Well yesterday's entry was rather concise, but missed a couple of details.

Yesterday I spent on my feet trying to get my head around Paris. The metro (bus) and train maps resemblenothing short of a plate of fettucini and I hadn't had a good time working them out. So I walked the streets, up and down, north and south, crossing the river a few times, each time facing the wrong direction or finding myself back where I started.

Eventually I had passed nearly all the major monuments, reading their position in reference to each other and trying to remember a couple of the nearby metro stations.

My “middle point” is Pont Neuf, which is on the river and appears easy enough to get to on the subway, and most of the things to see are within a couple of stops.

Yesterday I also had the zany idea that I would climb the Eiffel tower. Me and climbing things, eh? It's €10.00 to get the elevators all the way to the top, but it's €3.50 to climb the stairs to the half way point, and €1.70 to get the elevator from there! Go figure. I took to the stairs. There's lots of stairs.Well I guess it is a rather large edifice.

Down on the ground the day was perfect shorts, sandles and a t-shift weather. I did get quite a few odd looks – I seem to have been the only one who realised it wasn't actually cold (quite nice, I thought) and could only wonder at people in clothes better suited to the alps – gloves, cravats, that sort of thing.

Up on the tower it was a different story. The wind tore through everybody and we all stood there, teeth chattering and breath fogging, waiting for the elevator down. Great view of Paris of course, and I got my bearings. Then I walked home, got horizontal and -

Today I woke late, missed breakfast here at the hotel and went out to get something to eat. I took a wront turn, ended up at a completely different train station than I was expecting, and ended up at the Louvre meuseum.I was dissapointed because there wasn't a single louvre in the place. Fancy calling yourself that. So instead I looked at all the fancy-schmancy art and sculptures and paintings and nic-nacs that they had. LOTS of stuff, and way to many too many ambiguous rooms that lead to dead ends. Have they every heard of “flow through design”, I wonder? The Feng Shui was all up the bung in that place.

Had a too-expensive lunch involving soup, lanb shank and a hideously rich chocolate cake. This afternoon I marched up and down looking for that street the Nazi's famously paraded down, and eventually decided it must have been the one leading up to the Arc de Triumph. Why can't they put that thing a tad closer to town? I had to walk past 10,000,000 shops to take its photo. A good photo though – there was some dodgy marching band and they had stopped all the traffic going around it, so the streets were empty save the thick crowd all down the street.

Tonight I had a chinese take-away from a place whos cooks speak as much french as me – we each did hand signals and “merci”-d all the time at each other. The meal had lots of meat, lots of rice and lots of vegies. Like most French food – it's just like food from home (at last!), complete with chips in sauce! Mmm. Haven't seen a proper hamburger or pie shop yet, but I could get used to this french muck pretty easily. Well, tired now – au voir.

2005-01-31T20:21:30