In a welcome break from the news gathering/mocking/crying that seems to have overtaken Ooh Sometimes recently, after all there is only so much you can write about Libya, Pirates of the Coalition cutting everything this weekend only, act now for a free pen and a natural disaster colourfully described with culturally insensitive jokes so bad, Mr Takazuki of the Evil Takazuki Corp has ordered my death, we present to you now the Lonely Lord’s guide to Paris, complete with pictures!

Instead of taking its cue from various travel guides researched by various professionals all well versed with finding the very best places have to offer such as Lonely Planet, Time Out and Zoo Keeper Monthly, prepare to be amazed by the sheer lack of understanding and indeed caring that the next couple of posts will bring.

You see, most people’s experiences of places are different, they travel because they like to get away from it all, from work, from bills, from the police for reasons I can’t go into right now…and therefore when it comes up in conversation, travelling becomes a dick waving competition about what places are like, what you and at least one crappy story about how someone fell over and how you laughed and laughed, before the other people in the conversation stick cocktail sticks into your eyes.

So consider this, the written version of the above, but there’s no chance of sticking anything in me to make me stop. And yes, I realise how that sentence sounds. Writing without sounding dirty is hard.

Anyway, to Paris. Capital of France, setting of Liam Neeson kicking ass in Taken and home of a thousand stereotypes. Our epic journey begins at the St Pancreatic cancer train station in London (if this was television, we’d have produced a sh*tty map with my face on a dot), where after checking in quite quickly and getting felt up by a man whose face simply screams out for someone to kill him now, a realisation dawned on me.

You see the French border control people are in London, not the other end and as such, in a bizarre technicality once I went passed them, I was in France. Probably could have just called it a day there really.

Travelling by Eurostar was actually quite surprising for a start, it’s easy to forget you’re travelling internationally when you’re on the train and to be honest, it only hits you when you come out the other side and whizz past the sign for Calais. Sitting around various business types was most interesting, every one of them buried in some spreadsheet stating how much their lives suck or indeed how many Apple ipads were on show outside of the Apple Death Star or stores as you may know them as.

Arriving at Le Station de train de Paris le-ter on, it was amazing to think that in two hours, I’d gone from one European capital city to another, all without sh*tting myself about travelling on a plane.

After leaving the station, and getting slightly lost, I ended up at the metro subway system where some little girls with clipboards crowded me asking for money in every language, waving the disability thing in my face as to what it was for. The foreign version of the same student gimps in the cities here asking for cash I first thought, however these girls were far more persistent, basically crowding me, saying excuse me 100 times a second and asking for cash.

They smelled tourist. And fear.

Having used the subway to escape them, that also provided a welcome experience. Basically the Parisian Subway smelled like rotten piss, which had the unusual effect of rotting away my nostril hair. Remarkably no-one else seemed to care about the smell, which only raises questions about how often the entire population of Paris goes on a bender and then proceeds to empty their bowels on the metro lines.

Having made my way round to the river, and then proceeding further to get lost despite having one of the supposed travel guides with me telling all the wonderful places to go, I then came to Notre Dame.

There was no hunchback screaming.

Shame.

It’s a beautiful building, which stands as a wonderful testament to the test of time through construction methods as well as how much money the church has, though of course anyone who hasn’t buggered children would say that.

The stained glass really filled the insides with different colours, and the bishop who was performing a service at the time, seemed to just give up and wander off. The confessional thing was no longer just a wooden box where people go into and admit to doing naughty before going off to do more naughty, it’s a modern plastic box with a computer, so you can probably email God and then get a tweet back saying 5 hail marys and a how’s your father.

Further down the road from Notre Damage, another new scam which seems to be roaming the streets came into play; a man of questionable accent came from behind with a ring in his hand, basically asking if it was mine and asking for a finder’s fee. If only I hadn’t see him put the ring on the floor, and also if only I wore bling. He grabbed my hand and wasn’t willing to let go until I gave cash, but I worked free and wandered towards the police, at which point he magically disappeared across the river.

It must a stronger smell of tourist than what was coming from the metro.

It was at this point, I had wandered into the Louvre, the museum with the glass pyramid thing and that painting which was responsible for Tom Hanks coming over and running round in the Da Numpty Code.

It seems that the French really went to town on ensuring that the Louvre was wearing it’s best clothes for all to see, there was a bit of French history, which was in French. So that lasted all of 3 seconds before moving onto somewhere underneath the main building with pretty big bricks. After that, was a load of stuff nicked from Egypt, with a man-lion thing and stuff which have been off Stargate.

After that, was the Greek area, in which statues in capable of wearing clothes were on all display and you just couldn’t help but wonder how the men’s joy departments were “lacking” or it could be that the porn industry back then was more realistic.

After passing the Ark of the Covenant and the burns of former Nazis on the wall, we come to the main event, the moaning Lisa. Da Vinci’s masterpiece was located in a massive room, on a huge fake wall with four security guys keeping an eye on it at all times, and this of course had the biggest crowd.

But the thing is, it’s such a tiny painting, I felt like someone had just slapped it onto a giant letter to be mailed to ask for money (after all that’s the only reason we get letters these days) and it’s strange to actually see something like that in the flesh.

The one thing people wanted to do was just get their picture with it.

Yep, that was it, get a picture of it with them pulling thumbs ups. I could have made a fortune taking pictures, and then after the ninth picture taking session, an Indian man asked me if I wanted a picture doing. Well, when in Paris;

After that, it was getting on a bit and there was only time to do one more thing. The Blackpool Tower.

The lines were long, the “looky-looky” men selling sh*t were on the prowl and for some reason there was an army presence on site, perhaps they had been expecting me. The last time I had seen it so up close was on a trip back when I was 16 and loathing school to a degree that most others would have gotten various firearms and gone on a rampage.

You know that people describe the history of the Blackpool tower more eloquently, with feeling, and make the obvious remarks about the structure being a piece of engineering wonder.

I describe it as a big brown thing that has a bar on the second floor.

It seems that there are several things which need to be cleared up about Paris, aside from needing galleons of bleach for the subway system. As far as being romantic goes, Paris is about as romantic as a colonoscopy.

Granted this could be just because Paris was viewed from the perspective of one fat lump with looks that causes planes to crash if he were to look up, but during the time there, it was rare to see anyone wandering around in the illness state which doctors refer to as irritable bowel syndrome to singletons or love to those who are currently going to places while having to remember the long list of things not to do given to them by their other halves.

Also the various con-artists that were around everywhere were far more annoying to point I just ended up telling them to f*ck off, of which they seem to understand perfectly, therefore it was fantastic to see some of them getting chased down by a bloke who was just waiting for the bus.

It was great to the French striking at a nearby public building over something, but there were no cars on fire, which was a great disappointment as I had a new camera to try out and I could have made a mint selling the photos.

The prices of Paris are worse than London, with the most reasonable cuisine that could be found being Mcdonalds. But they sell beer, so that makes it all good. Conversation with people was difficult as it went something like this;

Me: Bonjour
Other people: Bonjour, blah blah various French words etc.
Me: Je parle petite francais, pardon.
Other people: Au reviour blah blah blah etc.

Though at an Irish bar by the train station, there were some hot French ladies who just wanted to talk to everyone and also they had the cheapest beer going; the exchange worked out about £6 for a pint of lager. No wonder they drink wine.

Also from what went on, a day was more than enough to be in the French capital, there are some great sights to be had, but the travel in-between the various areas, the number of times I was stopped by various swindlers, the expense of everything (10 euros for a tiny crepe, wow, I seen bigger crepes floating in the toilet for free.) and the lack of any real variety in terms of the restaurants was surprising. Though finding tat shops were easy, especially if they are called “TATI”.

Overall, despite seeing some of the great sights of the city, if you feel far better getting back home to shower, crepe and then watch artful porn about the 18th century from BBC 4, then there was something wrong with the whole experience. Perhaps another day can be spent in future either finding things off the beaten track more, or just washing down the subway.