France - Back in Paris again (once wasn't enough)...

FUCK!!! Fuck fuck fuck fuckity fuckfuck!! damn my brain, damn my memory, damn my jet-powered rocket pants... which i don't have and are yet to be invented! it's Monday. i just hopped off the train at Gare du l'Est and started hiking off to go sight-seeing when i remembered that tomorrow i'd planned on going to the Louvre. but tomorrow's a Tuesday. the motherfucking Louvre's closed on a fucking Tuesday!

FUCK!

i stopped in the first cafe i saw and payed a ruinously high price for a coffee so i could use their wifi. the lack of free wifi in Interlaken meant that i hadn't actually worked out where my hostel was, so i needed to find it quick. half an hour later i'm there and wait for some stroppy French bitch to finish arguing with the staff so that i can get checked in, dump my bag and run. it's 4:30PM before i get there, having sprinted to the nearest Metro station and guessed right the direction to go. fortunately the Lourve is on the same line, and thank fuck for that.

come 6PM i'm much calmer. i've seen the Mona Lisa and the Venus di Milo, i've seen the Code of Hammurabi and more French paintings and sculture than i care to remember, including a room full of colossal Rubens works, and spent the rest of the time aimlessly wandering looking at whatever i can see, which is a lot. i could head back to the hostel again by Metro... but it's a pleasant evening and i've spent most of the day on the train from Interlaken to Basel, then on to Paris Est so i could use the exercise and i plod up to the Opera house, then meander my way back, stopping at a greasy kebab joint which happened to have an open wifi connection nearby to feed for the first time today, check my email and sort out my bus route and realise that i have 9 days unaccounted for at the end of the trip before i head off the the south of Italy. hmm... i'll have to find something interesting to fill those with.

did i mention that yesterday i went Canyoning? i don't think so. for a full description of what it involves, check the excellent Wikipedia page. for the lazy, you start at the top of a canyon and get to the bottom or end of it, jumping from rock to rock, wading through glacier-melt and jumping off or sliding down waterfalls. i was exhausted at the end of it, once i'd had a few of the provided beers and had a cheese-and-salami sandwich and the adrenaline had worn off. it's been safe-ified, and there are a pair of experienced guides who take you through, but from the 50 metre abseil at the top to the zip-line at the bottom it has to be one of the funnest things i've ever done - just imagine doing a flip off a 6 metre jump into freezing snow-melt next to a waterfall in the Swiss Alps. it's unbelieveable... now i just need to find 380 Franks so that ii can pay someone to let me jump out of a helicopter.

meanwhile, i'm back in Paris again and this is something which brings me no small joy - a pastry shop on every street corner, monuments you can navigate by and attractive women who say "oui" (or more usually in the case of one hairy Australian: "non"). the only sadness is that it means that i'm no longer in Interlaken. Jason and i parted company early this morning after having a lovely dinner out at the Thai place near the Funny Farm, but he's on facebook, so we can catch up whenever we want. we wound up sitting next to the guy who runs the Hang Gliding business in Interlaken, who asked how long we'd been travelling together.

mate! we only met a couple of days ago in the hostel!
"Really? You guys seem like best mates!"

i guess it was a bit like that. still, he's in London by now and i'm chilling out in the St Christophers alongside the north-east end of the Seine. i got the Louvre in today, so i have tomorrow to entertain myself. i'll probably do one of the free NewEurope tours - it leaves from the hostel and promises 3-4 hours of entertainment. it's lovely being back in Paris. i can walk around this city for hours on end and be happy, stopping occasionally for a coffee or a Tartelette Citron. it's going to be a great day tomorrow - i can feel it, then it's on the bus to Bruges for me and on to phase 2 of my trip. i'm still looking forward to heading home, but there's no urgency in it. i've hit my stride and got my second wind. i'm powering on in the best way and laughing all the way. part of the joy of being back in Paris is that i don't have that feeling of being lost in an unfamiliar place. i still have my map from the last time, but my feet seem to know more or less where to go and there's no concern about getting horrendously lost. it's a great feeling and i'm grooving it, a lot. i'd head back out into it tonight, but i'm opting for a quiet, and cheap one lying in my bunk with my Eee getting a few things sorted out online. tomorrow's another day however, and i'm sure there's plenty of adventures to be had then...