Sunday, July 8, 2007

One of us will be having a close encounter with el toro

Britain
Ireland
France
Spain

We got into Spain this morning around 10:30 after sleeping on the night train from Paris. I drew the top bunk in a 6 person sleeper and couldn't really shake the fear of rolling over and falling 8 feet; the safety belt was more designed to hold up the middle bunk rather than keeping me alive. This was all after having to almost evacuate the train station in Paris as the cops came in and cordoned off first a small section of the platform and then the entire thing. It took about 10 minutes for the fuzz to clear thankfully. I asked an English-speaking cop what happened and he told me, "We had a problem and that's all I can say," as we walked past a guy getting cuffed by 6 officers prone on the ground. This is terror incident number 2 on our trip so far.

This morning begins an epic attempt to stay up until about 8pm tomorrow night as we'll be leaving from San Sebastian for Pamplona at 11pm this evening in order to catch bull festivities tomorrow morning. Travis has committed himself to running and has drank his one el toro rojo in order to stay ahead of the nasty, nasty bulls and their horns. I have no doubt that he is insane. We're only slightly behind him on the insanity scale at this point for following this closely behind him.

Over the last two days of Paris, we checked off some more mandatory sights on our list such as the Arc d'Triomphe, Cathedral of Notre Dame, and the Palace at Versailles. All were impressive, but none came close to Versailles where we were awestruck at just the palace gardens as we couldn't get into the palace itself since the lines were ridiculously long. Let's just say multiple wedding parties were on hand to take photos on the compound; it's that nice and more.

We also witnessed a guy proposing to his girlfriend in the park surrounding the Eiffel Tower on Thursday night. Of course, she said yes. Cheers went up and two nearby picnicers offered champagne. We immediately remarked that proposing there was too easy as she can't possibly say no; the girls were not amused with our glib appraisal of the situation.

Speaking of other mandatory sights, the Aviation Club was highly profitable. For those of you who don't know, it is a small yet well known casino/cardroom in Paris in which we had to don the James Bond attire to enter. I learned how to say flush in French (colore); which, coincidentally, is a very good poker hand which wins you money.

I´ll try and post some pictures here shortly as the internet connection here is very spotty and I want to make sure this gets up...

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