I hate flying. I totally hate the feeling I have when the plane goes up, I hate the panic attacks I have when the plane moves while flying, I hate the bumpy landings. I hate everything about it! Other than that, what a great thing to be able to travel thousands of kilometers in such a short time!

We arrived in Paris around 3 o’clock in the afternoon and by 5 we were walking around the city. His sister is sooo nice! She found a place for us to stay there, she cooked for us, she was our guide, yeah, she was great!  Of course, she would have liked us to stay longer, to visit more places, to do more stuff, but maybe next time. Three and a half days were exactly the time we needed to walk around Paris and take pics with all the cameras we own (the digital ones + the film ones = 7 cameras).

On our first afternoon there we walked around the Latin quarter and Notre Dame. Whenever I’m visiting a foreign city I’m amazed of how good it looks. Most of the cities here are horrible: the big communistic blocks, ugly shops, cars parked everywhere, people dressed like they’re going to a funeral. It’s horrible! Being abroad is like a breath of fresh air and also like a punch in the face: you realise you’ve been cursed to live in such an ugly country and that no matter how much you hope things will change one day, deep down you know they won’t and you’ll grow old looking at the same shitty buildings, bumping into the same angry people.

But there everything is quaint: from the cosy restaurants to their old bikes scattered around the city. There was always something new to discover, some nice flowers in a window, a beautiful lady with a colourful scarf, the fact that the drivers respect the bikers and don’t honk at them to pedal faster, in other words – civilisation.

I could have walked aimlessly for hours and I still wouldn’t have got enough of it. I know it’s not good comparing what you have with what you could have, but being there made me not want to come back ever again.