Back in London

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So I'm back in London,

I've completed my round trip of Europe and it's been great. The bod has taken a bit of a beating and is starting to wear down. The good news is I'm back and London and I've done a whole lot of nothing. Which is fine with me.

Since I've last wrote anything I've travelled from Amsterdam to Paris and spent about a week there living with Darren (a friend from Calgary). Paris has a lot of things to do, the first day we (Justin, Peter, Darren and I) went on a free walking tour around the city seeing everything from the Eiffle Tower, Louvre, Bastille and Notre Dame. After the walking tour we decide to go visit Neopolean's Tomb at the Hotel invalides where they also had an armoury museum which was very cool. On our walk to the Eiffle Tower we stopped at a grocery store and ended up grabing some beers and pretzels and hung out in the park. The idea was to carry the beer in my bag and drink em when we got back to Darren's place. But they wouldn't let us take the beer up to the tower so we had 2 choices, drink em or throw them away. So we drank them.

The next day we rented a car and headed to the beaches of Normandy. The frist beach we landed at was Juneau, this is where the Canadians landed on D-day. From here we drove up the cost passing gold beach, Oamaha and Utha beaches. The last stop was Point du Hoc. This is a memorial for the Rangers of the US army. You know Saving Private Ryan? Yeah this is what that first scene was based on. They left everything the same here as the day it was taken by the Allies. So bomb craters everywhere. Busted bunkers. This was exactly what we wanted to see here. Up to this point we were on the disappointed side but this area made it all worth it.

We spent the next day in Paris, checking out the Notre Dame, Arc de Triomphe and the Paris Catacombs which were cool cause there were human bones lining the walls, apparently 6 million people rest in the catacombs. It was pretty cool. After all that we went to the Louvre and saw the increadably large collection of stuff there. We pretty well just skimmed it all and saw the majors, the wing victory, Mona Lisa, Venus di Milo and Michangelo's Slaves.

The next day was Justin and Peter's last day so we went to the Palace of Versilles. This is the French Royalties second home. The most notable room was the room of mirrors where mirrors line the walls and everything is gold. This is where the Treaty of Versilles was signed. But more breath taking was the gardens. It is huge and well taken care of. It remined me of the Washington Monument area ( though I've never been to DC). So this night we decided to go partying at a Club, we pregamed on a bridge in Paris and eventually got in a club at 1 am. We ended up partying until 5:00 because this is when the trains start up again. Good time, crummy next day.

So after a day of nothing Darren and I checked out the Musee d'Orsay, Musee de L'erotisme (which wasn't great by the way) and Mont Martre. We also stumbled on a GLBT parade ( I'll let you guess what GLBT stands for).

The next day Darren and I hoped a train to Koln, or in English Cologne Germany. We got there really early so we checked out the Dom, we also checked out the 509 stairs to the top as well, old town and the Chocolate Museum. It kinda sucked because it was Sunday and everything was closed.

The next 2 days pretty well comprised of Shopping. Things in Germany are much cheaper the France and expecially Paris. But I had to be constantly reminded that I am heading to the Orient next where it is really cheap to get stuff.

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