Day 41 - Paris (France) - Not quite the city of love

SHE LOVES ME, SHE LOVES ME NOT. For most it is the most romantic city in the world, a place to propose to anxious girl friends or to whisk your lover to for fine wine, food and plenty of 'rumpy pumpy'. For me, the relationship with Paris started off a bit luke warm. I choose to begin my moaning.... now. The overnight train from Switzerland to Paris sounded like a great/romantic idea... except you are sharing the sleeper carriage with 4 other strangers (it looked a lot different in the James Bond movies). Those strangers can be the nicest people in the world... but if they snore like pickup truck with only one gear you will be ready to squeeze them out the window! So we arrived at 6.30am in Paris, with a few scant hours of sleep under the belt. "Where is la left luggage centre?" (actually Yen asked this and actually spoke decent French instead of adding "La" in front of everything like I do). The answer, at the OTHER train station (of course, why would you want it at the train station the eurostar stops at!). We find the station, eventually find the left luggage centre and after going through airport type security are able to lock it away. Next stop, we need to get our euorstar ticket to London swapped from Saturday to Friday. We found Eurostar - they tell us because the ticket was issued by a travel agent and doesn't have a value on it, they cannot change it! (ugghhh... remind me again what value travel agents add???). So where did we leave that Flight Centre number? Half an hour later and one phone card later we are speaking to Prahan flight centre.... "Oh, you're in Paris? Oh, you need your ticket changed? Oh, that has to be reissued from here... Australia!" (uggghhh). Finally with many promises of travel faster than the concord we are told the new ticket will be arriving at our Uncle's place in Paris in a few days. Okay, time for 'authentic Parisian breakfast'. Wandered the block, gave up on authentic and just chose cheap. Relaxed. Deep breaths. Relaxed. Tourist centre at station now for Disney tickets and Hop-on-hop-off bus tickets - sorted. Raced to bus and collapsed on top - current time, around 10am. No commentary - headphones not working - changed seat - okay. Relaxed. Soaked in the sights. Soaked in the rain. Yes, it started pouring with rain! (who thought open top buses were a good idea?). Got off bus and enjoyed Paris from a curreny exchange shop doorway. Half an hour later got on bus, stayed downstairs. Made it to the Champ Elysees... jumped off after seeing movie theatre!! Retreated to the comfort of a cinema at 12pm and watched none other than "The DaVinci Code"! Was the perfect movie to watch when in Paris ("Oh, we've seen that" "Oh, we're going to see that")... only downside is that they had French subtitles... unless the actors were speaking French (which they do quite a bit in the movie) in which case they had no subtitles (not even English for those who didn't speak French!)... must... not... swear... about... frogs. Emerged to clear skies two hours later. Walked up to and below the Arc de Triomphe (impressive once you find the poorly signed underpass). Headed on to the Eiffel Tower... WOW... that's why we are in Paris! Started getting late so time to try and get to Uncle's house. Lined up for the Hop-on-hop-off bus again... and waited... and waited... along with a long line of others... tempers started rising as they were still meant to have one last bus leaving but it didn't appear as if they were going to do it. Finally a bus is arranged but only to the train station - fine by me, just get me out of here! Picked up luggage, picked up train tickets, figured out subway, arrived at Uncle's train station at 8pm. Called Uncle... "We are still driving back with your Dad from Germany... won't be back for 2 hours... call Aunty at home". We call Aunty... "Ring".... "Ring, Ring".... "Ring, Ring, Ring"... okay, lets just get a taxi. "No, won't go there"... "Nope"... and then no other taxis went by... we walked until we reached the next train station and still no taxi. Called aunty again... "Okay, I'll come pick you up, stay there". It starts raining... half hour passes... still raining... one hour passes... Aunty arrives! 10pm, we arrive at Aunties house, eat food, drink beer... Yen's parents arrive with Uncle around 11pm... collapse on couch at 12pm... "Ahhhh Paris" (at least I didn't step in merde!).
LESSON FOR THE DAY: What today is terrible is something to laugh about in the future.