In fact I want so much money... Give me your money

Yes, that's what Paris says to travellers. I think it is possibly even more expensive than London, which I had been told was one of the most expensive cities in the world.

Some of the highlights of the overpricing rampant in Paris. (Taking into consideration the current exchange rate is 2-1 for the Aus dollar to the euro)

• A toasted ham & cheese sandwich has a special name, croque monsieur, presumably in an attempt to justify the obscene $6-14 price tag.


• The average price of a beer in most places is around $10.


• I saw a restaurant advertising a hamburger for an exorbitant $24.

But I think the kicker for me was an experience I'm almost reluctant to admit, because it involves doing something that should not be done while travelling - going to McDonalds. However, it's not as bad as you might think, I only went in for a thickshake. But I was sorely disappointed for several reasons.
For starters, they only had vanilla and strawberry flavour. What, is chocolate not sophisticated enough for Paris? Then, they ask the appallingly high amount of $4.80. Then, to top it all off, it's not even a proper thickshake. It's a milkshake, with a consistency that's almost like pure milk. I should have gone with my instincts and braved death to cross 8 lanes of traffic to get an ice-cream from Haagen-Dazs.

We can be happy underground...

Except when that underground is the Paris Metro.

My introduction to this supposedly zonderful city has not been particularly wonderful. For those who have complained about London's underground, it is perfect in comparison to Paris. My luggage isn't the lightest or easiest thing to lug around, so it makes getting around between hostels slightly challenging. Now add the Paris metro into the equation.

For that, add cramped trains, (and this isn't during any sort of busy time period) the pain of which is multiplied by several squealing children that simply would not shut up despite the (rather limited) efforts of the parents to silence them. Obviously they considered it acceptable for the infant to be producing earsplitting shrieks that would likely have contravened any local laws on noise disturbance.

The next irritation is line switches. There's lots of stations in the city, so it's likely that you can get very close to where you want to go, but the convoluted stations means that I'd imagine that in more than a few cases that it would be less time consuming to simply walk there instead. I imagine it might take 5-10 minutes to make some of the line changes because of how far you have to walk in the station. This might be okay... if Paris had discovered escalators and/or elevators. But they haven't. And they've filled their underground stations with stairs. Sometimes there doesn't even seem to be a point, as you'll climb up some stairs, only to just go down another set only a short distance ahead.

Then after dutifully following the signs, I ended up getting to a platform on the correct line, but heading in the wrong direction. Even better, there was no means to get to the other side of the platform without leaving and re-entering the ticketed area. Of course, that required me to haul my luggage halfway across the station. Again. The real kicker was the long circular staircase.

I eventually got to my destination and managed to find the place that I'm staying. It hasn't heard of elevators either. It has, however, just like the station, heard of circular staircases. And I'm four floors up. Lesson for the future - always travel as light as is humanly possible.

Ain't no mountain... just lots of hills

This is an update from the road, coming direct from sunny Lisbon in Portugal. There's been a couple of gloriously sunny days here, with a warm sun providing 18+ temperatures even at night. It's also provided me with an mild dosage of sunburn, but I think I can put up with that.

The city seems to be built entirely on hills, and I'd swear there's not more than maybe 1 square metre of ground that is properly flat except for right at the water's edge. That said, the city is beautiful, and the hills give rise (ugh, that pun wasn't unintended) to some great hilltop vistas.

I'd post a photo, but I can't plug my computer into the computer I'm using - one which also has the incredibly irritating trait of beeping upon every keypress. So to avoid further aggravation, I'll keep it short.

Seaside towers, hilltop castles, a rush-hour that sees people honking horns near continuously, and some delicious culinary treats including great seafood and very tasty custard tarts. That's Lisbon in a nutshell.

Snow Drops, UK Stops

In my time in the UK, there have now been a few occasions where the weather has seen fit to unceremoniously dump a metric shedload of snow around various parts of the country. Despite hearing about ridiculously high temperatures in Australia during the summer, it does make it seem like the threat of global warming might be a little over-hyped, after all, it's supposed to be global right?

Anyway, perhaps the more interesting thing about these events is that the UK pretty much ground to a halt as a result of these snowfalls. While I understand that snow can put a dent in the ability to people to get to places, in some cases it seemed a little excessive. Perhaps the closure of London's underground rail system is one of these cases.

Underground.

Not exposed to the sky.

The sky where the snow is falling.

Go figure.

Though given there wasn't much snow in York, I understand that they might have had a little more to complain about in London.

Maybe.