Sitting on the Eurostar listening to Counting Crows ”Colourblind.’ a great song to finish a fast trip to Paris. Whats more, Liz just put a packet of M&M’s on my lap. Music has an interesting place in my life. It has become a refuge from stress, a place to explore my creativity, a way to worship my God and a lucky packet of memories that are associated with the songs I hear from time to time. Music definitily has a direct channel to my heart!

Anyway, enough about that, Paris is fantastic! Not the best city I have been to, the people are short and abrupt. One such person was not even keen to help in finding change for the crepes I just bought! If you let that get to you though then you will live a miserable life. Paris did have a few special surprises in store for me.

The first was arriving at the Paris Train Station needing to draw some Euro’s to pay for a taxi to get to our hotel. The ATM’s we were pointed to were vandalised and out of order. On returning to the tourism office to find alternative banks, an annoyed teller directed me to the nearest banks – four blocks away!! Sensing the irritation level rising with Liz I found a Café and sat her down to order hot chocalate and look after our luggage. I then set off to find the banks. At this point I realised the train station was not in the best area as I ran past at least seven sex video stores, and a host of others retailers of the same ilk. Found a bank, drew some money, ran back to the Cafe to find Liz a little more relaxed but without hot chocalate. Turns out the waiter did not understand English!!

The weather was overcast and lousy. This set my expectations very low for decent sights and photo’s. So with my low expectations we set off from our hotel room to make the most of the one evening we had in Paris. The evening turned out to be brilliant.

After fillng ourselves on pizza and pasta we found the Eiffel Tower which was very close to our hotel (in fact we had an amazing veiw of the tower from our room). Taking the lift up the tower did play with my mind a bit. Although you are enclosed in a very secure box, seeing how high you are gives you a weird sensation of falling. I also kept having visions of dropping my camera off the edge! The veiws were awesome in spite of the cloudy surroundings. We even played with the idea of having a glass of champaign at the top but at 10€ a glass we figured it would be a waste. Especially seen as our palates are only resered for the finest lime and soda or cola tonic and lemonade.

Walking around Paris after descending of the 318m Eiffel Tower we stumbled on a small concert in the square across the Seine river. The concert was a display of two Scottish Marching Bands. We were blown away with the skill, syncapation and rythm of the one band in particular. I ended up buying a CD to remember the music. This concert made some great photo as well. This probably ended up being the biggest treat for my on the trip so far. The musicianship was excellent and whenever you have seven drummers on a stage it has to be awesome.

Later we took a boat trip along the Seine to get in as many sights as possible the shortest time space. We lasted on the top of the boat for about 35mins and then carried our frozen eyeballs and fingers down stairs to warm up. The trip was pretty cool. It started at the Eifell Tower and went past the Notre Damme turned around and came back. We saw pretty much everything except the Arc de Triomphe so we decided to walk up there the next morning.

The trip turned out to be great. Maybe a bit to short but we made the most of it and loved it! Looking forward to a week in the UK now!

P.S. I will be home in South Africa this time next week! Time has flown. No regrets at all!