Walking around Paris

The Metro's actually alright. Most of the time.

The dreaded day when Andi spent all the money we walked around central Paris for a bit. She's weird, she likes walking and we just drifted around Notre Dame, the flower market, and then up to Forum Des Halles. We stopped in a McDonald's too, the weather was nice so it was okay, and Sandy slept the whole time so he wasn't too screamy.

So to start the day I had to get the Metro to Cité and that was pretty cool; the thing is I've been to Paris so many times the last year that it's almost normal. The metro is alright, but I don't like it when it's busy. Cité has loads of steps too and because we missed the lift Andi decided we needed the exercise, she's used to it, she was living in a third floor flat at one point with no lift. My mum and I? Not a change, we're overweight, lazy slobs, we we're almost dying by the end of all those steps.

Like a Sir.

When we emerged from the Metro we were in the flower market, we didn't buy anything, but Andi and Mum wanted to look around, as usual she found a cactus, but decided it would probably die on the journey home so didn't buy it. We then ended up walking around for a little while looking for Notre Dame, most of the buildings on that little island are stone and it looks very dramatic, but there was building works going on with something and that ruined it a bit. I hadn't been to Notre Dame since November though so it was nice to see it again, but I regret going during tourist season because of the queue. In the end we didn't go in. They'd added this big walk way thing to it so you could walk up and see it from a platform, there were names printed on it and Andi found the name of the woman that flirted with her printed and then said it was creepy because some god was trying to set them up and blah blah blah. Sometimes I wish she'd shut up.

*Relevant caption*

We went looking for the bookshop Andi had read about afterwards and it was amazing. We got lost and ended up walking around for a while, then we went to a little park with a war memorial to all the Jewish kids they sent to die and an old stone building. There was the ramains of a stone wall and a well and some homeless people sleeping too. Then we found the bookshop, it was called Shakespeare and Co. There were some boxes outside with second hand books and a big sign saying no photos, which is why there's no photos of it in this post. The building was small and had so much life in it. It was very crowded and hard to move through. It was a mixture of too many books, too little space and too many people but it made it an amazing shop to vist. Upstairs, which was a very narrow staircase only fitting one person at a time, was a little libary and people could just sit there and read. And there was a kids section and a wall with messages.

After chilling in there for a while and buying one book for Sandy we then went walking looking for the big shopping mall Andi goes to when she wants wifi or clothing. And when it's the sales; she loves those.

Oooh, fancy.

This was fun because we saw one of those bridges where people who are shagging put padlocks on them. This is meant to be a sign that they're strong together and not going to break up. So it's basically a promise of "I'm not leaving them for a younger better woman who has nicer tits". Seems like a load of piss to me. Wait a minute! Doesn't this lead to one of those "A lock opened by many keys is a shitty lock and a key that opens many locks is a master key" things that is used to explain why men can shag anything that moves but women can't? Hmm... I see more meaning to this now.

Rue Nicolas Flamel! This is the very sign.

And, at one point Andi started saying "GEORGE!! Look! Isn't that fucking awesome?! I didn't know he was a real person!" I say saying but it was more like minor excited shouting like when we let her have too much coffee.
I thought it must have been serious from the amount of times she swore. It turns out she was overly amused by the fact there is a Rue Nicolas Flamel, who I'd heard of but couldn't think where. Turns out he's from the first Harry Potter book, he created the Philosopher's Stone. And Andi is overly obsessed with Harry Potter.

Thus concludes the first part. (I apologise for the late post - I'm still new to this whole blog-y thing, and I'll hopefully learn from this mistake.)

This is the sign, from further away this time.

This is an old well, apparently. Well, well, well, what do we have here? What, I'm not allowed to use puns?

Why I can't have nice things.

No, really, I can't. 

This is the result of the day out in Paris, it is 130 Euros worth of shopping. First we went to a bookshop, and then walked over to Forum Des Halles and did some other shopping. Andi and Sandy got 107.10 and I had 22.90. As I've already said, this is why I can't have nice things, it really is because she spends all the money. She had near enough 70 Euros worth of baby clothing from Gap, it was meant to be 90, but there was a deal on for 20 Euros off. Then she got a book for Sandy, and some wool, and then some earrings for her and my mother. This baby thing is costing a fortune and all it does is scream and bite me.

We had waffles and a drink in McDonald's too though, which was kind of nice, I like waffles.

Now it is a crime to rhyme.

English books are hard to find in Paris, Andi found a Parisian guide book in our apartment, and it listed the book shop Shakespeare & Company at 37 rue de la Bucherie, very near Notre Dame, so, apparently we had to go. She spent ages there, having a real look around and then couldn't decide if she wanted to spend around 10 Euros on herself or nearly 20 on her son. I really want a computer with the EUR symbol. In the end she choose a Dr. Seuss compilation of five stories, then an hour after my idiot mother says we had the hard back version of the same book in the UK. Why didn't she say this at the time? Andi could have got a book for herself and waited for the next time we visit.
The book shop was amazing though, there were some second hand books outside, which was nice to see, then upstairs there was a library, and some children's books, and downstairs was very crowded, it was hard to move, but it was amazing to see so many books. One, which I found upstairs in the library, was interesting. It was called "Tales of the Frontiers" (or something similar) and was about the views of a British man travelling through the British Empire. Unfortunately I didn't get to read very much of it, because not long after I started reading it, it was time to leave.

What is the attraction of this? Why do you treat it as a drug?

 She then made us walk, all the way from Notre Dame, and we didn't even get to see inside because there were too many other tourists, but that wasn't really important because I've already seen it, multiple times. We had to walk to the Forum Des Halles and it took a while but it was nice to walk around for a bit, sadly on the way there she found Gap, and my mum found Hema. Hema is basically Woolworths and my mum went in there for wool, Gap is full of cute baby clothes and my sister is obsessed with those. So there went 70 Euros. Crap. I'll admit though, the things from Gap are very cute.
 Ad then after all of this? She went and spent more money on earrings.

Cute, but expensive.

The Gap receipt measures 1.7 metres.

Thanks Andi, thanks.

My nice things

I guess at least I got a pen, which looks like a pencil, just to confuse people, and some boxers. I took a photo of these too, and no, you cannot see me in them, you pervert. I'm 14.

Mine have smaller numbers.