Paris, Snails and Strikes

Another week, another project meeting! This time it was a few days in Paris for a project called Not Only Fair Play which is focussed on schools and sport.

For once, the journey wasn’t painful as there were no connections although on arrival at Charles De Gaulle there was a bit of a queue due to Immigration staff being away for lunch (or so it seemed!).

The food was excellent, as was the wine but the bins were overflowing apparently due to another strike. One morning a bin truck did turn up but the guy decided to empty some bins and leave the others – he did pick up whatever he dropped though!

I did manage to get a few hours of touristy stuff during the trip and main things I learned was that the Eiffel Tower is just like Blackpool, the Louvre is bloody massive and the street vendors are grumpy sods.

Whilst the street vendor reluctantly provided a colleague with a paper bag for a purchase, all the waiting staff I saw were great. Well, apart from the lady who took our order near Sacre Cours – the gave the impression of understanding us but the only English word she responded with was beautiful. Probably the reason why they got the order wrong four times which led to a very apologetic manager comping us more of the meal along with a nice bottle of wine.

After hiking up to Sacre Cours, the place was filled with tents selling local produce; wine, beer, cheese, meat and all sorts of other foods. It was teeming with people of all ages having a drink and something to eat with no trouble whatsoever. Most definitely a different drinking culture to most of the UK!

All in all, a great trip and hopefully I can head back at some point to do the real touristy stuff like buying a plastic Eiffel Tower and waiting four hours to view the Mona Lisa from 30 yards away.

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