The City of Blinding Lights

The City of Blinding Lights

After spending quite some time enjoying all of Europe, we were going back to where we once landed to experience their culture, France. Upon arrival, we were greeted by super strong smelling toilets, not so smiling locals, and a lot of wind turbines. Although I didn't drink coffee at this point of time, and nor will I ever smoke cigarettes, those two Aromas strongly filled the air mostly everywhere in the city limits.

The Art District.

One thing that was fairly interesting to watch year was the traffic. If it were a complete stop in public, and you were riding on a moped, you go directly between the two rows of cars and not care. It was incredible. Also there driving was a lot better than it was in the south. And then the Germans I met drove with such surgical precision that it could be painful sometimes.

In France, they have a system called the rent a bike. People will rent a bike out to take it somewhere, usually work, and then they will lock it up at another Kiosk for somebody else to rent out. The entire time we were in France, my buddy and roommate Nick had a credit card that didn't want to work on him. The same followed suit for me as well. Both of us tried our MasterCards, to no avail. And so, one of the locals had to come to help us out at this kiosk. Nothing eventful really happened other than us both embarrassing ourselves and continuing onwards on foot.

Rent a Bike. Or a horse?

The most noticeable difference about Paris from the rest of the places we had been in Europe, is that smokers were literally everywhere. There was a definite layer of smog covering most of the city, and much more traffic than everywhere else we had been as well. To be honest, Paris wasn't quite what it was cracked up to be. Then again, I was never one for cute little fantasies anyhow. There were also several couples seriously making out with each other on benches, people shouting across the street to one another, and people cutting in and out of lines. But the most notable difference of all was their McDonalds. We witnessed two different things inside of that McDonald's, unisex bathroom and Portion Control. The same cost for a massive burger from McDonald's in the states about a quarter of the result, if less fries and burger than usual. In reference to the bathrooms, there were two doors for men and women's restrooms, and they both went to the same room with urinals and stalls. This freaked out some of the girls that were trying to use the bathroom, as there were guys standing and taking a leak. Of course, they promised that they weren't trying to catch a peek or anything.

Cheese!

We went to the Art District then saw some beautiful scenery, we went into the roof and saw the Mona Lisa and other eclectic artwork, we took a tour around the base of the Eiffel Tower, and we were introduced to the Metro System so that we knew how to get around in Europe. We went on a boat tour and saw the Lock Bridge, which up until the recent lock for moving act had literally thousands of locks on it. And most importantly, we gave our fourth and final performance in Luxembourg Gardens. This is where we played our bucket drumming piece once, broke our buckets, and then were asked for an encore from the audience, and needed to play with our broken sticks and buckets. Needless to say, France proved to be very interesting.