More London

The following 2 days in London were spent catching up with friends, and doing some sightseeing. London was interesting but not quite as exciting as I had always thought of the 'Mother Country'

But I did have lunch at a Gordon Ramsay resturant, which was very nice (although around the same time I heard he had had some fairly fruity things to say about Tracey Grimshaw) Whatever he said I couldnt care less, cause his pork belly was freakin awesome.

We also wandered around the Tower of London, and had a look at all of the usual touristy stuff oh, and we had Nandos TWICE in London, mainly because there is no Nandos to be found in Paris so had to get my fill of yummy Nandos before heading home to Paris.



I could not find the Hoff anywhere!



I found the name of both of these places rather amusing for some reason

Versaille

Last Sunday we took ourselves out to the Palace of Versaille, (which of course is where they signed the treaty after WWI) and thats how I know of the place. There was nothing in or around the Palace or grounds that talked about the signing of the treaty. The palace was basically an homage to all things that were decadent about a whole bunch of Frenchmen called Louis. (Louis the XIII, XIV, XV & XVI ) they all lived there and the place is freakin massive. The gardens are pretty nice, well manicured and huge.

(This painting is called "The Feast of Simon")




Yes there were a lot of people there (like seriously everywhere) and it was freakin hot.

French Family Feud

Yes I have discoverd that Family Feud is on in France. Here is the French version on Rob Brough
(Lets face it he is no Broughy)








I am buggered if I know how to pronounce the name of this family.















BONG BONG














This topic is "Things That Vibrate"

2nd Day

Wow, went to the local markets that they have around the corner here twice a week this morning and it was pretty awesome. Soooo much good food, especially fruit and veg, meat and seafood. It smells so good, and tastes even better. I am getting a little concerned that I am going to get pretty fat from all of the delightful food. There is some pretty weird animals that they dont mind eating here.

This afternoon we headed over to the Eifel Tower, its was pretty touristy. If I have one more person come up to me and try to sell me some stupid Eifel Tower nick nack, I am going to punch them and smear their nose across their face. There were almost as many people there trying to sell crap, as there were actual tourists wandering around. It was a little bit wet, so we didnt head up the tower today (will leave that for another time). (Have a look at this pic here, its a very interesting juxtaposition.) -------------------->

We randomly walked around town, and viewed ourselves a typical French protest that was going on. There were a couple of hundred people occupying a road outside an important building, chanting and just generally being in the way. There were also about 100 cops hanging around with all of their riot gear, looking particularly scary, we watched for a bit, but alas, nothing exciting came about.

Then to amuse ourselves we thought we would spend 5 minutes sitting watching the traffic go around a particularly busy roundabout. Sounds a little boring I know, but it was very entertaining. The French, with their disregard for authority, have decided that even having lanes marked on the road is far to authoritarian and that in the true spirit of freedom, people should be able to make their own way around. Without the fancy "rules" or "lanes" that are opressing so many of us in our cars every day, the French are showing the world just how egalitairan the road can be. Throwing away the shackles of oppression and with little regard for anyone else on the road we witnessed a lot of tooting horns, raised fists and general gesturing but sadly no accidents.

Travel and First Day

Well,

I had the worst trip ever, like the worst 24hrs EVER. First of all, I spent the 1st 14 hours to Abu Dhabi stuck next to someone who already managed to take up more than their whole seat on the plane (and a little bit of mine) and didn't mind a chat. Whilst I don't mind a chat on the plane, I am not generally interested in your opinion on anything, especially on how loud the children are on the plane, particularly when you are going to snore loudly later on.

Anyway, needless to say I did not get 1sec of sleep on the 14 hours to Abu Dhabi. After a 2 hour stop there, I had another 8 hours to Paris, which was a much more pleasant trip, and I actually managed to sleep (a whole 3 hours) on this flight, so when I arivved in Paris at 7:30 am, I had managed to have about 3 hours sleep in the preceeding 30 hours. Je suis fatigue.

Thankfully, Rachel made it to the airport, and despite my extreme tirdness, I was far to keen and enthusiastic to want to have too much sleep, and I wanted to get out and explore the town. That being said, I still needed a wee lie down. After a trip in from the airport on the train, and then onto the metro, we arrived in the lovely 13th Arrondisment, which will be our home for the next 3 months.

Its very quaint, with nice cobblestone streets, and older type buildings and lots of cool little shops and boutiques. I couldnt sleep for too long, and we headed out on the metro into town for some lunch. We had lunch at a nice French bistro, and wandered around a bit, and then jumped on the metro to head back home, as I was starting to feel the effects of lack of sleep. When we got home, I climbed straight into bed, and was out like a light, next thing I knew it was 4 hours later, and time for dinner.

I picked a good day to come, as that particular evening they had this thing that they have once a month over here well all of the museums and gallaries are open at night and are free. We decided to take ourselves off to the Louvre as I have heard some terrible stories of people queuing for hours to get inside. When we got there there were a hell of a lot of people there, but we went straight in, and started wandering around. Sadly there is just so much to see, and my tiredness combined with my short attention span meant that we quickly wandered through everywhere (mind you it still took 2 1/2 hours) but we saw all of the important stuff.