crazy days

howdy,

this week i am back at work, and disappointingly no-one has done my work for me while i was away. damn. but it's good to get back into it, and it's only three weeks before rikki and i are off to oktoberfest which will fantastic.

but right now i will tell you about the couple of crazy weeks i had on these holidays. i went to paris, marseille, then valencia for la tomatina and lastly barcelona for the weekend. i had so much happen, i just kept thinking this one crazy holiday, both good and bad crazy. anyway, i'll start with paris.

paris was great fun. i pretty much had new people to hang out with everyday which was cool. the first night i went out with this aussie chick and this odd gay asian guy from liverpool and we went to a gay club where none of the men were gay because it was 'ladies night'. so dana the aussie chick picked up at least 3 guys, the gay dude managed to find another gay dude and i met this lovely parisian boy who kindly took me home on the back of his scooter.

riding around the streets of paris at 4am holding onto some hot guy and i was thinking, 'i love paris, this city is great!'.

despite the all-nighter i was up bright and early for some sight-seeing. i ran into a guy who was also staying at the hostel and had no friends, so the two of us went together to stand in the queue for the eiffel tower for 2 hours. funny, i always thought the eiffel tower was black. but it's not. it's poo-brown colour. even though it is poo-brown colour it is a very impressive structure. it is just massive and there are no other real large buildings around it so it just looks so massive. and the view is pretty spectacular, paris is such a huge city, and so old, but much prettier than london.

so after the eiffel tower i went and saw the arc de triumphe which is pretty cool. that's the big archy thing in the middle of the huge round-about in all the movies. and then wandered down les champs elyesees (shit - i've spelt that wrong) which is basically a big street with lots of expensive shops. kinda pretty, but i'm not really a brand baby so i wasn't real fussed by it. it was better at night i think when all the lights were on and the clubs and pubs were open.

that night when i got back to the hostel, dana was keen to go out again. i was yeah ok, but i don't want to spend much and she was 'that's ok, we'll just go to these quality bars i've got on my list and we'll wait for rich men to come and buy us drinks'. i was a bit, but i don't want to hang out talking to dirty old men just for free drinks, but she was come on, so i said yeah. but i was right, it was all dirty old men and when some guys came and bought us drinks dana was happy as a pig in shit chatting to them, but i was getting bored, because as you all know i am the best dancer in the world and would rather be out in a club pulling some quality moves and impressing the audience.

crap, i just started writing out the rest of the story of what a fruit loop she was, but it's a bit boring to read, it's piss-funny when you tell though, you you'll just have to ask me. anyway, after going out with her a few more times and i'm not sure whether i was more shocked, thoroughly amused or horrified by her antics. on my last night in paris i came back to the hostel to find she had left a note on my door to meet her. i showed it to the guys i was hanging out with and they nearly wet their pants laughing, they were going 'oh my god, she's crazy'. so we didn't go meet her and go to her special bars on her list. we ended up at a little irish bar with a bad band and about 6 people. it was much more fun.

well, the other days in paris, i got some good site-seeing in. me and antonio (peruvian guy in my room in the hostel) went on a walking tour of montmatre which was cool. we saw a statue of a man stuck in a wall and this really awesome cemetery and we ended up at le sacre coeur and then walking through the markets where all the struggling artist ply their trade. i so wished i was rich so i could have bought some of the paintings, but i did get a water-colour done of yours truly which is pretty cool. then antonio and i went and had a big arse lunch including lots of red wine, snails and some fantastic ice-cream.

the next day i did some touring around the traps with antonio and 2 others guys from the hostel, tiago from brazil and martin from poland. we went to the louvre which was awesome, i took some photos of some cool paintings. my favourite was the one where this lady had just been walking along the street when a lion comes up and grabs her baby and her boob falls out. hilarious.

after the lourve antonio had to go so i was left with tiago and martin which was funny. i think my main problem was i was hungover, but for some reason i could not keep up with their conversation. english was the second language for both of them so you think i would be the one translating between them. but no. they could understand each other fine, but i couldn't understand either of them and if i spoke they would both just start giving eachother funny looks and laughing at me because neither of them could understand me!

then tiago was talking about going to 'invalides' and i was what is it? and he was telling me where they take the sick people. and i was 'a hospital, why they fuck do we want to go to the hospital?' they didn't explain to me that invalides is a massive mansion that was built by some king or something for wounded soldiers returning for war. they just told me that we were going there so they could leave me there. smart-arses.

but the next day martin left so it was just me and tiago. and i was hungover again. lucky i'm so fantastic at charades or i never would have been able to have a conversation with him. although i do have to admit, i think it was more my dumbness, his english wasn't so bad. at one stage he was asking me 'what do you call it when you are in bed but not sleeping?' and i'm like huh? and he's 'you know, when you horizontal, not vertical. like when sleeping, but not sleeping' and i'm thinking 'is he talking about sex?' and then he says 'like i am now' b/c we were laying on some benches in a park. so then he gave up. about five minutes later my brain goes 'der' and i ask 'did you meaning laying down? like if you're not standing up you can sit down or you lay down?' and he was yeah. i am dumb.

anyway, that was my adventures in gay pari. after that i caught a train to marseille which is officially the worst place of my holidays. it's actually a beautiful city and it was nice and warm and beachy. i went diving, christ it was so cold i was getting ice-cream headaches on the way down and couldn't feel my toes for an hour after we came up.

but the reason marseille was not my favourite place is because it was so sleazy. there just didn't seem to be a lot of chicks around, especially after dark. and the men would just stand in groups in the street and stare at you and even though they took up the whole pavement they wouldn't move for you. i walked two blocks to the internet cafe and had 3 old guys stop me in the street to ask me to come for a drink with them. then i went to friol, an island there, very pretty, about the size of rotto. so i was walking around and stop to look at this building and there is this old guy who is about 50 and he gets chatting to me, telling me about frioul and marseille and the churches and stuff. and he says 'i'm happy to have some to practise my english with, can i walk around the island with you.' so i was yeah ok, he was being a good tour-guide and telling me about the place. so off we go around the island. as it turns out, and i wasn't that surprised, he's a dirty old rummy. half way round the island and half way through his bottle of rum, he's forgotten how to speak english and keeps yelling at me in french. so i keep yelling at him 'i don't fucking understand. english! english!' and i am about to just go fuck it and walk off when he sits down and he's trying wave me over to him and his tongue is hanging out. and i think poor old bastard it's a hot day, so i ask 'do you want water?' he says 'no. you come' he waves me over, then he points at my crutch and says 'me lick you' and starts waving his tongue at me. i was like 'oh my god, i don't fucking believe this' and i was gone. like the road-runner there was nothing left but a cloud of dust. and all the while back to the boat i was getting flashbacks to the dodgy baggage handler when i was in rome. please tell me, does this shit happen to anyone else?

so that was marseille.

oh, i'm getting writers cramp. i will fill you in on valencia and barcelona in the next couple of days. it was a jam packed week full of sangria and tomatoes and a fucking shambles of a tour.