Well, it appears that summer, or at least, some pleasant warm weather is here at last. It seems like only yesterday I was taking photos of the floor, and the several inches of snow laying on the sweeping lawns and gardens of Mercuryvapour Towers. Instead, I have to go out and mow the bloody things.

In fact, that’s a good a place to start as any. Yes, cutting the grass. After awaking on Saturday morning, and seeing the glorous sunshine outside, I thought I’d do the front garden. I’ve made a conscious effort to actually look after it this year. Well, by that, I mean butchering the hedge so that there’s not a leaf left on it, and cutting the grass to within a millimetre of its life.

I dragged the lawn mower out into the garden, after completing the whole rigmarole of finding somewhere to plug it in which doesn’t result in a wire trailing all of the way through the house. Eventually, a suitable outlet was found, and I plugged in the lawn mower. On it went, and after approximately six seconds.

“BANG! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

That’s supposed to imitate the sound of one of the blades coming off, thus making the rotating thing imbalanced, then vibrate like a motherfucker, for want of a better term. Indeed, the blade has snapped. Grrr. Oddly, the repacement blades are scattered throughout the house, with absolutely no rhyme or reason. To prove this, I located a repacement blade on the telephone table near the front door. Clearly, a strange place to keep a small item of gardening equipment.

I replaced the blade, and once again began to cut the grass.

“BANG! BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!”

Christ almighty. Two blades, shattered in less than 15 seconds of the mower actually being switched on. I have no idea if this is a record, but I once again located a blade in a strange place, this time the kitchen windowsill. I reliased that my luck of finding these blades was bound to run out sooner or later, especially if they were snapping at this rate, and I’d be left with a half-cut front garden.

Amazingly, after the 2nd replacement blade was finished, I managed to complete the garden without incident.

After I’d completed this, I slapped one of the broken blades in my pocket, as it was the only way I would know which ones we needed. We headed (Daddykins and I) off to Focus and pick up a few things. Replacement blades were, of course, on the agenda, along with a new fluorescent tube for the off-shot, which now doubles up as my darts oche.

I headed off randomly to find the lighting section. whilst Daddykins hovered around the door handles, in an attempt to replace a broken handle in an undocumented and uninteresting door handle snapping incident several months ago. I just happened to be walking around the DIY-door area (which is roughly between the door handle section and the lighting section), when I spy something which caught my interest. Something which someone had placed on the shelf after they decided they didn’t want it. A blister-pack of replacement blades for a Flymo. Hmmm. Our mower is a Flymo, and these look strangely familiar…

I examined the code on my broken blade. They were the exact type I needed, just left abandoned in a random part of the store, as if someone had just placed them there, knowing I was going to come down this way. It was one of those coincidences which I am sure I’ll be sad enough to tell everyone I meet… or maybe not.

Daddykins also attempted to buy some pea seeds, seeing as he caught the little fecker that just happened to be eating his current crop of afore-mentioned green vegetables…

Don’t worry kids, he’s only sleeping. With his eyes open, because what remains of his skull is pushing his eyes out of the sockets. And his bed is at the bottom of our wheelie bin. It seems to be the season for photographing dead stuff. This time one year ago was the time I photographed the dead hedgehog, which has since became my 5th most visited photo on flickr.

Um, moving on swiftly. I also bought a new box to store some of my records in, also from Focus. Shouldn’t have bothered. It cost me nearly 8 quid, and I didn’t realise. For the record, the fluorescent tube cost me £3.99.

So, after the excitement of Focus, we went to Netto. I didn’t buy much, though one of the things I did place in the trolley was a 24x pack of Carlsberg. This turned out to be a mistake. Not because of the beer content, but because at least one of the cans was damaged.

Between lifting the beers out of the car and through the door, I noticed a wet patch on my chest. This wasn’t the time of the month where I usually lactate, so I thought this was a bit odd. Indeed, the pathetic amount of packaging around the cans had claimed a victim, and one of the cans was punctured. Grrr. Before I had time to get mad, however, the phone rang. Chris said he was on his way up, so I arranged to meet him half way, as I had something else to do, and we might as well both walk along.

After returning home, I showed him the new dartboard setup, and almost made him marvel at the wonderment of my new, shiny, fluorescent tube. OK, I’m not that bad, but I’m sure I mentioned it at least once. After a quick game of darts, I decided that it was just too nice a night to sit in and watch telly/play darts/listen to my shite music, etc. He agreed, and we headed off in the general direction of Hart Village. It’s a perfectly acceptable walk. It’s all uphill, nice scenery, and yes, there’s a couple of pubs there too.

After having a quick walk around, we entered one of the afore-mentioned watering holes, namely the Raby Arms. It’s a nice place, but not something you would call a “local”, as the only people that were in there looked to be attending some type of function. Not that I particularly minded. The weather was warm, the beer garden was cool, and the alcohol was refreshingly cheap. For a place such as this, it was a nice surprise to receive change from a fiver for 2 pints.

After a few minutes, we headed inside the pub itself, as Chris claimed it was too cold. David Icke has said a lot of things in his time, but for *anyone* to find it too cold, on the hottest day of the year by far, they clearly must be some type of cold-blooded reptile. Or I’m exceedingly warm-blooded. One of the two. Considering everyone else in the town appeared to be showing vast amounts of bare flesh, I can’t have been in the minority.

The holiday was discussed, and unfortunately, Jonathan has pulled out of this years’ trip, after finding the lure of another trip down under too good to resist. I’m not sure, as of yet, if this will put a hold on this year’s holiday plans. We certainly seem to be leaving it late to book stuff.

In other news, I have once again removed my beard. Aftyer the trip to Raby Arms, I found it physically impossible to drink from a glass without it all dribbling down my chin. I must have been a sight. Now, for exactly 2 minutes, I removed the beard, but left the moustache. Now, there was no real reason for this, I just wanted to see what it looked like. The answer? Ned Flanders. No photographic evidence exists of me with just a moustache, but all of the signs are there if you think about it. Sigh, again.

Hart was once again the destination on Sunday, when Andy the Iridium fan called round. Once again, I was too warm to sit in the house, so off we went in the general direction of Hart. This time, Andy took his camera, while mine remained at home. I’ll explain why in a minute. Either way, I was happy with the shot I took here…

It’s the cropped version, but still looks awesome. I’d love a macro lens for my camera, especially if I can get results like that with just the stock lens. You can view all of the photos taken on that day here. It’s the first time I’ve posted a link to a flickr set for some time.

As for the reason why I didn’t take my camera, well, it’s pretty ill at the moment. I went to take a picture the other day. I switched it on, only to get the message “NO CARD”. Bugger. I couldn’t remember taking the card out of the camera, so I searched high and low for it, in all of the normal places, with no sign. I never thought to have a look in the camera itself…

The card was RIGHT THERE. Inside the camera. Joy. I removed the card, and inserted it again…

“NO CARD”.

Thinking my 16Gb card was fucked, I nipped upstairs, and got my other one. Inserted it, and “NO CARD” again. Sigh, once again. My 2Gb card produced the same results. Arrrrgh. So, I inserted/removed the card a number of times. Clearly this was enough to restore the contacts, as the camera recognised the card after that, but I am a bit annoyed. My experience with electronic devices points me in the direction of this happening again, and frequently, until the camera is useless. Whilst the camera is under warranty, do I send it back now, or wait until it dies completely? This is clearly an intermittent problem.

OK, it’s not exactly new, but here’s Part 2 of my trip to France.

There will be more from the Eiffel Tower in a few days time. There’s a bit in the footage which I forgot to edit out, where I’m running around looking for Chris, because he had my spare tape, and the one I was using was about run out. I was too lazy to encode it all again.

Enjoy!

Imagine the scene. I got bored earlier this morning, after another shitty day at work, and begin to clear my C drive up. It’s a bit of a mess, and I like to keep it as clean as possible. Therefore, when I noticed that my system restore data was taking up over 3Gb (wow, count ‘em!), I thought I’d get rid of these by turning off system restore, and back on again.

I smiled to myself, and thought that it would be rather funny to have technical problems after this…

Time passes. A couple of hours to be precise. I slap a DVD in my drive, hoping to retrieve some ancient data from its purple surface. I click on Start, then Run, and type E:

Nothing. Not a sausage.

Had the drive letters become screwed up again? This occasionally happens when I’m pricking about with USB drives, like I’ve been doing recently. I go into the Computer Management section, to see if the drive had a letter assigned to it. Ummmm, no drive. This was looking odd.

Sigh. I headed into Device manager, and there it was. The big yellow exclamation mark, with the happy little message…

“Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)”

I felt repulsed. How could this happen? Why me? WHY ME OF ALL PEOPLE? I walked away from my computer, clutching my forehead, and shedding a slight tear as I tried to ignore the torment that was cutting me up inside.

Eventually, I dragged myself back to the computer chair, a shadow of the man I once was. I tried uninstalling the device, and reinstalling. Still nothing. The big, yellow exclamation mark stood out like a spare dick in a porno. What was I to do? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed, is to turn to the big, multicoloured tech support centre known as Google. Within minutes, I had a solution, but it took a bit of translating. Hopefully, if you ever come across the same issue, then the following should help you. It certainly helped me! (copyright some advert circa 1991)

Ooooh-kay. Here goes.

Click on Start > Run, type regedit
If you don’t know how to use regedit, get an adult to help you. If you’re a pussy winnet that thinks altering the registry in any way, shape and form, will cause planes to fall out of the sky, then feel free to back it up.
Browse to the following key…
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
In there, look for 2 keys on the right called “UpperFilters” and “LowerFilters”. Delete both of those. Fuck knows that they do.
Go into the Device manager, and right-click your ailing drive, and select the option for “Uninstall”. It’ll then disappear from your list. Click on “Action” and select “Scan for Hardware Changes”. Within seconds, your drive will be redetected, good as new. Hopefully.

Your mileage may vary. It worked for me. And, if it doesn’t, then I really couldn’t care less. Please don’t leave comments asking for my other suggestions. I don’t really have any, except for reformatting your machine. Look, I’ve had a shit day at work. I can’t believe I put this much effort in diagnosing my own problems.

Oh, one thing that has cheered me up immensely, is that I have once again become addicted to Google Streetview, despite the concerns about “privacy”… er, do we actually have such a thing as privacy anymore anyway?

Either way, whilst the multi-camera’d Google har has yet to reach the rural location of Mercuryvapour Towers, it has, in great detail, captured Paris city centre, including the exact hotel in which I stayed at…

So, this was it. My alarm woke me up dead-on-time. 6AM. I double-checked and triple-checked the list of items I was taking home. All of the packing was taken care of, and at precisely eight minutes past 6, I knocked on C+J’s door to make sure they were awake.

They were indeed, and the last precautions were taken care of. At 6:47, I took one last image of my hotel room, and locked the door behind me for the final time.

The phoe rang, and the shuttle was ready to pick us up. We made our final descent in the lift, and was greeted with a battered old tranny van, already packed with American tourists, and complete with a cracked windscreen that looked as if it was about to give way any second. In fact, this shot sums up the state of the windscreen.

See that blurry line? That’s the crack in the windscreen.

The driver, some random Japanese guy could only speak about three words of English, and considering he spoke these badly, this was going to be a fun journey. Firstly, he wanted to know what terminal we wanted… now this was easy. Terminal 2E, for the flight at 10:40 to Newcastle.

“Nono, look in the book”, he said in an accent which resembled something ripped directly from an episode of the now defunct play-along game show “Banzai”. He handed Jonathan a tatty timetable. the closest he could find was the flight at 10:20, from Terminal 2F.

Fair enough, clearly this driver knows what he was taking about. after all, judging by the state of the van, he must have been doing this for some time.

The seemingly disgruntled Americans departed at their appropriate terminals, while we strained our necks to make sure our bags were still on board. Now, imagine this. if your seat folds down to allow the passengers getting off to exit the vehicle, the normal thing to do would be to get out of the van, and allow the seat to be pushed forward?

Yes, that’s exactly what I thought too. I attempted to get up, this crazy driver said “Nono, you stay there”, and began to push the back of the chair forward so the Americans can get off, while I was still sat in it, now bent double. What the hell? Why couldn’t I have just vacated my seat temporarily?

So, after ignoring the advice given on the OFFICIAL ITINERARY OF OUR BLOODY HOLIDAY, we arrived at Terminal 2F. Amusingly, the driver also demanded that we give him a tip. Before I could say “Yes, here’s a tip, get your windscreen fixed”, Jonathan handed him a €5 note, and he happily went on his way, whilst we were just left in shock and awe at the most catastrophic journey in the whole history of airport shuttles.

We arrived at the airport in very good time. In fact, a bit too good, as our flight wasn’t even listed on the boards. We were left kicking our heels around Terminal 2F for a good half an hour, waiting for our flght to appear on the boards. With almost a sense of inevitibility, the flight appeared, and yes, we were indeed at the wrong terminal! Terminal 2E was our terminal, therefore we had to make our way over there. I had predicted this would happen, so I wasn’t too phased. Jonathan, however, appeared to be spitting blood at this point.

We reached the approprate gate, and waited in a mile long queue. Joy. Someone came over and checked our passports, Apparently, the queue was for US passngers flying out of the EU, and we didn’t really need to wait in the queue.

Therefore, we were shown out of the queue. “Go ahead, you can use the self check-in desk”.

We approached the machines. No less than five seconds after leaving the queue, we got stopped by some jobsworth… “Excuse me, but you cannot use these…”

I butted in at this point, and in the most patronising voice possible, I expained.

“WE ARE GOING TO ENGLAND. THAT GENTLEMAN INSPECTING THE PASSPORTS HAS TOLD US THAT WE CAN USE THE SELF CHECK-IN”.

Before that statement sank in to Jobsworth’s feeble little mind, we were approached by a friendlier member of staff who inspected our itinerary, and agreed that we could self check-in.

Jesus Christ. More sodding automated computerisation.

She showed us how to use it. Thankfully, this one was a piece of piss, thanks to the fact that the machines we used actually worked, unlike the ones back in Newcastle. Within seconds, our seats were allocated, we had our boarding passes, and our hold luggage quickly disappeared once again into the unknown. Cool.

We went to the appropriate gate. Again, there was a queue about a mile long. and again, we were told to join a shorter queue. Of course, I didn’t know this, and while Chris appeared to be wandering off, he was actually going in the right direction.

And once again, we were approached by *another* jobsworth who didn’t quite know what he was doing. I don’t even remembering acknowledging him, I just suddenly took notice of some argument going on, along with some French guy shouting “Merde” very loudly, and continued following Chris.

Once again, we were submitted to the humiliation of Customs. Well, I say humiliation, I passed through cleanly. So did Chris. Jonathan, however was not so lucky. He returned, shoes in hand, with a grimace that looked like he’d accidentally chewed on a tube of superglue. Let’s hope he didn’t get the “rubber glove” treatment.

Thankfully, that was going to be it for the searches. It was time to hit the duty free. I was impressed at the sight of a Virgin Megastore. Therefore, while C+J hit the booze shop, I went there.

And within 34 seconds, I was back outside of it. Megastore? Bollocks! It was absolutely tiny, and the choice of music on offer was laughable. Bugger. I caught up with C+J again, and continued to browse the duty free shops. There is an appalingly small selection at CDG airport. Annoyingly, there wasn’t even any type of bar to while away the hours. Instead, we just walked around the poor selection of duty free shops. Naturally, I stocked up on cola bottles. They taste so much better than the ones in the UK.

So, after walking around a bit, we eventually found a cafe type place. I wasn’t hungry, but instead settled for an Orangina, which cost me a cool €3.50. My word.

I amused myself by checking some of the error messages on the broken advertisement displays. Even these weren’t remotely interesting. all they were was the time, an IP address, and some code number. The rest of the time, I was wondering whether the airport lounge was lit by Philips QL lamps. No seriously, this is how boring waiting for a plane can get.

Eventually, after what felt like an age, we made our way downstairs to the appropriate gate for our plane. Well, I say plane, I actually meant bus.

A bus would take us from the terminal building to the location of where our plane was taking off. Now, you remember the boarding pass we printed out only a few hours before? It was useless. Absolutely useless. It got scanned in, by the desk at the gate, and a NEW boarding pass flew out of the machine. Apparently, the plane that was going to take us back… er, wasn’t. Therefore, all of the seat numbers had changed. I don’t know, and obviously will not know the reason for the change in plane.

At this point, I didn’t expect any delay, so I phoned Daddykins and let him know everything appeared to be in order.

We were then kept on the bus for what felt like a fortnight. Obviously, there was always going to be a bit of waiting to do, but personally, the less of it I did, the better. I’d been awake 5 hours by this point, and hadn’t done a single thing. It felt like such a waste. Still, we’d be gaining an hour when we landed in Blighty, so it wasn’t too bad.

The bus circled through the airport, slamming the brakes on for every single little thing that happened to cross its path, meaning that the unlucky ones who were standing up got thrown forward. Luckily, I got a seat, and wasn’t going to give it up for anyone.

We left the bus, and climbed on the plane. Now, this plane was brand new. According to the brochure stuffed in the back of the seat, it was only a few months old, and it actually smelled like it. All of the seats were leather, there were entertainment units in the back of the seats (sadly not powered on for such a small journey) and the whole thing was immensely immaculate.

Unfortunately, we were kept waiting once again, and by this time were roughly 45 minutes late. I was sure Daddykins would have been waiting in Newcastle by this point.

Now, this is where Daddykins used a bit of ingenuity (probably spelled wrong) that I didn’t expect from him. He had used the trip to Newcastle airport to kill two birds with one stone. He had an errand to run, and also had to pick me up. So, he went and did the errand, and after completing said errand, he sent me a text message.

At this point, it was likely I was still sat on the tarmac in France, with my phone switched off…

Daddykins knew that the first thing I’d do after we landed was switch my phone back on.

Anyway, after what felt like an absolute age, we were making our way around the airport whilst being sat in the plane. Eventually, we got told to prepare for take-off. And off we went. The plane left the tarmac, and I was prepared for the whole spectacle of flight.

It was the first time I’d flown on a relatively clear day, and I’d bargained with Jonathan and Chris to get the window seat. It was awesome. Words can’t describe it.

Pictures, however, can. This was my 6th flight, and the first proper one where I’d actually managed to remember to take my camera out of my hand luggage before getting on the plane.

I think overall, I took 80 photos just out of the plane window. I’m overjoyed that I was able to document it.

Coming into land was my favourite part. We flew over Whitley Bay. I was able to point out to Chris.. “Look! That’s what’s left of the Spanish City!”. Very little, by the way.

We kept getting lower and lower, until we eventually touched down at Newcastle airport. Obviously, as previously mentioned, I switched my phone on, and the text message Daddykins sent was delivered. This meant that he knew we were close. I rang him as well, just to inform him of the safe landing, and the fact we were about to collect our bags. We were to meet him on the outskirts of the airport, as he was NOT going to get stung for those extortionate charges like last year…

Within minutes, we were hurling down the A1, back towards Hartlepool. Our holiday was well and truly over, and unbelievably, there was no major disaster. All luggage was intact, and not stained.

C+J got dropped off at their abode, I returned back to Mercuryvapour towers, expecting to be slobbered to death by two dogs who hadn’t seen me for a week. Instead no, they just slobbered over Daddykins, while gesturing that they wanted to go out. Bah.

So, all in all, Paris is a very nice place. Most side streets and the metro smell of piss, the beer is extorionate, the view from the top of the EIffel tower is amazing, the french can’t drive for Toffee, the most popular car is the renault Twingo, the pigeons look even stupider, and I have been informed by Marko who occasionally leaves comments on this site that Lidl’s do own-brand cherry Jaffa cakes…

This is now the end of the 15,352 word essay. If you want to find out more, you can check out all of the pictures I took here:-

Paris Day 1
Paris Day 2
Paris Day 3
Paris Day 4
Paris Day 5
Paris Day 6
Paris Day 7
Paris Day 8

I might stick sections of the video I took on Youtube in the coming days, but as far as the blogging and photos go, that’s your lot! Normal service, about how much I hate work and dull crap like that will return shortly

As I awoke for the last full day, I looked out of the window. The weather had, once again, turned out for us. It was absolutely glorious. This was a nice surprise, considering last year, and the torrential downpour that greeted us on the final day.

We wanted an early start, to be up for 9. Therefore, I went and woke C+J up. At 10:05, I was still sitting in my room, taking photos of the ceiling.

EVENTUALLY, they both surfaced, and we headed off to La Terrasse, for our final awesome brekkers, consisting of the usual tea, baguette, OJ and croissant. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you get a little biscuit with your hot drink too.

Thankfully, it was Monday, so the Shoppy was open, so we were able to stock up on supplies and bottled water for the day out. We planned to stay in the hotel for this final night, seeing as we had a very early start the next day, so it was a case of stocking up on food-like supplies for the night. I was especially looking for biscuits, similar to what we’d just had for breakfast. Unfortunately, I didn’t find any, but I’ll tell you what I *did* find…

Cherry Jaffa cakes.

Oh, man. I remembered these from when the short-lived “Pims” brand was over here. I mourned their passing, and was absolutely delighted to find them again. I opened the box up, took one out, took a bite, and was in biscuit heaven. It’s like all of my xmasses had came at once. I have no idea why they don’t do them over here any more, but by the time I’d gone the short walk from the shoppy back to the hotel room, the box was half empty.

So, back in the hotel room, we made the final preparations to visit the catacombs. I had my camera ready, batteries charged. We then consult the book to find out their exact locations when… BOLLOCKS! The sodding things are only closed on a Monday, aren’t they? ARGH! I must admit to being a bit gutted, as it was one of the things I was looking forward to seeing.

Never mind. It just meant that we had to revert to the backup plan of visiting Sacre Coeur, which is the big church on the hill, and was highly recommended by one of Jonathan’s friends. It can be seen in this picture which I’d taken a few days before. Sacre Coeur, translates to Sacred Heart, and is a Roman Catholic basilica dedicated to the sacred heart of Jesus.

So, off we went, leaving the hotel behind again, for the journey on the metro. this time, we all got two tickets each, just in case we came across one of those “ticket only”stations like we did before.

A long metro journey later, we arrived at Montmartre, I think. We departed the metro station, and began to walk about, in the general direction of Sacre Coeur. It soon became apparent that everything in Paris is uphill. There are no downhills to this place, and this was no exception. What was even worse, is that the side streets were packed with tourists. Argh. We reached the base of Sacre Coeur, only to find two things. a hell of a lot of steps, and hundreds more of those damn souvenir sellers, all lined up in a big row.

Suddenly, their mood changed, and one of them began shouting something loud in french, whilst walking towards somebody. I could only recognise one word… “pickpocket”. Yes, it turns out that these sellers also have the added bonus of being able to recognise the persistant pickpockets and chase them away from the tourist areas. Wow. I was so impressed, I almost bought something from them. Almost.

Up the steps we went., but not before I broke out the camera…

Halfway up the steps was another one of those sellers, but this time selling large, 6-ft long inflatable things with the usual “I love Paris” type shite printed on them. He kept throwing one in the air. Unfortunately, his location was right next to a fountain and a large pool of water. Every few throws meant that the large inflatable thing would blow off-course and land in the fountain. He would get a round of applause each time he rescued it successfully without falling in.

Further up the stairs was possibly the best street entertainer I’ve ever seen… now this is the first time I’ve embedded video from flickr, so apologies if it doesn’t work right, but here it is…

We stopped off for a good 20 minutes whilst slowly sipping the afore mentioned bottled water. Looking at that small 30-second video clip, you can just see how many kids put money in his hat (probably because their parents didn’t want to look like idiots). If he could keep doing it all day, I’m sure he’d be making a fortune.

Of course, there was also some scruffy idiot approaching him and pretending to dance very badly next to him.

Next stop was the actual building itself. Thankfully, unlike the tourist trap outside, it was a lot less busier on the inside. In fact, you weren’t even allowed to take photos or video. Following on from how touristy Notre Dame was, this felt a much better place to see. It was also a lot smaller on the inside than ND, so it didn’t take too long to see all of it.

We went back out, and had a little bit of a walk around to see if there was anything worth seeing. We made our way into the market square, and walked around. the place was filled with painters trying to sell their paintings. Now, these were genuine sellers, as you could watch them painting them if you wanted to. We kept walking, and came across a nice little food eaterie place on the corner. I got a croissant, and C+J got sarnies. I can’t believe how much I love croissants.

We found a seat to sit on, and watched as a British car attempted to get up the hill, then deciding against it entirely, and reversing back down, causing temporary traffic chaos. Oh, the hilarity.

After we’d sseen everything that the area had to offer, we headed back down through the side streets and throngs of gift shops. I noticed that one of the stores were selling french CDs, lo and behold, the Gilbert Becaud CD I’d purchased was amongst them for €10! Baaahaha! I’d got mine for half of that price! Awesome!

A quick reverse metro ride from whence we’d came meant that within a short time, we were back at the hotel. You know, I believe that’s the worst sentence I’ve ever written. Never mind.

Either way, what I was trying to say is that we got the metro back to Le Hotel Splendid. It was about 3PM at this point, so there wasn’t much point travelling far, and I wanted to see the interior of the Hotel Invalides. After all, a building with such an impressive outside was bound to have something special on the inside. It’s only a quarter of a mile from the hotel along Avenue de Tourville. We walked over, and I got Chris to take some cheesy shots of me…

The entry fee was €8. Now, there didn’t appear to be a ticket booth in sight. Instead there were two ticket machines in a little cubby-hole. Oh, now this was going to be fun.

I inserted my card, hoping to be told that it couldn’t be debited, or something like that. Surprisingly, it went through successfully. I almost let out a cheer as thre little tickets plopped into the tray beneath the machine. The American tourists next to me didn’t have so much luck. Apparently, Chip+Pin hasn’t reached across the pond yet, so their card wouldn’t work in the machine. I thought they were out of luck, until I spied an actual manned ticket booth ahead. I pointed them in that direction, and they were eternally grateful for my help.

Some of the exhibits were closed on Mondays, which seems odd. Mondays would appear to be more of a rest-day than Sundays. Still, we’d paid now. The first stop was, of course, Napoleon’s tomb.

It’s staggeringly impressive.

Sorry for the large burst of photos there, I think it’s justified in this case.

After being suitably impressed with the interior of the building, the next step was the war museum. Now, this was interesting, though I failed to take any photos while I was in there – I didn’t know whether cameras were allowed or not, and I didn’t fancy taking my chances. Obviously, it expained a lot about the past two world wars, though it seemed to tone down Britain’s part in these conflicts quite considerably. There were some very impressive exhibits, however.

It seemed to take ages to get through the full three floors of exhibitions. And that’s because it did. We spent nearly two hours in that exhibition alone.

By the time we got out, it was 5:45… and the doors closed at… a quarter to six. There was absolutely no chance of being able to squeeze anything out of it. a bit of a shame, as it looked like there was plenty more to see.

We took one last visit to Shoppy, and I picked up some Leffes, With these, I was guaranteed a good nights sleep. Therefore, my last meal in France cosisted of this…

Crisps, cherry jaffa cakes and the all important Leffes. Wonderful!

Now, something I haven’t mentioned about this holiday, is that I took a copy of the Hartlepool Mail with me. They do a regular feature called “Put us in the picture”, where they invite you to take a copy of the paper on holiday with you, and then send them a photo of wherever you are.

I was originally planning to do this, but seeing as we were on the last night, I thought we’d never get it done. And, to be perfectly honest, I wish I hadn’t!

We set off from the hotel, after I’d knocked 4 bottles of the Leffe back, in order to take some hilariously ironic photos of me doing silly things with the paper, including reading it upside down. Despite the fact we were absolutely pissing ourselves laughing whilst taking the photos, it was very windy, and they all turned out to be abysmally bad. This is possibly the only publishable one…

Note how fat I look, that’s just my shirt billowing up, honest.

I have added the word “Arse”, and saved it with 83% compression, just to make sure it doesn’t actually appear anywhere else, such as in the Mail itself!

We said goodbye to Le Tour Eiffel, and I took one more “serious” photo of it, before we headed back to the hotel one final time…

We entered the hotel, and the next time we would exit through these doors, we would be leaving our keys at reception for good. Shortly after we returned back, I retired to my room to pack away the final things that were going home with me. The black bag which had carried water and cameras for the last week was going to be used one last time for my hand luggage. I set my alarm for 6. Earlier in the week, we had arranged for a “shuttle service” to pick us up. It would cost €17, but at least we knew it would get us there in good time, and exactly where we wanted it…… wouldn’t it?