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Published: September 10th 2011
Thomas Being OSM
Or so he thinks. With the Gran Palais.After waking up suitably late and being even more suitably chastised for it, we stumbled out of the house and rode off into the sunset. Ok it wasn't that late, it was around 11 when we left. Got to the metro and held up a variety of unimpressed Parisians at the ticket machine as it seemed to be beyond my parents. Unamused Parisian was not amused. It worked eventually though.
The Parisian metro is very barren, especially compared to the one in London (obviously). We arrived in the centre without any hitches, and walked to see the gran et petit palais. We went into the petit palais - there was a small design exhibition and a large art one. Naturally, Thomas and Peter hated it. There were some nice works though, saw a Rembrandt and a Monet and a Gaugin. All very pretty.
Next stop in our tour was the hotel des invalid, which is basically a hospital for invalids. By invalids I mean wounded soldiers, not my brothers. The 'chapel' - and by chapel I mean dear God what a massive structure how is that a chapel the French are retarded - contained the tomb of Emporer Napoleon.
Laff Birds
They are very much in love. they are the best parents I could possibly have. I shower them in praises and exhalations. They are financing this trip. Why such a tiny man needed such a massive tomb is beyond all of us, must be that thing about the small people and the large egos. So updates re. Little Nap - he's still dead and still full of himself.
After that we proceeded to the armoury. I have slowly noticed that these blog posts are taking on the general structure of a Tom and Kate book - we did this, and this, then this, then that, then this again, etc - but as I'm writing this in fragments while rampaging through the metropolis I have neither the time nor inclination to try and give them a coherent structure. For this I apologise. For this I apologise a second time, because it's quite an offence. You're going to have to live with it though.
So back to our epic tale. We went to he armoury. It was full of armaments. Go figure. We saw swords, katanas, crossbows, guns and armour. The highlights were a helmet with a chimera on the top, a couple of massive canons, and some guns with barrels a metre long for shooting ducks. Very pretty.
Another gallery in the building was the
World War exhibition. This featured various memorabilia of the French getting their ass handed to them on a plate sprinkled with a side serving of humble pie. Mama hated every second of this, Thomas and Peter enjoyed matching the guns from call of duty, Papa found it fascinating and I almost had a breakdown and cried. I seem to be a bit more sensitive than I pretend to be and 2 hours of visuals on humans' unending capacity for making one another suffer disturbed me somewhat. On 2 separate occasions millions of young men wasted their lives shooting each other because of a handful of men instead of doing something worthwhile with their lives. Twice. Humanity is actually stupid enough to allow this to happen two times over. At least we seemed to have built something useful on the ashes, but I wouldn't hold your breath for world peace.
After being offended for taking so long in the museum I returned the audioguide (on an iPod touch like the St Paul's cathedral one) and retrieved my credit card - you know so I don't run off with it - we walked towards the fabled Eiffel tower. Since none of
Me vs the AngelThing
The fish is doomed. The angel won't take me seriously. us had eaten anything we stopped at a little cafe for a light snack (a croque-monsieur bigger than the earth) before arriving at our destination.
The Iron Lady is both magnificent beyond belief and very masculine. It's a rather impressive toothpick-like monument, except the toothpicks are massive steel girders taller than a house. What's even more impressive is the queue at it's base, which is why we decided to postpone climbing it till Monday or so. Thomas and myself are adamant that we should take the stairs. Mama is just as adamant that she will not. We shall see.
As I lie here on my bed finishing off this entry, I can see the bloody misshapen stumps of what used to be my feet. This is evidence that today was nice and productive, now we'll just have to see what crops up this evening. Preferably something we can get a taxi to.
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