First Paris, then Spain

I know - I am an incredibly useless individual. I always get so caught up in the excitement of a moment that I just NEED to share with someone - no one is around, so ok, I will blog. And it is full of promises of blogs to come, and then a month, 2 months, 3 months later I look at it again and I have done zip. Typical. But anyway, better late than never as some say - so here I am again, with stories of my life.

To start off with - Paris was amazing. It was just the best place I have ever been to. Don't listen to anyone who tells you the French are rude and the place is dirty. They may not be known for washing too often, but Paris was an unbelievably beautiful city. And the people are so much friendlier than Londoners - every shop we went into, every corner we turned, someone greeted us. It was great.

We only had 2 days there, and after a gruelling coach trip, we got to Paris at about 5am on the Saturday morning. We were only due to go to our hotel at 6am, so the bus driver decides to take us on a little drive of Paris to start our sightseeing - in the dark. We went to see the Arc de Triomphe, and the Eiffel Tower, but I didn't really get to see too much of anything - the darkness and my sleep eyelids were not a good combo. Eventually it was time to head to the hotel, but when we got there they told us our rooms would not be ready until 7:30am. Great. But - like ture South Africans (pretty much all of us were 'Saffa's' on the tour) we wouldn't let anything get us down - we just set up camp in the hallways outside the elevators and slept there until they gave us room keys.

We managed to get a few hours sleep (and I set the wrong alarm on my phone, so Dane and I only woke up 5 minutes before we were due to meet the group again), and then we were off. It was a long long day - we walked Paris flat. First stop was the Louvre, which I was dying to see - especially the Mona Lisa, cliched I know, but it has to be done. But, we only had 20 minutes there - so Dane and I legged it. We managed to find it, but only by accident - we weren't getting anywhere and we were going to be left behind, so we took a little side duck and there it was :) It was then on to the Pompideau, then the Notre Dame, and then we had some free time in the Latin Quarter. After doing some shopping Dane and I walked (nearly all the way back to our hotel - stupid us) to see the Bastille, then we met the group back at The River Seine for a boat cruise.

At this point I was falling asleep with the rocking of the boat and the heat of the sun, but as soon as we got to the end of the cruise I was wide awake. The Eiffel Tower was looming over me. It is beautiful... We stood in line for ages waiting to get a ticket. The queue to walk up the stairs was shorter, but there was no way that was happening - lifts all the way. We made our way through all the levels, taking many many photo's of the view, and on the top level we had some champagne (we were celebrating our 1 year anniversary). It was amazing.

Afterwards Dane and I went for dinner at a little French restaurant and sat on the pavement to eat (well, at tables on the pavement). We had snails for starters - proper ones where you have to use a fork and clamp to pull them out of their shells. Very tricky. We met the tour group back at the Eiffel Tower at 10pm to watch them turn the lights on - very cool. Then we headed to see the Moulin Rouge area. After one drink there it was definitely bed time.

On Sunday it was up early and off to Disney Land. I had so much fun - think Dane was laughing at me a lot, but I had never been to anything like this before. Gold Reef City does not even come close. We worked our way through the park and we go to go on all the rollercoasters and rides - Dane definitely laughed at me screaming all the time. Before we left we had a nice long buffet lunch surrounded by all the Disney characters - goofy, pinnochio, Captain Hook, Pluto, Tigger etc. Finally we made our way back to Paris and the hotel and back onto the coach for the long drive back to London, and work....

That was nearly a month ago, and things have been pretty hectic since then. My application for my Irish citizenship is with the Embassy, and there were a few things to do for that. My bank account was hit by fraud and some bugger in India stole my money. And work has just been crazy - I got a raise for my 1 year review, but it kind of lost it's impace as on the same day someone got made redundant too - the credit crunch hitting Wand. So, yes, I think it is definitely time for another holiday - but this time a longer one...

On Saturday, Tanya and I are heading off to Valencia, Spain, and Dane is joining us on Monday. We are camping on the beach for a week, with nothing to do but swim, tan, play on the beach and drink cocktails and Sangria. On the Wednesday we do have a festival we are going to - well, the whole point of us going is for this festival.

It's called La Tomatina - it's basically a huge food fight. A few trucks of tomatoes are brought into the little town of Bunol, not far from Valencia, and when the trigger goes off, everyone starts throwing tomatoes at each other, for an hour or so, and then another trigger goes off and its all over and the clean up starts. It sounds like amazingly messy fun and I can't wait. Never before have I been ALLOWED let alone encouraged to throw food at other people. Bring it on.

So, that is my next adventure, and hopefully it won't take me a month to get back on here to tell everyone about it...