Ah, Paris!

We picked Sally up near Opéra after a couple of restorative drinks, then negotiated the Métro to glittering Saint-Germain for another gut-busting meal in a very Jackie O al fresco café. Saint-Germain seemed to be devoted more to shopping than drinking, and so we caught the Métro back again and had a few in a very local bar back in Montmarte.

Ash and I spent the next day doing the usual tourist rounds: the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre-Dame and the like. I've been to Paris before, and both then and now it seemed to me that we weren't so much scratching the surface as feather-dusting it. It's sprawling, but quite apart from that is obscenely well populated with notable buildings, monuments and parks. We retreated to the hostel to regroup after being blasted by the afternoon sun.

That night we decided to soak up a bit of the faded Montmarte grandeur instead of the sleek glamour of the city centre. Our hostel was on the less touristy side of Montmarte - pretty much slap-bang in the middle of the 'hood, really - and we headed towards the streets in the shadow of the Sacré Coeur instead. We found a café serving gallettes and crêpes at surprisingly non-Parisian prices and settled in for a very pleasant evening. It was still mostly warm enough; the streets around our little square bustled with scooters and pedestrians and the alcohol flowed most gratifyingly. In fact, it flowed with such vigour that it must have appeared to the locals that we were absolutely caning it. Everyone else in the place was daintily sipping espresso or minute glasses of wine but we, on the other hand, knew the word for "big glass of beer" (sérieux! Thanks, Ben) and were not afraid to use it. (In fact, I can look back to the night we all first met the French girls and perhaps begin to understand their bemusement at our collective state.)

Having finished our meal, we climbed a little higher up the hill to another café. By now, Ashley was overjoyed that Paris knew about cider and our bouncy (speeding?) American waitress furnished us with a bottle of Brittany's finest. Getting ready to down the last glass, I stopped when I noticed a considerable blob of...phlegm, for want of a better word, in the bottom. We took our leave and I switched to wine for the latter part of the evening.

Before leaving the next day, we climbed to the Sacré-Coeur, took a quick look round (ach, you've seen one Romano-Byzantine influenced basilica and you seen 'em all) and headed to Dieppe. We arrived in the late afternoon, found a suitable hotel and then met up with Sally and Jez to eat. Dieppe went from sunny tourist town to dustbowl eerieness in about half an hour flat: our chosen bar started to close around us at the same time the weather turned grey and we wandered the empty streets until happening upon seemingly the only lively joint in town. We took a quick break from boozing to eat some excellent pizzas at a miniscule pizzeria around the corner, then got back down to business. Finding and patronising a Scottish bar on the way home capped the evening off in a weirdly full-circle way.

There's not much to tell about the rest of the holiday; we got to the ferry in the nick of time after a frustrating crawl along the Normandy back roads, headed to Oxford to visit a friend of Ash's and finally came to rest in Edinburgh the Sunday before last. Conclusions? Driving on a track is excellent; driving a thousand miles to get there isn't, but do it with the right company and it'll be a great trip!