(For the record, I don’t have any pictures to accompany this post, so I’m just putting up random pictures of Paris. Enjoy!!) If you followed my trip from my first tour of Europe, you might recall that I met people here and there but it was usually for a day or so and then we’d go our separate ways. Ah, the traveling life. In Argentina, however, I was in the same place (mas o menos) for two months and I was able to make a bunch of friends. One of those friends was a guy named Joe who was in my TEFL class in Buenos Aires. His partner is a student in Paris now, so he has been living there for several weeks. Yesterday was my last day in Paris, so I met up with Joe to catch up and see what he’s learned about Paris in the past few months.
After getting some wires crossed and a delay caused by the cyclone (or whatever the Hell it was) that hit France like a German tank division (sorry, is that in bad taste?), Joe and I met at the Café de Flor on Boulevard Saint Germain. It is next door to Les Deux Magots, but is supposed to be better and less touristy that its better-known neighbor. I had some coffee and some bread, which in France is always good, and we talked for a while. The wind died down and the rain stopped, so we headed out of the café and walked down the Boulevard towards the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. It was a long walk and we decided that since twilight was coming, it was time to grab a beer.
I don’t know the name of the place we went to. I know it was on a side street in the Latin Quarter and it had lots of Irish Beers, but I didn’t hear anybody inside who sounded Irish. I also don’t know if the place had a juke box or if the music was run by the people at the bar or if it is haunted by a sadistic DJ but whoever was in charge of the hit parade decided to play about half of the Grease soundtrack while we were there. This was followed by half of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. Now, I’m used to traveling overseas and seeing things hit in other countries a few months after they hit in the United States. Thirty-three years, though, seems a little ridiculous. Nevertheless, Kilkenny’s and John Travolta turned out to be a pretty good combination and a good time was had by all. (And in case you were wondering, no it wasn’t Disco night. John Travolta was eventually followed by the Black Eyed Peas , Madonna and a pinch of Michael Jackson. Okay, I guess the Michael Jackson stuff could fall into the disco category, but I think it was just a sadist with a five-Euro note.)
After the Travoltafest, we went out and got some pizza. I realized that it was the first pizza that I had ever had in France. I wanted to test it out because I’m heading south and will be in Italy in a few days and I wanted non-Italian pizza to be fresh in my mind when I get there. We go a trois jambon (three ham) pizza and a pepperoni pizza. To my dismay, the trois jambon pizza was the better pizza and that’s a disappointment that I’m going to have to carry with me for the rest of my life. Perhaps, though, after spending three weeks in the middle east, there was no way I wasn’t going to love a ton of pork products piled onto a pizza.
That was it. After pizza, I returned to my hotel and started to pack for Marseille. (I’m currently on the train to Marseille.) Thanks to Joe for hanging out with me in Paris and hopefully I’ll run into some more friends from Buenos Aires during my travels.
This trip, I am sort of playing by ear. I think I have the first three weeks semi-planned (Paris – Marseille – Milan – Pisa – Rome), but I’m still debating about what to do the following six weeks. I can head south to Sicily, west to Spain or east to Greece. If you have any suggestions, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail.
Until Marseille . . .
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