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Published: November 15th 2008
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I woke and wasn’t at all looking forward to the nine or so hours of traveling we had in store. We grabbed a few chocolate croissants for brekkie, what better way to start the day. The morning traveling was spent watching Ewen Macgregor and Charlie Boorman’s Long Way Round where they travel across Europe and Asia on motorbikes. It’s a great series and a good choice for a bus full of travelers. Our first port of call was Bordeaux were a few passengers jumped off, we went for a toilet stop and only found a weird dungeon toilet in a hostel, was rather freaky. We gladly got back on the bus and made our way across the picturesque countryside. We passed rustic buildings, vineyards and large sweeping fields which every now and then had a scarecrow. I honestly thought they only existed in movies.
Later in the afternoon we rolled into Tours, which incidentally is the old capital city and the home of the French language. It also has a McDonalds; I know this because we ate there. To go to the toilet there you had to punch in a code found on the receipt. Not a bad way to
keep hobos and the like out. That’s about all the useful info I have on Tours.
We finally arrived into Paris and the bus driver had to negotiate the manic traffic and nut case drivers. As we passed through a dodgy area with loads of sex shops the Busabout guide let us know we were close to the hostel. Not really a reassuring sign. We passed Moulin Rouge and soon found our hostel. It was brand new and packed with young people; it would do us just fine. We found our room which was full of boisterous Aussies and packed our gear away. I almost killed myself with the ridiculous storage system they had. It was a large metal cage that you pulled out from under the bed. The top part lifted upwards and rested against the bed, but if you knocked it, which I did, it came down with a great force, thankfully I got all my limbs out of the way in time. We actually had to sign a waiver at the front desk because people had been hospitalized from them! Thankfully they had an in-house bar so I could calm the nerves with a few beers.
We chatted to a few people and hit the hay.
The following morning we HAD to do some washing, we were down to our last clothes and were getting weird looks from people who I’m sure were thinking that our dirty washing bag in fact contained a decaying corpse. Thankfully there was a Laundromat close by. Unfortunately all instructions were in French and no one was around. After a while a guy entered and helped us out. We played paper, scissors, rock to see who would get to shower while the other watched the clothes. Jez lost. When I got back I thought he’d be dejected after his loss, he was in some sort of shock, and unraveled a story of how a strange guy had come in, pulled out a package from his pocket, placed a substance on the washing machine, which Jez initially thought was washing powder, but then proceeded to snort it. I’m guessing it was cocaine. Rather peculiar for 9am in a Laundromat!
Sadly our washing heroics were not rewarded, by the time we had caught the tube into the Eiffel tower our cycling trip had already left. Not to worry we'd do the
afternoon tour. Effectively that meant we'd have to do 9 hours straight of cycling as we had booked the night tour also. We decided to spend the time before the tour checking out the famous Louvre art gallery.
On the way a random guy was looking down at the footpath and picked up a gold ring. We were a bit bedazzled. Then he started yelling for us to have a look. I had a suspicion he was a pickpocket so we kept on marching.
Before arriving at the Louvre we'd heard stories like 'if you look at every painting for 5 minutes, it'll take you 206 days 4 hours and 21 minutes to see every thing' or something of the like. We had 3 hours. We had a quick look around the grounds and took a few photos of the giant spider statue and the glass pyramid seen in the movie the Da Vince Code. Once inside we bought our tickets, grabbed a map, decided on what we wanted to see, and started hussing all over the show to fit it in. Highlights were the Mona Lisa and the Feast of Cana, they were in the same room which
was a bonus. The Venus de Milo and The Winged Victory of Samothrace were impressive sculptures. I think Jez's favourite was the Turkish Baths because of all the boobies.
Seeing as we saw so much in the afternoon I've split it into its own entry. Read on to hear about how Paris almost built a 300 metre high guillotine instead of the Eiffel Tower!
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hi