ok, let’s see
we left off with…the failure to get to Ireland

Thursday
Ah yes, slept in, again. Headed over to St. Paul’s Cathedral, and were running all kinds of late, again. Man, what honest to god bums we were. We found this nifty little make your own sandwich shop for food and scarfed it down while walking to the Cathedral. I got stopped by some Italian tourists asking me if I knew where some place was. I apologized profusely, because I had no freaking clue. Mat had wandered off some place, so I couldn’t redirect to someone who actually lived on the same continent they were inquiring after.
We managed to get in after the guided tours, so we wandered around ourselves. The choir was in for most of our visit, which absolutely fit. St. Paul’s was simply fantastic. We climbed up to the whispering chamber, and mucked about up there for a bit and had to leave as they were closing down the upper chambers, so we headed down to the catacombs/cafe.

Finally had a cup of English Breakfast while in England, and dear god, I missed my tea. Also tried some crazy elderflower extract drink, not my thing, and CHEESECAKE, numnums.

Afterwards we headed out and wandered around a bit. No other tourist attractions were really open, so we did the wander down the street, this place looks interesting, pop in, leave thing. Sometimes I wish I wasn’t so frugal, I’d have a lot of awesome smelling things.

We made our way over to Leicester Square, I once again was feeling ill, so we (Mat) tracked down some mint chocolate chip ice cream and we had “ribs” at Garfunkel’s. I say “ribs” because they were far from ribs, but still, obviously, meat. Afterwards we saw Cars in a gigantic sprawling theatre with no stadium seating, o_O. It was a cute movie :) Headed home, and I developed a lovely fever, and slept curled up in the comforter (it wasn’t cool that night).

Friday
Oh joy of joys, I contracted my Mysterious Throat Illness in which my tonsils/adenoids swell up so much I can’t swallow! I’m afraid of the prospect of actually taking the antibiotics I had the foresight to bring because what if I run out while I’m still here, and it isn’t gone? Friday was to be dinner with Mat’s parents and laundry. We got a slow start because I wasn’t moving all that fast, and didn’t get to their house until later.

I called my parents from Wimbledon tube station at about 13:30, 7:30, their time, and lamented to Mom. She told me, in her loving motherly way, that I sounded like shit and to take the meds. They’d last for 10 days, and by that time I’d be home. Dad confirmed her stance. Got to Mat’s parents’ house, had some fritata, took the antibiotics, apologized for feeling ill, sorted the laundry and proceeded up to Mat’s office to sleep for about 3 hours while he tried to fix his laptop’s optical drive. Great impression, ey? Hi, I’m your son’s girlfriend, let me do my laundry and sleep in your house.

Afterwards had dinner with them, and ate so freaking little because I couldn’t swallow. :( I felt so rude, the food was great, but the hell if I could swallow it. In any case, bummed around their house watching TV (British TV is…different, it’s extremely hard to explain how but it is. More…cheerful, it seems). We had to leave some of our clothes there as they weren’t dry yet and headed back to the hotel for the night.

Saturday!
omg, still sick. Throat is killing me, so I pop the Advil and antibiotic, take about an hour to manage a piece of freaking toast and a hard boiled egg from the hotel breakfast. Shower and head back to Mat’s parents’ place (that’s actually getting easier to type) to get our laundry. We’re running late because I got up, ate, showered and needed a freaking nap. Slept until 11 or so, and then headed over. We grabbed our laundry, Mat took care of some family stuffs, and we headed back out. (Do you have any concept of how much it sucks to walk 20 minutes with a week’s worth of laundry slung over your back when you’re sick? I’m pretty sure we only did this Friday, but let me clarify….it sucks, don’t do it, take a freaking cab or your doting boyfriend will be sick of becoming your pack mule.)

Now, there was an ars meet that we had set up, which we were now three hours late for, going on in the other freaking side of London. >_<. Meet thread here. We managed to meet Firesuite and TheAdmiral on our way to the place as they were leaving it to go see The Blue Man Group, fortunately, we managed to meet up with them again in Covent Garden. Kobin, PeterB, Hari, mat and I went to the wagamama’s there after we wander around looking for a bar. I was far from “bar” mood, I wanted a stinking nap and some food.

I’ll spare you details of PeterB, and other lewd things, but needless to say there was a half-naked street performer (pics in thread), and PeterB’s an interesting character.

Sunday
Leave for Paris, zomg. I’m still not feeling better, fever’s gone, but throat is still fantastically sore. Head to Waterloo for the Eurostar after having another slow start because it takes me hours to eat anything of any real substance. My bag got searched on the way in O_o. Eh, it was only one of our freaking 5, so that’s not that bad. I plopped myself down and waiting for boarding time, Mat wandered about getting me xboxstronglol pain meds because my throat was still miserable and a paper, because he’s male. We finally boarded and sat down in our loverly seats for the ride to Paris. I have to say, rail is the fucking way to travel, hands down. You get to get up and wander around, that alone pwns, but there’s no turbulence, nothing. We watched from the dining car until we head under the water. I sat to a rather nice French girl, thank goodness she spoke English :p. After a stop, the girl left, and mat got to sit next to me for the remainder of the trip.

We got to Gare Du Nord and realized that we only had a vague recollection of how to get to our hotel, and we were starving. There was no freaking wireless in the station and I wandered around the entire upper floor to find an ATM and there was one about 3 freaking feet from where we camped our bags. For the record! My hunch on how to get to place was accurate.

We flagged a taxi, pointed them to the hotel and “enjoyed” the ride. Seriously, driving in Paris is insane. That’s all I have to say about that experience. Got to the hotel, enjoyed the miscommunication with the cabbie (don’t try and have 2 people explaining something to you in your native tongue, a foreign tongue and not have the native speaker have only half a clue). I read the lovely little notice on the windows on the way over that any bag over 3 was a few euros more, and that’s what that was about, but damned if that didn’t take a lot to communicate.

Got to the hotel, were underwhelmed by the hotel. No wireless signal, nothing, and I swear, someone had been killed there. Rank of mildew, busted window sill, sink falling away from the wall, rust everywhere and the pervading smell of piss from the toilet. We were starving and tired and sick of the place already, so we headed across the street to grab McDonald’s (it really does taste the same) and hopefully find some freaking wireless so I could check my finances and we could find a new hotel (yes, it was that bad, pics coming shortly). Moderate success on the food/wireless front. It was rather obvious that we were not in a good part of the city, but, people were friendly with my horribly mangled French when I ordered.

Went back to the hotel, watched Futurama and slept.

Monday
Slept, bums! Utter bums! To be fair, I still wasn’t feeling great. Got sick of creepy french TV so we went out in search of wireless to find hotels/check finances. We were only successful in the last bit. Tried “ribs”…I’m not sure what we ate, but it sure as shit was not ribs. Had McDonald’s again! I believe this was the night we also got treated to a lovely, noisy, hump session by someone else in the hotel.

Tuesday
Explored our surroundings a bit more, headed back to Gare du Nord for food, found a hotel, booked said hotel, mooched wireless shamelessly from the McDonald’s by buying mat a milkshake ;) Headed back to the original hotel, packed up, left. The front desk dude was….creepy to say the least, and just kept telling us that he couldn’t refund my money. Whatever, for $372 I would pay to leave this place, which, I did. We headed over to our shiny new hotel (I don’t recommend Libertel Saint Martin, I do recommended Escapade Exelmans). We got there and were told there was no reservation in our name o_O! Fortunately, the only room they had open was the exact room we reserved, so ha!

Took pictures of our pretty pretty new place, with our shiny marble bathroom (why the heck were there no shower curtain/doors, washcloths and the toilet was always in a separate room?) and went to bed.

Wednesday
Notre Dame! I was super psyched. I was also super disappointed. Notre Dame was absolutely gorgeous, but it’s had its soul sucked out by all the irreverent tourists. Went through, left, went to a cafe across the street and had a disgustingly French lunch (cheese, wine, kir, and bread). I went back with the newly found change to get the sweet little informational packets they had, and on my way back to the cafe, discovered/re-remembered that there was the FREAKING PIETA there. So, we headed back, of course. Took some pics, and then headed off to the Eiffel tower.

Took a roundabout way to the Eiffel tower, walked most of the way, in fact, because hey, we could see it, and that was more reliable that the Metro was being. Most of the stops to get there were closed, which was annoying to say the least.
Got there, and it started to rain, glorious. The drizzle let up and we got to the first tier, took tons of pictures, acted like your consummate tourist and headed back down.

We got lost on our way back to the Metro, and ran into another English speaking couple, which was humorous because Mat approached them in French. “No, sorry, we don’t speak French.” It was hilarious, because it took us both a second to process that, “hey! That was English! I’m fluent in that!” I swear, they were American too. The navigated us back to the Metro, and we finally got back to our hotel before the trains stopped running.

Thursday
Instead of me feeling like utter crap, it was Mat’s turn to get fantastically ill for no discernible cause. We got most of the way to the Louvre, and decided it’d be best to head back. Bummed around the hotel for the remainder of the day.

Friday
Ars meet and the Louvre, AHOY! Got up early-ish, dashed off to the Louvre, and stopped at a charming little bistro on the way for breakfast. Finally got into the Louvre, after wandering around the courtyards for a bit. Saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus di Milo and a bunch of other random art stuffs. The Mona Lisa was every bit as underwhelming in person as it is in print. I’m sorry, I respect it for its groundbreaking respects in painting, but as an actual piece, there’s no emotional connection, it’s just some chick. The Louvre was also underwhelming, too many tourists, not enough courtesy :\. Stopped at the gift shop and then headed off to the ars meet.

The place where the ars meet was supposed to be was closed, once we finally found it. Got in contact with one of the guys that was supposed to meet us there, a native Parisian, who directed us to a place across the street. OMFG the best food since…I don’t know when. It was amazing. Sat, ate, talked, and drank. Wonderful.

Reboot, the guy we met, suggested other places we could go. He even offered to take us to one of them. I have to say thank you to this man again, he showed us the best parts of Paris on my visit; totally made the trip worthwhile. He took us to a famous cemetery, that I freaking loved, where people from Proust to Jim Morrison were buried. I have so many freaking pictures, it was awesome.

Afterwards, he directed us to a few other places we could try, so we headed to a park somewhat on the way to the Arc de Triomphe. We mucked about the park and headed out to find food. Had dinner in a nice little cafe of the beaten path…I ate like a freaking pig in Paris, I have to tell you. Profiteroles, creme brulee, creme de caramel, roast chicken, penne in saffron sauce, jesus the food was good. They also have a huge thing for french fries. I don’t get it. Also, if you ever have the occasion, go to this awesome cafe just outside of Gare du Nord, I believe it’s just called Cafe Gare du Nord, but the service, the food, the atmosphere…it rocks, I miss that place.

Eventually, we found our way to the Arc de Triomphe, took some lovely pictures, wondered at all the crazy bicyclists, bought some souvenirs for the awesome people at home, and headed back.

Saturday
Time to leave. Packed up, headed back to Gare du Nord for once last meal at the cafe (”Heading back home?” “Yeah, sad to say.” “Well, have a safe trip.” I told you these people rocked), and then off to the Eurostar. Took a nap sitting across from mat until a crazy, smelly (according to mat) British family boarded, and claimed their seats (and his) as their own.

Again, traveling by rail pwns. Slept/read/wrote all the way back. Got back to London and checked the status of my flight. What with the whole terrorist thing going on and all, it was still up in the air if I’d even be able to leave. I was told “probably” and to check again tomorrow. Yay.
I have to say, it was a relief to get back into London. The only time in my entire life I was ever homesick was in Paris. The language barrier really isolates you, even if you get nothing but the nicest people to interact with.

Headed back to the Troy Hotel (this hotel gets a solid “meh” from me), checked in, were bums again, and then headed back to the Gourmet Burger Kitchen so I could actually enjoy and remember it this time. Thank god I was finally healthy. Stopped at a Tesco’s on the way back and stocked up on last minute “I love London” food, proceeded to stuff our faces with bad-for-you-food and watch TV.

Sunday
Headed over to Mat’s parents’ place because they were also leaving from Heathrow that same day to go to Italy, so we got a ride. Rode to Heathrow, got mat past security sneakily >_> <_< “What’s your flight?” “Chicago.” “OK” and waited around for a bit until I had to go through security. It was thunder storming fantastically, and I got patted down twice, WOOHOO. Our flight crew was late, and security stunk, and oh, yeah, the freaking terminal leaked o_O. That gives you a boost of confidence.

Headed home, and note: I don’t fly well, apparently, on any trip over 4 hours in length.

Be grateful, I’ve spared you all the mushy details of Mat and I for the most part :p
Honestly, Paris was nice to visit, and I’d like to go back to see the catacombs, but….never could live there. It just didn’t ever click. London on the other hand…I miss. I freaking loved London. Simply awesome.

And I’m freaking starving and the Simpsons are on, so BAIS