Paris

We've now left Paris and, being the lazy so-and-so that I am, I've yet to write about so many things. It was the first city on our travels, and in many ways it felt more like a holiday than a travelling experience. We did a lot of touristy things, which I suppose I should expand upon..

The Eiffel Tower: It's easy to understand the fascination with this thing. It's f###in' huge. The first night we went there (Day 2 of the trip) it was incredibly stormy, and there were no lifts going up to the very top because it was so dangerous. Still, we were satisfied just having visited the base and gazed up at the oddly beautiful structural monstrosity..

We went back again on Day 4, again at night, and this time discovered a queue the size of something really, really big awaiting us. It took two hours to make it to the front and get our tickets, but they flew by. The Hugless Stone found neverending amusement in The Disgusting Hippo's nom-du-moment, and took great delight in adapting it to anything and everything he could. Suddenly, Bono from U2 became 'The Disgusting Bono'. One half of the classic television pairing "Steptoe and Son" became 'The Disgusting Steptoe'. Our former college footballer Tom Jarvis because 'The Disgusting Jarvo', and each new instance was followed by guffaws of laughter from The Hugless one. Eventually we did reach the front of the queue and it was time to ride the great glass elevator to the skies.

Let me be open, honest and candid for a moment now: this thing was f###ing scary as hell. When we'd got to the level of the first floor, I was still just about okay. But by the time the lift made it to the second floor, my knees were weak and I was ready to vom. At that point, naturally, we got out of the lift.. and got into a new lift. A smaller, more rickety lift. To take us up to the third floor, the highest man-made point in all of Paris. If I was scared before, this new lift took me to new heights of unparelleled fear. At long last we got to the top. Naturally, given the immense fear that had taken hold of me, I made the understandable decision to skip the covered sight-seeing part of the top of the tower.. so I headed straight for the wobbly metal staircase which led up even higher, to the open-air section. At this point, the height was no longer the most scary thing. You see, the wind and rain and general stormy weather that had recieved a 'Too Dangerous' classification two days prior had returned, and now as well as dealing with my own personal fear, we had to battle the elements to even keep two feet on the shaky floor. That said, it was an incredible sight to behold, and enjoyed the hell out of every shit-my-pants second of it..

The Louvre: This was a rather different beast. You see, where the Eiffel Tower was 'thrilling' and 'exhilarating' and 'high-octane entertainment to the max.', The Louvre could by the same token be described as 'shit-boring', or perhaps a 'snooze-fest'. The Pristine Marmott, our resident culture-vulture, ate up every second of the pretentious art/history dichotomy, and in his own words, "would have spent another four hours there" if he hadn't been so hungry. The Disgusting Hippo and myself were less impressed by much of the collection, however, and I personally made the best of the situation by taking photographs of the very worst exhibits in the museam for my own art collection, which I may well title "Why The Hell Is This Piece Of Shit in The Louvre?"

Here is the prize photo in my collection..

I was also over-joyed to discover an uncanny miniture statue replication of one of our merry band of travellers. Here, for your amusement/education, is a photo of The Disgusting Hippo with his Louvre namesake..

L'Arc de Triomphe: Much like The Louvre, the Arc is very boring. It has a few saving graces, however, for instance (1) it's free, (2) it's a very nice walk to get there and it's outside, and finally (3) it's free. It's also somewhat picturesque, I suppose..

Overall, certainly not a regrettable tourist attraction but perhaps we could have ventured into less well-travelled parts of the city instead.

Sacre Coeur: I'd visited the old 'Sacred Heart' only a few weeks previously on a short-and-sweet Christmas holiday to Paris, but this time we decided to take a whole day to do it. I mentioned this in passing in my last 'blog' (Sweet Jesus, I do hate that word..), but for the sake of anality, I'll write about it again. Sacre Coeur is in an area called Montmarte, which was one of my favourite areas of the city that we visited. It's really chilled out and relaxing, and it just happened to be glorious sunshine that day. We ate lunch in a lovely graveyard, which was also coincidentally the final resting place of Henri Clouzot and Francois Truffaut (or at least their bones). After that we climbed up the hill to visit the church, taking care to avoid the Senegalese braid-merchants who seem to claimed the bottom of the hill as proper jurisdiction to take hostage the hapless tourists frequenting SC. The Hugless Stone was especially paranoid about getting caught by one of these dudes, although The Marmott and myself took a different view, enjoying seeing how many ridiculous answers we could get away with to their incessant shouts of, "Hey you, my man, hakuna-matata! Where you from?". It seems 'the United Arab Emeritz' prompted the greatest disbelief, whilst simply replying 'Senegal' never failed to get a chuckle and occasionally an affectionate (and undoubtedly hip) handshake.

Sacre Coeur itself was beautiful, and we got a stunning view of the city at large as glorious sunshine turned to an early, dusty dusk..

We went back down to Montmartre to eat and stroll around some before, before heading up the hill again at night to check out the church in darkness and enjoy the view.

After that, we headed back to the hotel for what we thought would be a quiet, early night. But then we met two army guys with whisky and stories to tell and, well.. you know the rest.

Join me next time to hear about a 13 hour train ride to Vienna, incredible cookery, 32 apple-sour shots and our first MAJOR CATASTROPHE!