Contiki Chronicles, Day 2: Paris? More like ParISN'T!

Also known as the post with the most irrelevant title.

So, the next day was one of our free days in Paris. Having just charged up my camera batteries, I was ready for taking photos the moment we got off the bus along the Champs-Élysées. We were meant to be dropped of at the Arc de Triomphe, but the combination of strict driving rules and traffic meant that we couldn't actually drive all the way up there. So naturally the first thing I do is walk all the way up the hill to the Arc.

The Arc de Triomphe was originally commissioned to be built by Napoleon himself in 1806, although he never actually got to see it built, because he died a good fifteen years before it was finished, and inaugurated in 1836. Yes, that's right, it took THIRTY YEARS to build, from start to finish. And honestly, if you look at it, that's not all that surprising:

Yeah. It's pretty damn big. The big sets of words engraved in the sides of the monument are names of places where Napoleon won battles, while the smaller words are the names of his generals. The names that are underlined indicate they died in battle. The two carvings to the left and the right of the front, I believe represent Napoleon leaving and coming back from war.

It also happens to house the French tomb of the unknown soldier:

Anyway, that thing is like, monstrously huge. You can pay something like six euros to climb up to the top, and this is what you see:

Have I mentioned that Paris is like, super-huge? In those pictures you can see a couple of landmarks in Paris, most notably the Eiffel Tower, but also the Sacré Coeur ("Sacred Heart") Basilica all the way on the distance of that last photo. There's also the Champs-Élysées, which, after walking back down to the ground floor, I set off down.

Oh, but one other thing I found kinda cool - inside the Arc, they have a screen showing a birds-eye video feed of the tomb of the unknown soldier below:

Not particularly noteworthy, I just thought I'd show you guys.

Anyway, back to the Champs-Élysées. Si tu peux le parler allez tombez la chemise. 

Um.. Yeah. That. Every time I hear the name of the street, I can't help but think of that song.

Anyway (again), the Champs-Élysées is easily one of the most expensive areas of real estate in the world. It's also one of the busiest shopping streets in the world Pretty much all of the street down the end of the Arc is either shopping or overly priced restaurants. And it is PACKED, especially in summer. The funny thing is, though, that almost every store on the street operates at a huge loss. The reason for this being simply that the cost of renting a building is so ridiculously high that it's almost impossible to break even, let alone turn a profit. And yet they keep on being rented out, if only for the sheer bragging rights of saying you have a store on the Champs-Élysées. A lot of big name chains have stores on that street: Chanel, Bulgari, H&M, McDonald's...

It's a long street.

They also use it for military parades. Apparently, there's a very correct way to parade down the Champs-Élysées, and there's a very wrong way. When Hitler invaded in WWII, he paraded up the Champs-Élysées in the wrong direction, he went up the street, towards the Arc de Triomphe. When Paris was retaken, the joint American and French forces celebrated their victory by parading down the street, away from the Arc, and towards Place de la Concorde, where I was now heading.

The Place de la Concorde is a big plaza or something in the middle of Paris. It stands at the the heart of a giant cross, with the Champs-Élysées stretching out to the East, the Tuileries Gardens (and by extension, the Louvre) off to the West, the building which houses the French National Assembly all the way to the South, on the other side of the Seine and across the Pont de la Concorde, and to the North is L'église de la Madeleine, which is basically a big-ass church. At the centre of the cross, and in the centre of the Plaza is an Egyptian obelisk, the Luxor Obelisk. It stands 23 metres tall, and has a gold-leafed pyramidion resting on top. There are also some fountains. I got some photos:

Anyway, I didn't really stop to look, I just kept on walking straight through, down through the Gardens.  The Gardens, by the way, like a lot of things in Paris, are HUGE.

You can barely see the end of them in that photo, and they're fairly wide as well. So at length, I eventually came to the far end of the Gardens, to the most famous art museum in the world: The Louvre. 

Now, I'm going to tell you something now: The Louvre is big. There's almost no way one person would be able to see everything in it in a day, and even if you did, you wouldn't be able to take in and fully appreciate the artwork surrounding you. Before the reign of Louis XIV, the entire place was the French Royal Palace, and the Tuileries Gardens were the Royal Gardens. At some point, it was converted into a huge museum and it still holds an incredible amount of important artworks, most notable da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Of course, the entire place is a massive tourist destination, and despite the fact that there are at least three, possible even four separate entrances, waiting time for tickets can be upwards of a couple of hours. I didn't go inside, but instead just took photos:

After loitering around there for a while (and grabbing some lunch), I met up with some other guys from the tour, and we set off for our last tourist destination for that day, the Notre Dame Cathedral.

That's it there. The Notre Dame Cathedral was completed in 1345, and is probably one of the most well-known churches in the world. It's a prime example of Gothic architecture, and pioneered a couple of architectural tricks, such as the "flying buttresses", or arched exterior supports, which became necessary when the sheer size of the building caused it to crack under stress. Also, entry is free, meaning that there is more or less always a steady stream of people going in one door, and another stream coming out the other door. That said, though, it's not actually all the interesting inside. There are a lot of alcoves with displays and memorials towards something or other, and a lot of candles and places to donate to get a candle, but that's about it. Oh, and the windows are kinda pretty.

After we looked around in there, we headed back to the pick-up point for the bus and went back to the campsite.

*phew* That took a bit of writing... and there's almost as much again tomorrow. Tune in again for day 3: Working Title!

The Contiki Chronicles: Day one: The White Cliffs of Dover (and also Paris, I guess).

So let's get this thing started.

Day one - London to Paris.

All Contiki Tours leaving from London leave from the same place - the Royal National Hotel (near Russell Square Station, if that's any help). The company has it's own basement-thing there, and I think you get a free night's accommodation there when you book a tour. The reason for this is fairly simple - they hold a meeting the night before so you know what's going on and you can meet the other people on the tour.

Also, the tour leaves at six am.

So on this particular day, I roll out of bed on receiving my wake-up call in the hotel, have a quick shower, make sure my stuff is packed and head downstairs to where everyone else is gathered to make sure none of the baggage is overweight. Eventually, all the baggage comes through (there were three tours leaving on this particular morning), and we all get on the bus, which after a time, eventually sets off. The crew for the tour then introduce themselves. We have Luca, the tour manager, Dom, the cook, and Andras the tour driver. Yay.

Anyway, that is when we arrive at the port of Dover to take the ferry over to Calais. That was also about the time I took these photos:

Well isn't that pretty.

We eventually disembarked at Calais, where we faced several more hours of driving before finally arriving in Paris.

Now, Paris is a really interesting city, with a lot of history behind it. It was originally settled by the Parisii tribe along the river Seine all the way back as far as 250 BC. Eventually it was conquered by the Romans - like so much of everything else in Europe - in 52 BC. After that, the city grew and grew, and with the collapse of the Roman Empire, eventually ended up being the capital of France. I'm still not exactly sure how that happened, but whatever.

It also has a curious history of never having been conquered (up to a certain point). When Attila the Hun tried to lay siege to the city, he was apparently stopped by Saint Genevieve who told everyone is Paris to pray, and this reportedly sent Attila to go and attack Orleans instead. To this day, Saint Genevieve is the patron saint of Paris. Furthermore, when the Vikings tried invading during the reign of Charles the Simple, he reportedly sent them away by giving them all his money the first time, something else which I've forgotten the next time they came back, and then when they came back the third time, he finally ended up giving them an area in the North of France - called Normandy to this day.

I say up to a certain point, because a whole lot later, after the reign of Napoleon, and into the 20th century, the Nazi's came along and conquered Paris. Shame, that.

Here are some pictures of Paris that I took:

There'd be more, but at that point my camera batteries ran out, so that was it for that day. That night I drank a bottle of cheap-ish Rosé before going to bed. Good times.

Tomorrow is Day 2, I guess. I might actually post that one before midnight.

The Contiki Chronicles!

So, as some of you may have known, I've just gotten back from a 32-day Contiki tour around Europe. And I also promised that I'd try to update this thing daily (like that's gonna actually happen). Which is why I am introducing to you.. The Contiki Chronicles! That is to say, a day-by-day record of the tour, based off my recollection of events and the 1000+ photos I took.

So get ready. Tomorrow is day one: The White Cliffs of Dover (and also Paris, I guess).

The glorious return.

I'm back, apparently.

Which means that I'll be posting again, I guess. As soon as I'm done catching up on sleep, and put all of my photos around the place.

Yay.

Tired now. Sleep soon. Post later.

Holiday Awareness Post

Hi everyone!

Hm. It seems kind of odd to start out a post like that. I think I normally begin all my posts with "So,"

Meh. Let's be different this time.

Anyway (once again resisting the urge to type "So" there), I wanted to make this post to let you, my loyal reader(s), - who knows, there might be more than one of you - know that I will be out and about for a month starting 10th July. It turns out that I have a Contiki Tour around Europe booked, so I very highly doubt there will be many posts during that time.

Hell, I probably could have not said anything, and nobody would have noticed if I didn't update for a month. It's not like I update this thing daily or anything...



SPEAKING OF WHICH, in an attempt to gain some control over my life outside of which video games I decide to play, starting when I get back, I will try to update this thing daily! Whoo!

Some of you may think that this would produce a lack of quality and/or size of posts, but never fear! I can totally take a whole bunch of photos on my trip and waste a week just putting all those things up. Hopefully everyone will have forgotten this post a month and a week from now, so after that, it doesn't even matter! Everybody wins!

Anyways, that's it from me for now. Bye!

The post after about a month of procrastinating

So, I figure if I have a blog, it should probably get updated every once in a while, shouldn't it? From what I gather, that's all blogs are good for. It's not like I'm using this for anything else.

So yeah. I logged back in to blogger for this first time in over a month, and the very first thing I see is this:

Yeah. 666 page views, bitch.

Also, I don't remember having 16 followers. Seriously, when the hell did that happen? Whatever. That just means that I'm getting, on average, two thirds of a follower per post. Yay.

So now that that's out of the way, I guess I should maybe say some stuff or something. Possibly.

So... what's happened in the past month or two? I'll start with the only big thing I can actually remember: Tenacious D.

Live.

It was awesome. We watched The Pick of Destiny and took some shots before heading out, and I only got told after one particular shot that it apparently had some cannabis in it, and would have mildly hallucinogenic properties. I didn't feel anything, although that might be more to do with the fact that i suck at taking shots and half of it went down my face.

We then bought burritos on the way to the tube station(So good!!), got on the train, and headed off. When we got to the venue, the O2 Academy in Brixton, there was a pretty big line. As in, the line headed off one way around the block, and we were told to join the end of the line in  the other direction around the block. Yeah. It was a long line. We decided to buy some more drinks for the line, and started playing whiskey slaps to pass the time.


That said, they processed us through fairly quickly, and we ended up fifteen minutes later hastily finishing our cans of cider and entering the building - we somehow managed to be fairly close to the stage. And then, the awesomeness began.

...Well, I'd like to be able to say that but in reality, some random opening band came on about an hour after the time on the ticket, and it was an hour after THAT when Jack Black and KG got on stage. I think my life might have been completed four separate times that night.

Now, there was something else which I swear was totally worth talking about. I've forgotten it now, though, which makes me doubt that it actually was worth talking about. Oh well. I'll remember it about thirty seconds after hitting publish, and then I'll forget about two minutes after that, and it will be lost forever.

FOREVER!

And with that, I'm off. See you guys... whenever, I guess. I really wouldn't be expecting any posts from me any time too soon.

Maybe I should do some guest posts...

Legit Post #4, maybe.

Well, I've been moderately neglecting this blog kinda recently, so I'm here to stage a triumphant return and save the day with a completely unplanned, impromptu blog post.

YAY!

Anyway, my last blog post (and I mean the one before that last one) was the one about a bunch of issues which had been pissing me off a bit. The only reason I mention it is because it got quite a few views (for my blog, anyway), probably because a) It's about something which actually matters and b) I actually posted the link to it in more than one place. Either way, the only reason I mention that is so I can say that the greedy, publicity-hungry side of me wants you all to share that post as much as possible, while the slightly pessimistic side of me realises that there's only a very small group of people who would find the rest of the blog interesting at all, and doesn't want a bunch of people coming in expecting the whole blog to be deep and meaningful. The rational side of me sat the other two sides down for a chat and came up with the compromise that you guys should all leave a bunch of comments, okay? Any and all feedback is appreciated.

So now that the obligatory blog promotion is out of the way, it's time to move on to the reason I wrote this post: because I hoped I would have thought of something worth writing about by the time I got this far in. Evidently I didn't, and nothing particularly worth noting has happened to me lately, so I'm kinda stuck on things to say. Which means I get too fall back on my old standby: Typing "um" and lots of ellipses until I think of something.

Unfortunately, you don't get the pleasure of me doing that because I've already thought of something, and I just wanted to finish that last paragraph.

I've recently taken a break from some things which have been taking up a lot of my time, and, well. I dunno. It feels... weird. On one hand, I all of a sudden have heaps of free time, which is always good, but on the other hand, I just don't have anything to fill that free time with, and also there's the fact that I might be suffering from withdrawal. On second thoughts, those last two might actually be related. Anyway, this is most of the reason why I'm writing this, because I'm ridiculously bored and just can't be bothered being "constructive" or "productive".

So what else is there to talk about? I actually took an hour - half hour break in the middle of that last paragraph, so I'm kinda struggling for things to say now. I could just hit the post button now, but y'know what? NO.

On second thoughts, YES.