The France Finale

We took it nice and easy in Toulouse, particularly as I was coming down with a bit of a head cold and wasn't feeling the best. We spent a lot of time going from bar to bar watching the Rugby World Cup, half the time with commentary in French.

It seems like we spent most of the remaining time in France either eating or drinking as we made our way up through Bordeaux, Tours and then on to Paris. Highlights included snails (still in their shells which i slurped out, much to Bindys disgust), a duck and beef fondue, Bindy ordered mussels and received a bowl with about 50-60 of them, a rabbit and apple stew, foie gras (a special duck pate), duck (which i think Bindy had nearly every day), creme brulee, and surprisingly the best kebab in the world from this french lebanese restaurant (though even calling it a kebab seems to serve it injustice).

On the drinking front, Kronenbourg, Heinekken and Amstel are the standard beers here, along with the Desperados i think i mentioned previously (the beer and tequila mixes). Beer cocktails are very popular here, involving beer, a spirit and cordial. Wine is everywhere (particularly when we were in Bordeaux) and i'm sure it is fantastic, but as neither Bindy or I are that keen on wine we tended to leave it alone.

A large section of Bordeaux is World Heritage listed so we took a mini train tour around the town (along with plenty of Irish fans as Ireland had played in town the night before) and also visited the mirror lake, which was a large flat area with tiny holes that shot up a mist of water to create a mirror effect.
We then made our way up to Tours, in the heart of the Loire Valley, which has large wide boulevards lined with trees. Here we took a half-day bus tour to visit the surrounding areas and some famous chateauxs, Chambord and Cheverny. We had planned on buying a bottle of Chambord in Chambord, but at $60 a bottle, we decided not to. Chambord features a massive double helix staircase (apparently designed by Da Vinci), while Cheverny features in the comic Tintin and had a large kennel area full of the same breed of dog, branded with a V and had the most repulsive smell.

We found this really funky bar in Tours where Bindy made friends with the bartenders dog who was sleeping underneath her chair. The place was packed as France were playing Scotland in the Euro 2008 Football (Soccer) qualifiers. Scotland upset the home team 1-0 and the place went deathly silent when they scored, except for 1 guy outside who was going for Scotland.

Then on to Paris where we climbed the Eiffel Tower, visited the Mona Lisa in the Louvre, went and saw Jim Morrison and Oscar Wilde's graves, strolled down the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe (where Bindy bought Chanel earrings and a Louis Vuitton handbag for all the girls interested), visited the Catacombes (a 1.2km tunnel that is 20m underground in Paris and is full of bones and skulls) and spent a day in Versailles.



However the biggest surprise was stumbling into the middle of the 2007 Paris Techno Parade, which is the 3rd largest street parade in Europe (behind Berlin's Love Parade and the Zurich street parade), and featured 22 converted trucks each with various dj's playing from them, as they travel on a route through town. Nearly every genre of dance music was featured, electro, minimal, hardcore, hardstyle, breaks and even a jungle/drum n bass truck that was decked out as a jungle. Any cars parked on the side of the road were destroyed as people jumped up and down on them, people were walking around with half empty bottles of vodka, the place was crazy but so much fun.
The only annoying thing was that hardly any of the floats/trucks had the names of the people playing so i couldn't work out who we were listening to as we walked along (the only person i could work out was Oliver Huntemann). For some reason I can't add anymore photos so visit this other site which has heaps: http://jouissezsansentraves.blogspot.com/2007/09/081-techno-parade-2007.html

As you can probably tell by the use of pictures I am back at my laptop at my uncles place in London. So now its off to pack before heading up to Nottingham tomorrow, where I have to finally get stuck back into uni.