Cycling in Paris

After my serious post I would like to share with you the very good part of my day yesterday. We decided to do a bicycle tour of Paris. Anyone who has been to Paris can appreciate that people drive like they are in Bangkok. Anyone who has been to Bangkok can appreciate that that means scarily! It's like someone is in their car thinking "I don't really care what the lights say, I think I will just go and wing it through the intersection anyway...". Or my personal favourite, "Who needs line markings in a massive roundabout, I will wing it!". It appears to me that even when there is a green man indicating pedestrians can cross that it is legal (or just common practice) for motorbikes and cyclists to ride through anyway.

So imagine me on a bike (I don't remember the last time I rode one), with no helmet, from Australia and used to looking right, left, right not left, right, left. Probably a good thing or the ride may have been scarier. There were some other English speaking tourists (I will not name their country), who kept riding slowly in the path in front of me and let me tell you, I don't have the skills to navigate around them. So I figured out the best and safest way to complete this journey in one piece was to stay as close to the leader as possible, not with the stragglers at the back. Honestly, as we rode (I use the term "rode" loosely) around the corner from the bike shop I did think I was going to have to say to Clarence "Babe, I'm sorry, I can't do this, I'm going to hurt myself or someone else". Then I thought about the time I did a wee outside the toilet block in rural Zimbabwe, that was hard the first time, and how I survived after the kid knocked wee infected with goodness knows what on me and how I didn't fall apart when my luggage didn't arrive in Zimbabwe and how I looked out the elevator on the way down from the top of the Eiffel Tower... oh and how I survived what I think was scabies from Brilliant... and I thought to myself "You can do this...". And you know what? I hit my stride and actually began to enjoy it. It was a great tour, a lovely lunch and a lot more monuments that one of the Louis' or Napolean built in honour of themselves.

In exciting news... I am getting a blow-wave tomorrow. I will ask for GRANDE hair in honour of my blog and I will post photos of how the French do big hair.