Fuck Paris - Day 2

Ladies and gentlemen the title pretty much says it all. Let me summarise

1: Sleep paralysis
The day was off to a rocky start to begin with as I 'woke' up with sleep paralysis. While I could hear all the girls in my room moving about and getting ready I couldn't move, couldn't open my eye or even make a sound so I got left behind and missed the bus into the heart f the city.

2: Lost my room key
I don't understand this one. I had a shower in the morning with my swipecard and returned to my room. Once I was ready, dressed and perfumed I made to leave but miraculously the swipecard had vanished. Brilliant. I then spent an hour and a half unpacking and repacking both my bag and suitcase hunting around for it but for all it was worth I would have better luck searching for MH370.

After deciding to go without I left my hostel and navigated the convoluted rail/bus system that runs in the city quite successfully. Probably one of my proudest moments and I felt like I was a successful traveler being able to do that all by myself. It wasn't long until I jumped out at Notre Dame and began to wind my way back and forth across the many ornate bridges that cross the Seine River.

Fun fact : There are actually 3 love lock bridges in Paris. Pont de l'Archevêché is the bridge that crosses near the Notre Dame Cathedral and traditionally you hang your love lock there if it is for secret affairs. Passerelle Léopold-Sédar-Senghor is the third bridge in the series which is were you hang locks for those in happy marriages while Pont des Arts crosses near the Louvre and is for young lovers. Pont des Arts is also bad thing No. 3 happened.

3: Got robbed
Yup. I honestly did. I stopped at a souvenir stand near the Pont des Artes and brought a snowglobe. As I was closing my wallet this hand swooped in and grabbed all my euro notes before it's owner ran across heavy traffic and was quickly followed by another five women. I guess they were part of a gang that does this kind of thing frequently and I was, understandably, pretty upset. There goes all my admission money to the Louvre, a walk to the top of the Arc del Triumph, lunch and more souveniors. I just wanted to go back to my room and sit there for the rest of the day but no money for metro and no keycard for access. I may as well just head to the next meeting spot and wait.

Next meeting spot so happened to be for a fat tire bicycle tour of the city. I quite enjoyed this bit a lot. It nearly made up for the rest of my shitty day. Nearly.

4: Rain
Towards the end of the bicycle tour it began to rain. Just little drips at first, then big. fat, heavy drops. After the tour I still had to get back to our final meeting point. I didn't have money for an umbrella as atms seem to be nearly non-exsistent and to be honest at this stage of the day there was not many more fucks to give so I walked back in the pouring rain and arrived thoroughly drenched.

On the plus side though, I went to a cabaret after dinner. So many boobs. If you want to know what a cabaret is watch this. It also had really ,really good red wine.

http://youtu.be/IivaDS3eWrE

Despite all the crap that happened, I quite liked Paris. Each and every building is a historical. You can walk a single block and have to stop at another piece of beautiful architecture. I would come back again just to do all the things I missed out on due to losing my money but it's definitely a four-six day stop needed to take everything in.