It's been a Queenstown week this week in Paris.
Kristen Guthrie had her 60th here and it was hard to walk anywhere without bumping into familiar faces.
The four families living on the floor below our apartment in Montmartre will be very happy to see the back of us all as there was a lot of traffic up and down the tiny wonky staircase.
The very angry Croatian guy who burst in on our pre-dinner drink party at 10pm said some very rude things about tourists, and I don't think he will be rushing to book a holiday to New Zealand anytime soon.
It was a shame for him that Kristen is so popular and that so many friends from home wanted to share her birthday party.
Happy birthday, dear Kristen and I hope the "Queenstown goes to the Dordogne on bikes" trip is a huge success.
Our apartment in the next street was impossibly romantic. I had made the foolish mistake of telling my parents we had rented a two-bed place, so it should have been less surprising when I got the text saying they had decided to join us.
Our Paris pad was six floors up and they were very historical steps all the way.
The only other means of getting there was a lift, which surely won every prize for world's smallest and clonkiest.
Not sure the parents thought much of their bunkroom. Dad said it was easier climbing Everest than getting into his top bunk. And any idea of romance for my darling went right out the door with his father-in-law wandering through our room all night heading for the loo.
I told you last week that crossing the road in France was the most exciting thing to do here; I was wrong.
It is biking in Paris. Five of us went on a night bike tour and the instructions were to stay together and never let a car in, as a big lump of us will stop the cars hitting us!
It was exhilarating after a while, but terrifying to start with. The tour goes every night so the locals are used to it - and there was always some very drunk chap leaping from his seat in a cafe stopping the traffic and waving us though.
It's ridiculously good fun hurtling round the Louvre on a bike with the sun setting behind the pyramid, and finishing up under the Eiffel Tower with its disco lights.
The Paris skyline is set to change, as the French Government has done a deal with the Russians, letting them buy a decent-sized section next to the Eiffel Tower, for the bargain price of 60 million ($NZ106 million), where they are going to build a giant gold onion dome. As with everything here, there has been a lot of loud argument and hand-waving!
Now we head for Germany, and to keep myself happy and busy on trains, I bought myself the highly recommended Germania by Simon Winder. It's his version of German history and culture and it's hysterical.
In his introduction he says he just writes about things that interest him, as he has no idea what might interest his readers (I know the feeling!) and says it's a bit like two people - one who goes to Germany to study late medieval altarpieces, and another who just wants a bit of a wild night out with a Dortmund transsexual - hard to see where their interests might cross apart from perhaps in a less popular, regional museum ...
I'm loving it and he has a very highly developed sense of the ridiculous - quite Bill Bryson-ish.
Home is calling and the thought of a coffee at Motorgrill and reading the ODT is getting very appealing.
Wouldn't swap my ground-floor lifestyle with REAL showers and loos that work for any amount of great museums and haute cuisine!
