♣ May 19th-27th, 2008. Leo´s House, Pantini, Paris, France.

This entry is going to sum up Paris. Paris was great. We spent the afternoon with Gretchen, Ian´s friend from Fort Collins, she is a cool art nerd who we spent our first full day in Paris drinking near the waterway and enjoying the true French life. As we sat there drinking, the Gendarmie, (Police) stopped us from drinking there and told us that we had to chill away from the river (safety I think). We complied. Cops in Europe are generally easy going and prevent things unlike American cops who just escalate things. We just putz-ed around Notre Dam and saw things from a lackadaisical world. No rush, no stress, just bliss. We later met up with Leo. Leo is a Bald headed bad ass who put us up for almost a week straight.

We cooked for him and cleaned his house a bunch for the free place to live. 7-10€ a night in food was the least we could do for his hospitality. Especially when hostels would cost double that. We spent a good majority of the days seeing sights and then at night we chilled with a nice dinner and dinner conversation. Leo is an art student, and staying there he inspired me to want to draw and live the studio art student lifestyle. Awesome. While in Paris we saw the majority of the tourist spots like everyone else but after the first day of sight seeing we saw all that was needed to be seen.

By day three we felt the true Paris the one Americans never see in their 1-3 day vacation to Paris. We, while in Paris, ran into a “Gréve General” general strike over social security. We found some members of the CNT the anarchist group in the march and we marched with them until we reached the end of the march at La Republique.

After the manifestation we grabbed some beers with a few members of the CNT protesters, who asked us to join them in a squat party. We would have joined them to but Leo, our host asked if we would tag along to a house party that his friends were having. So we went to the party with Leo.

It was a posh part of town we agreed and in the end we had a great blast getting drunk with a bunch of french students who spoke bairly a lick of English, but it was great. Fun was had by all. The next night we made diner for Leo´s Father, Brother, Sister, and Brother´s Girlfriend. It was great, especially to see a normal family get together. We watched rugby (Munster v. Taluse) and then later Futball (Paris v. Leon). It was a great cultural experience. I read a lot on this leg of the trip. The Last day and night need there own section…

Flogging Molly…

We were itching to leave Paris but we couldn´t, why? Ian had got in contact with Dennis a guitarist in the Band Flogging Molly. He got us some free concert tickets to the sold out show in Paris, France. We went to the show and had a blast singing and dancing and having a great time. We partied with the rock stars in Paris. I met Dennis,

Nate the bass guitar player, Nick the accordion Player and also “shaggy” Rick from the light team, all after the show.

We drank the night away and met two other Flogging Molly fans from Paris. It was a blast. Wound up walking home in the rain. We hitchhike out the next morning. Paris was out of this world.