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Day twenty-nine and we started the day by forcing ourselves out of bed and down for an early breakfast and check out.
It was time to say goodbye to Munich and to switch our attention on to Paris.
The train ride was a long six hour journey. The scenery really didn't reach the heights of what we'd seen throughout Switzerland, but it still provided enough of a distraction to stop us getting on each others nerves.
We arrived in Paris and quickly organised our metro pass for the week. The lady selling the tickets was obviously having a bad day as she was a '100% Angus Certified Grain Fed' Cow! She showed zero appreciation for my hearty attempt at the French language.
Somehow we managed to navigate the trains hassle free even with our enormous packs and quickly found ourselves in Bastille.
We had to hand over a large sum of cash for the apartment as the landlord had no credit card facilities. Trying to find an ATM was surprisingly difficult and took us the better part of half an hour. We did find a Laundromat though, much to Sallie's delight.
After settling in at our apartment and getting a number of tips from our Landlord (who happened to be one of the nicest people we met in Paris) we headed back to the Laundromat to do some washing.
We broke one of our routines of the holiday and decided not to eat a romantic dinner while waiting in the Laundromat. The owners of the facility came in and began to lock up while we were waiting. They were friendly and waited for us to partially dry our clothes. Their little boy kept pulling out all the cleaning equipment and mimicking their actions, much to his grandmothers frustration.
We headed back to the apartment and decorated every edge we could find with our clothes in the hope of getting them dry.
Off to dinner and what better way to welcome ourselves to Paris than with some delicious McDonalds? We collected our bag, beautifully packed in a picnic style hamper and made our way to what we had hoped would be a romantic park.
On the way we passed a protest and discovered the benefits of inhaling tear-gas. It's really terrible stuff, even in a moderate dosage, so I wouldn't recommend ingesting it regularly. Many were throwing up along the streets which really destroyed our appetite. Our eyes became quite sore, breathing a bit difficult and it smelt like a bag of dog poop.
We fought through it and arrived in the 'romantic park' for dinner. Just as Sal was biting into her burger a man began urinating two meters from us and another man started badgering me with aggressive French. I could see he was after money and when he finally pulled out his wallet to show me what he meant I could see he had plenty already - so I kindly told him to 'b***** off' in very clear and concise English.
We headed back to the apartment promising never to eat McDonalds again on the trip.
When we finally relaxed and tried to go to sleep we realized the apartment was above a jazz bar. Great for about 20 minutes but by 3.00am the novelty had worn thin.
Welcome to Paris!
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