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Welcome to the home of the official Vegemite Ambassador travel blog. A chronicle of mildly amusing journeys.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

We'll Always Have Paris ...

Well it's been a little time in the making but a good blog entry is like a chocolate macarone, hard to prepare but when ready it tastes oh so very sweet, light and fluffy. Though belated, this post is very special for it relates our adventure south of the channel to the romantic capital of the world - gay Paris.

Firstly, it's very hard to describe the cultural shift that you witness crossing from England to France. For two bodies of land only separated by a break in the cloud cover and a few miles of water at their closest point they sure do things very differently - for starters they speak French here!

The French also seem to have a general loathing for the English which I find a little weird considering they technically have the upper hand in terms of who actually invaded who last. I guess one thing to their credit is you would only be looked down upon for saying "I'd like a beer please" at a French bar, whereas you would probably only be recognisable by dental records if you blurted "Je voudrais un beer se vous plait" in an England pub.

The most important French cultural phenomenon you'll experience in plenty is the infamous "linger of death". If you are not sure of what I speak, it's the general expectation by any waiter in a restaurant or cafe that you want to wait an incomprehensible amount of time before the next step of the serving process. You linger at the door, they seat you, you then linger waiting for the drinks menu, they bring it, you then linger waiting for them to take your order, they eventually come back, you then linger waiting for the drink, you then ... well you get the picture and before you know it a "quick" coffee break becomes a two and a half hour linger-fest.

Paris, much like London and Rome is a roller coaster ride of big name attractions. The city is simply spoiled many times over for amazing sights and I wouldn't even begin to detail them lest your eyes glaze over. But there are two which are clear stand outs for me - the first being Le Tour de Eiffel! This just has to be the coolest gigantic pile of rusting metal on the planet. So cool it even has it's own post code and post office.

If you ever go, get there VERY EARLY and forget the elevator, the stairs are where it's at - the queue is shorter and you'll be reliving those awesome James Bond fight scenes in no time. Naturally the 360 view from the top is astounding and makes the climb satisfying, perhaps even more satisfying was to see the queue at the bottom which at that point was an inexorable snake-like weaving mess of confused tourists being covered in a light drizzle of endless pigeon stool.

The second amazing sight is of course the Louvre. Once again, with the benefit of remaining sober, an early start was possible - consequently being only the 50th in line to get in. Little does anyone know what is coming when you go to the Louvre for the first time. You might expect the typical museum experience of walking through two large doors and meandering any-which-ways but instead you'll be sucked right up into a flash flood of crazed tourists that can only be described as "the 200 metre Mona Lisa sprint".

And so, with priceless artwork almost being knocked off pedestals at every turn, the horde rampages through the Louvre like a Da Vinci homing missile. Amusingly and probably much to the curators entertainment, the Mona Lisa is actually behind you as you enter it's vaulted chamber which, due to the cunningly well polished floor, leads to a brilliant mass of frantic reborn art lovers all doing Tom Cruise slides across the room in unison.

Once that farcical ceremony is over the Louvre feels like a normal museum again. Albeit one the size of a small city in itself. You can spend days in there and only really scratch the surface. If you were a real art connoisseur you could easily spend days wandering that place and still not see everything as much as you want to.

Paris is a fun and beautiful city and it has no equal in terms of soul soothing beauty. So, for now, au revoir ... or as Australian's in France would say, OH REVWAR