Enjoy the climb

Stairs, holy light shade Batman! We must have climbed 10's of thousands of stairs since first arriving in London up till now. They should have that as a tourist brochure - love stairs? COME TO EUROPE, we have shitloads.

So we are currently sitting in the common area of our hostel which is a 3 minute walk from the Moulin Rouge, fancy that hey! The street which it is on is pretty dodgy, full of strip joints and the like.

The street we are on is very nice though, full of little shops and a lovely little bakery which has the best Quiche I have ever eaten, there is also steamy hot bread sticks any time of the day which is very cool and tasty and cheap (which is very important). I made a €4 dinner tonight which everyone sitting around us was envious of in both terms of quality and price. The standard fare around us was canned food and fried eggs...

After Scotland we popped into a little town called Bath which was terriffic but bloody expensive, so after a few cruisy days and a comedy club evening we decided to get into cheap territory, ANYWHERE but the UK. A microwaved slice of Quiche and some cashews was all it took to go from Western England to the heart of Belgium - Brussels.

Sweet lordy lord it was cold there, we got about a reasonable amount on the first night as there were some South Korean guys sharing our room who were on a mission from their Government to see the entire city in one night. We left them after we visited the statue of a little boy taking a wizz, Manekin Pis to be exact. There are several legends aorund the origins of the kid but I think he was just a little shit taking a wee in the middle of the city and not some grand saviour!

We also popped into some other towns while in Belgium, Bruges and Gent which were both awesome places and the tour guide we went with was very cool and looked exactly like my uncle! Crazy stuff, so after having a cosy lunch in front of an open gas fire we finished off the tour and had a bit of a snooze on the way home on the bus.

So with some time to burn before Amsterdam we chose to head off to the only logical place when you have spare time, PARIS. Arriving in a country with a strange language was very daunting in Belgium but that was quickly forgotten here in Paris and we were cruising the metro with the best of them and eating some French sticks before you could say Yoplait (its French for yoghurt).

So after climbing to the top (with some slight assistance from a high speed lift) of the Eiffel tower in some seriously crazy winds and below zero temperatures, we rested. With the rest done and Erika calmed down sufficiently from the staggering height we pressed on to the bus straight back to the heated hostel. We had a nice little walk around the vicinity of the hostel looking for dinner, well it wasnt that nice but it was exciting all the same. Finally setteling on the finest piece of Quiche I have ever encountered and some bread sticks along with some water and ham on the floor of our room, it was great fun (being serious there too!).

Coming to a close today we went and visited the Lourve (pronounced luve) which was mind blowing. The place is so huge and is on such a grand scale, nothing I have seen in Australia comes close to being a single room of this place. Around 7 hours later we completed about 70% of the place but I blame the fact of me solving the Da Vinci code on not getting around to the other 30% of it. But I know the secret tunnels now so I can sneak back in if I need to.

Tomorrow we do other stuff but I will tell you about that later on. We have access to the net alot more that one would think so send us both an email every now and then! Look forward to our next post from either our last day in Paris or Amsterdam (if we remember what the internet is from there).