Paris, Valentines, Romance, a weekend in bed…

Posted by on 22, Feb 2015 in 2015 - Iberia and Morocco, Countries, Europe, France, Taffy, Western Europe

Paris, Valentines, Romance, a weekend in bed…


Sounds great (or gross if you’re my kids reading this) but the lure of the most romantic city on earth (especially if you like dog poo), and a valentines / birthday combo weekend was just too much to resist so I managed to hurt my back and spent large portions of the weekend unable to move for all the wrong reasons! It wasn’t quite as bad as it seemed as I was able to cycle, but not walk more than about 10 paces, actually not all bad – no shopping for me!

So we confined our visit to cycling around Paris carefully watching the road for the potholes (many roads are broken cobbles), the traffic and the ubiquitous dog poo. Quite how the rats on sticks that you see round here manage to deposit such vast quantities I have no idea, but it seems to be something of a national pastime to get your dog to poo everywhere. I’ve even started to watch my step in cafes now as you see dogs in there too.

But we’ve loved Paris, it’s magnificent, the buildings are grandiose, the boulevards wide and offer great views of all the architecture and the people are so smart and fashionable – you never see anyone obese, or if you do they’re speaking English – and the traffic is actually quite easy to cycle through, and considerate too.

They may be a Republic now, but the car is still king. There are few buses, presumably because of the metro, and cars are everywhere, though it doesn’t feel crowded. Us poor cyclists ‎- especially idiots on tandems – are few and far between, despite an excellent bike hire scheme the cycle tracks vary from fantastic to “where the hell did it go” as you plough headfirst into a wall, or worse a roundabout. But the drivers here seem unfazed by us ending up in the wrong lanes, going the wrong way up streets and generally trying our hardest to get knocked off Tilly. We’ve got used to cars squeezing either side of us at junctions then giving us a large berth or stopping for us to get in the right lane. It’s been really fun cycling and the drivers have been courteous and considerate too.

But it’s not all cycling‎ we did manage to do some touristy stuff too. We went to Montmatre and visited Sacre Coeur having cycled up a steep cobbled hill to get there – much to the amusement of the tourists in the petit train. I even managed to hobble around like an old man inside and declined some kindly passers by offer of some loose change for a coffee.

I’d like to say my back is much recovered, but it’s not. I can sit, cycle and walk from the bike to a chair and back but if there’s a fire in Taffy I don’t rate my chances of getting out in time. And I can’t figure out what I’ve done to it, one minute I was fine, the next Hello old man Jonno. It must be my age has finally caught up with me, which can’t have been hard for it as I can manage about 1 mile an hour at the moment.

Never mind, maybe some rest will help – its 9pm, time for bed now I’m getting on….

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