Sacre-Bleu!

Ah oui ma cherie, zis is zee fuhrst time in zee pareeee for meh, zoh az you can eeemagine, i ad zee kind of excitment zat not even ah weeping toddler can bear...

But first we had to get out of Brussels, but not before eating the biggest pizza I have stuffed down my stomach to date. There was a lot of waiting and smoking and finding ways to sleep comfortably en route to Paris. Seriously, I have short legs and even I had cramped leg space. I curled up in a big ball-shaped ball at least attempting pretend to look comfortable while I tried to better my situation by thinking of all the long-legged/ tall people I hate and how hard their lives are and what they would look like with humps on their backs. Huh huh huh, then we were in Paris!

After some time of pretending to understand maps and then standing on it Joey-from-Friends style, we asked for zum help from zee very Frrench looking Frenchman in zee information booth. (I love it when you arrive in a country to be immediately faced with people that look really like their own nationality because with cheap travel these days, anyone can look like anyone. And anyway, it really gives you zee essence of where you really are). We got the tube to bring us to Montmartre and the girls had some digs at me because of my admittedly strange obsession with the underground. It's not a map thing yet (although the Moscow system is apparently to die for!) but more a love for the clammy dirty heat. You could really feel to be in Cairo when upstairs, old mens' beards could be frozen with ice! So yes, we climed up the windy stairs that went on for uhuhaaages when we were finally in the heart of it all, Montmartre.

And again, more smoking and waiting and discovering that our hotel was on an unnamed street that nobody seemed to know where it was, we sat down and took it all in. How delightful! Cobblestones, a merry-go-round, old drunk man muttering in French to us about how he doesn't like tourists who then went on to zay zee exact same zing to zee very Frrrench looking people, the smell of bread, cluttered displays of every possible thing sold in the shop, elegant brasseries with the little-chairs-and-tables-on-the-street thing going on even if it means we have to walk off the kerb as zer is just no room anymore, random graffiti - something that's only starting to catch on then Dublin and SUZANNE!!! Yes! Our Irish girl in Paris just knew that we would be lost and even factored in 2 hrs of lateness just in case... Oh how happy were we to see her hazelnut eyes and to hear her off the pan voice. She was just so Parisian taking us to our hotel and hobnobbing with the receptionist and even placing the odd uuh or uuum in her speech, just as the French zoo when zeey are uuhh, talking...

It was nice to spend time drinking wine on the steps of the Sacre-Coeur looking down at the very white Paris (all cities have a dominant colour, Dublin is grey-no wonder I travel so much) and then on the grass near the Eiffel Tower with all of Suzanne's Irish friends in Paris. I got to see it twinkle every hour and not only does it fufill a visual pleasure, it is also a good stopwatch for an hour of power when it gets just too tough to time our drinking intervals. Everything manages to sound more elegant with the French, even when they use English or Ooirish words to describe something. And the things that they do when they do it... For us, drinking cheap wine outside with plastic cups robbed from a shop is knacker drinking, but the Frrrrench, oh but zat is called picnicing (and of course pronounced peek-neek-eeng). For us, we might be lucky if we manage to remember to bring a plastic bag to sit on, but ohh the French, they have proper tartan blankets!!!

Paris can not be remembered without our disastrous night looking for John who worked in an Irish bar near the opera station. Like always, we got carried away with the time and the wine and the smoking and the listening to music and then we just had to swing by the Moulin Rouge to see it one more time and then there we lost more time laughing at not-so-attractive-without-clothes-on people standing on a gutter that swishes hot air up from the underground causing a knickers showing under the skirt effect, but that's only if these people hadn't ALREADY taken off their clothes. Otherwise it was spiderlegs and eyeaches. They had to be English or Irish citizens. So we get on the train spending our time drinking our beautiful wine when Amy all of a sudden had to pee and could not wait till we got to our stop. So we got off at Stalingrad (which turns out NOT to be the place to get out to pee), taking up more time, nearly missed the next train to Opera, ran (yes, running is an unfortunate thing), got lost in Opera, and finally arrived at the bar where John had pulled a no show. Turns out he was all the way back at Sacre-Coeur, 2 mins from where we were bloody staying! So his friend took pity on us and gave us a drink on the house, something which he probably ended up regretting because we stayed for at least 5 more. Sick of running around all night, we decided without saying anything that here was where we would lay our hats for the night. And there was vomit and tears and debates and lots of "oh but seriously guys i looove you, it's not coz i'm drunk or anything", followed by singing. Then we realised we hadn't found John yet. We never did in fact find John!!! We got taxi home with a crazy driver who gave us all chinese cigarettes. I sat in the front practising my French on him. Were a hit!! Every taxi that stalled beside us got an earful from Mr. Taximan saying that we girls were "libre" and "seulement vingt-et-un ans" and "sans bebes", followed by an exclamation of AGGGGGGGGGH and then a 10 seconds of wonky steering! Whatever gets you off. But still, I never thought that young single French girls were fans of premature pregnancy but there is always something that will shock me.

*********************************************2 Years Later*****************************************************

It's over two years since my interrailing stint and half written blogs about my voyage around Europe and despite procrastination turning into a non-publication, I decided to satisfy all your needs and finish my adventure.

I have a theory that things stay into your head for a good reason (that is, unless the fluid in your brain freezes due to contracting some rare tropical illness and then that's just bad luck).

With Paris, many things stayed in my head and after living in another Latin country (Italy last year - watch this space for my upcoming blog(s)), I will still maintain that Paris is my favourite city of all time. Contrary to what most people say, the Parisiennes were NOT rude. If anything they were really nice and if in the event of encountering rudeness, it was done in a, ehh what's zee word again?, vivacious manner. Mon frere Bernard (that is "my brother" for all you anti-Latini out there) can second that and will even go a step further and say that the Parisiennes were the nicest French people he has met. I also remember being more impressed with the architecture of the Louvre rather than the actual paintings. I should have gone to the Musee d'Orsay instead (all the Monets, Manets, lillies, haystacks that you have ever dreamed of, and more). Stuck up Kings/Knights in their military gear just don't do it for me. Instead of wasting your shrapnels on the Eiffel Tower, pay €2-3 for the ferris wheel in the Tuliere Gardens and you will get a better view of Paris, sans queue and sans paying through zee noze to crawl up a load of metal! Do go and stand under it though!!! After Montmartre, my favourite quartiere was St. Michel which is very like London's Covent garden and even has a piazza that bears an uncanny resamblance to the Seven Sisters (Covent Garden's square that branches off in 7 directions - the roads are the same distance apart so if you spin around, you won't know where you came from). Another place I liked was the Latin Quarter. Something tells me that I am talking about the same or a very similar place as St. Michel. Excuse-moi, mon tete is very hazy...

Other things that stuck in my head about Paris??? It's very big but smaller than London. The fashion is amazing. The breakfast is fashionable and amazing. But the Gare du Nord is neither of these things after 5pm. And you will spend more money than you plan to because you will get dewy eyed and romantic the minute you enter zee city and money, ehhh, won't be an object. Not until you come back to Ireland. Until the next time, I will satisfy my longing to return to Paris through my sporadic consumption of croissants (which mean creasents en francais!) and broiches avec un cafe au lait whilst listening to Serge Gainsbourg.

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