New York London PARIS Munich

And so after days, months, years of yearning even I embarked upon my voyage to gay Paris. It was indeed a charming city, at times, but I must admit France wasn't quite as magnifique as I'd anticipated...then again I guess I'd been idolising it for so long it came a little as an anti-climax.

A fabulous time was had never the less, and highlights included:

• Climbing all 300 and something million steps up the Eiffel Tower despite remembering I am not a fan of heights, occasionally nearly keeling over with exhaustion and being put to shame by toddlers taking on the challenge with far greater aplomb . Also amusing was a thief who was chased after and floored by several policemen, who were soon after backed up by fellow police officers on horseback. A little extravagant but hey.
  
• The Palais de Tokyo, a contemporary museum with some pretty rad installations and a really cool video on skateboarding, gnarly dudes.
  
• Eating the obligatory snails, which I had eaten before in Barcelona but not in garlic, and using a lovely metal claw to extract the slippery buggars. I became quite adept at this, and after a while managed to persuade the lovely Hayna to sample one. She dug it.


• The Moulin Rouge - amaaazing costumes and acts inbetween the dancers, paticularly a woman who scantily clad in a diamonte thong proceeded to dive into a tank full of water and snakes, where she thrashed around recklessly for a good minute or so. Main complaint with the show, there was no where near enough male nakedness, then again I guess the leering fat businessmen would not approve. But still.
  
• Montmarte - such a lovely area, there was a really good Dali museum where they had the Mae West lips sofa and the Sacre Coeur was beautiful, we saw the carousel and steps where Amelié was filmed. Not so lovely were the hordes of foreign men attempting to sell bracelets, telling you 'not to worry' as they try to prise their wares onto your arm as you shout at them. The erotic museum (which we perused purely to kill time, you understand) was also a giggle, Hannah tempted by the 'intimate jewellery' in the gift shop.

Not so great was the awful weather, which meant that we got soaked to the bone in a not so fun trudge down the Champs- Élysées, which was no where near as picturesque as I was hoping. The Louvre was also a bit of a let down, though our experience was marred by the horrendous amount of visitors crammed into every square metre and our fatigue from the significant amount of walking we'd racked up over the excursion. Overall a trés bon trip, but I was glad to get back to London where in my opinion, even though people (especially on the underground) can be rude, we are altogether a lot more pleasant than the French.