Paris.

A windswept and interesting way of starting this post would read like this: ‘Paris in August is not like Paris at any other time of the year’. As my previous experience of Paris currently extends only into the month of September 2005, I suppose all I can say is that my experience of Paris this time around was quite different indeed. It was still a crowded, bustling city as I’m sure it is year round, but if you keep away from the tourist attractions and traps, you would be forgiven for thinking that nobody lived there at all.

August is the time of Summer vacations for Parisians, and (as we sadly discovered) the time of mass restaurant and boulangerie closure. This results in a very large number of polar fleece-clad, bum bag-laden middle-aged tourists who view the city from the vantage of their video camera eyepiece appearing in much larger quantities than actual French people. It is times like this when visiting big tourist cities that am so totally overjoyed by Melbourne’s massively inconvenient distance from most places on earth (do remind me of these words around hour twenty of my flight home on Wednesday, as I’m rubbing lip gloss inside my nose to prevent further dehydration).

Despite the lack of fine dining opportunities, the weather permitted Sui and I several picnics on the Seine in hammocks, where we sat reading, eating cheese and drinking delicious wine. We avoided tourist attractions to the point of not even sighting the Eiffel Tower above the skyline until my last day there. Not having to queue for hours or fight through too many conga lines of tourists made for a very relaxing long weekend, despite my feet slipping into their usual European rhythm of forming cloven hooves. When woman can design a comfortable, supportive, moisturising and exfoliating pair of fair trade, vegetarian, fashionable shoes that will allow me to walk 10km a day and render me able to dance til the wee small hours to Phil Collins’ greatest hits, I’ll be first in line to purchase them. For now, I’m sticking with my thongs and a pair of well-beaten suede boots that will surely result in my later life becoming a Christy Brown-esque existence of being moved from pub to post office in a wheelbarrow pushed by kindly family members and friends.

Anyway, I’m back in London now, and moving on to Sheffield on Friday. Why Tropical North Sheffield you ask? I shall be visiting my dear friend Bronze Age in a last ditch effort to get her to call me ‘Miocene’.

Here are a few shots from last weekend....

Australian giants having a tiny drink at a tiny Parisian bar.





An indoor picnic due to rain. Delicious!



Looks glamourous, but we found these flowers in the flower dumpster at the park. Kyatt, you would be proud... but it was no Barkley Square dumpster, so don't get jealous!



Our picnic spot by the Seine.








PAPY DANCE! I have so much time for legitimate street theatre.