Je voudrais deux billets s'il vous plait

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Bonjour, ello, etc

It's still Erin here... I'm sure Dan will be making a guest appearance sometime in the near future on his own blog.

Paris was tres bien. However, we both thought not as good as you'd think it'd be, the way people keep banging on about it.

On our first night (how tragic) we did our laundry. No, but really it was getting pretty bad. In Neustadt we said we'd do it in Berlin, in Berlin we said we'd do it in Koln... you get the idea. So, after we'd worked out the bizarre French laundromat system, and had satisfied ourselves that no Frenchies were going to pinch our soapy knickers, we decided to nick off to the pub for a pint or two.

A few streets away we found a place that had "restaurant, bar" out the front, and so we ducked in. After I asked to see the drinks menu and got laughed at, I began to suspect this wasn't much of a pub. When they closed the doors and politely kicked us out at 10 past 7, we were more than a little put out.

(me) "I can't believe it! If you're going to kick people out at 7pm, I don't think you should be allowed to put the word 'bar' above your door"

"Well" said Dan, quite dryly "it is a Saturday night".

The next day we decided that since we had a pretty good map and that everything was mostly lined up along the Seine river, that we'd just walk from our hotel down to the river doing all the bits along the way. This is a tremendous idea in theory.

It took us about 45 minutes to get to the Seine, then we walked through the botanical gardens with about 40,000 joggers competing for space. You'd honestly think that either the annual fun-run was on or that there was nowhere else in Paris to jog.
For a change the weather was quite nice, brought to attention by Dan's statement "You know, this is the best weather we've had since we arrived on this God-forsaken continent".

Our first real landmark was the Notre Dame cathedral, which both Dan and I agreed was shat on from a great height by the Koln Dom. If we had seen them in reverse order I'm sure we would have been suitably impressed, but unfortunately we weren't at all really. The gargoyles were pretty funky however.

We walked through the grounds of the Louvre, but agreed we'd leave the actual museum for the next day. We were both blown away at the size of the thing. It was just HUGE! Our lonely planet (aka the Book of Lies) says that if you spent one minute looking at every artefact in the Louvre, during every minute that the museum is open, it would take you 6 months.

The Champs Elysees was great, and then at the Arc de Triomphe we randomly met up with a mate of Dan's from uni. He was meeting up with some other Adelaide people, and within 5 minutes we had met them too and worked out that one of them lives with a guy that I go to uni with and another went to school with Dan's sister....

Adelaide.


Anyway, more to follow I'm running out of steam....
Check back for updates soon

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