EuroTrip - Day 21

Eiffel Tower and Some Observations

I am not a man with words. My vocabulary beats me regularly when I try to play with words to describe a place/event/person. I end up using words like awesome, amazing, superb, cool, beautiful etc. at a frequency that is more than that of the AC supply in this country (Don't ask me it is 50 Hz or 60 Hz? I am not sure).

I am a man of stories. Stories - that I did not write, I just narrate them the way I heard them. And that's precisely the reason I find museum with no good story very boring. Same applies to historical monuments and various cathedrals that are present in every corner of this continent. I never imagined so much presence of faith and religion in some of these most developed countries with a strong inclination to logic and science. The churches here are very old and so to an extent that clarifies the contradiction. Atleast that's what I will love to believe. These countries are preserving the past - the glory of a time when churches were as strong as the queen/king and religion was the pivot that connected various countries.

Eiffel looks beautiful. In any time of the day. However I am still wondering about some fool who sinned to compare it to his fiancee and said that Eiffel is more beautiful than her. How could he do such a crime? I disown him today. I am not doing it under any pressure - parental or peer. :D
Eiffel is as beautiful as you can imagine it to be. It is grand, it is magnificent and it is the center of attraction here in Paris.

European countries have done amazingly well to provide the public amenities to their citizens and others. Roads, trains, power - the system seem to work smoothly. However when it comes to drinking water and public toilettes, these countries leave a lot to be desired for. When you stand in a queue for 15 minutes to go to the loo, just because this was the only public toilette you could find around Eiffel, you can not resist cursing the government here. The water supply to the homes is that of portable water. That means that we can directly drink the tap water. But the issue is that once you leave home, you can hardly find tap anywhere. It's unimaginable the kind of places we have filled our bottles from. Oh yea, one more thing - somehow the packaged water culture is not as developed in France and most other European countries as it seems to be. At times a bottle of packaged water is as expensive as buying coke or bear. I guess cheap wines and bear make up for the lack of drinking water outside home. Or else they carry their own water bottle from home.

In India, shopping is much more easier with the concept of MRP. Here, you are never sure about the price of something. Everytime we need to buy something, we think twice before buying it. Can we get it cheaper somewhere else. It takes time to figure out the references in a new city. Today we planned to shop from LIDL or CARREFOUR but could not do. Visit to Tam Street was not very useful too as most of the shops were closed. Only good thing is that we did get frozen parathas and thus had a very good dinner.

Tomorrow, we plan to take some rest and then think what to do on a monday.
Till then... Bbye...