One Mans Odyssey

7:58PM Kick Off

We turn to the nearest group of people, which happen to be Chinese tourists and hug them all whilst cheering. The night had landed and with a bit of luck we had made their holiday worthwhile

We stocked up on drinks and decided to continue our exploration of the city. I made a few attempts at chatting with randoms in broken french but didn't get very far. We pulled up a pew by a huge building with a metro station below and did a little dancing on the streets with our portable mini bar.

Shortly after this we discovered a building with an open door. Obviously this was an invitation for us to explore further so we stepped forward into an empty square courtyard. We entered one of the buildings and ascended to the staircase, on each floor there was a door with a different name on. With no idea what it was we took the opportunity for a little photo shoot and then left.

Shortly after our courtyard adventure we discovered Victor. The face of a nation. The Ultimate in France Technology. Who or what he was, where he came from and why he walked the streets on this night we don't know. What we do know however is that he looked like his name should be Victor and for one night only he would be our celebrity. After approaching him on a bridge we had a small chat and a group photo, which unfortunately I missed out on as I took the pictures.

Next came the giant wheel of light! As we meandered in the general direction of the looming Eiffel Tower we usually just headed to the next shiny object or interesting building and this was no different. A giant illuminated Ferris Wheel, what more could one want? We stood in the bask of it's light for a good few minutes before filming a video update of our journey and moving on. My friend holds this video, I'll see if I can get hold of it.

Nobody could have known that tragedy was bout to strike. As we wandered into a small park all was quiet but the English trio. An old unused fountain lay central to the area. "Don't let me see what's in there" he said and with that he ran and launched himself across the fountain barely making it. He stumbled to the floor and he didn't get up. Typical of Matt he just had taken the chance and his ankle had gone.

We found the nearest bench Matt hopping in tow. It was bad… This boy always injures himself and gets on with life. The usual attitude of not worrying was there but it was clear that we may never make it to the Eiffel Tower or Mix Club. As a matter of fact we only made it about 50 metres down the road before we had to leave him on a bridge and find a taxi. This turned out to be an adventure in itself…

We walked about 5 minutes to Champs Elysées before managing to flag down a taxi. Getting in the only word that the taxi driver seemed to know in English was "Address?" clearly it was going to be a task directing him to the bridge that we had left our friend on. After several minutes of heated "discussion", us trying to direct him whilst he repeated the word "Address" amongst other very angry sounding french words we managed to find him now laying on a street corner.

As if we hadn't enough trouble already, trying to get the taxi driver to stop and open the doors so we could let this man lying on the street into our cab wasn't the easiest. Especially as he started hopping towards this poor mans taxi with a bag of drink in his hands. Finally we got him in and mentioned the name of the train station nearest our hotel, the only address we knew.

We pulled up at the station and tried to direct the taxi driver towards our hotel but clearly by this point he'd had enough so we got out and proceeded in the general direction of our hotel. I decided to go ahead and drop our things at the hotel and then go out again without Matt and his broken ankle. We were in Paris after all, not something you do every day. Unfortunately as soon as we got to the hotel my other friend fell asleep. Undeterred I left in the direction of the station and found Matt still only half way and took pity on him.

We hopped into a nearby cafe and had something to eat discussing the days activities and how he would cope with the rest of the holiday.  It was a very cosy cafe and after walking around so much it was quite nice to eat and just relax listening to music into the early hours. We left  and it took a further 20 minutes to get back to the hotel on what could easily have been a 3 minutes walk under normal circumstances.

Finally I got into bed and had a very welcome full night of sleep in a comfortable bed… I'll wrap the story of this little french trip up in one more post in the next couple of days. Meanwhile it is getting ever closer to my Australian trip so keep an eye out for updates on that…

In my last update I began to tell you about the trip I took to Paris last weekend. I'm picking up the story after we had finally arrived at the hotel…

Have you ever had that feeling where you wake up and something is different but you can't quite work out what?

Imagine that feeling and then remembering that you are in Paris after possibly your longest journey of the year (so far, I'm not even going to get into the 23hr flight coming up). The feeling I had was that of both relief and happiness for having made it. My Friday evening idea had materialised and here we were in Paris on a Saturday afternoon with a blank canvas to work with. Brilliant!

Clothes were thrown on and we headed out to some statue that my mate had recognized earlier. No idea what it was then and I still don't know now, pretty but not my thing. Right next to this we found a Metro station and decided to take advantage of this and try and find a place that's name we'd recognize within Paris.

We approached the ticket machine with no idea what we were even looking for and after converting to machine decided that 20 tickets should be enough to start three of us off in Paris for the weekend. At 22 euros it seemed like it would be a good start at least. To this day I'm still not sure how their ticket system works but we managed to use only 7 of these throughout out whole visit and we took many trains!

In the end Châtelet was decided on as our destination as it seemed pretty central. Upon arrival we were no better off in our idea of where anything was but we walked along the river. Took a look at a couple of stalls along the way, typical tourist trap behaviour but hey, you have to do it sometimes.

Grabbed a few beers to wake us up as we were still a little sleepy despite the few hours of sleep. We sat on a bridge and discussed our plans. We would wander the streets of Paris and see what we could find and possibly hit up a club we'd seen on the net before called "Mix" if we felt like it later. It was also decided that there would be a 7:58PM kick off. It was a couple hours away and by that point we would all be fully awake and really come into our own. Don't ask why but this really does work, if you set yourself an exact goal of waking up to take on the world it does something to you psychologically.

The streets of Paris are truly beautiful, I felt like such a typical tourist taking pictures of buildings that the locals probably see every day of their life and have become bored of. It's like when I walk around in my home town sometimes and see people taking pictures. You sometimes forget that all it takes is for something to be new to you or looked at in a different way to completely change how you see it.

Hunger sets in. We all decide to get a snack. for me that ends up being a Pekinneese Soup. Felt like something different. Slightly spicy and there were things in it that seemed very slimy but tasted good none the less. As we stood on a street corner eating, the real way to see Paris we were approached by a dutch guy. Had a little chat with him for no apparent reason. I chatted about 'Me Gusta', a cafe in Amsterdam currently run by my family.

Shortly after this we stumbled across Notre Dam, finally a place that I recognized. Thank you Walt Disney! We had dinner at a restaurant on the corner. Very friendly waiters and I could feel the food finally charging me up and the energy coming back.

We left for another walk along the river with only MINUTES before the 7:58PM Kick Off… The journey will continue over a couple more posts…

Just thought I'd drop in and tell you what I got up to at the weekend. I'm guessing most people would be content with the fact that they are going to the other side of the world in a couple weeks and just save the craziness for their travels…. Well it seems that's not me.

Friday 02/11/07

6:00PM: "I'm bored I fancy doing something crazy like going to Paris or something"

7:45PM: Tickets booked and two friends rounded up

11:00PM: Dover

2:45AM: Calais

5:30AM: Paris

Yes, thats right, we really did go through with it and end up in Paris searching for hotels at 6 in the morning last Saturday. Whenever you do something crazy like that completely out of nowhere it always seems to be great and this was no exception though it wasn't all plain sailing.

After arriving in "Paris" we spent literally hours searching for a place to stay. I've never been turned down by so many hotels in a row. Apparently there was some race going on nearby so every hotel was fully booked out. Note to self try and always have a place booked to stay in advance and be aware of local goings on that may effect your plans. So after far too long and far too many rude declines later we decided to sleep in the car for the night..

There were three of us in a Renault Clio and I got the back seat to myself. Not exactly the most comfortable place to settle down after an 9hr+ journey but for the moment it would do. I lay under a coat and ended up getting snuggled up and feeling quite comfortable, turns out the back seat wasn't so bad after all.

One hour sleep later, OK so maybe not so comfortable after all, we hit the road again. The small sleep we had seemed to completely revive us, it really did feel like hours had passed. So desperate to find a hotel for the Saturday at the very least. but feeling slightly more awake we continued in another string of Hotel attempts, always getting the same response, Until…

"Est Hotel" A name that now brings joy to my heart! Not only did they have rooms available but they had a triple room for 105 euros, by this stage that was the deal of the century! Only catch is that we would have to check in at 12:00 and it was now only around 10. No biggie we were settled and the man promised to keep the room for us. We had finally arrived!

We parked the car and we went in hunt of our next survival tool, Food! You know the saying about waiting ages for a bus and then suddenly two come at once. Well I must have seen like 10 hotels at least in the time we went looking for food. Turns out we had been right on the outskirts of Paris, barely even inside it really. We had a place to stay though and that as all that mattered.

Getting some food would be an easy thing to do in Paris at 10 in the morning right? Well apparently not, we wanted some decent food and everywhere was telling us we would have to wait until 12 till they brought out the big guns, meals to make your mouth water. Tails between our legs we headed into a bakery to eat.

Perhaps it was the tiredness, the hunger, or many other factors but this Palma Ham Salad was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Accompanied by an orange Minute Maid I was in bliss. We sat above the streets and watched passers by discussing the difference in appearance and fashion of the British and the French.

Twelve quickly rolled around and we checked in with our reserved room as promised. A quick shower and we all settled down for a couple hours rest ready to take on the city that afternoon and onwards!

This is only the beginning, we hadn't even got started yet and I will tell all over possibly one or two more blog posts in the near future…