Ahh, our last day in London. I know what you are thinking, “Paul, you are the most amazing travel author in the history of words, but your blog doesn’t appear to help me at all in my life.” Well, my little sasparilla, the luck is all yours. For the first time in modern history, I present a travel blog that will benefit you:
Tips on Saving Money in London
1. Don’t eat food. Things are ridiculously expensive here. Much better to wait and eat elsewhere. However, if you must eat, don’t shop for foods at Whole Foods. If you do, expect to hemorrhage money. Between the exchange rate and the high cost of living, London will take your silly little dreams and aspirations and throw them into the Thames. (BTW, not pronounced “Thayms” but is called “Tems” by the locals. The woman who told me that didn’t have to be so mean about it though.) Buy your groceries at any other place, a local market will do. In fact the best way to save money is to not buy your food at all. That’s right, steal shit! For every two things I give to the store clerk to ring up and put in a nice, crisp grocery bag, I hide a couple of things in the stroller or diaper bag. Grab some eggs and bread and put it up top, throw some Cuban cigars underneath! I have what you must admit, is the cutest, most effective little accomplice on the face of the earth! Why not use him? If they ever do check, look shocked, and then throttle the little kid for not telling daddy he put stuff in the stroller. (This has less chance to work if he has been strapped in the whole time, but hey, no arrests so far!) I admit that this is a bit risky, but so is driving on the wrong side of the road, walking around weird places in the middle of the night, and sneaking into your neighbor’s rooms and trying on their clothes while the neighbors are out and the baby is asleep. (I especially like staying next to Italians, they have ALL the style).
2. Don’t use chopsticks at Chinese places. They cost anywhere between 20p and 1 British pound. Hey that stuff adds up if you eat as many times a day as I do.
3. This one is really important. DON’T EVER GO INSIDE ANYWHERE. That’s when they can charge you money. Be it museums, palaces, castles or other tourist what-have-yous, nothing good can come of going inside, except maybe learning about new things or seeing interesting stuff. It is not worth it, I implore you. It is much cheaper to stand on the outside of things and make up what its like inside. My personal favorite experiences include complaining about what I thought the carpets in Buckingham Palace would be like and making up my own stories about the ghosts I wish lived in St. Paul’s Cathedral (Sparky the ghost of bad french fries runs around decrying soggy chips).
4. Look for bargains on the internet. I could have done all sorts of stuff if I was a proper tourist. A website called lastminute.com will give discounts on the London eye (not really an eyeball, more like a ferris wheel taller than the alps), boat cruises, theater tickets and small African children. A useful website, and there are more out there for those interested. This item is LAME, I know, but it is actual knowledge I can pass on.
That’s all I could muster, you will have to fend for yourself if you choose to sightsee, eat or generally live here. I couldn’t do it for long, so we are headed to Paris. We took a rather circuitous route to Dover from our spot in west London. Instead of dealing with city traffic for a good chunk of the way, we backtracked, going west, to link up with a major expressway. Our plan was working marvelously, until we caught traffic anyway due to an accident. By the time we got passed the accident, we found ourselves, once again, racing at breakneck speeds to try and catch our ferry. It was truly remarkable because I had slammed a couple cups of coffee and felt like my bladder was going to blow up in an act of defiance. Well, we raced, raced, raced and made it with several minutes to spare. I was hoping again to jump over the cliffs and come crashing down on top of the boat, but instead we just rolled up and stood in the queue waiting for our turn. After racing for so long, and then just sitting and waiting, my bladder was now hurling insults at every other organ in my body. (Especially the pancreas, those two really don’t get along.)
This ferry was not nearly as nice as the one from Dunkirque, but it did have a little play area with logos that Malcolm loved. We had more sandwiches on the ship and I had a funny tasting pepsi. I won’t be having any more pepsi this trip I can assure you. We drove our car off the ship and pladow, we were in:
France!
Amy took a turn driving, now that the lanes were back on the right side of the road. I told her that she wasn’t getting the hang of it until she stalled the manual transmission for the 4th time. We were both out of practice driving a stick, but it came back to us eventually.
We were running a bit low on the petrol (diesel, or gazole if you must), so we made a bee line for a gas station. The station we found was completely automated, with no one on site to answer our questions, but, no mind, we have a credit card and a sense of adventure so we tried our best. By the way, the combination of credit and adventurousness is lethal in Las Vegas, so if you go, leave one of them behind. We were easily outsmarted by the gas pump who laughed at me, coughed and then proceeded to show me pictures of a woman with beautiful hands removing a credit card from the gas pump over and over and over again. I was confused, and the people behind us at the pump were irritated. I then heard a French voice come from the sky (god must be a middle aged woman here in France) and then the pump reset itself. We tried a new lane, but our credit card was rejected there. With our tail between our legs we limped to another place and luckily there was an attendant there. He pumped the gas, swiped the card and we w
ere off to the French countryside. It was quite a nice drive and was a stark contrast to the rain we just left behind in London. Along the way, we listened to French for Dummies Vol. I, which I had on my Ipod. I started to learn some key phrases which I could use once I learned other words later on, like “where is the [brothel] and how much [for one night].” Obviously I didn’t learn the bracketed words yet, but I have enough time in Paris to learn some functional French.
Malcolm was asleep for a great deal of the ride and when we woke up he was not happy we were still driving. So we stopped at a rest stop and it had a modest playground. 
We already love it here. While Malcolm was playing, I took a visit to the rest rooms and noticed that even the restroom signs here are artistic.
Driving in France
I do not know what the rules are for driving here in France, and I do not care. I drive like an idiot/maniac and I have no real idea what is going on around me. That is why the car it staying in the garage until we leave for Switzerland. The main reason for the mayhem is that the street lights are set back from the intersection by around 10 feet. Thus, when you were actually at an intersection, you had no idea who has the green light. I noticed that the cars honked at me a lot more when I sat at the intersection stopped, not knowing when to go again, so whenever I got to an intersection, I just went ahead, regardless of who else was going.
This was all fine and dandy until we reached the arc de triumph. There is a roundabout around that sucker that is the funnest ride I have ever taken. There are, at any given time, about 150 cars circling the roundabout, and there is some mechanism by which people can tell if it is their turn to go. What that mechanism is, I do not know, for I lurched, halted, and bluffed my way through it. It is a lot like surfing as you navigate ahead of cars you want to turn in front of and brake for cars that want to turn in front of you. As I throttled the engine to reach the turn I wanted (I went from 0-60 in about 3 seconds) I was reminded of the scene from star wars where the good guys narrowly escape getting away from the death star which was seriously blowing up. Phew! We made it, and now we get a leisurely drive down the champs elysses. Very nice, and there are cops everywhere directing traffic so I didn’t have to worry about what color the light was.
Our First Night in Paris
We reached our destination at around 4:30 and couldn’t be happier to have reached our apartment. Our location is on an island in the seine, the Ile Saint Louis. Our place is in one of those small streets. 
What we found inside was amazing. 
Old timber beamed ceilings and walls, lots of upholstery (including the walls of course), and HOLY SHIT THERE IS A GIANT PICTURE OF THE OWNERS ON THE WALL! It is very alarming and no matter where you are in the room, they are staring at you. Even the cat is eerie and he is smiling at you like you are tomorrow night’s entrée. I know; we’ll put Malcolm in there, that way the Kitty ghost will feast on the boy, and spare us. Send my parent of the year award to our house in Cali, we can’t use it here. I’ll post a picture when I can go back in there. It still kinda weird’s me out.
We strolled around a bit, and visited the Jardin des Plantes. There was a nice big sculpture of a dragon made out of recycled materials. I am seen quite cleverly here pretending that the dragon is attacking me. 
We then went to a metro stop so that Amy could get set up for her trip to her conference tomorrow (to Euro Disney and Malcolm and I won’t be going!) As we were looking for some dinner, we passed a neat little statue of some abstract stuff with a man in it when OH MY GOD THAT MAN IS MASTURBATING. The statue is of a man masturbating! 
Boy am I gonna like it here. When I tried to do that kind of stuff in Bakersfield, they arrested me!
Dinner
We finally settled at a park with some dinner. This was the view from the park (the side view of Notre Dame). 
Tonite we have a ham sandwich and a cheese crepe. The crepe stole the show, as no one was paying any attention to Malcolm when he fell through the back of the seat and sat folded in two waiting for us to notice. As we dined, I immediately noticed that this was a town of strollers. Everyone seems to be about town with not a care in the world. Even the street lights reinforce this. In London you have about 5 seconds to cross the street before you are smashed to bits by a giant bus. In Paris, the light gives you about 8 minutes to cross the street, and you are free to stop in the middle, converse with a dear old friend or read a
book. London is a town for people who have somewhere to go, Paris is for those who don’t.
I looked around and saw that this was some sort of park for lovers. Every other person there was with someone special, there were two couples making out, 1 couple breaking up, and another couple absolutely destroying a ham sandwich and a crepe. After diner, we enjoyed some gelato, and my lemon and strawberry was pure art, tart and then sweet, it was even shaped in the shape of a flower. 
Trey Bean!
We returned home and gave Malcolm a bath in his bathtub fit for a king.
We drifted to sleep with the sounds of Paris trickling in and out of my consciousness. After about 3 hours of trickling I got up to close the window. These Parisians are fuckin’ loud!!!
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