Just watch. Just listen. Wait for Yeezus.

London was quite nice, but Paris… Where should I start?

Maybe I’ll start along the source of civilizations — the river. The river Seine that parts the city into the left bank and right, rive dois and rive gauche, is the centerpiece to the city. it’s more interesting in placement than anything I’ve ever seen — dead smack in the center of the action. Tourists, like us, flock to it as you’ll find beside it the Notre Dame,  Musee D’orsay, the Louvre and other attractions.

Our flat was far away from the action. In Parisian proximity it’s far, but by American standards it’s right around the corner. Where we stayed was also worlds away in terms of neighborhood style. We were in Paris’s pseudo red light district, better known as Pigalle and home to the Moulin Rouge. Sex shops and hooker bars lined the streets. The Sexodrome was the first thing that caught my eye. This building was a few stories high and had a huge neon sign on the upper front that you could not miss, day or night. To top it off, my lady got asked in French … “how much?”  wow.

I can’t believe it’s more than a month after the trip and I’m able to recall all events like it was yesterday — I’ve impressed myself.

Anyway, let me backtrack a bit. Tiara and I take the Eurostar (high speed rail, similar to the US Amtrak) from London, through the English Channel, and arrive in Paris in about 2 hours. Getting from one country to another in the amount of time it takes to travel from NYC to Philly is pretty sick. We get out of the Eurostar (with over 100 pounds of luggage) and make our way through the subway and start figuring things out. The train system is 1) highly efficient with no wait more than 3 minutes 2) very easy to navigate, probably due to my subway savvy lingering from my NYC days. We take a couple trains to get to Pigalle and get out of the metro to a bustling Thursday night. Here we go…

Now back to where the story began. The flat sat on a small street a few blocks away from the action. From the metro to the door we passed the debauchery, but also beautiful French cafes with the aroma of caffe and pastry. On almost every corner was a patisserie (pastry shop) or brasserie (restaurant). The flat was a small studio, just enough for the two of us. Modernly decorated with trendy Ikea furniture and the classic French windows that open up  and give a slightly intimate connection with the streets on the other side. The elevator was a joke. It was only large enough to either fit our bodies or our suitcases, not both.

I’m trying to be descriptive as possible, yet concise and to the point. Tough work.

The first night (when we arrived), it was around 10pm, so we got settled in and went out to grab food and some Euros. We crashed, then woke up early to get the day started. This is when you know you’re having too much fun, or something, because we got up on Friday morning thinking was Wednesday. I had to reach out to my homie Kenji to confirm (the first name I saw on my gchat). I’m sure he thought I was on absinthe or something. Anyway, my 100 pound luggage was obviously overweight. I needed some way to displace some unnecessary articles of clothing and footwear, especially with the stuff I picked up in London. The plan was to get up around 9am and hit the post office. Here I am, carrying 2 heavy bags of clothes to the post office which was about 4 minutes away. I made it there with no problem, just a turn or two up the block. I get there, find someone that speaks a bit of English and figure out how to cheat the airline for charging me $50 for my overweight return. Turns out that everything is smaller in France. The largest box they had was 7kg and  my stuff was easily 3 times that. So, with the same two bags in tow, I attempt to make my way back to the flat to head out to a full day in Versailles. What should’ve been a 4 minute return trip, ended up taking over an hour! I’ll spare the details of where I went wrong in my journey and cut to the chase. This was a beast! I was sweating after a while, because I struggled with the bags as they tore through my hands (they were those rough plastic shopping bags that give no mercy on the palms). I ended up walking all the way up to Montmartre (which is just north of Pigalle on a hill). After turning my data on and risking a sky high cell bill, I Google Mapped my way back to civilization. While being the worst journey ever, I managed to find the most beautiful hood in the city, which we’ll get into later…

After getting back to the flat, we decided that it was a little too late to try and get out to Versailles and spend the day, so we decided to get the city pass and hit up the museums and things along the river. It’s pretty convenient having most of the big attractions in walking distance from each other. Of course, we hit up the Louvre first. It is massive! I got tired walking through it and need to go back a few more times to fully immerse myself and soak it in. We hit up the Mona Lisa and realized that the hype didn’t live up to the painting, at least from the distance that I could see it. There were hoards of people snapping photos (including me), very reminiscent of the paparazzi  but to an old white lady in a portrait. The Louvre was once the fort of Philip II, but now is a huge museum that has exhibits all throughout each quarter.

Let me take a break from the sight seeing adventures to note the scenery in Paris. Everything was beautiful. That’s not a blanket statement, but the straight up truth. The food was amazing, the streets were cobblestone and the women were gorgeous. THE WOMEN WERE GORGEOUS. Long, curly hair with beautiful skin, on scooters. This doesn’t account for the diverse array of women from all over world that call Paris home. I saw my first fully garbed out Arabian woman and she looked like she walked out of a dream. However, these women are all a backdrop to the amazing woman I had on my arm, who happens to be of French blood.

So, we continue to Notre Dame, where we missed the last tour, but made it to the last mass of the day, where a black bishop was preaching. That was pretty cool. I had a chance to check out the hundred of candles lit for prayer and check out the intricacies of the architecture. That church was beautiful. Outside of the Notre Dame were little side streets that was something out of a movie. Quaint restaurants and butcher shops, souvenir shops and people on people on people. It reminded me of Soho.

That was during the day… night was an entirely different story. Or shall I say turnup? I connected with friend, through a mutual friend in the states. He tells me about this tattoo party that he’s having, and I accept the invite. We obviously don’t know what we’re doing/where we’re going in the city at this point, so he gives us the directions to his house. We get their pretty easily on the metro, but getting to it was something else. We punch a code to get through the front door, no problem. We open the door to what looked like the beginnings of a Freddy Kruger flick. Pitch black, abandoned courtyard situation and mad sketchy. Tiara surprisingly has a YOLO moment and walks ahead to see what’s up. We get to the door to the stairs that we need to go up, but no one there to open. At this point, I’m thinking I need to get the knife out. There’s no one around, and something felt really weird. As I was about to get us out of there, I hear faint music playing and people upstairs. I figured I’d give it a shot and holler for the homie to come down and open the door. It worked! Someone came down and escorted us up these beautiful spiral stairs, which were red, and we get to his flat. I finally meet dude and his crew of eccentric French peeps. The crew included 2 DJs, a black mime and a French-Persian woman. We all had a few pre-game drinks, chopped it up about music and headed out to the club. The club, Numero 15, was in the Bastille neighborhood (and right next to the stop where they chopped heads off). The night was pretty typical of any nightclub in the world: some random Japanese guy snorting cocaine in the bathroom, bottles popping and top 40′s hip-hop. Good times, and got home around 5am. Turnup!

After turning up on night #2, we head out to Versailles for the entire Saturday. I’ll let the photos tell the story of the beauty this palace exudes. A fully golden gate is the FIRST thing you see. Let that sink in…

After hitting up Versailles, it starts to rain on the way back to Paris. By the time we got back, about an hour later, the rain subsided and it was back to business. We head back over to the River Seine to put our lock on the bridge. If you go to Paris in the future, look to the far left end of the bridge and you’ll see our lock. We got VIP parking on that bridge. ha.

The cool part to this story was that we kept putting off getting a marker til the last minute. We finally get to the river and come to the realization that we might’ve failed. hard. We didn’t see any open stores at this point, and she starts to get sad. I start to get creative…

I carve our initials into the lock, which took some muscle and precision and about 15 minutes of my life. Then, we run into some lady packing up who has a plethora of markers! She actually gives us one for free and we end up properly tagging the lock and going about our night.

Sunday, we met up with the homie Max. This guy spent his summer vacay in LA, where I connected with him and showed him what LA life was about, so he looked out and returned the favor. We met max in Pigalle and he took us to the Champs-Elysees. We walked the entire length of it and hit up a few store. Saw the Louis Vuitton headquarter, which was massive. The line was too long, so we didn’t go in, but just seeing it was enough.

It’s amazing how symmetric landmarks are in Paris. The Lou de Paris (Ferris Wheel) is perfectly aligned about 5 miles away from the Arc de Triomphe, which is all aligned miles down the road with the Garden de Tuilleries and the Louvre.

After spending time at the Arc, we ended up hitting the Eiffel Tower. Now, the Eiffel had been cool in movies and pictures, but now until coming up the metro stairs and turning to get smacked in the face with this remarkable, close-up view are really made aware. That thing is huge and is a true manmade wonder of the world. There were the usual African cats selling souvenirs on huge rings and tossing up lit toys into the air, which made the scene even better. People smooching and loving each other in front of the glowing light from the tower. And did you know that it glitters every hour in the evening and night? Fancy.

Now, for the climax of the trip — New Year’s Eve. This video pretty much explains the excitement:

We hit up Montmartre again for the countdown, in the rain, with a million people. It was awesome. Then came back down to Pigalle for what you see above. Mind you, my knee had me buckling down the street but I mustered up the strength to dance in the streets. Bon Annee!

All in all, this was the most exciting trip of my life. Culturally rich and adventurous. It was all that I imagined it would be.

Can’t wait to see what’s next.

-mADmanRalph

To see all of the photos from our adventures, click here.

If anyone knows what’s up, you’ll know that I’d probably attempt most of what you see in this video. Just a little visual stimulation and inspiration of the great adventures there are to be embarked upon in the world.

Credit to youtube.com/knownowhowdow for the HD vid.

Check out my skydiving video here for a little taste of my personal adventures.

I finally embarked on my first trip out of the country — London! This was the first stop of 2, and the 2nd was Paris, which I’ll cover in the following post. It didn’t hit me until a few days in that I was actually in another country, and that’s real. Probably because we arrived on Christmas eve and the city was closed on Christmas day, so we didn’t really get out until day 3. When I say “we”, I mean me… and my lady, Tiara.

(that’s Tiara right there)

Day 1 was pretty simple. Touched down at Heathrow during the early afternoon and found our way to the “underground” or “tube”. I like “underground” better. I learned these terms from 2 cool london girls that helped us a bit while on the train to the hotel. The underground is super clean, efficient and easy to navigate once you check out the transpo map. The ticket, however, was 8 pounds (approx. 12USD)! Granted we could ride the train/bus for the next 24 hours, but that’s still pretty steep for a train ticket.

We checked into the A loft hotel in the northeast region of London, in a town called Westham. We were right next to the London Excel conference center along the Thames river. The view was beautiful.

(that’s a onesie…)

Since all the stores would be closed the next day (Christmas), we were able to stock up on food and drank at the nearby grocery, where I picked up my first British GQ! I’m on like page 100 right now — it’s a pretty solid read I must say. James Brown’s last interview is in this issue, and it’s pretty deep.

After that, we got some fish-n-chips (English dinner staple) and called it a night.

Day 2 was pretty empty, considering the obvious. My stocking wasn’t though! I got the only gift of the year which was a highly requested and anticipated Canon Rebel T3, AND the 55-250mm big boy zoom lens! Now, ladies and gentlemen, I’m a photographer. Seriously though, I went HAM in Europe and took over 800 pictures on it. Don’t worry, you’ll find a plethora of those shots pretty soon (and a few already above and below). Aside from the gift exchange and a little walking down the river Thames, that was about it. Oh, and what did I get her? I got her a vintage Macbook that she’d been needing forever. I say vintage because it was slightly used, but in great condition.

Day 3 was mayhem. It was London’s “Boxing Day” which is the equivalent to “Black Friday” in America. It basically looked like this…

We hit up Regent street, Bond street and checked out a lot of stores. You see the crowd was pretty crazy, so that got old pretty quick. Yet and still, I had to geek out a little bit and hit Savile Row, the world famous home of traditional, bespoke tailoring. Remember this post? Well, I finally made it!

After indulging here, we made our way toward Trafalgar square. We ran into an old homie from around the way…

This is when it started to sink in… we’re amongst real history right now. Right down the street from Westminster Abbey, Big Ben and other historic sites that until now, I’ve only seen in movies or pictures. Deep.

As we were walking towards Big Ben, we noticed down a small side street some neon light glimmering in the distance. It caught my eye pretty quickly and I had to lead us over to the light! It turned out to be the London Eye. We ended up walking over to it and only seeing Big Ben from distance. The view from up there was amazing. We saw all of London on a 45 minute ride on a huge ferris wheel.

Day 4 was partial. We woke up, packed and got read to see a couple more things before heading off to Paris that evening. Those couple things included a proper English breakfast and Spitalfield’s Market. The English breakfast was at this classic little cafe on a corner next to Spitalfield’s (a block away from Liverpool station). The meal was hearty and classic, yet nothing too crazy. But it was the best meal of the trip so far. It included an English delicacy, called “Black pudding”. Leave a comment to find out what it is…

That was the London trip, in a nutshell. After that breakfast and a little shopping at the market, which definitely had a few choice pieces that I picked up, we headed to St. Pancreas station to hop on the Eurostar to Paris. Peace to London and Bonjour to Paris. The Paris post soon come.

Check out the rest of the pics here.

It’s been a while since my last post (below), but a perfect segue into this one, since James Bond and I now have one more thing in common…  sky falling. Get it? See previous post here on “Skyfall”, way back when.

Finally, on Global James Bond day, the anticipated intro song for “Skyfall” is released.

To get right into it, I must say I love the classical approach Adele took. She stuck with the original chords of the theme song, but sensualized it with her own touch. Good work. She also co-wrote the lyrics, which is also admirable. I definitely have a thing for artists who write their own lyrics.

Along with the song release, comes a documentary called “Everything or Nothing. It’s a recount of the trials that Cubby and Saltzman have gone through to keep the franchise afloat for 50 years — which is the longest running move franchise in history, FYI. Looks like it dropped in the UK, but awaiting more details of how I can get a glimpse of it in the US. Looks like Epix will provide, though.

If you can’t tell yet, I’m very excited for the November 9th US release; however, if I have friends out there that care anything about me… you’d hook a brotha up with an advance screening. After all, I do live very close to Sony Pictures Studios!

Cool, now that it’s out in the universe, I’ll end here. Not without a link to the official trailer though.

Enjoy.

Ralph

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