January 18th - Paris.
Well, following on from my late night realisation that something was rotten in the city of Paris, we headed, quite literally around the corner to the Pantheon.
Now this I liked.
Kinda like a small St. Paul's in London - good looking domed cathedral, but since the revolution, they discarded the religion and it became more like a monument for French intellectuals and a burial place for their greater minds instead.
Nice. So we paid out respects to Voltaire, Dumas, both the Curie's, Zola (my fave), Victor Hugo, Braille and Moulin.
Oh yay!
A great Paris experience!
Finally.
Then we walked back down to Notre Dame, just in time to hear it going bong bong.
So I phoned Adrian who was still in Vienna before his flight home and shared the experience with him. I interrupted his schnitzel, but that's OK.
By now it was raining and there was such a queue to get up the stairs to the top of the Notre Dame tower that we decided to give it a miss.
After a cafe baguette so crunchy that my gums began to bleed, we both put our umbrellas up and headed for the Louvre.
We hadn't gone too far when Jeff turned to me and said,
"Errrk, we have red and blue umbrellas, we look like Roosters supporters."
OMFG x10
We did too.
Should we split and walk on opposite sides of the rue?
Oh dear, I'd purchased them at separate times, and so was unaware of my gaff.
Fucking Roosters. I hate 'em.
As we walked, I was muttering to myself about the fucking Roosters when it finally dawned on me what it was about this city that was getting under my skin so badly.
How I had not noticed it before I cannot imagine.
Perhaps my brain had blocked it out in order to protect me.
Suddenly, everywhere I looked, there were red white and blue flags, lights, ribbons, streamers, T-shirts.
And I'm talking on everything.
Everything.
It was horrible.
No wonder I was antsy.
No wonder I felt uptight and provoked.
I was surely in Hell. I had been so focused on dodging dog merde I just hadn't noticed the pitchforks and horns.
Suddenly it all made perfect sense.
The way my Souths sticker had made it all through Hong Kong, UK and Europe unscathed, but didn't last 10 minutes alone in CDG airport....
The staring, the hostility, the inclination to be pretentious and boastful...
The Universe had tricked us into holidaying in the fucking Chook Pen for 97Eu per night.
Once my head had stopped swimming, I turned to Jeff and explained what was going on.
It was like trying to relate a nightmare to someone.
Jeff being Jeff, helped by exaggerating the situation by also drawing my attention to the sea of Roosters in shop windows.
Le coq!
Fuck it!
They were everywhere too.
OMG
It's some sort of hideous national symbol, that fucking thing.
It's like kryptonite to me.
This was a moment of my life I really wouldn't do again for a million dollars.
Never ever ever.
That and the time at a game when the Roosters supporter who wears the rubber glove on it's head touched my hand as we both threw something in the bin.
I considered prosthesis.
OK, so the Louvre is awesome.
But why does my lower back always start to hurt in art galleries?
I love portraits.
Jeff likes huge battle scenes.
Either way, we're both happy poking around in the 15th and 16th century stuff (TWSS).
Now if you run the most famous art gallery in the world, and you leave it open until 9pm, please explain to me why you would close the cafe at 2-3pm.
And why you would have only enough seating for 20 people.
That's quintessential Paris.
They make no effort to accommodate you.
I felt about as welcome as a stray dog the whole time.
So whatever.
We saw the Mona Lisa.
It seems to be guarded by 4 rows of Italian tourists at all times.
That's OK too, because the Venus de Milo is guarded by Asian tourists.
At this point, we were in the Italian Jesus painting section and simultaneously decided that we could no longer tolerate religious imagery, no matter how pretty, historically important or famous.
This is where I heard Jeff say,
"Oh fuck me dead, not this guy again."
I didn't have to turn around to now to whom he was referring.
So, after 5 hours, we thought we'd walk from the Louvre, through le Jardin (OMG grass!), past Concorde, up the Champs d'Elysee and then climb the Arc de Triumph...
Looked like about a 15 minute walk on the map. Easy.
Stopped in a lovely little kiosk (I won't bother comparing the content of an Australian kiosk with that of a European kiosk) and fuelled up on huge hot teas and the legal limit of chocolate croissants.
Being maybe 4 o'clock when we left the Louvre, the "sun" AKA that lighter grey colour that Europe goes during winter days, began turning to that lovely velvetty deeper night grey.
We both love grey weather, so it was pleasant.
But after a day in the Louvre and a huge walk in the morning, it was a long, long way to the Arc.
I'd finished 2 or 3 croissants and 1and a half teas by the time we even made it to Concorde.
By then we figured that we'd come this far, so...
We hit the Champs d'Elysee just in time for them to turn on all the silvery fairy lights.
They were very pretty.
The novelty wore off well before the 2 kms were up though.
I cannot remember being more tired than I was during that hike.
When I look at that map of Paris now and see the distance we covered that day, I still can't laugh yet.
Oh well, you see more on foot, hey?
So, arriving at the Arc and being confronted by hundreds of stairs was less funny still.
But we did and it does afford a comprehensive view up there.
We got to see the Eiffel Tower light up at 6 o'clock, which was nice because it glitters for 10 minutes like a sparkler.
Awesome.
But the view of Paris...I dunno, it's just same no matter which way you look at it.
Blonde brick, curly lamps and vespers.
I did maybe 2 laps of the top of the Arc before I figured out which was the Champs d'Elysee that we'd just trekked down.
OMFG that speck in the distance was Concorde... idiots.
And then they sucker punched me (TWSS)
I was looking at the Champs and Jeff had joined me, when I noticed something grizzly (TWSS).
Firstly, it's so wide and the Arc stands in the middle of it, so you feel as though it's pointing at you.
Each side of the avenue is flanked by the fairy lights as I said - as it grew darker, I can tell you that they were not white or silver and all, but blue.
The effect of that traffic in the lanes between them is of course white headlights coming toward you and next to that, red tail lights going away from you....
One gigantic blue white and red stripe....pointing straight at me...
Suffice it to say I had a very Hitchcock moment up there.
I went dizzy, swayed, felt ill and utterly incensed.
I'm attributing up to 30% of that to low blood sugar, but the rest was their fault.
I felt as though I'd woken up holding a gigantic Roosters banner, and that this fucking dirty little city had staged an elaborate practical joke.
Honestly, I swear I saw stars circling my head just like in the cartoons.
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