The saga continues

To the Louvre!

After a day of wandering around aimlessly in Amsterdam and drinking at random bars, we boarded the morning train to Paris. We were approached by some American about a hostel close to the station, so we decided to check it out. It turned that it wasn’t THAT close to the station (although it’s close to A station), but the place had a good atmosphere so we decided to stay there.

We checked out Notre Dame and got soaked in the rain thereafter, but dried it all off in the big behemoth of a museum known as the Louvre. Saw some cool pieces of history for a couple of hours and probably didn’t even get to see half of the things there. Afterwards we were feeling very tired, so this only meant one thing... party! We mingled with the other people staying at the hostel at the bar on the ground floor and I got pretty drunk. There are so many Australians here, and most of them are from Melbourne. There must be something about Melbourne that drives them away.

Anyway, after a morning of recovery, we checked out Notre Dame again so we could do the tower walk. Got some really nice views of Paris and got some really tired legs. Afterwards, we sat back and watched some roller bladers and roller skaters do some fancy stuff on the street whilst a band played by the riverside. It was a very nice experience.

Lost in translation

France has probably been the hardest so far in terms of the language barrier. Half the people don’t speak much English, if any at all, so it’s hard to go shopping or to buy a meal. One other thing I noticed is that the keyboards have a strange layout (AZERTY as opposed to QWERTY, and the symbols are all over the place). Fortunately there’s an option to change the layout to the English layout (and fortunately I remember where most of the letters and symbols are).

It’s a small world after all

I woke up yesterday feeling rather refreshed since I slept at about 8 and didn’t drink at all. Dave, on the other hand, was feeling a bit off after a day of walking and a night of drinking cheap red wine. Due to this very reason, we decided to minimize the walking and stair-climbing for the day.

The day involved Dave getting an extremely cheesy caricature before we went on a cruise on the Seine, which was really nice. What was nicer was seeing the Arc de Triomphe then walking down the Champs Elysee (okay, so minimizing the walking didn’t work out too well). To top off the day we saw the Eiffel Tower at night which is quite a site to behold.

When the day was over we got drunk on Champagne (from the actual region, not ‘sparkling wine’)... unfortunately it tasted the same as every other bubbly I’ve had. Oh well. We downed the bottle pretty quickly then proceeded to get some happy hour pints and head over to a pub near the Moulin Rouge.

Perhaps the craziest part of the night (apart from the 10 Euro vodka and Red Bulls) was running into somebody from the same town as me. I was standing outside catching some air and hydrating myself with some water when some girls tapped on the window. (I think) they asked how old I was. I said ‘21’ and they didn’t believe me, so I showed them my driver’s license. They got excited and grabbed another girl at the bar. She showed me her driver’s license and, lo and behold, she was from my town. Freaky. I think she was working at the Moulin Rouge or something.