Day five: Sightseeing in Paris.
I had the worst night’s sleep.
I’ve never shied away from being on a top bunk in a hostel but on this particular occasion, we was not up against the wall, nor did it have an barriers around the sides, nor a step ladder. I have no fear of heights but I feared for my safety.
So I moved the mattress onto the floor waking Trigg up in the process where a couple of times he moaned “What are you doing?”, I apologise sincerely for waking him up, but I just couldn’t stay up there.
I then declared, “I’m not drinking today”.
Will I keep to it? We’ll see.
Today we did a lot of walking. I mean we worked it out we did a good 10 miles at least, probably half a marathon if we’re honest – but its a good excuse to walk off the booze. Paris is a big city, but I didn’t expect us to do that much. We went 150 minutes without stopping until we got to the Eiffel Tower, to which we were going to climb the top and take pictures of some shots of Paris.
Wrong! The Eiffel Tower was closed due to strikes. Which brings us onto another issue. I mentioned earlier about the strikes. We were teargassed (kinda) in Marseille due to the trouble behind us when they were walking. But it must of been a good way back, but tear gassed travels! Trigg and Coatesy caught the end of it in Marseille luckily I avoided it, but they said the effects carries on for a few days.
In Paris they were having demonstrations due to the transport strikes, French police brought out the teargas (which becomes a regular thing it seems) to calm the situation down. As we were walking down the River Seine, it travelled and I got a whiff of it. Let me tell you, it is not nice! It goes up your nose and makes your eyes water and makes them sting. Now I got hit from a good half-a-kilometre away from the demonstrations where the teargas was released – imagine if we were closer.
I was coughing for days after that and it affected my sleep.
We got our third picture done with the flag with the view of the Eiffel Tower in the background. Arguably our best one to date.
On our journeys round we also saw the Arch De Triomphe, which is weirdly situated on a roundabout – not just any roundabout but possible the most lethal roundabout in the world. Thank god for underground passages or it would’ve inevitably have made us road kill. We queued up for a good 20 minutes to the box office to buy our tickets. But wait? Whats this? If you’re 25 year old or younger coming from a country in the EU you get free entry? RESULT!
So we wandered in, and my good self carrying a bag with the flag in, obviously we got checked of our possessions, and I was refused entry due to the flag. I said I wouldn’t take it out the bag but he wasn’t having any of it. Anyway, he did say he would take care of the flag while I go up. Okay thats fine – so I handed him the flag.
He put it in the nearby bin.
“WOAH, WOAH WAIT A SECOND MISTER! Someone has gone out of their way to make us this flag, and its cost us money” (blatant lie – it didn’t cost us a penny, I just wanted to make a point). Anyway I was fuming, what about if I put his country’s flag in a bin?
I sat outside and waited for Nick, Trigg and Coatesy to come down. They wasn’t long but I didn’t want to go up in the end, probably out of protest. I wasn’t that bothered.
Still, my perspective of Paris has changed. The scenery is beautiful, the tourist attractions are great and we were having a great time despite a few minor things.
Okay, okay, we starting drinking. What a shock! We went on the wine because beer is too expensive. It went from a healthy day of walking to drinking cheap box wine in a french bar.
Two things about this bar:
The first is that the French box red wine was horrible. My god it was disgusting. We had four bottles of it. Why? Well after spending 32 Euros on a round the previous day – you’ll take anything. We went for a fifth but luckily the bar closed.
The second thing is that not long after we entered the bar, the lights went down a hoard of people came into the bar. A projector came on and showed a film. Now I had no idea what this film was about as it was in French, but it was so weird. It must’ve been a student thing. Trigg classed it as “The most French thing I have ever seen in my life”. Cool thing though to see happen. It only last five minutes or so, the room was empty not long after it finished however.
We got an Uber cab back to the hostel. Trigg decided it was a funny idea to fake putting the room key down a drain… He wasn’t in charge of the key for much longer after that. And we went to bed for the greater good.
