Figjam's Epic Adventure 'The Second Coming': Paris... Was Snails, Buildings, Old Birds, and Triangle Shaped Objects

23/5/11

2055 (local time)

What starts with P- and ends in Aris! Thats right PARIS! Been there done that! Nah, its a pretty nice city to be fair! But I want to start off with my adventure there firstly!

So the trip started at me waking up at 3.30am on Wednesday morning, so I could get a taxi to Kings Cross... but even before we get to that, I must mention, Tuesday I went to the Australian Comedian Carl Barron for 10 (GBP)... Bargain! It was a funny show, he did use his old material a bit, but it was still funny seeing him in person. Annnyway!

Back to Wednesday morning, so the wake up was super tough, but being the athlete that I am, I managed. Caught my taxi to Kings Cross, where I then jumped on the Euro Star train to Paris for 57euros... I got into Paris at about 7.30am, (its only a 2.5hour train ride) quickly headed on the Metro/Underground train, and made my way to my hostel.

I quickly checked in, had a shower and then put on some shorts and headed to the Arc de Triomphe. Coming out of the platform with that as a view was amazing, but... (grandparents and parents... ‘I’m sorry’) in all honesty, it was just another building, yeah the architecture was pretty, but it wasn’t all that great to be honest. So I swiftly made my way to the Eiffel tower! Now, by this stage I was absolutely knackered! I’d been awake for 12 hours, my legs were killing me from all my walking, I was in a bad way! But I powered on through, purely due to my massive lactic threshold! I bought a ticket and climbed the 669steps to the 2^nd floor of the Eiffel tower to get an amazing view! I fought the masses of people to get some photos. After I wandered around for a bit, and sat down for like 15 minutes to rest my beautiful pins! I then trekked my way down the 669 steps.

When I was at the top, I saw a pretty building with a gold roof, so I wandered over there, to check what that was all about... and all it was, was a world war museum... I’d seen plenty of these, so I had some lollies and ended up catching a train to the catacombs... on future reference, apparently Napoleon, from the French revolution was buried there?!

The catacombs, is located in south Paris, and the reason it is there is because, early 12^th century Paris, as a city had grown in massive size, and people could no longer afford to have proper Christian burials, so they created this mass burial site under the city. And once a certain part of the city got to big, they just dug a small tunnel and went to the next one.

But by early 17^th century these sites became unbearable, and these underground burial sites were at ‘bursting’ point. It wasn’t until around the 19^th century when Paris created some new cemeteries in the North, East, South and West of Paris and these burial grounds were no longer used.

The reason why nothing was done earlier was due to the lack of ideas about how to move these rotting corpse’s into proper cemeteries.

Anyway, enough of that stuff, so I trekked throughout the mines and ill show you some of the photos so you get an understanding of how crammed these bodies were! Its pretty cool!

After this, I made my way home. I was exhausted and had a power nap, and then pretty much fell asleep.

The next day was an early rise, and I smashed some brekky and made my way to the Louvre. Now, once again im sorry to all the parents and grandparents about this next bit... but I’m 22, all I want to do is just do fun stuff, and I know that I would appreciate it a bit more when im older but at this current stage in my life, I really couldn’t give a rats arse J. But anyway, so I made my way to the Louvre paid the stupid entry fee of 10euros, wandered to the Mona Lisa, elbowed all the tourist out of the way, got an Aussie family to take a photo of me with the old bird! And then made like hay and bailed!

Saw the Egyptian part of the museum... which I had already seen in Egypt, went to the Roman part of the museum... which I had mostly seen in Greece. Then finished up went outside an had my sandwich that was like 3 days old and tasted so off I thought I was going to throw it up on the spot!

Finished up at the Louvre, took photos of it, took photos of people taking photos of it and then briskly walked to the Notre Dame Cathedral. It was a bloody long walk, and the legs were burning but, I think I have all ready mentioned my massive pain threshold so I continued around the church until I found a nice little bench where I sat down (and fell asleep) for about 15 minutes.

After my power nap, I went outside and decided to wait in the 30+ minute long cue that allows you to the top of the cathedral. Got chatty with a couple of American guys, who were proving to me how retarded that race of people were... But they were ok, We all climbed to the top took our photos and then headed back down again. Lovely! One of the American girls in the group I was talking to, continued to chat to me, and then eventually asked me to have lunch with her... her shout. I couldn’t say no, so I proceeded to order the most expensive thing off the menu... no no, just joking! She ordered for me, and we ended up getting to courses of sails! How bloody French was I. Impressive?

For my first snail, it took me a good 5 minutes to get the thing out of the shell, but after a did a few, I was pro! 15 seconds is all it took me to get the little suckers out of their home. When I get back, I’m definitely going to deep fry some garden snails in mums cooking pots!

So that was lovely, this lady told me some stories and I told her some of my (better) stories, we then made out way home (to separate locations) and I had a nice night, and ended up chatting to another younger American bloke, who took me up to a beautiful white church that overlooks the city called the Sacre Coeur. We were up there for about an hour just watching the world go by! It was a really nice night!

The next day... was my favourite day! I had a nice little lie in, had a big brekky, played on my PC for a bit, grabbed my bag and then headed up to the Sacre Coeur for a day time viewing, with this Aussie chick who I was explaining the meaning of life to. Maybe I wasn’t the best person to be telling her this... but not to worry. We climbed to the top of the Cathedral, took more photos until I got bored! I went back to the hostel, grabbed some food, grabbed my skateboard and went skating!

The first place I hit was just outside of a train station, that overlooked the Eiffel Tower! There were a couple of locals here, but it was awesome, I was ollieing steps and getting super close to kick flips! After we hit that spot for about 1 hour, one of the local boys took me to another place, where there was a rail! I had an absolute ball, and skated until my feet, legs, hips, head... EVERYTHING hurt! Went back to the hostel and pretty much chilled out for the rest of the night, until had to catch a train at 11pm a night from Paris to San Sebastian, in Spain! To where I am now... but that my friends is all the story telling you get tonight!

So until next time!

Make sure you have a shower... (you know who)

Lots of love!

Steve xx