Monday the 28th of July, 2008 - Gay Paris

So I get to the Eurail station at St Pancras International, right? And I assume that I got there with plenty of time to check-in for my 11:05 train to Paris and I’m trying to walk through the automated ticket gate but it won’t let me, and I'm thinking “why is there always a problem with anything I do!”. So I go to the desk with the man and he informs me that this is July. I'm like “uhhh I know it's July...”.

Then he shows me my ticket.
My ticket for the 28^th at 11:05.
My ticket for the 28^th at 11:05 in August.

Ba-bow.

Cue shock! Cue horror! Cue cursing myself under my breath and dashing to the Eurail ticket office, where a lady very kindly booked me on the next train (12:30) for no extra charge (it could have been 300 pounds).

Honestly, I am such a douchebag sometimes.

The worst part is...this isn’t the first time this has happened for a Eurostar train (may I remind you of the London-to-Brussels-for-Pukkelpop fiasco of ´06? The one that Sam and I swore we never tell anyone about but then proceeded to tell everyone about).

But I catch my train and all is good. While travelling, I dog-ear pages and circle items in my Time Out ´best Paris listings´ guide (I always trust those folks at TO; hereby referred to as TO for the duration of this post).

I get into Paris Nord and Emm, Josh and I have our little excitable triplet reunion. It’s hot in Paris in the summertime – much, much hotter than London, even on its good days. I’m wearing jeans and I’m schvitzing as we walk the four kilometres to the Hostel, catching up along the way. We get there and it’s this delightfully huge modern monstrosity, one big hulking cube of trendy exposed wood panelling – our hostel St Christopher’s Inn (one of a chain) and the adjoining Holiday Inn Express. I was pretty impressed with it though: all very clean, all very new. No unavoidable and scary odours. No urchins loitering in the hallway. Just a lot of Australians and Americans.

Emm and I were booked into a 6 bed down the hall from Josh's 10 bed room. We threw our backpacks into the lockers under the bed, changed and head out. We walked along the canal that our hostel is banked on and it all was so lovely and Parisian. We tried to find a bar that TO recommended but after 40 minutes, found it and decided that it was too early. We walked for quite a way before settling on a random café nearby for three ice cafes and a slice of apple pie to share.

From there, we wandered past a bar called Cafe L´Absinthe and thought ¨awesome¨ obviously, and ordered three absinthe aperitifs. It was so charming and cool, so we stayed awhile to chat and get tipsy off just a shot of absinthe and sugar painstakingly diluted into the cool water.

After that we walked to Bastille, did the tourist thing, and decided that it was probably going to rain. Which it then did. A lot.

Oh, summer! Humid rain! How lovely you are!
We would have just walked through it but we wanted to go out later and would have had anything to dry us off, so we hid in doorways and under shopfront curtains along the length of entire length of street. It was great, actually. We laughed the whole way.

It eventually stopped raining and we found our destination: a hole-in-the-wall crepe restaurant that TO had recommended. YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS.

So good. The sweet, middle-aged lady who served us was so delightful. We drank a litre of their specialty of dry cider from special cider bowls´ before and during our crepe feast. I had the gruyere, egg and mushrooms, Josh had goats’ cheese, and Emm had Camenbare and walnuts. Then, even though we were fully sated, we just had to share a crepe suzette doused in Ramble.

We decided that we go out to a bar another night – we were pretty beat – and took the Parisian Metro back to our Hostel. There were snorers in the room and various other noisemakers, but we slept fine.

And that was day one of Paris. Thank you.