Paris - An Excessive City

Paris is already known as the City of Romance and the City of Light, but in light of my 9 days there, I really think it is more like The City of Excess.

For starters, who wouldn't come to like a city where the cheese section in the Supermarket is the same size as the wine section? Which of course led to excessive amounts of both being consumed... as well as crepes, Milka chocolate and decent espressos. Don't worry, I did eat some fruit and veges at some point. Our love of the wine section was one of economic necessity though, I hasten to add. For although Paris seems to ooze an aura of excessiveness, the prices of alcohol in all the pubs and bars don't really encourage hedonism, as 9 euro for a pint of beer is a bit much. Fortunately, for some reason or another I never actually had to buy a drink in the Iguana Bar, a bar in Bastille which had been made over to be the 42 Below bar in Paris. A combination of drunk and foolish New Zealanders buying me cocktails and a barman who was besotted with me(!) gave way to free 42 Below. Which, on the Wednesday, led to excessively bad behaviour on my part. Woops.

The bar of Excess - Iguana Bar, Bastille

For all this gluttony and overindulgence in the food and drink department, Paris also has an excessive amount of sights to see... although I admit I wasn't rushing around like a mad tourist, I still have yet to see everything I wanted to in Paris. I didn't make it in to the Louvre, I didn't go up the Arc Du Triomphe and I didn't get to any of the famous cemetaries there (Marcel Marceu will wait for me I'm sure) but what I did see was a lot of amazing views, and not just from the Eiffel Tower, but also from the Sacre Couer and the tops of various buildings we visited - hell, even our apartment had a view of the Tower. And everywhere is beautiful, even the shabby red light district had its charm. And no rubbish on the ground! London, take note!

Highlights of the trip? The Pompidou Centre, starting with the building itself and going all the way through with amazing contemporary art;

The Pompidou Centre - all the inside bits are outside the building! Amazing!

going up the Eiffel Tower;Doing my best to pose on the windswept 2nd platform of the Eiffel Tower

NZ Tourism's amazing giant Rugby Ball that they somehow got away with rigging up right on the Champs Du Mars for the world to see - inside was this amazing multimedia experience (with an excessive 6 cameras projecting all the way around the ball)

Manaia at le grand Rugby Ball - Go NZ go!

... and of course seeing the planning done with Manaia come to fruition with them performing outside the ball daily for 2 weeks. The free accommodation with them helped too...

The problem with Paris being so excessive, however, is that it has been one of those holidays that you have to recover from - catching up on sleep being the main. But it is all work and study until January from now, and my god I'm behind. So luckily I created some excessive memories.