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Iberian Spring: Day 14 Barcelona Paris Helsinki
Soundtrack: every song about spending time in airports, but especially “Departure”, R.E.M. So begins the next adventure: getting home. Right now, L and I should have been sitting in Qatar business class, somewhere over the Mediterranean, perusing the champagne and whisky menus, before lying back in our seats and having a nap 36,000 feet up in the air. Maybe I’d be blogging to you over the complimentary wi-fi, maybe I’d be thinking about blogging to you but I’ll have another drink and some canapes first. What fun to pander what might have been. Right now, L has just left Milan on her way to Singapore, after a brief tarmac stop.…
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Buns2025: Day 10 – Paris > Dublin
Soundtrack: “Army of Me”, Bjork/808 State Woke early with a mission to get my laundry done before hotel checkout. Part of the reason for picking this hotel was the close proximity to the laundromat, as clean underwear for me is as essential as nicotine to the locals. I felt like a seasoned traveller being able to navigate the weird central payment thing without assistance, which is good because, aside from a small gang of school kids who were using the space as shelter from the morning drizzle, I was the only one there. It was an untidy pack, the clean laundry bag just went straight into the case, but there’s…
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Buns2025: Day 9 – Paris
Soundtrack: “Red red wine”, Neil Diamond Last full day in Paris, a day to madly run around the Ile de la Cite mostly. The sore throat turned into an irritating dry cough without much effort, certainly not helped by it being pretty frigid cold (daytime temps hitting a balmy maximum of 6 degrees) plus never being more than about 1 metre from someone smoking. Time for evaluating a couple of stereotypes. Does everyone in Paris smoke? Pretty much. Certainly more than many other places I’ve been. Vapers carry a powerbank so they can recharge their suckers. Smoking seems to be banned from inside public buildings, so every doorway is crowded…
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Buns2025: Day 8 – Paris
Soundtrack: “Cemetery Gates”, The Smiths Sadly it seems the crowds in the Metro have got me, and I can feel the first hints of getting a cold. The Paris Metro system, generally seems to work okay, once you work out how the ticketing goes. Took me a while, it all hinges on little paper cards that can be recharged. In theory it can work on phones, but after installing one app, then the app that needed, then yet another app that something needed, I hit a wall of it also seeming to want me to create another account for something else. So instead I found a machine that would spit…
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Buns2025: Day 7 – Paris
Soundtrack: something old and French It’s another day for cool art, this time from the last 200 years or so at the Musee d’Orsay. I’m finding my French comprehension to be a little better when I see things like that and don’t bother to pause at the apostrophe, so it’s Musee dOrsay, and he apostrophe is just for show. Speaking of just for show, the Musee d’Orsay used to be a train station. When they decided they didn’t need it anymore, there obviously weren’t any rich property developers around to turn it into a bunch of overpriced shoebox apartments, so they put a bunch of art in there instead. With…
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Buns2025: Day 6 – Paris
Soundtrack: “Never can say goodbye”, The Communards I have Louvred. Somehow I managed to get up early (probably due to my body not yet knowing what time it’s supposed to be) and headed down to that big old museum. Stopped for breakfast at an artisanal boulangerie, where I couldn’t decide if I wanted the croissant or the the pain au chocolat so I went for both. And they both were very nice, either dunked or undunked. I’m still not converted. Does dunking add something to the croissant? Not really if it’s fresh. Does it add anything to the coffee? Nope. I booked a 9.30am admission so when I wandered to…
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Buns2025: Day 5 – Paris
Soundtrack – anything but “Candles in the Wind” It never fails to amaze me how badly the worlds of accommodation and travel fail to to be in sync. Flights arrive all the time, but most hotels only let you check in between about 2pm and 1am. You might be able to store your luggage, but I’m yet to find a hotel that will let me check in at 8am or 9am, even if I do offer to book a full extra day (I won’t rule out that there may be places of the 5 star variety allowing this, and if I ever get to the point of being ablke to…
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Buns2025: Day 4 – Airports & Paris
Soundtrack: “This Flight Tonight”, Joni Mitchell It’s a 15 hour flight from Sydney to Doha, then another 6 to Paris. I’m not sure I fully worked this out when I booked the trip, I was more just being amused that the journey started at a Charles (Kingsford-Smith) and ended at a Charles (de Gaulle). I’ve done the 18+ hour Singapore to Newark, but that was Premium Economy, where this time around it was just economy of the common variety. Fortunately, between the early-ish night and the subsequent sleep-in, I got almost a human amount of sleep. This gave me plenty of time to pack and finish the b log, helped…
