Thursday, February 3, 2011

La vie quotidienne à Paris...

Let's start off with me and my confused face about the strange upside-down dispensers.
Ok, so wow. What a couple of days. This keyboard is French, so if there's any errant Qs where there should be an A, that's why. I'm not gunna lie, it's already pissing me off. You have to use shift to use a full stop for shit's sake and it took me (no joke) fifteen minutes to figure out how to type the @ symbol! On the bright side, plenty of punctuqtion marks seem to take precedence over other things, like you have to use shift to type any numbers, but all the punctuation marks are ready to go, one touch! Even ampersand! Score one for the grammar nerds! In your FACE mathematicians!!! If only Qwerty and this lovable mutant could have clicky clacky babies, they would be perfect, but I'm pretty sure keyboard cloning is still illegal.
Anyhoo, back to where I left off - after my last entry we went to pick up our laundry, it cost ten US dollars for an efficient Asian lady to do it, so we were cheering. They have folding down to an art (must be all the origami practice) and we were pleased with the result.
From there we went shopping. I found a purple Adidas shirt for twelve dollars, cheerin'. Then I found some shoes I wanted to try.
I said to the girl 'can I see those blue AD-i-das shoes?'
'excuse me?'
'the AD-i-das right there?' *points*
'Ohh, the a-DI-das.'
o_O
Actually, on that note - I have never had such trouble with people understanding me! Half the time Americans would just look at me, open mouthed, although we speak THE SAME EFFING LANGUAGE!!! I'm having better luck in Paris!
Hey I just discovered that with this keyboard when you have caps lock on, it acts with all keys as if you are holding shift too. Getting me one of these.
Ok, so from there we went to an NHL game, NY Rangers vs Pittsburgh Penguins. I bought a Rangers hat before the game and had it embroidered with the date as a memento. Haven't taken it off. *true love*
Madison Square Garden is everything I hoped and more. Like I thought, even the nosebleeds were *a-ma-zing*, we could see the whole rink! While visiting with Bren, we volunteered at a church that supplies hot meals to people that either live in poverty or are homeless. A guy there told me that one of my two fqve hockey players from there that I used to watch is also in the NHL (I'm talking about Cory Perry and Brandon Prust), and guess what team? The Rangers! I was so excited to see him play! While we were waiting for the game to start, Kitty says
'y'reckon we'll see a fight?'
'Most likely. Probably Brandon, he was a mad brawler when I used to watch him in the Knights, I saw him down a guy with one punch...'
Lo and behold, who not only scored the first goal, but also started the first fight? Brandon lol and Kat went wild for the violence! She started getting all mean about it when the refs ever stopped a fight! It was an awesome night, they lost, but in a shootout, so I was still stoked.
The next morning we were very lucky to get a flight out of NY, the weather is retarded. As I was getting over to the taxi, I almost went ass over tit on the sidewalk, it was slick as snot, on account of the freeezing rain. A close shave, and surprising actually, since twice the day before I had fallen up stairs. Special, that's me.
So off to London we went. I was ridiculously tired and spent the whole day napping like a Nana on chronic. Finally inside our hotel room, which was seriously smaller than anything I have ever been in my entire life, we ordered a pizza and watched some guy on the telly dressed as a red devil throw a shit on someone.
Up early this morning for the Eurostar journey to Paris, I wasn't bothered that we were only slightly behind schedule, because I never unpacked my suitcase from last night so it was tetrised nicely. That feeling only lasted until I went through the scanner at the train station and they pulled me aside. I asked the gargantuan Carribean gent what they were looking for, as I could locate it easily and retrieve it for them. More the strong, silent type, he instead opted to pull every single thing out, at the pace of the aforementioned hash Nana, sans speaking. It turned out to be my metal bottle of pure Canadian maple syrup, which (naturally) was at the very bottom.
Consequently, we had to run like Pcp Nanas to the carriage, but we made it, so no harm, no foul.
Once we arrived in Paris, the fun began. Although I can read French decently, speak it enough to get a message across, my listening comprehension is less developed. This becomes a problem when (because the amount of French I can speak I can pull off with a pretty decent accent) people hear me and then assume I can understand when they assail me with beautiful, beautiful French at pcp Nana speed when I require justsmokedanapplebong Nana speed. At these times, I come across about as well as an idiot savant that has spent twenty minutes feverishly scanning a French phonebook. The cool thing is, that very few people speak anything but a very little English, so I'm forced to speak French. Bon.
So, at Gare Du Nord, where we arrived by Eurostar, we had to figure out how to get to our hotel. The taxi line was huge. As we exited the building, there was a bunch of guys with motorbike helmets. One said 'YO! Taxi bike?' And then told us it would be forty euros each for the ride, which, if we didn't have luggage we would have walked. So, we opted for subway, at a saving of €38.30 each. They thought they saw me coming, but I had the last laugh... For about half an hour until we had to take two trains with stupid amounts of luggage. I honestly have no idea how a person confined to a wheelchair would do it. So there we were, painfully obvious as dumbass tourists, cracking out an horrendous hullaballoo clacking up and down stairs, but we made it, and finally emerged into the sunshine like a couple of trapped miners. Kat was pretty pissed by this time, and I don't blame her. I realised we were on the right street, but didn't know whether to go left or right. I told Kat to wait outside a bank while I went in and asked. Not only was the chick horribly rude, the bitch sent us the wrong way!!! When I came out of the bank, I said to Kat 'what's that liquid emanating from my suitcase?' Turns out the plethora of steps up which we trudged had caused the GIANT CAN OF LABATT BLUE I was taking home to burst. Now as I sit here (and anytime I'm in the vicinity of the suitcase) I can smell the sweet scent of the best beer in the world and I lament my loss.
Well, that's about it for now. Kat and I are getting pretty damn good at using the subway in pretty much any country, if I do say so myself, and we went to see the Moulin Rouge. We actually killed two birds, as I had used the google machine earlier and sourced a gluten free resteraunt near there! A short walk though cobblestone streets and we were there. The food was amazing. From there we went to starbucks right across the road from that big red windmill and sat outside, sipping cafè lattes, ooh lala.

Well, just thought I'd pop a quick one in, so these aren't so long,
talk soon!
Tx
P.S. I have a new international Derby wife! Mirambo from the Tames Fatales! She is super bad ass, it was derby love at first sight when she punched me in the jaw :D

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