Gypsies!

Well it has certainly been a busy week. After London (saw the real crown jewels!), I took a train through the channel tunnel to Paris, only 2 hours and 15 minutes away, and settled into the city of love for a couple days. I can say that I love Paris but I am not in love with Paris, primarily because of the gypsies continually trying to creatively separate me from my money. The first trick someone tried on me involved a young woman "finding" a ring on the ground and asking me if it was mine; then when she had my attention and distraction she asked for money. First of all I saw that the ring did not come off the ground but out of her hand. Secondly, if she had legitimately found this ring, and because I did not claim it, the logical thing would be to keep it and pawn it for money, so again, obviously a scam. The same scheme was attempted on me near the Arc de Triumph. That poor man had barely got the ring out of his sleeve before I rebuffed him rudely. The funniest part was it was an identical ring.

I have to admit that they did catch me once though. I was heading to a food stand under the Eiffel Tower and hadn't eaten all day because I tend to forget about nourishment when I am traveling. Tired and starving, I was approached by a "deaf" woman with a clipboard who indicated by pointing that she was raising money for a deaf charity. Now in my defense I have encountered real deaf people actually raising money in a similar fashion in Canada. I took the clipboard and filled out a space beneath the others already there and as I was handing over the 20 pound note I had left over from the UK, I noticed that all the other names had been photocopied. My brain was a bit slow to react so it took a few extra seconds for the synapses to fire and by that time she was long gone. Alas. Suffice to say the woman aggressively begging beside the food stand got a particularly dirty look from me after she refused the fries I offered her.

The rest of Paris was amazing, but the Louvre was my absolute favorite- it really helped that I was there in the low season so I wasn't completely overwhelmed. Much of the museum is practically empty compared to the chaos in front of the Mona Lisa and to a lesser extent, the Venus de Milo. What really bothered me though was the people who walk up to the painting, take a photo, check their display to make sure they got a good shot and then walk away. Kind of defeats the purpose of coming to see the real thing, don't you think? I took a photo but ended up deleting it because it just didn't do justice to the actual painting (the numerous Mona Lisa postcards, mousepads, notebooks, etc at the giftshop would have done just as well anyway). Even behind glass I couldn't take my eyes away and probably stared at it for a good 15 minutes and still came back for another look before I left the building.

I left Paris on March 2, showing up at the train station to see what might suit my fancy. The next train to Caen (in Normandy) was leaving in 15 minutes so I hopped on that and transferred to a small local and ended up in Bayeux, home of a very famous medieval tapestry dating to the 1060's detailing the Battle of Hastings and rise of William the Conqueror (first king of all England). I was also hoping to take a bus to Juno Beach yesterday where the Canadians landed at D-Day but it is some sort of school holiday right now so there was only on bus per day and I wanted to catch the ferry last night. I was originally going to take a ferry all the way to Ireland, but that crossing was seasonal (and 21 hours!) so I opted to go back through the UK and then get a Sail and Rail ticket to Dublin. Plans changed again when a man had a heart attack on the ferry just as we were leaving port so the departure was pushed back an hour and I didn't get into Portsmouth, UK until 10:30 at night. Luckily for me, an older couple and their adult daughter that I was visiting with in the bar invited me to stay at their friends' place where they were also staying. The daughter's husband picked us up from the ferry terminal and that is how I ended up in Bristol this morning. There is a birthday party I have been invited to tonight so I will be checking that out and then moving on tomorrow.

The plan is to take a train to Fishguard from Bristol and then ferry to Rosslare in southern Ireland. But we will see how that turns out. Hurray for random wanderings!

-A.