I spent Friday walking, walking, walking!! I started at the tourist ridden Champs Elysees, walked up and down, paid a visit to my regular shopping stores: Louis and Cartier, then decided to move on. The Champs Elysees, while great at first, gets rather boring and seems very detached from the real Paris. There are tourists everywhere you go in the city but on the Champs its like the tourist industry is on steroids. Everyone is trying to sell you something, everything is huge, bright, and the once historical buildings now house Adidas, Nike and MacDonald's.
I then walked to the musee d'orsay and enjoyed a steak-frites lunch in a little bistro. From there it was on to the islands where I bought an ice-cream and listened to some live jazz in the park behind the towering Notre Dame where the endless lines to get in nearly drown the huge building. Finally I found myself in the streets around Places des Vosges (I can't keep away, it's too nice) and found some great shops before picking up the girls.
Saturday the weather turned arctic, which makes complete sense as tomorrow is the first day of summer...?? I waited all day for the socceroos match and ended up watching it in a tiny little bar with a few Aussies just around the corner. It was disappointing to say the least but I have complete faith we'll pull a miracle against Serbia and Ghana will beat Germany... Hmmm?
Saturday night, what a night! I met up with a Swedish girl Elin who is the friend of a friend of mine and offered to take me out. We pub hopped around English, Irish and Scottish bars one in which two Australian guys were playing live music. By about midnight I was pretty tired but apparently going home before 5ish is very un-French and so it was that I didn't crawl into bed until 5:30. I hadn't realised that the metro stops between 2 and about 6 so I was pretty much stranded. Nonetheless I had a great time, met some other world travellers and learnt how to party in Paris. It didn't feel much like I was in France as I spoke not a word of french and the pubs made me feel more like I was in Dublin or London.
Anyhoo as I am living on only about 3 hours sleep and its bloody freezing outside I'm going to crawl back to bed and hibernate for the rest of the afternoon.