Paris

Paris, home of the beret, Gerad Depardieu and sex tapes, oh wait, that was the other Paris.
at first i was a little worried because you hear quite alot of horror stories of the french being rude but to be totally honest they were nothing but helpful. when i got off the train i had to find my hostel, which because it was on a small street it wasnt on the map, one old lady stopped and asked and tried to help me, but she didnt know she even offered to call them for me but i didnt have the number so i went to another hotel and the woman behind the desk got on the internet for me found my hostel, marked it on a map and pointed me in the direction. i tell you, the french are getting a bad wrap, they were extremely friendly. i think as long as you say 'bon jour' and 'merci' they are pretty happy that you made the effort. if anything the rude people are the tourists, for instance i was in Notre Dame cathedral and they were having a mass or something, and people were taking photos, with a flash i might add, and talking and pointing all while other people were praying. i thought it was so rude to have no respect for others. also people pushing in line to get into things quicker, i was more shocked to notice that it was more of the grey army than it was younger people. imagine what theyre like on pension day!

but one stereotype about paris is right, its so expensive here it costs an arm and a leg for everything, hence why some days it has reduced me to living off jam sandwiches. however, there was one free thing in paris. a tour and it was brilliant. it was a walking tour and it went for 4 hours to different parts of paris showing you where people were beheaded, what was stolen from other countries etc and just generally filling you in on the history of certain areas and some interesting facts ie: there are over 400 dog poo related injuries every year in Paris. The tour was also a good way of meeting people who were traveling.
eventually i found my way to my first hostel which is pretty nice, the guy that worked there is from Australia and we had a chat about the AFL grand final. i'm sharing the room with a girl fom norway a girl from argentina and a guy from the USA theyre all pretty friendly, Ben, the american guy was a pretty interesting guy, he was the same age as me and wrote for a environment magazine back in the states and was over here on a confrence to listen to Ted Turner and David Suzuki talk and decided to do a bit of touring around while he was over here. He and i got on really well and one night went out to Montmartre which in parts is a pretty cool area, but if you walk too far you walk straight into the red light district which isnt too bad because we got to see where the Moulin Rouge is, we didnt go in becuause the line was ridiculous and also because the price to get in was roughly 150 euros, i wasnt really that shattered i wouldnt see it. also in that area is Salvador Dali's studio, it was right on the top of a hill that overlooked paris, it was a beautiful view i can totally understand why he made it his studio.

both the hostels i stayed at actually werent that far from the eiffel tower which is HUGE and quite pretty at night its funny when they turn the lights on to hear all the tourist 'oooooh' and 'ahhhhh'. i climbed it as far as i could with a few people from the hostel, then i was luckly enough to get a free ticket to the top from another guy who didnt want to go up to the top anymore. bonus! the view was really cool. the second hostel i stayed at wasnt as nice as the other one but again i met some cool people, like 4 american guys, Matt, Andy, Wade and Adam from North Dakota. a funny story from staying there was one night we all were trying to get to sleep and someone in the room was snoring so loud, it made it nearly impossible, we could tell where the snores were coming from, but because we came in late and it was dark we couldnt see who it was. when we woke up in the morning we found it was a petite french girl who, by looking at here was not capable of loud noise that had kept us all awake that night. we were all left a little dumbfounded!

i figured while i was here i have to give the local food a go, even, how you say... escargot which is surprisingly nice. i wanted to give frogs legs a go but i couldnt find anywhere that sold them. the patisseries here have amazing food i find it hard not to walk pass one without buying something. there are some grat little shops around paris, i really liked some of there book shops, i found a really cool music shop here that had a Johnny Cash colouring in book. i thought that was kinda funny because you'd only use one colour... black!

it is quite a romantic city lucky josh didn't come, who knows what might have happened. but the 3 words that make my heart flutter in paris are 'YOU ARE HERE' i get so lost in paris, which is strange for me becuase my sence of direction is pretty good. i dont like getting my map out of my bag too much because A) then i look like a tourist and B) i look lost. lucky there are a few maps around so i can get my bearings that way. towards the end of my stay i was getting around without a problem.
one day i was walking around just taking in the sights like the Arch de Triumph i wandered across the tunnel where Princess Diana died. it was a funny feeling becuause i remembered where i was and what i was doing when i found out the news that she had died. its probably been about 10 years since her death now but it was strange how i could remember everything about that day and how tragic it was. anyway, as i kept walking a saw a giant white tent set up right near the eiffel tower so i went over to have a sticky-beak and on closer inspection i saw heaps of papparazzi then i realised it was fashion week in Paris, so i stood around for a little while then who should brush passed me but model/actor/singer Milla Jovovich. crazy! it was pretty funny to watch all the try-hard fashion people wearing strange clothes with bits shaved out of there hair walking passed like they were really important. by the way, it seems that red ray ban sunglasses are a must have item this season in paris, it seems everybodys got one... except me.

I experience parking in Paris 101 also. a watched a car ram into the back of another car and push it forward to make enough room to park behind it. i couldn't believe my eyes, it was like watching Mr Bean.

I should probably add that i walked doan the Avenue des champs elysee and had a look in all the big brand stores like Louis Vuitton etc, not because i like what they sell but there instore experience was amazing. also they had a few really good cool concept stores on the street like the Peugeot store, now for people who know me know that i'm not really into cars (hell, i dont even drive one) but this was really cool, one of the cars was really futurist and another looked like it was made out of fine china cups and were painted like them. you could even sit in a F1 with a simulator so you could feel like your driving it, also you could buy music, chosen to help you enjoy your driving experience.

Of course i couldnt leave paris without checking out the Louvre, which was ridiculously big, i spent a couple of hours there but it broke me after a while, just way too much to see so i ran around and saw the main attractions like the Mona Lisa (i think she had eyes for me because she kept looking at me the whole time i was there, but with a name like Mona makes me think shes got a bit of a reputation so i let her down gently) i also saw the Venus de milo and by accident i saw the painting thats on the cover of the new Coldplay album 'viva la vida' i never knew it was actually a piece of art. it was really cool to walk through Richard Serra's 'clara clara' which is more or less just outside of the Louvre. i also when across the seine to the Musee d'orsay and checked out some Monet, Renoir, Van Gogh, Cézanne and Gauguin, just to name a few.

i also checked out Napoleon's crypte and i went to Cimetiere du pere lachaise which is where a lot a famous people are buried like Jim Morrison, famous french singer Edith Piaf, Chopin and Oscar Wilde. i also saw the centre pompidou which i like to call the inside out building becuase it was designed to have the things that are normally internal on a building, like its pipes, are on the outside. it was a pretty cool piece of architecture, the different coloured pipes winding around each other was amazing effect. the Catacombes were quite interesting also, from what i could gather they are these underground tunnels that were made from mining, then when the plague hit they didnt have anywhere to bury people so they put them because the cemeraries were full so put them in there. all the femurs and sculls are stacked together to make a uniformed wall and then they threw the rest of the bones behind it, there were thousands upon thousands of bones there. it was strange to think that these were once real living and breathing people and now there stacked into a wall. the boys and i went to a jazz club one night, or a i like to pronounce it 'yazz'. it was pretty cool to listen to them play, even though its something i normally wouldnt listen too. it was funny too, because all could think of was beat poetry and Mike Myers in 'so i married an axe murderer' also because the trumpet player looked like Rob Sitch from the TV show the Panel.

oneday i was walking around Paris when i was again approached by a TV crew for an interview they waffled something in french to me and stuck a microphone under my nose. when i said 'hi...' in my australian accent the camera man started to laugh and interviewer realised that i wasn't french and said sorry for annoying me. i know what your thinking, your thinking 'Trent, if your not careful your going to be huge in europe this is the second time youve been interviewed on europe TV' i have to say, i know, damn these movie star good looks.

one thing i'm a little annoyed at is i didnt see a mime the whole time i was here, whats the deal paris? maybe they were stuck behind a invisable wall somewhere. but i do have to say i'm looking forward to seeing the south of france later in my trip. oh well, off to Munich to meet up with Josh and Kate.