splash the RUM –- molasses

(to save me 3 emails, a summary of paris. too lazy to write a day by day like i did for amsterdam on the padacia.)

hello gorblogs!

july 14th was france's national day. the big treat, and one of the highlights of our trip was the hour long fireworks at eiffel. awesome, sial! the best i've seen and perhaps the best i will ever see. hundreds of thousands gathered with appreciative oohs and aahs. everyone was so jovial (not just on the 14th) and super friendly. i love frenchmen (yes, women too) and i absolutely love paris. fave spot is the area around notre dame, especially the second hand stalls and artists' bank along the seine. i wanna work there, man.

weather was perfect, fed a lot of friendly pigeons and very bold sparrows to my complete satisfaction, didn't step on dog poo, stroked more than a dozen cute dogs, window shopping (didn't buy anything at all other than 2 bots of poppers). spent money on food food food – plenty of seafood. crab salad!! yummy!! escargot!! can't have enough! buttered fried sole with lemon… sigh..

day 1: eiffel tower; went to the top. fantastic view, you'll agree.

day 2: montmarte, cool. basilique du sacre-coeur and the park behind it, grand. after that, we walked a long long way to arc de triomphe.

day 3: louvre. brilliant, not enough time. i went alone while T went elsewhere.

day 4: notre dame: now that's what i call romance.

day 5: notre dame again. went to the same restaurant for dinner as the previous day, and the mid eastern waiter + romanian waitress recognised us. they were wonderful people, kissed us goodbye they did, amidst the crowded restaurant. comic incident: the waiter dropped a spoon and accidentally kicked it while trying to pick it up. he laughed and said "football football". dunno why i found that extremely funny, and laughed my ass off.

day 6: jardins des plantes, museum of natural history, reptile vivarium menagerie, saharan/algerian photographic exhibition, notre dame yet again, and then struggled our way on the metro to the eiffel tower for the fireworks. crowded mrt? we breathed on each others' necks on the metro that day. been on the metro? no aircon there. people holding on onto each others' shoulders and none was grumpy. after the fireworks, there was a street party with more fireworks (albeit illegal and mini) . we walked 5km back to our hotel.

day 7: checked out of our hotel alesia at 12 noon. bloody impatient chambermaid. flight to oslo at 9pm. hung around the area and then to notre dame for the final goodbye. a bosnian girl asked for money, showing me a note that said her father blah blah blah. i told her i had no spare change. she said "fuck you". muahahaha….

at CDG, upgraded to business class. perfect ending.

8 out of 10 for this trip