La tour Eiffel

#30. Climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower.

The first time I went to Paris, it was freezing.

Our beloved teachers had said that it was going to be warm in France, “like Spring!” They were wrong. It snowed. I brought a spring jacket, on their advice, and froze the entire time. We bought hats and mitts underneath the Eiffel Tower to keep warm.

There was almost no one around when we got to the Tower, at least nothing like the crowds you see in movies or hear about from friends. The wait wasn’t terribly long. We walked up to the first level… where it was extra freezing and, in my mind, terribly high.

You see, I’m afraid of heights. I try really hard not to be. I’ve been trying to conquer this.

I didn’t go up to the top of the Eiffel Tower that day, but when I wrote my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die, I include “Climb to the top of the Eiffel Tower.” Because the cold and the heights kept me from doing it the first time and I sincerely regretted it.

So two weeks ago, when I finally returned to Paris, I simply had to go up the Tower. The friends I was with didn’t really want to go up, but luckily it turned out that I could drag my friend Steph, who is living in France right now and was visiting for the day, up to the top with me.

I remember the climb being very tiring, even just to the first level, the first time. I guess I’m in better shape now, because it didn’t hurt nearly as much. And we were lucky enough to get beautiful sunny weather, too, at about 12 degrees Celsius. (Only one week later than the week six years ago, can you say global warming?)

I had to hold on to the railing a bit too tightly when we got to the top. My knees were a little wobbly. But I did it!

Here’s Steph and I at the top!

Ottawa is only 5,662 km away!

I’m glad I finally got a chance to do this - another step towards conquering my fear of heights and another (the 29th!) thing to cross of my list of 100 things.

J’adore Paris!

Hello, pets! I have returned from another stint of travelling* the world with a mind to start posting here more regularly again. I have some post ideas, and it’s getting to be the infamous essay/exam time, so obviously I will be procrastinating! So, it’s not a promise exactly, for those of you who are still reading, but it’s a quasi-promise.

So, two weeks ago I finally returned to Paris.

Paris was the first European city I ever saw, the first city I ever fell in love with. And it took six years, almost to the day, for me to finally make it back.

I was a bit worried it wouldn’t live up to my memories. It was a pretty epic trip - I was 16, I was with almost a dozen of my closest friends. I got my first rose from a boy, I drank my first legal cocktail, I ate my first nutella crêpe. It was my first international flight, it was my first hostel experience.

But I have to say, there’s just something about Paris. J’adore Paris. The city has such a unique feeling. There are parts of it that are less than nice (like the extortionate prices and the fact that it smells like pee) but they’re all part of its character, its charm.

I got to sit in a café and drink a great latté, I got to drink beer on a patio facing the street. I got to eat nutella crêpes for most meals and croissants for breakfast. I got to spend an hour speaking only in French to my friend Steph. It was exactly what I wanted.

Number 54 on my list of 100 things is to live in Paris. I thought this might be one I wanted to revise, but it isn’t. Someday, I will live in Paris. Even if it’s just for a month or two, in a crappy apartment in Montmartre (it has to be Montmartre).

I can’t seem to put my finger on what makes me love or hate a city, but I always know it when I get there. And I still love Paris.

*So I used to think I just couldn’t spell the word “travelling” because I always put two l’s. Turns out that travelling is spelt like that using the British spelling, and traveling is American. So, like a good little Commonwealther and someone who’s tired of correcting her spelling, I’m sticking with travelling from now on!

Watch the sunrise

#82. Ride in a hot air balloon.

Number 82 is the third on my list of 100 things to do before I die that I got to do by going to Egypt.

Originally I wanted to go on a hot air balloon ride because a) I’m afraid of heights and I’m all about conquering my fears (except spiders) and b) when I was a teenager and printing other people’s photographs, someone came in with the most beautiful pictures from a hot air balloon ride in Ottawa. You see, the best times of day to go on a hot air balloon ride are dawn and dusk. When I was little (and even to this day) I used to watch the bright balloons appear one by one on the horizon as the sun began to set. We used to count them out loud and pick our favourites.

I never imagined that I’d get to go on a hot air balloon ride in Egypt.

When Chandra and I booked our Egypt package, I saw that there was a supplement you could add for a hot air balloon ride. It was expensive. I was afraid to mention it. But Chandra said it first. “How cool would it be to go on a hot air balloon ride over Egypt?” And done.

It was worth every penny. It was even worth waking up at 4:30am. Because we watched the sunrise over the Nile. Because we saw the Valley of the Kings stretch out beneath us in the early morning light. Because we glided over the city of Luxor.

I wasn’t afraid, not for a second. I thought I might be. But I was too busy taking photos, and then suddenly we were in the air, 200 metres up.

It was one of the most spectacular things I’ve ever done in my life. And that, my friends, is why my list of 100 Things to Do Before I Die exists.

Africa, culture shock and number 89

#89. Go to Africa.

In case you didn’t know, Egypt is in Africa.

I knew this. I think. I mean, my brain knew this. It’s pretty much common knowledge. It’s just that when I thought of Africa, when I wrote #89 on my list of things to do before I die, I wasn’t thinking about Egypt. I was thinking about safaris and places like Kenya or Madagascar. Or maybe even someplace like Rwanda (since I was a member of Journalists for Human Rights at the time and we were working with the Rwanda Initiative.)

The only images I had in my mind of Egypt were pyramids, temples and sheer linen dresses. We are a product of the media, and my expectations were fabricated mostly from historical fiction and BBC documentaries.

But Egypt is one of the most populated countries in Africa. Cairo is the largest city in Africa. There are about 25 million people in Cairo on any given day. In one city. There are 33 million people all of Canada. Our largest city, Toronto, has just over 2 million people.

Cairo isn’t just the home of the Great Pyramids of Giza, it’s also the home of millions of people and is the densest metropolis that I have ever seen.

Needless to say, it was an intense culture shock. I have never been to a city even a little bit like Cairo before. The traffic is so bad that it can take over three hours to make a 30 min drive. Every time we were on the roads, I thought we were going to die. There are no road rules, no traffic lights. There’s only pure determination. Every vehicle is dented, scratched, damaged in some way by its life on the streets of Cairo.

And there aren’t just cars on the streets either. There are also carts, drawn by donkeys and horses. Egypt is very much a city where the modern and the antiquated are thrown together and live side by side. I half expected to see a Bennett Buggy driving down the street.

The houses in Cairo are unlike anything I’ve ever seen. There are thousands of huge apartment buildings, stacked almost on top of each other. There are buildings that look more like shacks, with satellite dishes on top. Everything seems to be in a minor state of disrepair and in need of a good paint job.

There’s another aspect of the culture in Egypt that I wasn’t prepared for. As an obvious tourist, I meant only one thing to the people of Egypt. Money. Everywhere you go in Egypt, someone is trying to sell you something or ask you for money. They will take your luggage from you and then ask you for money for carrying it, even though you were perfectly capable of doing it yourself. They charge you 5 Egyptian pounds for a camel ride, then ask for another 20 for you to get off.

Everything is about hassling and haggling and it is thoroughly exhausting. No one even speaks to you unless they want you to buy something. And when you walk through the market, the vendors yell things at you to get your attention. “Do you want Egyptian husband?” “You have beautiful eyes!” “Are you from the moon?” “I will kill my four wives for you!” “You walk like an Egyptian.”

They offer camels in exchange for your hand in marriage. Someone offered me 2 millions camels. It was a good day.

Egypt was a definite culture shock. It was my first African country. Next time, I’ll be better prepared.

Next time, I probably won’t go to Cairo. Luxor was much nicer.

See the pyramids along the Nile….

#100. See the pyramids.

I’ve seen the only remaining wonder of the seven wonders of the world, have you?

The first thing that I ever wrote down on my list of 100 things to do before I die was to see the pyramids. I have been fascinated by Egyptian history since reading Lloyd Alexander’s Time Cat when I was little and finding out that the Egyptians thought that cats were gods. I’ve always been a cat person, okay?

There’s something iconic about getting to see the pyramids. Eiffel towers, Colosseums, Statues of Liberty are the bookmarks of travel guides, the milestones of trips around the world.

The question is, do you see the pyramids to say that you have seen the pyramids, or do you actually see the pyramids? Do you stop and think about what you’re seeing? About how long it has survived? About the thousands of people who built it, or the millions of people who have stood where you’re standing and looked up?

The pyramids aren’t what you think they’re going to be. Behind them you can see downtown Cairo. Across the street from the Sphinx there’s a Pizza Hut and a KFC. The pyramids are no longer a relic of a great civilization. They are, instead, a magnet for tourist dollars and cheap souvenirs.

I wouldn’t let them ruin it for me. As I stood there on the sand, I forced myself to look up and not at the merchants circling nearby. I forced myself to remember every favourite moment in all of my favourite historical fictions that made me fall in love with ancient Egypt.

The pyramids are a feat of engineering and design. A colossus, withstanding the test of time and giving the Pharaohs what they desired most - immortality. Because thousands of years later, we still stand amazed.