March 4th-7th

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Album I’m listening to: Still Biffy as I love this band and goes well with trains.

So I’ve just spent the last 3 nights in Paris with Clement and Cattie, friends of mine that I knew in London for the last 3 or 4 years. After I arrived I dropped my bags off at theirs and decided to do a bit of sightseeing. As this was my 3rd time in Paris I’d pretty much seen it all so I wasn’t too fazed about not seeing all the tourist things (in fact I didn’t even see the Eiffel Tower this time around). We were mainly passing time until it was time to go out for the night. We did see the Crypt under the Notre Dam, the bridge(forgot the name of it) with all the lockers attached to the fence and part of where Inception was filmed, and the pyramids at the Louvre. After having a ridiculously expensive cappuccino at a corner café we went to O’Sullivans for a couple of £6 pints and to meet up with Nelson, another friend of ours from London. We soon headed to Udo Bar to meet up with a few more of Cattie and Clement’s friends and colleagues. It was one of the smallest bars I’ve been to, with a few seats and one toilet but it was packed because it’s supposedly one of the best bars around, which I could definitely agree with. The drinks and food were cheap and the atmosphere was great. Plus one of the bartenders kept calling sausage faufage as he was quite gay.
After a couple of hours there we decided to head home so tried to find a taxi, which was very hard to do (it seems to be the case all the time in Paris) One offered to take him if we helped him push his cab to the next petrol station but we politely declined. We finally managed to get one after 30 min in the cold and after a stop at Quick (fast food joint) we went home.

Saturday we were all hurting but managed to go to the local patisserie to pick up a few pain au chocolat and I hung out most of the day at home playing Fifa with Clement while Cattie slept. In the evening we went out to Place Monge and had an awesome meal at Che Robert. Had the Chef’s recommendations of lamb salad with fruit, rump steak with pepper sauce and apple pie. Decided that during my trip I will only have chef’s recommendations when eating out in restaurants cause it was so good! We’ll see how that goes in lesser known places (Bulgaria, Macedonia etc)
Cattie was still tired so went home after dinner so me and Clement went out to Les Pipos to meet up with his friend Homer. This place was very very French from the surroundings to the music (a lady played the accordion pretty much the whole time) to the food (bone marrow soup straight from the bone, countless pate and cheese plates, and calve’s head. Woody Allen just shot a scene at the place for his new movie. We stayed there for awhile and managed to catch the last tram at 1:45am.

Sunday we were up fairly early as we decided to go see the Catacombs. We got there and saw a massive queue so waited for about an hour before we got in. It is an amazing site to see. It was originally a limestone quarry in the 1700’s but for health reasons the Parisians decided to place all the remains form the cemeteries here since the quarry was now disused. After 60 years and 6 million bodies they finished the project. It was opened to the public in the early 1800’s while bodies were still being placed there. It was an amazing site to see, walking down 163 steps and walking 2km throughout the catacombs and seeing hundreds of thousands of bones. They are all in order and not strewn about, with some even placed together in an artistic way. It really is a site to see. After a tight windy climb back up to the surface we went back home to watch the Liverpool v Man U game, but not before going to the patisserie to pick up a baguette for lunch (a daily occurrence for lunch or dinner or both with the Parisians) to go with the pasta meal that Cattie made.

After the game I went to book my seat for Monday’s journey to Austria and got a bit of a scare when I saw that it was sold out (most international journeys need a reservation, but the fee is minimal as I purchased an interail pass). As an online ticket to Salzburg was 170 euros thought it was a good idea to head to the train station and see if I could speak to someone. I got there and saw that then ticket counter was closed and I now I was really stressing cause I wasn’t sure what I could do except pay the amount. I went to look for the tourist info booth to see if they could help, but couldn’t find it. Instead I found another ticket window on the other side of the station that was open! There was a bit of a queue but I didn’t care as long as I could get this sorted out! I spoke to someone and told them my situation. He said that the 11:24am train I wanted to take was no longer accepting interail passes as they had sold out and I would have to pay 100 euro. Fortunately though there was a 7:24am train which I could take for 10 euros. I said hell yes! and went back to the house, very relieved that it had all worked out. As I now had to wake up at 6am the next morning we had a pretty chilled evening, having dinner and watching football highlights.
So now I’m on my way to Salzburg, Austria via Germany and looking out at the very different scenery, churches, windmills, and houses with solar roofs! Looking forward to it!

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