Journey to Paris

Paris, France

1st April 2002

England, Thursday morning:

I woke up at 5:30am, got ready and headed down to Exeter St. Davids to catch the 6:40am to London which came shortly after 7am. Whilst on the way to London it stopped in Feniton and I saw this one bird I knew but unfortunitly I flew by so I couldn't get her attention. I arrived in London a few hours later and headed straight for Starbucks. £1.90 and a big gulp later I headed to Waterloo to catch the Eurostar to Paris. Whilst in the London tube I noticed EasyJet now offering £17.50 one way to Paris fron London. Just my luck, I had to dish out £170 to take a shitty train ride instead of taking a 45 minute flight for a fraction of the price.

I arrived in Gare du Nord in Paris at 3pm and walked straight to my hostel a few blocks away. It's amazing how easy it is to find your way around Paris. I checked in, dropped off my bags and began my walk around Paris. I first started walking around Montmartre, the area I was staying in. I was told it was a lively area. I found out lively ment 'strip-club ridden". As I walked down Boulevard de Rochechouart and De Clichy I was bombarded with people outside the clubs trying to drag you in. Outside one club a 40 year old woman (she could of been 20 but she looked bloody tired) grabbed my arm and said "Hello, Love show". I finally made it down De Clichy and saw the outside of the Moulin Rogue. There was an island in the middle of a roundabout where you could sit safe from all the dirty and dodgy people trying to drag you into the clubs.

I took a quick photo of Moulin Rogue and began heading south down Rue Blanche toward Musee du Louvre. I tend not to appriciate art as much as other so I didn't bother going into the meusum. From there I walked up Avenue des Champs-Elysees. The walk was beautiful as long as I avoided the 8 black men trying to get me to sign "for peace in Africa". The scam is that you sign and then they make you donate a.k.a. surround and beat the shit out of you until you fork over a few euros. One came to me and I told him to fuck off, he kept trailing me for a few minutes until he figured out that I wasn't going to fall for it. When I got to the top of the street I saw the Arc de Triomphe which was quite a site. In the distance I could see the Eiffel tower, it accually looked really ugly from far away.

From there I walked back to my hostel. Whilst on the way I stopped in a Haagen dazs and tried out my french for the first time. "Vous parlez anglais?". Thats all you really need to know in Paris. Paris isn't a small village in the middle of no where, it's a huge metropolis with more visitors that any other city. After that I got a "la Americain" subway sandwhich and headed for the finaly strech back to the hostel. When I got back I relaxed for about 20 minutes and then hit an Easy Everything Internet cafe. I thought they were as economical as they are in England but they weren't. ?2.60 for the metro ticket and ?2 for 14 minutes. Big rip off to see one e-mail. Speaking of the Metro, one of my mates said that it wasn't ever really busy. I guess he never took it at 8pm a night. I've been in mosh pits with more room.

I got back to my hostel around 10pm, I talked to a few people and then headed off to bed. I found blood on my pillow so I got rid of it and made one from my bath towels. Around 2am in the morning some bloke comes in. He forgot to pay for the night and they sold his bed to someone else. So he spent 10 miuntes with the lights on trying to figure out what to do. He then shouted his itinery of going to a couple of peep shows and doing an "all-nighter" as I put my dock martins to his ass to kick him out.

Friday morning I woke up, went down stairs and had French bread and coco for breakfast. It was soo good, much better than pasta. I went back to Musee du Louvre to find Heather, that I was saposed to meet up with there but I couldn't find her anywhere. After 30 minutes of waiting I went to Arc de Triomphe. I got there, bought a ticket and started walking up the 282 steps to the top. All I could hear during the walk up is unfit yanks passing out since this was obviously the first time they ever had any exercise since elementry school. I got to the top and looked out at a lovely view of Paris. Truely amazing. This was one of those things I've traveled around the world to see.

After that I headed to the Eiffel tower. There were LOADS of people there trying to sell you stuff. They aren't saposed to be doing that but the police looked like they had the situtation under control and they sat back and chatted in the police van. I lied down in a park infront of the tower and looked upon it whilst writting for about an hour.

From there I headed back to my hostel. I had met up with a few people there that were going out to a bar that served free food. We took the metro from Anvers to Barbes Rochechouart. This was a really shady part of town. There were dodgy blokes everywhere. Not the place you want to come down to on your own. The one girl that knew of this place couldn't find it and ended up talking to a French man to get directions. It's a good thing she was completely fluent in French. We ended up finding the Bar and having the best Couscous on the patio/sidewalk whilst sipping wine, hinekin and other random French drinks.

Saturday I went to a flee market with a few mates. I ended up getting a really nice watch for ?8. I ended up loosing them at the flee market (this one was HUGE) so I ended up taking the metro to Anvers and walking up to Sacre Coeur. There were soo many people trying to sell you stuff and the smell of urine was everywhere. I didn't stick around long before I left. I walked around Montmartre some more and then headed to a grosery store. Whilst in line I noticed a kid in front of me, he must of been 8 years old. He had with him 2 1L boxes of juice and a bottle of wine. I stood in amazement as the cashier ran the items though the til, gave him change from his ?10 note and didn't think anything of it. I don't think there are many places in the world where a child so young could buy alcahol. Even it if was for his parents.

I met up with my mates back at the hostel and from there Chrissy (American), Allen (Scottish) and I went out to Palais du Luxembourg, a park on the left back. There we drank wine and enjoyed French bread with soft cheese. We chatted there for about 2 hours. For a while I forgot I was in France. Around 6pm the closed up the park. We walked up to a wine shop and bought another few bottles of wine. One thing about wine in France, it's cheaper than water. I've bought a ?1.90 bottle of water and a ?1.09 bottle of red wine (plastic bottle mind you). We continued to enjoy the wine as we slowly walked back to the hostel. Around 9pm we finally found our way back. We ended up dancing, laughing and having a great time that night. Around 10pm me and Chrissy headed out to get some Takeout and water. We ended up getting some Lebanese Falafel's and scaring the shit out of a few poor French shop owners in the process. I made a point to go around and appolgies to them the next day. Around midnight I went up to my room and there was a new roommate. Yolanda from Porto Rico. She is an artist that is studying in Paris for 3 months. We talked for about an hour and had a great conversation. I paused only to go downstairs and say good night to my other mates.

Sunday, in the words of Allen, the great scotsman "Sunday is the day of rest, you drink until you fall asleep". At this point I had accomplished all that I hoped for in Paris: "Relax, see the sights, meet some new friends and scare the shit out of the French". A few of us went to Notre-Dame and then had a really nice meal near the river Seine. Afterword I went off on my own to walk around Paris and explore as much as posible. It was Easter sunday and the streets were empty. I got back to the hostel and started talking with Yolanda again, we ended up going for coffee at a cafe not to far from the hostel and then she invited me to a get-together with a few of her friends.

We got a bottle of wine and some flowers and took the RAR down to Port Royal. Whilst in the train station we saw gangs of theives nicking stuff from the tourists. When I got to the platform, there must of been 20 people working as a gang nicking shit from tourists. Good thing I didn't have anything for them to nick. We finally got to Port Royal and walked up to Yolanda's friends flat. It was very small, typical of Paris, but it had a really nice feel to it. Everyone there was from Denmark, South America or France. Everyone there was an artist in one way or another. It was really interesting to get to meet all these people, talk in a couple languages and get to see how the people in Paris "live".

This morning I woke up, had breakfast, went with Yolanda for a cup of coffee at a cafe and took the Eurostar to London. This was truely a trip I will not forget.