My God there are some very ugly cars in Europe! It seems that no matter how painful on the eyes a car is, some idiot out there with no taste will buy it.

And in other news, I got a present today - yes! It was from Alicia, who wrapped it and everything, and it was a spinning top hehe (i.e. pull the thing and thingy spins for ages). Very long story behind that, but just what I always wanted ;)

Today is International Chick's Day apparently (thanks Google), a day to celebrate the fairer sex and their economic, political and social achievements hehehe. Sorry I didn't mean to giggle there. So let's hear it for those of us missing a Y chromosome - hip hip hooray! International Men's Day is officially November 19th, but let's be honest - it's a man's day every day ;)

After a week of mostly decent weather, today looked no different so it enticed us out to...

...the wee town of Saint-Rémy-lès-Chevreuse, about 30kms southwest of Paris and home to 8,000.

One of the Frenchies I work with recommended this area to me as a good spot for cycling, so I thought I'd scope it out on foot first with Kristina before dicking around with getting the bike out here.

Our first stop was the tourist office across from the train station where we were given a brochure with a big write up about this church. One might therefore figure it's quite the thing to see, but it ain't hehe. Tha was my first clue that there wasn't much to this place. My second clue came from getting yelled at twice from passing cars for no apparent reason when I was lining something up for a photo, so clearly they're all pretty bored here too. Check out the dinky little thing above hehe - the driver (so black you can barely see him) yelled at me too hahaha! Weird.

Anyway this is quite a cute little town despite the apparent boredom. It's got a good little playground for the kids though - hard to be bored with a good playground, even for adults ;)

With that we headed west out of town along the deformed piss (deformed track) aiming to reach this château up on the hill a few kilometres away and the town it overlooks.

Spot the German (clue: walking sticks).

In the tourist office we given this map with a walking route scribbled on it in pencil.

When it started leading us high up into the woods it all got a bit Blair Witch Project hehe, but was fun nonetheless.

Eventually we found civilisation again, and what looked like a proper track. No worries.

Then the tourist office lady's scribble that we were following on our map took us back down the hill and I thought towards the château, but instead the path ended in this person's backyard hahaha! Their dalmation came out barking at us, but they were much nicer and pointed us in the right direction hehe.

So after much fun and games we finally made it here - the Château de la Madeleine, dating right back to the 11th century!

Overlooking the village of Chevreuse, with the castle's objective being to protect it against pillaging. By this stage the weather had turned to shit and was cold and raining (which we really hadn't prepared for) so this is a bit of a miserable panorama, but anyway this is overlooking the Yvette Valley. I'd keen to get the bike back here and go nuts if I'm still in Paris come summer.

The main drag through Chevreuse. By this stage we were cold, wet and hungry, so we raided a bakery, waited for a bus that never came, and wandered the few kilometres back to the train station.

Hehe, no idea.

Paris weather - four seasons in one day.

Tomorrow is my six month anniversary in Paris :) I'm not sure how much longer I'm due to be here - at least until May but hopefully for the whole summer! We'll see, but in the meantime I've been given a change of scenery. The apartment building I'm living in is undergoing renovations at the moment - one floor at a time. The Top-most floor was recently completed, and so Angelos (my workmate) and I have been moved up from this on the third and fourth floors...

...to this up on the seventh (the limit for all buildings in central Paris). The shot on the left is the rather bland greeting you get when you walk in the door, but the rest of the apartment is pretty nice and pretty spacious! Just need to get those single beds biffed out and a double put in.

That's what I'm talking about - my new view over Les Halles, central Paris. Incidentally, that fountain down there of which I've taken plenty of photos but never mentioned is Fontaine des Innocents. It was constructed in 1550 and is the oldest monumental fountain in Paris, and the only Renaissance fountain either in Paris or all of France - I forget which.

After a failed attempt the weekend before last we finally got on to a court to smash a few balls (and a send a few over the fence). And now I'm sitting here with stiff legs - not a good sign for the marathon coming up in just a few weeks hehe.

Nothing like a lot of black smoke pouring out of the (unfinished) office building across the road, and watching a whole lot of French fire-fighters running around and instilling no confidence in anybody hehe. Good times. And with that I'm off to London for the weekend. Oh and happy St Patrick's Day to my Irish fans (of which I'm sure I have none).

I've gone on about Place Charles de Gaulle a few times (the road surrounding the Arc de Triomphe) and how chaotic it can be, but so too for that matter can be the Champs-Élysées. During rush-hour it is eight lanes of traffic either grid-locked, cutting each other up, obstructing intersections, mopeds all over the show - it's not for the faint-hearted and yet there are still idiot cyclists who don't wear helmets.

Anyway, I see several near-misses every day, and occasionally see this. I'm not sure exactly how this happened but it involved this moped wiping the front of this car and that guy on the road getting wiped out. I've done about 3,000kms on the bike in Paris since first arriving here last September, and cycle along here to and from work almost every day - it's always unsettling to see the reality of what can happen without warning.

This certainly isn't unique to the Paris Metro system but it does seem to be more rife in Paris, and that's the weirdoes and whack jobs everywhere both loitering in the stations and on the platforms, and on the trains themselves. Kristina and I were off to play some more tennis after work tonight, and after we'd all piled on to the train I noticed this one dude left 'standing' (or wobbling) on the platform. He had a large bottle of something in one hand, and a couple plastic bags nearby which appeared to be his. Before long he sort of fell into the wall, dropped his bottle which smashed everywhere, and obviously figured since he had no more drink he'd take a piss instead hahaha!

Smile for the camera ;) By this stage we'd been sitting on the platform for about a minute; by comparison the trains barely stop for 30 seconds so I wasn't sure what the holdup was. It turns out he was the hold up. Evidently when someone in this state is found on the platform, the train driver and several plain-clothes police who ride the metros whip out their walkie-talkies and deal with it. Meanwhile our friend decided he wanted to ride the train, and while getting on dropped his plastic bags to reveal they were full of... raw meat?!?! God only knows where he got that from, but regardless he refused to get off the train and be helped.

Although he obviously attracted a lot of attention, no one (and I do mean no one) found it the slightest bit amusing except us tourists hahaha! I even got told in French by some chick to stop taking photos (and I told her where to go, also in French).

This all dragged on for about ten minutes, by which stage everybody except me was getting pretty pissed off. Finally they got him off the train though and after holding up the entire line the driver got in and we got out of there. Yup, just another night underground.