After a 3 hour train ride from amsterdam to paris (with a massive hangover from the night before). We arrived in Paris, Paris du Nord!We went straight to the tourist office where we asked for a metro map, daytickets for the public transport and some other stuff... From there we went to the ticket office to book our trains to Bordeaux and San Sebastian... It was hot in the station and we had to que, NICE... but all part of the fun!
After we got the tickets we were on our way to the prommising campsite! We took the tube to station )·"($/)"(·/$ the Maillot (Note to myself: )·"($/)"(·/$ is not a french word). From where we had to take the bus to the campsite! The bus was crowded and the packs were heavy, the ultimate reason for sweat álá all over the place.
NOTE TO EVERYBODY, if you ever heard people talk about a CHEF´S ASS and you didn´t get it?? Here is the explanation! A chef´s ass comes from the magical world of cooking. Basically a chef´s ass is an irritation of the anus and surrounding skin caused by sweat! Sweat contains above a large amount of water a certain level of salt which can couse irritation!
I though i´d share this wisdom with you readers!
Anyways, when we hopped off the bus we soon saw a sign Boix du Boulogne (campsite) and offcourse we followed that sign (together with 2 liverpool people we´ve met in the bus). We walked, and walked and the temperature was a bit unbearable...after a 20 minute walk we arrived at the campsite. Compleately soaked, and pissed off because we followed the route for cars, the rout for pedestrians was like 2 minutes but with no signs! But later we found out, we weren´t the only one who made that mistake! (The signage kinda suited the campsite!)
At arrival we checked in (everything looked pretty good) and were told we could pick every free spot on the campsite (they gave us a map and the campsite looked quite big) but after a small hot walk we found out the map was almost 1 to 1 scale and most of the free spots were taken, people we sleeping on a grassy hill, they put their tents on a slope of 4/5 degrees which must be good for you nightly bloodflow!! anyways, we just couldn´t find a good spot, but after some searching we at least found shading! YES ONLY SHADING!
Because most of the time you expect some grass on a campsite! This one had nice sharp small stone and a rocksolid floor. Putting up my tent costed us loads of effort and we had to slam the picks in the floor with a stone (next time when I go backpacking I´ll definately bring a hammer).
When we finally got settled me and Franzi went to the supermarket to get the ingredients for a feast meal!!! We prepared Tasty from-the-bag pasta cooked in lovely tap water, some pesto from a jar and as final touch (the creme de la creme) vegetables from a can! Well... offcourse you´ll think i´m going crazy but the meal actually taste like thatwhen you are really really hungry!!! TRY IT!After our delicous meal we headed off, off to beautiful paris which was absolutely packed with people because of the birthday of the country whis was celebrated in the morning with a massive military parade and in the evening closed with MASSIVE fireworks! The eiffeltower and the grass lane in front of it was already scary busy 4 hours before the fire works, there was a giant stage and they were still constructing stuff (which later showed as part of the fireworks). After a walk to kill some time, a nice meal at the busiest MC DONALDS i´ve ever seen (yes,we do like culture but sometimes we need a BURGER!) we ended up finding ourselves in the middle of a giant crowd on one of the bridges over the river Seine. We we´re waiting for the fire works to start!
When the lights of the massive eiffel tower shut down and the light was lit by a single red flare the tension and exitement started to build up! It´s hard to describe fireworks in text but i´ll try and will add some pictures to help my story reach you guys!
Colors of the endless firework explosions were colors i´d never seen in fireworks. Bright green, Real pink, Golder than Gold! Pure White! Those colors lightened and brightened up the streets of paris, the crowd and the sky. All those people were suddenly quite, some ooooooooohs and wow´s and offcourse you have the special europeans (THE ENGLISH) who like to be different and shout a bit! The climax of the fireworks display kept building and building! A couple of times the eiffeltower created a OOOOOOOOOOH in the crowd after a loud explosing with bright white light the eiffeltower lit up in 1000nds of flickering lights.
After an hour of standing on one spot and lights you noticed the darkness of the sky and that told you it was time to go to bed!
The next morning after a hot shower we went straight to the louvre by metro. After a breakfast we walked on the the Notre Dame. In my whole life ( hehe 22 years young) I´ve been to paris 5 or 6 times, but I was shocked by the change, everything looked a lot smaller. Maybe because I became a bit of a giant in those 22 years, who knows! After the notre dame we walked on to Centre Pompidou where we ate some fruits, checked out an internet café and took the metro to the sacre coeur... From the sacre coeur we walked on to Montmartre where we found a local piano bar, The walls were filled with notes, student cards, photos... I left a note-> IK-VIND-JE-LIEF!
Next up, the cemetary where james (jim) morrisson is burried. That cemetary was one of the biggest and most impressive graveyards I´ve ever seen. endles small lanes of graves and tombs, lots of trees, flowers and memories people left. Strangely this graveyard was not scary, this graveyard was peaceful and actually a nice place to be (considering the location). I liked the rumor that people smoke a joint at the grave of jim morrisson! I don´t really know what I have to think of that but I do think it´s grieving with style!
After the visit to the cemitary we went back to the campsite to check out the restaurant there. We sat down at a table and very promissing we got the menu and ordered some drinks. But offcourse on a international campsite you write the menu in france because they work in france and don´t care about the international amount of visitors on the campsite.
Anyways, we ordered our food, I ordered chicken (well in french i though i ordered chicken) franzi and froggy ordered steak. 20 minutes later our food arrived, but without cutlery... we waited a while and started to laugh about this shitty place, everywhere we looked people got up to get salt, pepper, cutlery of whatever the staff forgot to bring... A boy from another table brought us some cutlery from their table. Another lady gave us mustard and mayonaise from their camper... I gave her flowers and a candle... Anyways, when we got our cutlery, the food was cold and definately not enough for what we had to pay for. About the paying... we had to wait 20 mins for our bill... Later that night we had a drink with the mayonaise-mustard people and I think all 3 of us when to bed drunk...
Next day we left to Bordeaux!
1 comment:
thank you, tim, for your detailed description of your sweaty, red baboon-ass :-D
katharina
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