Ahh, now we’re starting to get into the swing of things. We knew where all of the eateries were, and we knew where we can stock up on supplies, we knew how much it was to get into at least 3 of the attractions.

Today was the day that we’d all planned to get up early and attack the Eiffel tower queues. It looked as if you really had to get in there early, or not bother getting in at all. Now, I knew, if we were going to attempt this, we really WOULD need supplies. Definitely water, for a kick off. Thankfully, Shoppy came in handy again, and I picked up three bottles of water. We also had the breakfast this morning. Now you may remember yesterday I mentioned La Terasse, where we’d stopped off for something to eat on the night. Well, that’s where we went for breakfast too.

I forgot to mention we also went for breakfast here on Day 2. I think. See, my mind doesn’t record every single detail on mornings. I just remember getting confused over the following…

Me: “Parlez vous Anglais?”
Him: “No, only French.”

You will just have to imagine my face at that point. No, in fact, imagine my face about 30 seconds later when I got his “joke”. Anyway, one awesome breakfast later, we head off to the Eiffel tower, and joined the queue, at 9:43, and didn’t get into the actual tower until 10:29. There was then a 7 minute wait until we got into the cable car at 10:36 to take up up to the first floor. The question was, would the view be worth it? I don’t think I’ll bother answering that question, as I can assure you, the views are absolutely amazing. Oh, wait. I just answered it.

Seriously though, it’s not until you get up to a high point that you realise how big Paris is. Here is a view of the hotel we were staying in, from the top…

See that “wedge” right in the very centre? That’s where the hotel is.

We stayed up there for ages. It was surprisingly warm considering we were on the top of a ~1,000 metre high structure. After spending quite a while at the top (mainly because there was a queue for the lift approximately a mile long), we went back down to the second level, and began the long walk down the stairs to the 1st floor. It was less busy than getting the lift, obviously, plus it offered a more entertaining view.

The first floor is a lot different to the other two floors, as it has bars, exhibitions, etc. After a quick look around them, we settled for something to eat and to drink. I went for the croissant and a “pint” of Heineken. And although it was reassuringly extortionate, must say, it’sn the most picturesque beer I’ve ever had…

Edit: oops, correctified image.

The chairs, however were a little bit “rustic”. They were made entirely out of old bits of tree, and not very sturdy at all. I think the person that was on the chair behind me almost went arse-over-tit because of them.

Anyway, we ate up, drank up, and began the descent via the stairs again. Unsurprisingly, there were once again vast swaithes of souvenir sellers trying to sell you stuff from their big black bin liners. Sigh.

We headed back to the hotel temporarily for some reason, and headed off to the Arc De triomphe. Now, it’s only 1.4 miles from the hotel On our previous trip there, it certainly didn’t feel like it. It felt a hell of a lot more. Therefore, we decided to use our €16 ticket on the boat again. Now, the only slight flaw in this plan, was that in order to get up to the Champs-Élysées, the boat had to make its way all the way along the touristy parts of the Seine, and then back again This was something that took 90 minutes.

Meh, it gave me an excuse to break the camcorder out, but by the end of it, even I was all camcordered out.

Eventually, we heard the words we wanted to hear… Next stop, “Champs-Élysées”. Awesome. This is where we wanted to be.

Off we jumped, only to realise that we were nowhere near where we wanted to be. In fact, we were still 1.2 miles away from it. Gutted. That means that we’d taken a 90 minute boat trip in order to save one fifth of a mile. I suddenly knew how this guy felt.

As we continued our walk down the Champs-Élysées, we walked past the preparations for the Wall-E premiere. It is unknown whether anyone famous attended, but there were a lot of security and cameramen about.

Eventually, after what felt like a fortnight, we made it to our final destination. It was €9 to get in, and no, we didn’t take the lift. Therefore, it is a climb of 284 steps to reach the first level, which is a sort-of museum. Unfortunately, this turned out to be very sparse indeed, with only a few exhibitions in it. I really thought they’d make more of a song and dance about something that looks so impressive on the outside.

So, after a quick look around, we went up yet more stairs and reached the top of the monument. Again, the view was great.

You also get a great view of the comedy roundabout while you’re up there. It looks even madder from above. I’m honestly surprised we didn’t see a major incident while we were up there, though there were plenty of brake screeching and blaring of horns.

We headed back down, and made our way along the road we should have came in the first place. Once again, we attacked The Shoppy.

Now, imagine the scene. you enter The Shoppy, and pick up a basket, only to find that one handle on it is broken. I attempt to place it back on the top of the baskets. Next, a small woman walks into the store. She thinks I’m actually getting a basket for *her*, and she takes the broken one I was about to put down… She thanks me with a cheerful “Ah! Merci!”… now, although I did French in school, we didn’t learn the words for “this basket is broken”, and I have the documentation to prove it

I tried to explain to her in sign language that the basket was well and truly fucked, and I was simply putting it back in order to get another one.

It failed miserably.

She looked away, and muttered “oh, non merci” under her breath as she grabbed a working basket. It was all so hilariously embarrasing.

First stop after the water aisle was, of course, the beer aisle. Now, you may remember the 7.9% beers I’d bought the day before. Well, I stocked up on these again, and got a few more to last me through the night. I did spy some 9% Leffe, but steered clear of this for the time being.

In our quest to find a cheap pub the previous night, we noted a few eateries to try out. It is unsurprising that we wanted a taste of home, and therefore resorted to choosing a Chinese.

As the night was getting on by this point, we retreated to our approriate rooms, and got ready for the night. On the way down, we had a special guest in the lift…. yes, a bloody wheelie bin…

We entered the Chinese, and found it to be a very nice place. the staff were friendly, spoke perfect English and it was overall a very welcoming atmosphere. You’ll be unsurprised to find that I ordered a chicken curry. Sorry.

SIDENOTE: I know I stated I’d eat horse while I was out there. I didn’t. Though, this was mainly because I could only find one place that sold it, and at €15, I didn’t want to risk that amount of money in something that may have been horrible.

Right, with that out of the way, back to the meal. It was top notch. Me and Chris had the chicken curry, and Jonathan had Chilli beef and noodles. it was all very nice, and although yes, the beer was still expensive, we didn’t mind paying it if we were getting something to eat.

After that, it was getting late so we headed off back to the hotel to talk about the days antics, eventually retiring to bed at approximately 1:30AM.

Technorati Tags: arc de triomphe, basket, boat, chinese, drink, eiffel tower, embarrassing, Food, holiday, paris, walk

No sooner had Day 1 ended, than Day 2 began. Now this, of course means, unfortunately that I didn’t get much sleep. This was mainly because of the afore mentioned factors in Day 1 about everything being too hot. This was something I’d obviously have to get used to.

I awoke at 7. C+J were obviously still going to be asleep, so I took a bit of a walk without them. They wouldn’t be up for hours. I think we made tentative arrangements to get up early, but not THAT early.

I donned my clothes and headed off, camcorder in hand, to the Eiffel Tower. This is the first time I’ve mentioned the camcorder in this trip. Yes, I did indeed take it with me, but thanks to my hard drive being a bit of a nuisance at the minute, I’ll not be able to work my way through the tape until I attempt to format my storage hard drive. That’s something I’ll leave for now, however.

Anyway. the time is 7:30 AM by the time I have a shit, shave and shower. I head off outside the hotel, and in the general direction of the tower. It seemed eerily quiet. I really didn’t expect it to be like this. In fact, I think I only saw a handful of people on my entire journey.

Unbelievably, one of those people was one of those stupid sodding crap-keyring sellers. Aaaaaargh. Is there no time of the day safe from them? Clearly not.

Thankfully, he was the only one I saw, but still!

I continued my journey, and headed along the bridge across the Seine. It looked like a nice walk.

Interestingly (or rather erm… not really very interestingly), their road sweepers use a lot more water than ours. Instead of a shitty little drizzle in front of the brushes, this thing splurts out a great big gush of water across the entire pavement.

The walk continued, and I continued taking photos and filming, as you can imagine I would. This was easier said than done, as there seemed to be hoardes of joggers out in the early morning.

I continued the walk as it was still early, and went along to the impressive structure known as Hotel Invalides. Little did I know that this was the way we’d came originally, and I’d totally missed it on the way there. Mainly because all I cared about was getting to the hotel.

I didn’t know much about the bouilding at this point, so I took a few photos, and headed back to the hotel.

I awoke Chris and Jonathan, and we headed out onto the Parisienne streets. I can’t for the life of me remember if we had breakfast on this particular morning. I think it was more likely that we picked up something from The Shoppy.

The shoppy (actually spelled Shopi) is a chain of supermarkets throughout France (by the looks of it), and the prices are perfectly acceptable. Now, we actually discovered this wonderful little supermarché on Day 1, but I didn’t mention it. In all, I think I spent something like €22 in there just on the first day.

Anyway, off we went to the shoppy, and bought what we needed, and headed off in the general direction of Le Tour Eiffel.

The first question of the day was how we were going to see the sights of the city. We initially thought that most of the attractions were a distance from each other, so, after consulting a map, it was agreed that we would get a pass for one of the river cruisers. Seemed expensive, but we got a 5-day pass, which cost €16. It looked as if this was the best way to see the sights.

Indeed, it was great to see the famous landmarks from the comfort of a riverboat. It was nice to be able to break the camera out and take photos of them too.

First stop for us was Notre Dame cathedral. I must admit, it’s a stunning piece of architecture. Unfortunately, this was the first time we realised that Paris was really quite a bit too touristy. I remember I had to stop myself from collapsing with laughter every time I heard the inane statements and frustratingly annoying drawl of the American tourists walking behind us.

Though, the worst part must have been the camera flashes. It’s almost impossible to appreciate the building and the years of immensely hard work that would have been put into it, when every time you look at something, it’s doused in a split second of bright white light. You may find it a bit hypocritical of me to say that I would like to see them banned from a place such as this, especially as I took a boat load of photos while I was in there, but it’s true. You may also notice that on my photos, I didn’t use the flash once. Wasn’t bothered how blurry they came out. I simply respected the rights of other people around me to enjoy the building as it should be.

Therefore, I can see why Durham Cathedral banned cameras, and I stand with their agreement on this policy. I also retract any previous statements where I may have stated otherwise.

After the trip around there, it was then time to get some water, and a trip through the side streets in order to find a shop that actually looked like they’d stock something to drink. Eventually, I found somewhere. It looked like a proper dive, however, and this was confirmed by the fact that the water was manufactured in Greece, and was “sparkling”, though I couldn’t tell that by looking at the label. Bah. I hate sparkling water. On a hot summer day, it’s about as refreshing as a sand and razorblade sorbet.

Next stop was The Louvre, or at least the outside of it, as time was getting on, and there was no chance of being able to see most of of it, therefore we just stayed outside. As far as I was concerned there was plenty for me to photograph anyway.

After we’d picked up some food and stocked up on more water (this time at €2.50 a bottle… ffs), we headed off down Le Jardin des Tuileries, towards the Arc De Triomphe. Now, at first it didn’t look like a particularly long walk. We could see it in the distance.

However, this was entirely deceptive. Turns out the short walk was actually two miles. Never mind, we made it. It is MUCH bigger than what I expected. Last year, in Berlin, you may remember we went to see the Brandenburg gate, and were shocked at how small it was, well this was HUGE.

Of course, around the Arc De Triomphe is a comedy roundabout. Honestly, you could sit and watch this thing for hours, with all of the near misses. 12 different roads merge into one roundabout, which is roughly 4 or 5 lanes wide. There are no road markings. It is literally every man for himself. Oubviously, when this structure and the surrounding buildings were constructed, there wouldn’t have been any cars on the road.

Now this gives me an opportunity to explain a little about the traffic system in France, or at least Paris… there is *no* traffic system. Firstly, let me start off with traffic signals. Now, I’m sure you all remember your Green Cross code… look left, look right, wait for the green man. Well, you can forget it. Just forget everything you know. Over there, there’s no need to wait for the green man, because wether the lights are on red or not, they still go through them. If you happen to be obeying the green man, and actually crossing at that time, wish yourself luck, run like fuck and pray that you don’t end up splattered across the front of a Renault Twingo. I swear, I lost count of how many times one of the three of us almost ended up in a body bag because we thought that the red traffic light meant “stop”.

Now, I’m not saying that everyone in Paris is a bad driver, I’m just saying that everyone in Paris is a bad driver. OK, there’s bound to be one or two exceptions to the rule, but we found it hard to find a car without some type of dent or scratch in it.

Anyway, back to the Arc De Triomphe. There was a dimly lit subway which takes you from one side of the road, and onto the main building itself. We weren’t aware that you could get to the top of it until we got there. Awesome. The cost was €9. Again, we left this for another day.

After that, we began to head back to the hotel. It wasn’t too late by this time (about 4:30) so we walked it.

At exactly 5PM, we stumbled across the tunnel where Princess Di met her fate. Oddly, on the top of the tunnel is a replica of the flame from the Statue of Liberty. The top of the tunnel itself is covered in graffiti.

After a walk that felt like a week, we ended up back at the hotel, but not before we watched some brass band from England do their best to re-create the Austin Powers theme. Seconds later, off we went to the shoppy.

I picked up only the bare essentials in this particular trip. Water, cherry coke and more bacon Bugles. Oh, and some apples. And possibly some fruit juice too. The “pièce de résistance”, however, came in the shape of beer. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called, but it came in a blue can and was 7.9%. the price? Something like €1.40 a can. I bought 4 of them.

Off we went, back to the hotel, again, and began to flick through the various pieces of complete garbage that was on the telly. Let me tell you that the French version of Countdown (i.e. the original one) isn’t really that good.

So, after a quick change of clothes, an’t a bit-o’Brut-slappy-chop-chops, we decided to check some of the local eateries. There was a vast selection where we were located, though it seemed most of them didn’t offer a wide selection of stuff. Well, not for me anyway, the annoyingly fussy eater I am. Again, the meals were expensive, but a bit more reasonable than the drinks. After knocking down a chicken brochette, while C+J had a cod steak, we left La Terrasse behind, and began to try and find a cheap place to have a drink. We kept on walking. And walking. eventually, through pure chance, we ended up back on the Champs-Élysées. Bugger. This was not going to be a cheap night at all. Down a side street, we found a place that was reasonable, and actually looked like a bar instead of a cafe.

We entered, and was shown to a table. Wait, I thought this was a pub? No. It’s just another expensive cafe that’s made to look like a bar. Growl.

And expensive it was. €7.50 each for a “pint” of 1664. (Note that in France, 1664 and Kroenenburg are two separate lagers), and thanks to the language barrier, it turned out that Chris actually ordered 5 instead of 3, therefore the cheap drink suddenly changed into a not so cheap €37.50… awesome. The beer wasn’t even that nice either.

So, we left, and set off on the journey back to the hotel. It was getting late by this point. We left the “pub” at about 11, and didn’t get back in the hotel until 11:45, though I did get a chance to see something cool - the Eiffel tower, doused in blue light, covered in sparkling lights.

By the time we got back to the hotel, my back teeth were floating. Absolutely desperate for a pee. It’s moments like this that you don’t wish you had a room on the third floor. As I pleaded for the lift to go faster, it only seemed to go slower. Luckily it reached its destination in time, and I remembered how to open the door without having to resort to brute force.

It was approaching midnight, so me and Chris headed off back to the Eiffel tower to see if we can catch the light display. Indeed we did, and I even got it on tape, as I gave Chris the camcorder while I tried to get jaunty angles of it.

After that, we went back to the hotel and watched the tape of what I’d filmed. I then knocked back those cans I mentioned earlier and went to bed. Tomorrow was going to be a high, in more than one respect.

Technorati Tags: beer, boat trip, brochette, eiffel tower, expensive, france, graffiti, holiday, invalides, notre dame, paris, princess di, shoppy, vacation

Hello, and welcome to Day 1 of my Paris holiday write-up. Let me tell you that this should be well documented, as I have taken over 1,000 photos. No, seriously.

Right, where to start? Well, the beginning would be nice, I suppose. therefore, I shall whisk you back to approximately 7AM on Tuesday, 15th July 2008. I awoke from my steaming pit at that time, as we were going to pick up Jonathan and Chris at 7:30. Well, that’s what I thought anyway.

I had a quick bath, only for Daddykins to inform me that he actually wanted to set off at 7:20 and get to Chris’s by 7:30. Oh, the joy of it all. Therefore, the quick bath got even quicker. In fact, I barely had enough time to stick my balls under the tap.

I then jumped out the bath and began meticulously checking my hand written list of things I was taking, just to make sure everything I needed was there. It looked as if it was. Awesome!

We set off, and arrived at Chris and Jonathan’s house by ooooh, 7:34. So, only 4 minutes late. Not too bad.

I knock on the door, only to find that Jonathan wasn’t ready, due to the fact he’d been driving up here until 2AM in the morning, as he currently lives daaaahn saaaaf.

Off we jolly well popped, up the A19 to Newcastle Airport. It wasn’t long until the camera was broken out, though for now, I’ll not resort to showing you scary photos, or photos of streetlights, there’s plenty of time for that in the next hundred or so updates I’ll write about this trip.

After last years’ fiasco over parking, where Daddykins got charged £6 for waiting about 15 minutes in Newcastle Airport, he dropped us off on the outskirts, near the roundabout, meaning that there was a slight walk to the entrance. Perfectly acceptable, I thought, especially as we’d be doing plenty of walking over the coming days.

So, we enter the complex and arrive at the check-in desk. The lovely young lady behind the counter instructs us to the use the self check-in machines. As much as I love computers, I absolutely hate anything that has the word “self” at the beginning. They just never work. This was no exception. After following the instructions on the screen, it prints out ONE boarding card. There are three of us. The bloody self-service machine brings up an error, and then instructs us to contact the lovely young lady sat behind the Air France desk, who then checks the other two of us in. Why couldn’t she have done that in the sodding first place? Sigh.

As our bags disappeared along the conveyor belt into the unknown, I nipped off to buy a little travel guide - one of the Lonely Planet ones. £6 it cost, but did turn out to be very handy. I’d say that it was probably better than the one I bought for Berlin last year.

Chris got his money exchanged, and we headed to the departure lounge. Of course, this involves the added indignity of having to remove your belt, and in some cases, shoes too. It’s something that is necessary, yet strangely humiliating (though not as humiliating as getting frisked like I had to be last year).

Thankfully, this year we didn’t change planes, so didn’t have to do this twice in each direction.

Once again, the passports were checked, and we headed off to find the bar we went to last year… Disaster! The departure lounge had completely changed, and the bar was boarded up and closed! The large seating areas were now taken up by another bar (it was actually the same bar I was referring to, but it had moved out of its old location, and into where the seating area was).

The large amounts of open space has also been “built on”, and to access the gates, you had to go through a duty-free store. This annoyed me, slightly.

I went into WH Smiths, in order to buy something to read on the plane, Chris bought something to drink from the same shop, and Jonathan looked around somewhere else. As could be predicted, we got separated, and had to cross through this bloody duty free shop.

A heavily done up assistant approached me, looking like she’d just tripped up in the make-up aisle.

“Are you looking for anything in particular?”, she asked, Geordily.

I looked at Chris and said “Yes, his brother…”

There was a few moments silence, and she walked off looking slightly bemused. Eventually, we met up with Jonathan (the shop assistant was no help at all on that one), and proceeded to another bar which had been constructed, coincidentally in a Parisienne style fashion. Now, considering this was a duty free area, the beer was 33% more expensive than it was last year, and it tasted 33% warmer too.

At some point during this whole waiting procedure, we looked out across the runway to see an awesome looking flighter jet getting some service done to it.

We then hovered about, watching the destination boards, waiting for our plane to come up and show a gate number. This seemed to take forever, but eventually, up it came, and we headed off in that general direction. I believe it was the same departure gate we were at for Berlin last year, but can’t really remember. It seemed to look very familiar.

The plane was tiny. It looked even smaller than the little fokker I flew in last year. I didn’t really mind, but I was a bit concerned that we’d have to land half way through so someone could get out and wind the elastic band back up.

We headed out onto the tarmac, but not before getting our passports checked AGAIN. The flight was perfectly fine. I got chatting to a nice young lady sat next to me who explained she was off to Disneyland with her neice who was in front.

We landed, and the weather was lovely. Let me just try to explain how big Charles De Gaulle airport is… HUGE. I’m surprised it doesn’t have its own national anthem.

According to a quick play with Google Earth, Heathrow Airport is 3.3 miles from corner to corner, this is 5.5 miles.

This would explain the queue for the passport checks that we were in that must have been at least a quarter of a mile long. In fact by the time we’d reached halfway down the queue, I’d eaten an entire bag of Haribo chews. The person who I’d talked to on the plane got right to the front of the queue instanmtly because their family had a kid. By the looks of the line, it seemed quite possible that I could court, copulate and become a father by the time I got to passport control. In the sheer boredom, I began to wonder if there was anyone even slightly famous in the queue.

We collected our bags, and attempted to find some type of exit. Apparently the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra was in that queue somewhere, as someone was waiting to pick them up outside the airport, waving a big white card.

Now, finding our way to the centre of Paris was going to be fun. Something that we (or rather I, as I decided which hotel to book) didn’t take into account is the distance of the airport from the hotel. A taxi may have been possible, but expensive. We decided to risk the train system. We must have spent about an hour trying to work out the tube map and roughly where we wanted to be. It would have been a good idea to actually plan that type of stuff before I’d left England, or at least consulted Google Earth for the nearest tube map. It would be something I’d kick myself later on in the day about.

We consulted the tiny (yet useful as the week went on) tube map, and got a train to one of the main stations in Paris - the name of which escapes me (Gare Du Nord, or Gare De Lyon, I think), and then get on to the metro to a station named Invalides. Unfortunately, this metro station was 0.6 miles away from the hotel, and Chris’s homing-pigeon instincts let us down for the first time EVER, and we headed off in completely the wrong direction, meaning that the journey we’d taken walking with heavy bags actually went on for 1.2 miles. Luckily, on the way there was a shop that sold water at a reasonable price, otherwise I don’t think I’d have made it. Although it was warm at the airport, the city heat just made it unbearable, especially when we didn’t know where we were going, with no end in sight. Eventually, after what felt like a month, we just happened to stumble upon the hotel. We checked in, and after taking a moment to regain composure, and to soak up the sweat, we headed up to the rooms.

The first of (thankfully not many) embarrasing moments came when I collected my key and couldn’t actually open the door - Jonathan showed me how to do it. Turns out the handle on the front of the door is just for show. you open the door by turning the key clockwise, and then pushing. Clever, but confusing when you’re dehydrated, hungry and fed up of lugging a case and a bag around a capital city. Actually, it’s not clever at all. I guess I just suck at opening other people’s doors. Maybe I’m the ani-burglar, or something

Anyway, I went into my room, Chris and Jonathan (hereafter referred to as C+J as it’s too hard to type otherwise) went in theirs. It was about 6PM at this point, and we arranged to meet an hour later to go out and see the Eiffel Tower, as it was less than a mile away from the hotel. I decided to have a proper bath seeing as my earlier one had been so rudely interrupted, and a lie down.

Two hours later I awoke. I went to C+J’s room, and knocked on the door. No answer. Were they both dead? Had they gone and left me all on my own?

At great expense, I called Jonathan on his mobile. Chris answered. I asked where they were, and they replied they were already at the Eiffel Tower. He’d knocked on my door, and there was absolutely no answer. How odd.

Anyway, they made their way back along to meet me, and all three of us had a wander up to the Eiffel Tower.

This was 15th July, the day after the Bastille Day celebrations, which meant that there were still areas cordoned off. New trees which had been planted still had bits of hardboard around them, and metal barriers littered the avenue leading up to the tower. This arrangement, however, allowed some people to make use of the obscure arrangement and make a temporary football pitch in the sand.

It’s only until you get underneath it that you notice all of the effort that had gone into creating it. it’s really quite intimidating.

Something also intimidating is the sheer amount of foreigners selling stupid, badly made little miniature eiffel tower keyrings and shit like that. There are hundreds of them littered around the city, all selling exactly the same tat.

Something impressive was the size of the queues. to get up the tower. Absolutely enourmous. 45 minute waiting times at least. I could think of better things to do for our first night, so we gave it a miss. Instead, we crossed the River Seine for the first time, and began to take photos of the sun going down, with the Eiffel Tower mostly in the foreground.

After the sun set, we headed off to the bars near the hotel, as there were quite a few. It was getting on, and we didn’t fancy anything to eat, so we just got beers. Extortionate is the word that would fit in nicely here. Something like €5.50 for a 250ml glass. That’s less than half a pint. Holy cow.

One small beer later, we returned to the hotel to sum up the day, but not before we nipped into a local shop to pick up some essentials, and those essentials would be… BACON FLAVOUR BUGLES! My word, I had no idea they still made Bugles! I know they don’t over here. I think the last packet of those I had was back in March 2002 when I went down to London. I much prefer the BBQ flavour, but they don’t seem to exist anymore, even in France. Ah well.

I went to put the stuff in my room, and as I exited, Chris was in the middle of saying something…

“And then after that, we can… wait, did you come out of room 302?”

I nodded affirmatively, and audibly confirmed this with an “Aaaaaye?”

“BOLLOCKS. I thought you were in room 301. I was knocking on the wrong door earlier…”

I ate my Bugles, and went to bed. It was far too warm to sleep with the window closed, and far too noisy to sleep with the window open. Turns out that the hotel is situated alongside a military school, with nice solid walls so any traffic noise, or in fact the noise of people breathing echoes upwards. What doesn’t help either is the fact that the end of the road was actually on cobbles.

What made things even worse is that the room door was thin, and let any type of noise in. I swear, someone farted 4 doors away and I could smell it.

Eventually, I fell asleep on top of the covers, and prepared for Day 2…

Technorati Tags: airport, beer, chris, day 1, eiffel tower, expensive, extortionate, flight, holiday, hotel, jonathan, metro, metropolitan, paris, splendid, train, trip

Well, I’ve literally just returned from Paris. In fact this is the first sentence I’ve typed since I got back, or rather that previous sentence was.

I’m still getting unpacked, etc, but I’ll shortly begin the recap of the entire trip. And what a trip it was.

EDIT: The update, as I can’t see the point of creating a new post just for a bit of info…

WP 2.6 was released while I was away, therefore I’m going to update to that version.

Update 2: Done the upgrade. Woo.

Technorati Tags: holiday, paris, returned

Yes, it’s almost time that I shirk the responsibility of hosting a top class blog, and disappear to another part of the continent for a week. This means that I will be unable to keep you informed of such announcements as the server reboot / failure that took place on Tuesday Morning. Although I hate to keep you un-informed of realtime changes and problems to do with this site, it does mean that you will be with my irreplaceable wit and charm for a full week.

I’m sorry to break that news to you, and I’m sure you’ll all be devastated at the news. Yeah, righto.

Let me start off by saying I still have one niggling doubt. A doubt that I can’t explain in detail, though it is something that could easily mean that one of us does not fly. I have been assured that this “slight difference of opinion” has been corrected, but I will not know until we arrive at the check-in desk at Newcastle Airport on the appropriate day.

I shall, for once, pull myself away from looking forward to my holiday, and comment on what is happening right now. Looking out from the turrets of Merucuryvapour Towers, I can inform you that the sky is leaking. A lot.

It’s been another three days off where I’ve done quite a bit, but it feel like I haven’t. Let’s start off with Wednesday. It was the only day of the week where I was able to do what I wanted - the only day where the rain wasn’t constantly bouncing off the tarmac.

On Wednesday, I’d finished at 8AM. Normally, at this point I’d go straight to bed, in the vain hope of being able to get up at a reasonable time and make some use of the day. Thankfully, this didn’t happen, and I was physically able to stay up. Chris had phoned me the previous night, and we’d made plans to meet at the flea market. This was always doomed to failure.

I rang Chris at 9AM, as we’d planned, and arranged to meet in the town centre. Unfortunately, for once, *I* didn’t get the message, and totally misunderstood this simple instruction. Mohh. After a nice walk around the flea market (well, I say nice, I spent more money on CDs than I care to mention), I went for one last look through some records. Just as I was about to flick through them, I noticed the 242 approaching. My searching stopped, and I headed off to the bus stop, stuck my paw out, and alighted afore mentioned public transport.

Just as I’d got to Raby Road, my phone goes. It was Chris.

Him: “Where are you at?”
Me: “On the bus, going home”
Him: “Shit… I’m in the town centre”

Poo. I thought he was going to ring me when he was about to set off, and not when he was in the town. Oops.

All was not lost, however, as he had stuff to do in the town anyway, and he said he’d come straight up to Mercuryvapour Towers as soon as he’d finished.

I returned home, and while I was waiting for him, I did a bit of tidying, or rather, threw the hoover around the place for a bit. Hilarity ensued as I managed to get a bit of plastic stuck in the hoover brushes, meaning that every time it went over a bump or some sort, the thing screamed. Eventually, and with the help of one of those large forks you stab turkeys with, I freed it, and my hoovering continued unceremoniously.

Chris came over just as I was finishing. We sat around out in the back garden for a bit, deciding what we would do for the rest of the day. The weather was gradually improving, and it was eventually decided that we’d have a walk up to Hart. After all, the Sainsbury’s is on the way there, and Chris had yet to see it.

Off we went, and of course, the stop off at Sainsbury’s was included. Chris bought some pop, I bought a bottle of water, two Mars Delights (at the awesome price of 18p each) and, to top it all off, a Calippo. I haven’t had one of those since I was a kid.

We got served by the loudest, most over-enthusiastic assistant I think I’ve ever heard in my life… “HELLO SIR! THAT WILL BE £1.86! THANK YOU SIR! HAVE A GOOD DAY NOW!”

I was trying to work out whether she was just being sarcastic, or whether she really was that loud.

We left, and the walk countinued westward. We walked along the old abandoned road which is becoming ever familiar to me. I was surprised by the fact that a field which had presumably been left fallow this year, had turned into a sea of poppy red…

It wasn’t the only one, there were two fields on the way there. Eventually, we reached Hart, and although we’d enjoyed the walk, it became clear that we’d reached the problem I’d faced each time I was there… there is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in Hart. Well, OK, there were pubs, but considering I’d came out without my wallet, it wasn’t something I’d be able to partake in. Not that I particularly wanted to, anyway.

Of course, I came up with the wonderful idea of taking more photos while we were there. None of them turned out particularly, awe-inspiring, especially when I asked Chris to take some of me. None of them turned out good at all. In fact, this is probably the only one that doesn’t make me wretch…

Oh, wait. It does. Hooooorp.

After a good walk, and about half an hour of trying to get a good photo of a bee on a flower (and failing miserably), we returned home. Chris stayed for a little while longer, before he headed home. It was about 4PM at that point, and I was starting to feel tired, so I had a lie down on the sofa for a couple of hours. At roughly 6PM, the doorbell rang, it was Andy The Iridium Fan (see gallery) with DVD in hand, of the maritime festival which he’d recorded over the weekend. I didn’t attend this semi-annual event, which took place from 4th - 6th July, for you see, the weather was truly awful.

Chris came back over at about 8PM, and all three of us watched the DVD again, pointing out the goings-on in the background. and having a general good laugh at it.

Andy went, which left me and Chris to discuss the world, and marvel at the musical delight of the Sky News theme. It appears I’ve gotten Chris addicted to it too. Awesome.

Chris went, and I lapsed into a coma until the following morning.

Thursday was the day when I would start getting really prepared for this holiday. Money exchangement was about to take place, shoes would be bought, batteries would be charged, hair would be cut.

At approximately 14:28 and 32 seconds, we left the house, and went off down the town. Daddykins dropped me off at the town centre. Now, the plan was this. I’d be dropped off at the town centre, Daddykins would go somewhere, do what he had to do, then meet me a bit later on the Marina, outside of Brantano, the shoe shop. Fair enough. Seems straightforward.

So, off I toddle to the post office, debit card in hand, hoping to draw out some monopoly money Euros. I approach the lady behind desk 11. the Bureau De Change.

Me: “Can I have €300 please” (whilst holding up card)
Her: “Um… do you have a drivers license or passport?”
Me: [resigned to defeat at such an early stage] “Er, no… didn’t think you’d need it?”
Her: “Pop your card in the slot, I’ll see if I can withdraw cash for you”

[fx: computer bouncing across desk, smoke pouring out of the top of it, big flashing red lights, Family Fortunes 'Ick-urrrrr' sound effect repeating over and over]

Her: “Computer says no.” (note, approximation)
Me: “Er, but if I go and draw out the cash from a cash machine and bring it here, it’ll be OK, yes?”
Her: “Yes. Something to do with the Bank Of England”
Me: “I see… I’ll be back in a minute, then”.

I walk no less than 50 yards to the cash machine, withdraw the appropriate funds, and walk back to Desk 11…

Me: “€300 please…”, I say with a little twinge of sarcasm in my voice, though I try not to overdo it, as I know it’s not the cashiers fault.

Without hesitation, the funds are retrieved from the drawer, and I end up with a wad of notes.

I can’t help but think, “LOL, WTF”. Can someone explain to me why I can’t exchange currency when paying from my own card, without having ID, yet exchange it from cash drawn out of a cash machine with exactly the same card? The only difference is that I’m entering my PIN number onto a different sodding keypad.

Off to get my shoes, then. Brantano is a good quarter of a mile away from the town centre, so a small walk was in order. It would also give Daddykins the time to get from where he was going, to the car park outside of said shop, where he arranged to meet me. I entered the shop, and after a good old browse, I elected for two pairs of size 10’s that looked reasonably comfortable. I approached the check out to be greeted with… nothing. There was NOBODY THERE. What the hell? I was stood there for at least 10 minutes. Nobody came. I even resorted to tactics such as staring at the CCTV camera and shrugging my shoulders in the off-chance that someone was watching it, and would come out and serve me. I almost even resorted to setting off the store detector alarm in the hope of getting someone to come and serve me. Although I’m sure this idea would have worked, I decided against it, and thought I’d just stick it out and see what turned up

Eventually, an “assistant” made her way down the store, and I eventually got served. Awesome.

Now, by this time, I was positive that Daddykins would be in the car park waiting for me. I arrive out the store, and look about.

No car. You have GOT to be kidding me.

At this point, you’d be thinking that it’d be a good idea to ring him up and let him know I was waiting. this would indeed be a good idea, unfortunately, my phone was sat at home, on the landing, on charge. How handy.

At this point, I was wondering what had happened. Could it be that Daddykins didn’t hear me correctly? I clearly said “Brantano”, but was he thinking of somewhere like Staples? TK Maxx perhaps? They’re all down there too, though the other side of the marina. I must have walked the entire car park twice. No sign of him.

Every car that entered the car park got my evil eye at some point, as I attempted to read the registration plates as they went past. None of these cars matched the description I was looking for.

After approximately 20 minutes of standing around twiddling my thumbs, hoping that messages had not been misunderstood, here comes Daddykins. He flashes his lights, and I once again sigh, shrugging my shoulders. This was surely a day of me getting pissed around. I enter the car and ask where he’d been.

“Oh, I gave you an hour, so I went to the marina and got some fish and chips. They were gorgeous”. Eventually, I had to ask him to be quiet about how nice they were, as he failed to get me any chips, and I was not particuarly amused about being kept waiting for god knows how long while he stuffed his face.

After an amazing plate of curry, admittedly cooked by Daddykins, and using a jar of curry sauce that we paid 4p for. It’s the cheapest price I’d paid since I was working at Sharwoods. And it was delicious.

Thursday night saw me at the club. I wore a pair of my new shoes in by having several games of snooker. It was one of those games where I didn’t do well, I just got very lucky. Thirteen-cushions-and-in-off-the-light types of shots. I’d not played for a month, so it was surprising I’d potted anything at all.

I got a lift home from Chris’s dad at the end of the night, and I retired to bed after a couple more cans. In fact, here I am arriving home…

Oh, OK yes, I only included that image because the streetlight at the bottom of the road is off again. Someone climbed up a few nights ago and stole the photocell from the top of it. Speaking of streetlights, I explained my undying “love” for streetlights. (for want of a better expression… after all, there are some people who just take their obsession too far). He found my interest a bit weird, butalso strangely fascinating. Apparently, he’s going to take photos of streetlights outside of his house and allow me to identify them. I doubt he’ll remember, but it would be an interesting experiment either way.

Ahem, moving on swiftly. Friday came like a bolt out of the blue, or rather grey, as all it has done all day is rain. Considering this is the summer, it’s been shit so far. Today was the day I concluded my holiday purchases. Thanks to Thursday’s prick-about, I never had chance to get my hair cut, so I went on Friday instead. I always go to the same barbers, Ian Taylors on Church Street. Unfortunately, Ian Taylor died a couple of years ago, so the shop front is currently being repainted, along with the sign sayign what it is. I almost walked right past it. Not a good advertisement.

After a haircut which technically I didn’t really need, but considering I was going away on holiday, hasd anyway, I headed off to Asda, in order to stock up on some food. Now, what’s odd is that I didn’t buy any beer, or anything for the holiday, yet still managed to spend over £30 on grub for myself.

I returned home, laid on the sofa, watched Countdown, and promptly fell asleep on the sofa, eventually waking up to hear the theme from Channel 4 News as it was finishing.

That was then, this is now, It’s now just after 1AM on Saturday morning. Considering I’m at work for the next few days, this may be the lat post I make before I go away…

At this point, I would like to introduce you to my twitter account. While I am away from my computer, I can keep you informed of shit from my mobile. I bet you can’t fucking wait.

Seriously, I would like to use it to keep track of my “small” movements. It will also give me a chance to use some of the 200 mobile text messages I get allocated each month, yet never use. I will not use it while I’m out of the country, however. You’ll just have to imagine I’m having a nice time. I’m sure you’ll receive a desperately thorough write-up of what went on when I get back, however.

Paris beckons. Auf Weidersehen!

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