13feb

13.02.03
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
I was in Paris!!! i cannot BELIEVE it!!! After all this time - hearing Mrs Collins raving about it and practically drooling at the mouth about the wondorfulness of Parisian life and how god damn perfect of a place it is, I GOT THE CHANCE TO SEE FOR MESELF!!!

And dammit it was cool.

I left with my "Art Expression" class and whoever else wanted to come so that we could get cheaper group prices, at 7am on Friday morning by bus and arrived sometime later that day with cramping in my legs (I'm very good at choosing seats with practically no leg room). We dropped our shite at the Youth Hostel and then walked on over to Le Centre Georges Pompidou which is the French National Museum of Modern Art. Once there, we wandered around looking at all the sorts of artsy fartsy interpretive stuff on canvas and in wood and god knows what else.

After visiting there, I wasn't sure that there is actually anything left that hasn't been done. It scared me a bit to see all these ideas everywhere. And so many of them too - made me feel a little discouraged in fact, i mean there is so much art out there already; why the hell should I think that anything I could possibly do would make a difference. Mais, bouef, i got over it.

I managed to lose everyone and eventually found a couple of others and the Morale teacher who gave us a quick tour of the surrounding quartier before FINALLY showing us back to the hostel. We then had dinner at a completly different hostel and after that climbed back aboard the bus for a quick tour of Paris which stopped in front of the Eiffel Tower so that we could take photos.

Back at the Hostel afterwards, everyone went walking to a place where they have Kareoke but it was too full so we ended up buying some beer and heading back to our rooms with the bottles snuggly tucked under our jackets. it's quite hard hiding a six pack of beer if you don't have a backpack - i advise you all to try it one day. A few hours later we went to bed.

SATURDAY - woke up at the hideous hour of 7am by a vengeful Meghan who'd sensibly gone to bed quite a bit before Katy and myself and trotted over to Notre Dame de Paris and then on to the Louvre which, as you all should know, one of the biggest Art Museums in the world - housing such cultural treasures as the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. I naturally got left behind right at the outstart as it was very easy to get absorbed in the Egyptian section that we started out in and soon enough I found that myself and a rather tasty young man by the name of Jean (said John) were the only ones left. So we had a pleasant couple of hours wandering around looking at stuff before I had to go and recover my bag at 12. Met up with Katy and Patricia (brazilian exchange student at our school) and Guillaume (Belgian. Name is said gey-like key, ome as in home) and Jessica (belgian also who was in our room and followed me and katy like a SHADOW we could NOT GET RID OF HER!) Said bye to Jean who was gonna go find the others he hung out with normally and headed back to the hostel ourselves by way of the River Seine.

Dropped off some stuff at the hostel and then, because we had the entire afternoon free, went over to the Eiffel Tower again by way of the Metro (which I soon formed an addiction to) with the intention of CLIMBING it. Climbed it to the second storey cos that's as far as you can walk and we couldn't be bothered paying more to go up farther in order to see nothing because of all the foggyness. I could see that on a clear day you'd have a BRILLIANT view of Paris but unfortunately, there was too much fog and we couldn't see all that much. Came back on down and took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe which is rather massive but didn't have the time to climb it as we then had to go back to the hostel to meet up with everyone in order to go to a play together.

Caught the Metro (again) and saw the play which was quite funny in it's frenchy way and when I understood, I laughed as much as the next person. After that we walked to the most shockingly bad restaurant EVER (think Valentines but worse) by the name of "Flunch". Shudder. After that repulsive moment, we walked up to Le Sacre Coeur which is a massive church on Montmatre which is a hill. I may have botched up how I said this but I don't really care - y'all get the idea - Big church on Hill. We didn't go in, just looked up at it and carried on down the hill to the metro. Once back at the Hostel, Katy and I polished off our beer and talked to the people in the street from our window and then Guillaume declared that he'd quite like something to drink and that if we didn't go right now, the store would be closed and he'd have nothing at all. So we went and smuggled some more alcohol into the "dry-zone" of the Hostel and headed up to the 4th floor where there was QUITE the party atmosphere. Once again, Maghan did the sensible thing and went off to bed at about 1am. Katy and I joined her at 3.30.

SUNDAY; Once again woken by Meghan at 7am. Packed up our bags and stumbled out into the sunshine to drag all the luggage over to the bus. Drove through the Latin Quarter and ended up in GodKnowsWhere. Looked at some big buildings, kicked Guillaume a bit, got kicked in return (both of us feeling a little jaded after last night) and ended up at Le Mus�e d'Orsay which houses art done by people such as Monet and Van Gogh in an old railway station that they restored in order to use it as an art gallery/museum.
Looked around for a few hours and then Katy, Patricia, Guillaume, Jessica and a girl called Sophie (Belgian who likes Jean also - dammit) caught a metro or something and then we did somehting else and ended up back at the Eiffel Tower but it was raining but we didn't care so we walked to oh shit, i can't remember, I'll finish this off tomorrow. ANYWHO, it was fun save for the stomache pains that I had all of Sunday and on into monday and tuesday. Guillaume also had this problem. How strange that he and I had both been drinking the same thing on the Saturday night...