laughed so much my belly hurt
Gracing the streets of Montmartre, Paris by night with our backpacks and limited Euros we took a gamble and settled into a rickety budget hotel. With the fabulous view of four brick walls from our window and a brooding hotel owner with a limp it felt a bit like a bizarre movie. After checking out the next day the raw Paris adventure began with warm pastries from a traditional bakery in the amazing cobbled streets and then on to the Erotic Museum.
The museum was inexpensive and consisted of floors and floors of amusing and in some cases frightening sex aids, sexual photography, paintings, and sculptures. I fell in love with a piece on the stairway: a leg adorned with stockings, suspenders and killer high-heels climbing out of a window. It was the most classy thing in the joint and we left the museum with a taste of Paris’ ‘ooh la la’.
Taking in Paris’ character we walked west across town for the rest of the day and accidentally stumbled across the Arc de Triomphe. Did the touristy pictures and took the underpass under the crazily hectic roundabout (that’s one thing I did notice about Paris, there are lots of nice cars but they’re all dented because of the fast, unruly driving and the unbelievably tiny parking spaces people will squeeze into). The Arc was rather more delicate than I had expected and was beautiful from underneath.
After nearly losing the will too live through being turned down from what seemed like 1000 busy hotels we found a fantastic, hotel near the Arc with sights of Paris’ beautiful white stone buildings.
That night was one I will never forget. Because of our tight budget we shopped at a supermarket for our meal and spread cheese into baguettes with our fingers back at the hotel room and thanks to the life saving technique (well, social life saving), of pushing the cork in to the bottle in the absence of a cork screw we were able to enjoy quality French wine from our toothbrush holders. Classy. Following the consumption of France’s fine, fine produce we made our way to the Eiffel tower, something that is on everyone’s ‘to see’ list. I was so excited sitting under the light of the famous, daring structure finding it hard to believe I was actually there and to heighten my excitement it suddenly lit up with tiny blue lights and you could hear everyone around gasping. It was magical and very romantic.
Even on our tight – no luxuries budget Paris managed to force its outstanding elegance with edge and fascinating history onto us and even just being in Paris made me feel like I was in all my favourite black and white movies. The highlight of the trip was a really cheap boat tour down the seine with music and commentary by night. I still get excited remembering the glistening water even if it did smell of cabbage.
We saw a lot of raw non-tourist focused Paris which I am really glad we did but we managed to fit in café culture and I fulfilled my ambition of sitting on the banks of the seine and doing a sketch. I also have so many memories of laughing so hard my stomach hurt and the cheesy velvet picture in the Hotel that my boyfriend and I wanted to take home. Paris lives up to every expectation and I want to go back one day when I have more money to see how different the experience would be.
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