Paris

If I am so spontaneous, why do I always need something to look forward too?

This time last year I was only three weeks away from my trip to Paris. This year I satiated my desire by watching half of Before Sunset (Half because Leyla got bored as there was "no kissing" like there was in the first one!)
Last night I watched one of those travel programmes full of inane useless information about Paris.
--Did you know that there is a Vineyard on the slopes of Montmartre? It appears to produce half bottles of highly sought after red wine and some of the grapes are alleged to be hallucinogenic ( yeah right that’s one hell of a USP)

--Bees are making honey on the roof tops of the opera houses, Garnier and Bastille. Organic, no less. I am always puzzled as to how honey can be guaranteed 100% organic. How do the owners know whether their bees have not been on some orgiastic sojourn to some far flung genetically modified pesticide riddled field of rape. Well I guess because the bees would themselves die which as we know is happening, so I rest my case, there is no such thing as organic honey.
Under the same opera house there was said to be a trout farm!


--For a year from September 2005, under the nose of the Panthéon's unsuspecting security officials, a group of intrepid "illegal restorers" set up a secret workshop and lounge in a cavity under the building's famous dome. Under the supervision of group member Jean-Baptiste Viot, a professional clockmaker, they pieced apart and repaired the antique clock that had been left to rust in the building since the 1960s. Only when their clandestine revamp of the elaborate timepiece had been completed did they reveal themselves. More here

--The same group are now secretly mapping and archiving the various underground quarries that Paris is built on and from. Yep when you tuck yourselves into bed in that delightful boutique hotel, remember every brick that is above ground has been quarried from right underneath you. You do the maths and I don’t think you will sleep quite so soundly. I have seen the 300 kilometers of tunnel and that’s a lot of empty space precariously supported by only a few rickety pillars. That is what Paris is built on.

--Finally, In Paris 70% of bread is made by hand. In London 3% So Paris has hit the 21st century and still it can’t make a loaf of bread last till lunchtime. How on earth is it ‘a good thing’ to have to shop twice a day for bread?