One Graveyard, 8 TravBuddies, A Bottle Of Whiskey & A Riot

Today, was the day I was to fly to Paris to meet Lori & Jeff and all the other TBs that I had not spoken to yet....so why did I spend all night drinking with my buddy, Bryan. I got home towards 4 in the morning and had to be at the airport bus in an hour so why did I lie down and go to sleep without packing my bag??

When I got to Paris, I dumped my bag in Gare de Nord as I knew the others wouldnt be in until towards 3 o'clock. I grabbed a cheap crepe and set off in search of Peré Lachaise cemetary as it is one of the places I had never been before. It wasnt until I was leaving that I realised how wierd it was to be kicking off my holiday by strolling around a cemetery eating a crepe. It should have been a mood killer but somehow it was kinda cool walking around this grave yard unlike any other that Ive walked through.

After this eerie beginning, I headed for a bar near La Bastille where I decided to wait for the others to arrive. When I found a nice pub, Lori let me know that their plane had been delayed. That was fine seeing as I was having great craic trying to out drink the barman in the Irish bar. Many pints and shots later, I met the gang in the hotel reception.

So the gang was finally altogether with Lori, Bondy, Ben, Jeff, Ruby, Hannah & Anna (the order is purely random I promise!!).

I felt at ease straight away with this group. It was odd, especially seeing as they had all travelled or met each other before. The questions we asked each other were more about catching up with each other rather than trying to get to know each other. That really made me feel completely apart of the group and not just a tag along. So now we were 8.

After a quick dinner we headed straight for the supermarket to buy cheap drink. A cheap bottle of Jameson....sweet! We went back to one of the rooms, opened our drink and unleashed the party!! Unfortunately I didnt realise that there were cups so ended up drinking my whiskey without mixer, but hey, they just made the fun come undiluted and quicker.

Out in the square, we were not sure whether we could bring our drink and I dont think we were meant to....the locals really appeared disgusted with us.

If only we could have gotten a crane shot of the crowd, you could see a large circle form around us that seemed to move as we did, as if we were radioactive. I cant get over at how even at this stage I felt as if I had been friends with the others for such a long time.

The photos from each of our blogs tell a better story of what happened than I can. Lets just say McHammer (Ruby) appeared, some bicthes and ho's danced, Jeff did a traditional Russian dance and I did the Irish dance. From Jeffs photos I also gather that I did some amount of Irish story telling haha

Good times, Good times!!

At some point we were joined by two of Ruby's mates, Kellen & Obi, whilst Lori ran up about €100 on Bondy's phone bill to ring everyone about her birthday. We also found out that her friend Melissa hates me. Possibly something to do with talking to her in the middle of the night, drunk and very possibly making fun of her.

I should really apologise to her.

All of a sudden, the Gendarme were running all over the place with batons raised. Myeself and Jeff ran off close behind them sensing that a riot was happening. If it wasnt, our shouts of "RIOT!!!" would have been highly misdirected. It was not until Jeff jumped on a bench that we noticed the officer wildly swinging his baton towards as some "rioter" lay on the ground surround. The two of us made a swift exit.

We looked around for a bar to go to but decided that €7 for a beer was a bit steep and every other bar seemed to think we were slightly intoxicated...no idea where they got that from. Oh thats right all the vodka and Frangelico we were drinking infront of them.

So nothing for it then, back to the room to continue the fun. But first myself and Jeff made a quick pitstop at the kebab shop across the road.

The kebabs were delicious. Well I actually only had a bite out of mine before the lovely Ruby decided to share with me. I didnt know that sharing meant she got to eat all of my kebab and most of Jeffs!!! Ruby tells us they were nice however.

Apparently Lori may have celebrated her birthday a little too hard as she wasnt feeling the May West which perhaps was not helped by myself and the lads trapping her underneath the bed! While everybody else were preoccupied with Lori, Jeff and I slipped out the door back to the kebab shop. This time we got smart and bought 4!

Back up in the room, we were all enjoying our kebabs especially Bondy who was sat on the bathroom floor looking after poor Lori. At one point we could hear someone (Lori) getting sick,
Bondy asked "are you ok????"
Jeff replied "what sort of stupid question is that!!"
I innocently enquired from Bondy, "would you like me to hold your kebab???"

As we all know the feeling of being the person getting sick, we decided to give her some space and moved the fun to our room.

This was the site of the first meeting of Bob (my lightbulb) and Ciaran (Ruby's lion). It was a historic occassion as you could imagine as well as several hours filled with the most random conversations.

Once again, it was a great day and I could not have been happier that I took Lori up on her offer of joining up with her and her mates for this trip. Even after this one night I could tell that the next few days were going to be so much more fun than I had originally expected.

On second thought, perhaps adding photos of graves first to this blog was not such a good idea. Now if you just look at this entry on face value you will think it really morbid with all the grave photos filling in the text....