiar with this, because it's basically Chinese Game of Thrones. So, strap in for this doozy: It's 1850. Qing Dynasty (the last dynasty in China before the Republic, AKA Taiwan's current government). This guy named Hong Xiuquan is trying to pass the Civil Service Exam, having failed 3 times. He's in a bad mental place, so he has a dream about visiting heaven. In heaven, god tells him that he is part of his family, and that he alone can lead everyone to make the world a better place. He originally thinks "Wow, dreams are crazy. Well, let's give that exam a 4th try." But fast forward to later, and a traveling Christian missionary gives him some pamphlets about Jesus. Hong says "Holup. This Jesus guy is the one from my dreams. He must be my brother, so I will start a revolution." Then he goes to get baptized, to have the legitimacy as the "Ruler of Heaven." The priest is like "Uhh, you seem to be not 'getting' this baptism thing" and outright refuses. Hong decides "Who needs baptism when you're already Jesus's brother?", and starts his revolution anyway.

Fast forward 15 years, and 20 million plus people are dead - an entire World War I of casualties, in only one part of China. Nanjing, being the capital, was the last significant place to fall. Understandably, the Qing government was not happy with Hong. So, what do you do with people you are angry with? First you cremate them, and then blast them out of a cannon to make sure there is no resting place.

And that's really just the tip of the iceberg. There's a lot different stuff with this person betraying that person, or Hong dying because of bad vegetables. Or poisoning. Regardless, there's no way I can compete with a bonkers story like that, so I'll stop here. Usually my rule is "If I complain, you get pictures of cats", but we found so many cats in Nanjing, they seem to be half my camera roll. So instead, I'll just end with that.

Because it's my blog, you know we're going to talk about trains! The trip to Madrid is about 2.5 hours, on one of the nicest trains I've been on. It has very low lighting and a common area, and honestly looks like a hotel lounge more than a train. It has an upper and lower deck, and we opted for the upper. Most of the trip we had a view pretty similar to what you'd see in the US southwest. I had no idea Spain was so arid, so that was an interesting surprise.

So we arrive at Madrid, and at the time of writing, Europe is going through a heat wave. It is hotter than Barcelona, but honestly it's not terrible. Like, Thailand is normally far worse. Anyway, we had some issues with the metro since the line that serves the train station is under maintenance. I only mention this because we had to walk a few minutes to catch another line. The worker could clearly understand we were from out of town, and was just the most patient, kindest person ever to help us get a ticket. He even did some sort of voodoo magic to get us a 5-day pass for much cheaper than normal.

And then, the positive impressions of Madrid kept rolling in.

So, I'll just say it - Madrid is cool. Why yes, that is a trans person rocking a beard and dress at the same time, while riding a skateboard. Yes, there is a bar devoted entirely to mozzarella, and no, I don't know why or how. Our hostel is unlike any hostel I've seen before. It looks (and is, on the first floor) a brewpub in a hip neighborhood. When we walked in, a waitress with an iPad asked if we were checking in, what with all our bags. You don't get a room key, instead, it's just a QR code on your phone. Also they have comedy nights, karaoke, and pub crawls. Top 5 hostels I've ever stayed at for sure. That night we went to a building that is basically an indoor night market, a 3 floor building full of food stalls selling a bit of everything. We got to eat Peruvian food, which was essentially stir fried beef and onion with rice - I think Peru needs to expand to Asia, because it tastes different enough but is not a huge leap. Top it off with a 3 euro sangria, and exploring a car-free shopping street just outside, my impressions of Madrid continue to be high.

Let's start by running down the museums in Madrid, cause you know I like me a museum. I guess the big cat in town is The Prado, AKA that super famous art museum that's not The Louvre. So. I saw it. It has art in it. But unfortunately, I have been completely overwhelmed with art on this trip. I am thoroughly, completely, art-ed out. My brain cannot absorb more art. It is at art capacity. So while I could look at a painting and go, "Wow. That's impressive", I did it with the enthusiasm of pulling the exact correct amount of dental floss. That being said, if you just arrived in Madrid, it is absolutely worth it, but I have to really knock them for not allowing photos inside. Listen, guys. You're good, but even The Louvre allows photos, so you gotta loosen up. You can't call spoilers on something that's 500 years old. Despite that, later we went to another art museum, because it also has some famous things and is free on Sundays. Ella loved it. I sat and used up the data on my SIM.

For more interesting (to me) museums, a surprise hit was the Romanticism Museum. I don't know why it's called that, but it's a very nice looking old home that I was strangely impressed with. Also the 3 euro entry fee, because they should charge more. It's really good. Right around the corner from that is The Madrid City History Museum. Learned a bit, although I wish it didn't stop at around 1900. Still, pretty interesting, and for the price of free, it's definitely worth a look. Even just for the sparkly clean bathrooms. And finally, I have to mention the Cerralbo Museum. It's similar to the Romanticism Museum I suppose, it was a count's home back in the day, and they kept it exactly as is. That was my favorite, because while The Romanticism Museum looked like "Pride and Prejudice", this one looked like "Haunted Mansion". Compete with suits of armor in the hallways, this place is cool. Also a whopping 3 euros to get in, but we stumbled into its free day as well.

But looking back, it doesn't seem like we did too much in Madrid. But at the same time, I feel like we've done a lot. I mean, some of these museums did take the better part of a day, and we had 3 full days here. But I also feel in Madrid we were not in a hurry to go to a place, because the city itself is a destination. We even went to a park for the better part of a day, which is usually something I don't do unless there's something notable about it. In fact, I think half the time we just wandered around alleys to find random shops and coffee, which normally I like, but in Madrid I loved it. The vibe here is really comfortable to me, and it feels like a place I could easily live in. I have a lot of pins marked on my map, and we honestly didn't visit a lot of them. But I guess that's excuse enough to come back.

Even though Madrid was the last stop on our European Tour, I had to fit in one more train trip - to Toledo, about 30 minutes south. Toledo, Spain is a bit more interesting than its Ohio counterpart, I imagine, although I've not been. It's a walled fort city, that honestly looks like if the Romans invade, they'd be ready. We didn't do too much there, mostly wander around the alleys and try the signature dish, carcamusas. Essentially a tomato stewed pork, goes great with bread and a beer. Of course, we also looked at Toledo Cathedral. I was initially a bit put off by the 10 euro entry fee, but I'm glad we did it. This is one of the coolest looking churches I've ever seen, and honestly may top The Sagrada Familia in some ways. There wasn't anything too notable I guess, but imagine you had a dial for "churchiness". Toledo's Cathedral turned it up to 11, and was uncharacteristically huge, given the small alleyways that connect the rest of the city. Definitely worth the trip, it's a very pretty place.

I didn't really know what to expect from Spain. And I guess that's why it surprised me the most. I don't know why, but I felt really at home there, more so than the other countries we visited. It felt like a very young city with lots going on. I guess if you expanded Cincinnati's OTR to be much larger and connected with a metro, that would be Madrid. It was unapologetically weird, in a good way. It also had an incredibly diverse food scene, and sure, food from Spanish speaking countries was most represented. But on the same street you could find Greek, Italian, Japanese, Turkish, and who knows what in-between. It reminded me of the good things about the US, namely how diverse the food scene is in comparison to many other countries. And not to mention the diversity of the people, it feels sort of like Bangkok or New York, being a mecca for immigrants from different parts of the world. While we only scratched the surface of all the places we visited, I'm especially curious about the rest of Madrid and Spain. If it can live up to the cool factor of here, it's definitely something I want to see more of.

And now, sitting here on a plane, it's hard to believe our European adventure is over. I gotta say - big fan. I guess I'm not exactly blazing a new path by saying "Hey dudes, Europe is great", but I'm certainly glad I saw it. It understandably has a different vibe than Asia, and there's some things I prefer there, other things I prefer in Europe. But after visiting almost every country in Eastern Asia, I wouldn't mind posting up on this side of the world to see the other things on offer.

Amazingly, the last day in Europe happened to be Ella's birthday, which was a great way to end a great holiday. But for now, it's time to visit yet one more country - back to the US, for the first time in... well, many years.

I really like the vibe of Barcelona. It kind of reminds me of Pattaya, but the good parts. Meaning it's full of restaurants and bars near the beach, while being super laid back. It just makes me slow down and enjoy things, and I am enjoying it.

Plus the shops in Spanish (or Catalan?) are called "super mercat", which makes me imagine a cat mermaid superhero. That's always worth a chuckle.

We started not doing anything too notable in Barcelona. Having embraced the laid-back vibe, we wandered around the city, seeing buildings, drinking coffee, and eating things. Fortunately things are about 30% cheaper than Paris, which is much appreciated. Speaking of buildings, a lot of Barcelona's attractions are based on this fellow named Gaudi, although maybe some prefer to call him "Gaudy". He has about half a dozen buildings around Barcelona, and they all have a weird, organic style to them. To me, it almost feels like you asked insects to make a building. They look cool from the outside, but all the pictures we've been seen of the inside seem pretty normal and not worth the price of entry. Who knows, maybe next time we'll take a look - certainly there were people lined up for them, so I guess something is interesting in there. Then again, people lined up for that cable car in Paris that goes 50 meters, so I learned that people will line up for pretty dumb things.

But one of Gaudi's projects is worth the line, and you've probably heard of it. The Sagrada Familia is a big church that has been under construction for like 100 years, and won't be finished for many more. It's the top tourist attraction in the city, and here I go seeing a church after spending the last few weeks seeing dozens. But this one is definitely worth it. Sitting here, writing this, it has such an odd style. Ella said it looked like it was from Star Wars, and it does almost have an alien look to it. There's a lot of sharp angles, which look out of place for a church. But other parts have an almost organic, plant-like appearance, yet still symmetrical. Of course I'm going to add a lot of photos, but I really think this is one place you need to see for yourself. Looking at individual photos makes it appear odd, yet normal enough. But when seeing it in person, the contrast between the different parts sort of breaks my brain, like I'm having a holiday on Coruscant or something.

But most of Barcelona's other attractions are located in its Gothic Quarter, which is honestly an attraction itself. It's a very unique looking part of town, and I can't help but to compare it to Florence. They are different though, as Florence looks like a castle courtyard. Whereas Barcelona looks like a church courtyard. See? Totally different. But it's pretty neat, because like Florence there are few cars, and it's full of little shops and bars to find. We spent the entire morning just kind of wandering around, dodging the sun while drinking coffee and sangria. We also stumbled on the Barcelona History Museum, which I was initially pretty unimpressed with. However as it goes on, you go down into the basement, which have the remains of the streets and walls back when Barcelona was a Roman city. I remember wandering how old some of these things are, so I looked at a sign to see they were built in 10. Like, 10 as in 10 AD . So, that's pretty cool. It's a bit of a labyrinth down there, and definitely worth it. But you can skip the city museum upstairs, bit of a snoozefest.

But Barcelona is also near the coast, so we of course need to see the ocean. Well, I guess the sea would be more accurate. Still, it seems like a nice enough beach, although certainly a bit crowded. I guess that makes sense since it's practically downtown, but I had found more rural and probably nicer beaches online. Still, we walked along the beach for a bit, which is actually in another very cool neighborhood. It's got a nice square in the middle that had some nice outdoor restaurants and a lot of kids playing by themselves, so it seems like a safe place, despite it looking pretty inner-city. Actually according to the previously mentioned Barcelona museum, the Barcelonetta neighborhood actually has one of the cheapest rents in the city, and I cannot understand why. Maybe the buildings are too old and need renovated? But a walkable neighborhood, with little car access, full of bars, and next to the beach? I mean, sign me up.

 

Also, cool rocks.

 

Overall, I have a pretty positive impression of Barcelona. It has a fair amount to do for a city of its size, and is pretty affordable. It also has a bit of its own thing going on, with lots of locals out in squares chilling, and a pretty great food scene. Plus everyone seems to be bilingual in English, I guess due to the all the tourists. Nice for us, but I've tried my best to speak Spanish. I'm actually not terrible at it, although I hear the locals prefer Catalan. But that won't be a problem for the next destination on our European tour, Madrid. I really don't know what to expect there, but hopefully tapas and cheap coffee will continue to make an appearance.

After a two hour flight from Venice, here we are in another country. I'm starting to write this on the first day, without knowing how I feel about Paris. Hopefully by the end I'll have made up my mind.

There's an amazingly studied real thing called Paris Syndrome, where people feel despair that the "most beautiful city in the world" is full of trash, graffiti, etc. It's particularly common with Japanese tourists, and I guess if you come from there you'd be in for a shock. But I found Paris to be surprisingly well maintained for a city of its size, honestly pretty comparable to Shanghai. Also despite their reputation, Parisians have been nothing but polite. Maybe because we throw out bonjours like they're nobody's business, and we try our best to speak French. Ella has been particularly good, what with her knack for languages. We've run into some problems here and there, but with gestures and rudimentary French, we can make it through.

Still, it's not like we're really having conversations with the locals. Except the other night, when we were looking to get dinner. Fun fact, Parisians like to eat late, so a lot of restaurants don't open til 7. We were starving, so we popped into a cafeteria style place. We were trying to think of some French words for things when we noticed the staff spoke Mandarin to each other. We asked if they're Chinese, turns out yes, and turns out white people in France speaking Mandarin is not a common thing. It was kind of a relief to get food without navigating a language barrier though, and they really hooked us up with a pile of food.

Speaking of food, I've found that Paris really lacks any sort of convenient street food options. Everything is a sit down restaurant, which means it's expensive. And while I'm not surprised Paris is expensive, I don't really want to sit around and wait for, well, waiters. I want to get my food and go, cause we have things to see. I mean, Italy had plenty of pizza and paninis to go around. Despite me hearing crepes fill that role, I've found remarkably few crepe stands - they're still often sold in sit down restaurants. Aaaand speaking of restaurants, Paris is a lot like Venice, with a massive discrepancy in the cost of food from the grocery (where both of us eat for about 7 euros) versus a restaurant (where both of us eat for about 30, and it takes a lot more time). I'd like to try more French food while I'm here, but they're not exactly making it appealing. We did carve out time to try the classics like beef bourguignon, duck confit, escargot, and crème brule. And yes, the croissants are amazing, and cheap. But I'd rather limit a big hunk of bread to one meal a day.

But anyway, enough about food, what's going on in Paris? Well, the first day we went to The Louvre. They were completely sold out online, so we considered doing a more expensive bundled ticket, or just lining up. But then Ella was a hero when she checked on Taobao, and sure enough, they have tickets - suspiciously for a little less than the standard price. I assume it's because they buy them in bulk, or maybe resell cancelled tickets? Whatever the case we got in. And even after the art extravaganza of Italy, The Louvre was seriously impressive. We got in as they opened, and decided to go see The Mona Lisa first thing to avoid the crowd. Of course, we weren't the only people to think of that, with some sprinting past us, while we took a more leisurely pace. Still, we had to wait in line under a minute to see it. As others have said, it's really small, and the other art in the same room is more impressive. Still, saw the most famous painting in the world, so, check. About 5 minutes later, the queue was nearly out the door, so it was a good thing we went first thing. The Louvre is a very large place, but I feel we saw about 75% of it. Also as part of the Taobao ticket we got a 3DS to guide us around, so I had fun playing with that. We certainly saw all the famous stuff, so here are some photos:

 Surprisingly though, Ella was not all that excited about The Louvre. She really wanted to see The Musee d'Orsay, known only to me as "The 2nd most popular art museum in Paris." But it has all the artists she knows, and of course some I've heard of, like Monet and Van Gogh. We probably spent just as long there as The Louvre, even though it's about 1/10th the size. I was more impressed with the building, as it was an old railway station. In fact, it reminded me of a renovated version of Bangkok's Hua Lamphong Station, so for me that was the main attraction. But I think Ella said "Oh my god, it's X!" every 5 seconds. So, best look at her photos if you know art. For a bit of fun, we found a blank spot on a wall and stuck Ella's art up there with a description card. So now Ella can say she's been exhibited at The Musee d'Orsay.

There were a few other sites thrown in there as well. We went a little north of town to see Sacre Coeur Cathedral, which is nice but the view of downtown from the steps is far more impressive. It has a funicular to get to the top, and while not too expensive I guess (2 euros), it's probably the shortest funicular I've ever seen. Actually I'm pretty sure our apartment stairs are just about as tall, so I found the long queue for it a little weird. Instead we walked up, which I realized was the same spot they filmed that last fight scene in John Wick 4. Fortunately for us, it was a bit easier to make it to the top. After avoiding all the hired assassins and seeing the church, we went to a bakery which the internet claims is the best croissant in Paris. And yeah, wow. Probably the best croissant I ever had for sure. While we were stumbling about town bread-drunk, we saw a giant torch that is a copy of the Statue of Liberty's. Neat enough, but also it also sadly marks the tunnel where Princess Diana was killed, so there was a little memorial to her.

Now, this was totally unintentional when planning this trip, but as we discovered when fighter jets flew over downtown, it happened to be Bastille Day. We went down towards the Arc de Triomphe to see a ton of military vehicles, with people just hanging out talking photos. Turns out you can just hold their gun for a photo if you ask nicely. So umm, that was something! It was pretty crowded, and we saw most of the parade before it started to move, so we decided to escape to see The Eiffel Tower. Gotta get that obligatory tourist photo, after all. Also since it was Bastille Day, Napoleon's Grave was free admission. So. There he is. He's certainly got a grand enough tomb, but I guess when you're emperor you can do that sort of thing.

The next day we took a day trip to Versailles to see the palace there. The way Google suggested was kind of dumb, taking us way out of town and then back on a regional train. I couldn't understand why, so we just took the commuter rail line. And then I realized when no trains were available, that the reason why Google suggested that weird path was because for a month, that section of the line was closed. So instead we metro'd to the other side of the maintenance, and got there only about 20 minutes later than normal. Which, I have to think going to a train station, buying a ticket, and waiting for the train would take longer than that. Take that, Google. Anyway, turns out I like to talk about infrastructure a lot. How was the palace? Honestly pretty underwhelming. Part of that reason was because it was packed with people, but also because it's pretty empty inside. Sure there are some paintings on the wall, but mostly you just go from room to room with one thing in it. Oh, here's an old bed. Here's an old desk. Okay. There were some very impressive halls, but I think if you've seen The Louvre, you've seen a more impressive version of Versailles. To me, it's not worth the trip, unless you're a big fan of French Royalty.

And that's a good segue into my final thoughts about Paris. This is gonna be a weird train of thought, but stick with me - I remember when I was in business class on a long flight, and how it made me feel really uncomfortable. Because I was constantly being checked on, and given so many options for food, drink, whatever, it made me feel guilty. Like, there were people in economy who had far less legroom, and I would feel better if I could switch with them on occasion. I guess my point is that I think there are a lot of less fortunate people in the world, so when I'm treated as above anyone else, I don't like it. But yet, I feel that's what a lot of what Paris is. The service everywhere is incredible. I'm constantly being called monsieur, stuff is really fancy, and waiters wear nice suits even at corner cafes. I remember when I wanted to get to Pyin U Lwin in Myanmar, and the options available were a bus that left in an hour, or a guy with a tuk tuk full of milk would take me now. And I opted for the milk truck, because it's how a local would travel, it saved me a dollar, and most importantly, time. So I'd much prefer to eat at a place where the waitstaff greeted me with a fistbump and a "Hey dude". But that's definitely not Paris, as everything is quite luxurious in my opinion, with a price to match. I do like a lot of things about this place - the people have been unwaveringly kind, the metro is great, they have so many bakeries and grocery stores with amazingly fresh food, and it goes without mention, but there is a lot to do here. But I wish it was a little more chill, because I feel like I'm always being doted on. Still, I wouldn't be opposed to moving to Paris at some point. Though I'd need to get good enough at French to say the equivalent of "What's up bro?" to take the formality down a notch.