Paris

Paris! It's smelly and it's seedy and it's wonderful! I arrived in the evening and stumbled my way to Netta and Fionn's lovely and tiny studio apartment in the 12th arrondissement. We bought bread and cheese and cider and wine and went down to the Seine.

I'm worried this blog doesn't have enough lonely planet vibe so: Great times for under ten bucks tip: Drinking 2 euro wine from a plastic cup on the bank of the seine is pretty close to perfect. After a little while Fionn suggested a walk - Paris at night is just so wonderful. The buildings are beautiful and lit up and the people are happy and the air is warm. We stumbled about and finally home clutching nutella and banana crepes.

Casual brass by the Seine

Paris!!!

 

Good times

Next morning was more crepes (home made this time) then the city. Paris has a huge number of bike stands which you can hire out - Netta lent me her card which meant I could pick up a bike, ride it for half an hour, return it to another stand and go for a wander or get another bike. Since loads of Parisians leave town for the summer the traffic was easygoing and biking was lovely. I gawped at all the standard and most magnificent sights - that big ol tower included - and came back to meet fionn for lunch. He works as a bike-taxi mechanic beside Notre Dame. While buying amazing falafel (ten buck tip, people) he struck up a conversation with the next couple in line and one of them turned out to be in the same punk band as his workmate! We ate together in the park, where we met the most lovely and cheerful homeless guy - Fionn reckons it's harder to get the grimmer sorts of drugs in Paris so the homeless tend to be less terrifying and sad than in other big cities, which I certainly noticed. 

A goat chillin' at the Champs Elysees

OHH MAN I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING

Velib station in Paris

When Fionn went back to work I followed our new friends along to the Pantheon where I saw the Curie's graves (wooo!) and some guy "Voltaire" who is a writer or something I think. They went off to shotgun beers at Jim Morrison's grave but I decided to get some culture. Netta had told me if I was going to a gallery to go to the P and she was totally right - it is in this amazing building and the modern art collection from 1905-present is really class. It's arranged by time and movement which is helpful if like me you're kind of an uneducated yet enthusiastic creten. By this point it was getting late and I was le tired but pretty happy with the quantity and quality of my day-tour.

Pompidou

We went out for dinner and had: CREPES. With smoked salmon and cream cheese and lemon. Walked around a little but I felt pretty brutal so we came home in order for me to get up a bit too early for comfort to catch the train to Italy this morning. The view has been amazing though - castles on clifftops, rural towns, rivers and forests. 

One of the many sites at which crepes were consumed