Paris

I got through security in 5 minutes, then waited in the lounge for an hour, people watching and reading. People are incredibly stupid. I saw at least 10 people wearing their masks incorrectly, sometimes not covering their noses, sometimes not covering their nose or mouth, one guy had it on his forehead. Britain increasingly rivals the US in terms of lacking common sense. A woman just used hand sanitizer on her latex gloves; humanity never ceases to amaze me.

I’m on the plane now- baby crying. Standard. I want my row to fill up so I can crack on with a slice of reading. The plane is almost full to the brim, very poor social distancing from EasyJet. I'm not arsed because I'm immune, but if I were old I'd be pretty pissed. There was a bit of a seat kerfuffle, but now it’s reading time. The guy next to me is doing something very peculiar, every 10 seconds or so, he takes 3 rapid breaths, in out, in out, in out, and then seems to hold it. Then he takes the 3 breaths again. I suppose it's a kind of stress reliever, odd though nonetheless. We're about to land and weird breathing guy is using mobile data; I cant understand how people struggle so profoundly with simple instructions. If we crash blame him. Breathing guy was being pushy, fuck him.

Trying to find juliette now, just saw a police man with a giant fuck off assault rifle. Now 4 soldiers all with ARs. I had to fight the sudden urge to grab one.

First impression of Paris- gorgeous. It feels like I'm in a Victorian gothic novel but vastly more pleasant. The buildings are a stunning palette of white and cream sat elegantly on the Seine, surrounded by black iron fencing. Beats Manchester. We're on the underground and I'm anxious to get back to ground level. I can't get enough of the city.

Juliette copies every noise she hears. Proper little sibling behaviour.

We got off the train and are now walking down a long stretching road, flanked on both sides by the cream buildings with black railings. They're covered in tiny intricate detailing that's featherlike. You can tell it's an ancient city. The buildings on either side of rue spontini tower above you, but its welcoming, rather than intimidating, as it might be at home.

Juliette's flat is a few floors up from the ground, and theres a rickety old elevator that feels like it's from the 50s. It’s part of the charm I suppose. Her house is so very French, I love it. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a house in Paris.

We’re off to get some bread. On the way back, we found ourselves stuck in the elevator. Fuck me. It’s because I'm too heavy. To be fair, the limit is 150 kg and I'm pushing 100. Stairs time.

We got the train to a park, which involved walking up a fuck tonne of stairs. I’m tired now. The park is very pretty. There's a green lake halved by a bridge suspended between two hills, one of which sits in the centre of the lake. The lake hill is more like a stack or a stump, one of those rocky towers from geography- you know the ones. It rises sharply from the water and is peppered with little holes, presumably carved millions of years ago, a little path winds up the hill and leads to the monument on the top, sort of a mix of classical Greek and renaissance architecture: Greek pillars support a short dome topped by a cross. An arch has been corroded through the hill. It’s covered in foliage which snakes towards the top like ivy or moss on an English cottage.

We walked past a little cave entrance that had been sealed off from the public. Obviously we considered trespassing, but I remembered that Paris is built on top of ancient and likely haunted catacombs, so we gave it a pass. We also remembered the soldiers we walked past moments earlier and decided trespassing might not be the best idea. We're sitting down by the lake now.

Sat in a bar in the park, I tried a new drink called a Monaco. Beer, lemonade, grenade. Extremely peng. We're about to get sushi. Paris is great.

We got sushi at a place called matsuri. It was a pretty standard Yo! sushi kind of deal; delicious though. Maria left to see Albane, one of my old flatmates, while Juliette and I left to go home.

We walked back, but figured we had time to kill and went to see the Arc de Triumphe. It's an impressive monument to glorious days gone and the immense vanity of the French, about on par with the statue of liberty, or the Stockport pyramid. Juliette suggested we go to some big road whose name escapes me, so we did. We sat in a little bar and drank more Monacos. It was a very pleasant evening. Juliette left her bag at the bar so we went back for it, then around midnight we hopped on an electric scooter called a Lime, and I drove us back. I wouldn’t say I felt like I was flying or anything like that, but it was definitely fun and I plan on renting another today. At home we watched community and then went to sleep. I slept well.

Maria and I are on the train to pick up Christiana now. The bakery was shut and I’m hoping this doesn’t become a trend. We waited for 30 mins at the airport, and I killed some time by pushing Maria around on a luggage trolley.

Just picked up Chris, she paid for her ticket but it didnt print so we snook her in. Now we’re back on the train, which is considerably louder with Christiana onboard. There's a man performing yummy by Justin Bieber in half French half English on the train. Its fucking awful; the man is talentless and dressed like a male escort. He's now murdering Billie Jean. This hurts. You can tell he can't speak English, he's making the noises but the words aren't sharp, they're just that- noises with no meaning. Bizarre. It’s like me singing Despacito I guess. Billie Jean was cut short. He clearly wasn't getting the reception he was after. I think the show is over. I was wrong, fuck. I’m unfamiliar with this song; he’s still just moaning noises though.

*Maria’s feelings towards the performer.*

The bakery is closed again. Ok we found one; bread time. We’re sitting at a roundabout eating a baguette, a woman just walked past with a baby in a papoose, but it was covered by a blanket so you could only see its legs. Wouldn't it be odd if she just had the legs and no baby.

We went to the Eiffel tower. It was very pretty, but the lookie-lookie men make it difficult to enjoy which is a real shame. I do not want to buy anything. We got some cool pics but we're going to climb it at some point later in the week.

After we got back, Maria had to work so Chris and I got some food in for a picnic tomorrow. Good stuff. I showered and read for a few hours. We’re getting ready to go out now.

*An al-timer cutie-pie Max and Juliette image.*

We got the metro to the restaurant. Jul’s parents were late but it was cool. It was mildly awkward at first as you'd expect, but the wine flowed freely and with it flowed conversation. Her parents are incredibly kind and very interesting. The food was fit beyond belief, really fucking scrumptious stuff.

*All-timer cutie-pie Max and Maria de las Nieves image.*

The restaurant is punctuated by pillars from ceiling to roof, all of which are painted in a style individual to the artist that painted them. They painted as payment for food, which is quite cool. I've never actively liked wine, other than perhaps champagne. The red we had tonight though, *chef's kiss*. I feel my descent into alcoholism accelerating by the minute.

Afterwards we got the metro to a bar but the line was too long so we went somewhere else.

The drinks were fine but the company makes the experience really.

*Said exceptional company and alright drinks.*

We got a taxi home. Slept well but I keep getting up too early. I’m rather hungover from the wine. I can’t get back to sleep so I'll read. Read for 2 hours, 4 chapters left, I've enjoyed the book as much as mum expected (for the record, I was reading East of Eden- editor Max, 2024). Cal Trask in particular is an incredible character. I’m having a coffee now.

Paris feels quiet when its gloomy, like the sun stopped talking. I’m eating cereal and enjoying watching the whirlpools that spin in the wake of my spoon as its dragged through the milk.

We went to the theme park but found out it was closed on the way, so we headed home. Jul’s friends came over to see her and obviously that made me anxious as hell. All of us went for a boat ride and met Albane. It was pretty good but stressful and it stopped working halfway through. Afterwards we came home to chill out before the firework display for French national day. I started to come out of my shell a bit; maybe it was too late, I'm not sure. The fireworks were stunning. See "The Knitted Tower", a poem I wrote before I went to bed last night.

I found it very difficult to wake up today, I think my lack of sleep is catching up to me. The girls are still sleeping so I'm updating this. I think I'll have a read until they get up. Heading to the Arc de Triumphe, Notre Dame and some museum later, before we hit a 4D escape room. Should be a treat.

On the arc now, the view is crazy, you can see for miles. I can only imagine what it’ll be like from the tower. We were at a Café before that only hired disabled people, how lovely. At first we thought they were all just shy but there was a sign outside, obviously it's a marketing ploy, but sometimes good things come of bad intentions.

It took ages to walk back, but it was nice to chat with Chris. When we got back the girls decided they wanted to stay in Paris longer, so they're sorting that out. I finished East of Eden, a real masterpiece.

Off to Notre Dame now. We couldn’t see much due to the damage, so we went elsewhere and got steak tartare which was fit.

The view wasn’t half bad either. We walked to the Louvre to explore the gardens and sat by a fountain for a while.

There were ducklings, so we weren't short on entertainment. I decided we ought to walk to the end of the Champs Elyseé (the big fuck-off road mentioned earlier) to get a picture. Sat under the place de la Concorde, the Champs seems to stretch infinitely. I don't think I'd mind if it did, I'd be happy to walk it forever.

We were in a rush to get to the VR escape game Juls booked, so we had to get a taxi after fiddling around trying to use limes for 5 minutes. We got there 5 mins late but it wasn't too much of a problem. The game was incredible, you really felt like you left the room, and the room itself vibrated to give a sense of movement- crazy. We didn't escape because the guy helping is spoke broken English, but it was fun nonetheless. For the first five minutes we were in a white room learning how to play. I would’ve been happy to spend an hour in that room, I was just busting moves and stuff, cracking the girls up. Quality. Even better was when I started slinging stuff at juliette in the game. Literally anything that could be picked up was dashed at her head. She got quite waxy which of course only enhanced the fun. I managed to find a way to fuck with her even more though: in the game we had to find fire extinguishers to put out a fire on one of the floors. After we put out the fire, we were supposed to leave the extinguishers behind. Of course I did not, and chose to extinguish Juliette rather than escape the room, pissing her off even more. I really am a barrel of laughs sometimes.

Afterwards we went home, vibed for a while and then walked to the Eiffel Tower for a picnic. The food was gorgeous, as you’d expect, and the atmosphere was one of a kind. We played music and lay down to watch the light show. Chris and Juls danced to Zorba the Greek. It was one of the best experiences of my life.

We got home, I slept like a rock, then I was up at 8.30 again for more shenanigans. Louvre today.

The louvre is alright, lots of statues- Aphrodite is clapped. We saw the Mona Lisa. It’s alright, overrated as hell. The building is probably prettier than the art and it’s gigantic, it took us 4 hours to walk around and we barely scratched the surface. Eventually we had to leave because we were all starving, so we got lunch at a café nearby. Chris and I had pizza, Maria had more tartare, classic. We had deep chats and people watched; theres nothing better in the world.

Then we got limes and messed around for about 20 minutes which was fun. Paris is defintely better from an electric scooter. We went to the Café de Flore to meet Juliette. I'd say the hot chocolate was a good as you’d expect for 8 euros. Maria left to go see Albane, so me, Juls and Chris went for a walk along the seine. It was gorgeous of course, and we stopped for a drink at a cool bar.

We walked all the way home past the Eiffel tower again, then sat around all evening chilling out.

Just woke up around 10.40 after a restless morning. Chris is getting a covid test, Maria is at Albane’s, Juls is at work. I might shower whilst they're out. I'm currently taking a large dump. Eating some cake for breakfast, yum. I ate some ham and cheese too, life is good. I had a shower then Chris texted to say she was in an Italian restaurant getting lunch with Maria and that I should come. I got changed and headed out.

The food was good, I had a calzone, Maria had carbonara and chris had some kind of spicy pasta.

Afterwards we went home to get ready for climbing the eiffel tower. Chris had a mental breakdown over what to wear. She changed 3 times, jeans, dress, dress, jeans again, and then once we'd spent 40 minutes watching her lose her mind, we left. In the end, we decided she should have worn a dress after all.

The walk to the Eiffel tower is 30 minutes and it takes 10 minutes to climb to the second floor. As you can imagine, this kind of intense walking takes it out of you, but admittedly the view was worth it. The sun was beaming through the clouds in a way it hadn't done since last weekend and it made the Seine glisten like the French crown jewels we saw in the louvre the previous day. From the second floor, Maria spotted a cloud of black smoke some distance away, in the more modern, built up area of Paris. It turns out there was a fire in the Ritz hotel that killed 8 people, bummer. The walk down was far easier, as you’d expect, and the journey home always feels shorter to me anyway. The only problem was that Chris made us stop so she could get a caricature done. The man asked for 20 originally, but after it was done, he upped it to 30. Thankfully, Chris isn’t a sucker, she told him it looked nothing like her (which was the truth) and told him that since she was a student she'd only pay 10. I think she may have fluttered her eyelids a bit too, which couldn't have hurt. Maria and I took the piss out of her the whole time, but when she heard the price, Maria decided she'd get one too. Predictably it looked shit too, so after allowing Maria to converse with the artist in mandarin for a while, we headed back.

When we got back, 2 of Jul’s friends had arrived, Kristine and lise. They're both lovely, Kristine is an architecture student and Lise studies medicine. Juls said we were going to an Italian restaurant. Of course we already had Italian for lunch, but I didn't mind. We dressed up nice and fancy and went out. I got tartare, the others mainly got pasta.

The food was great as per, but we were all knackered so instead of going to a bar as we'd planned, we got some booze in and went home. At home, we spent the night chatting and getting to know each other. It was lovely.

French people actually do say oooh la la all the fucking time. Crazy stuff.

I woke up an hour ago, read for a bit, and waiting for the others to get up too. In the end, Kristine and Lise came into the room and woke the girls up because I felt too mean to. I’ve just showered, and I’m currently sat in bed waiting for the others to get ready. We’re about to go for brunch.

*Who is Christiana staring so lovingly towards? Probably Maria.*

Got loads of bread for lunch, very nice. I’m still getting on with the new girls. The waiter just dropped a plate, I guess you could say the service is smashing. The weather is so gorgeous today, 30 degrees and sunny, slight breeze.

After brunch we went home and did nothing for hours until it was too late to go to the museum. During this time, Chris learnt that Spanish people convey laughter over text with the phrase jajajaja due to the fact that they pronounce j as heh. She didn’t much care for the trivialities of Spanish pronunciation, and proceeded to have a field day with her new knowledge, shouting jajajaja all the time. It never got old.

Instead of the museum, we chose to go to the park to get McDonalds and chill. We'd intended to go to Luxembourg gardens but juliette took us on the wrong train, the cretin, so we decided to settle for the Louvre which I guess isn't too awful.

The place we decided to sit was nice, nestled between two hedges and with a view of the Eiffel Tower and the louvre, but it stank of piss and we kept getting sprayed by the nearby sprinkler. Obviously we moved. The new spot was between two more hedges and stank of manure this time, again not ideal, but we put up with it, finished the McDonalds and headed home ready for Jul’s party.

I wanted to dress to impress, so I went for chinos and a baby blue t-shirt with dads belt (in what world can a Primark t-shirt and chinos be categorised as ‘dressing to impress’?- 2024 editor Max). I was looking fly, if I do say so myself (No I wasn’t- 2024 editor Max).

Kristine and I went out to get booze for the party. We got rum, vodka, creme de peche, orange juice, cranberry juice, and more coke. At home I made a huge bowl of sex on the beach and began my bartending escapade. The sex on the beach "punch" as it came to be called, went down an absolute treat, to the point where a caught a girl scraping the bottom of it with a soup ladle in a effort to scoop more out.

Jul’s pals started to arrive around 9.30. I'd already met one of them, Natalia, but I wasn’t familiar with the rest. There was a guy called Lucas who I chatted to a lot. He was refreshingly open, honest and kind. He got Juliette a pair of shoes and a tracksuit. It must have been expensive. As soon as I saw that, I realised he was in love with her. Poor guy, she doesn't suspect a thing. I also briefly chatted with a girl called Raphael, odd name, I know. Seems nice though. There was a girl called Ornela, whom I didn’t speak to. She spent the whole night making TikToks with her cronies. One of them came up to me, said "English?", I nodded, and she walked off. She was exactly my vision of the French, weird and rude. Everyone else proved me wrong however. Albane made a cake, the weirdo. I drank a fair bit, though I wasn't particularly drunk, especially not compared with the high bastards around me. Chris simply couldn’t understand anyone, and had to text me whenever she needed something. She's funny. Juliette spent the whole night running around trying to please everyone, and stayed up with Lucas until 5 am so he could get the early meto home. Maria went to watch the sunrise over the Eiffel Tower with Albane. Chris fell asleep early, as did Kris. Lise went to bed around 2.30 so I decided to do the same. I was on the receiving end of a load of compliments throughout the night. Lise told me I was very interesting to talk to, a real gentleman and the kind of man the world needs right now. She also said I had great style, I guess dressing to impress paid off. Raphael, Lise and Natalia complimented my knitted tower poem, especially the French bit. Lucas said that I had a real prescence, that I owned the room. What the hell is happening to me? Am I finally as cool as I've always thought I was? That can't be.

Woke up before everyone else again, kind of hungover but nothing terrible. Had a shower and packed my bag. Decided it would be nice to tidy the house, so I collected all the glasses, plates, litter and assorted blunts from the kitchen and living room, and binned or washed them. I tidied up my cocktail stuff and rinsed out the punch bowl.

I was on my own for about an hour, then Maria came into the kitchen and we chatted over passionate fruit juice, as she called it. She caught me up on her night with Albane, who I decidedly I resolutely do not much like, and I recapped my own night. Juls wandered in next, and we did the same. Then came Chris, and a few minutes later Lise and Kris. I told them all I had to go in 2 hours and that if we wanted to eat together we'd have to eat soon. Nobody seemed to register that for an hour, and by then it was too late to go out. We ordered o'tacos, a French fast food that Juls and Maria had been banging on about all week. It was distinctly French, very rich, lots of cheese and rather tasty. It's no go-Burrito, but it wasn’t at all bad.

"Max, you eat it in two bite," Lise remarked. She wasn’t wrong.

Almost as soon as the two bites were over, I had to leave. Leaving was hard, I'll miss everyone a lot, more than I've ever missed anyone other than Mia (notably, this is the first mention of my girlfriend of four years at the time; how telling- 2024 editor Max) and my family, perhaps. They're all such great people and I'm so grateful to have met them. They've shown me what real friends are like. I should not be tearing up on the plane but alas. I hugged everyone, and I'll record their individual reactions here.

"Max, I'm gonna miss you big man." Juliette.

"It was very nice to meet you." Kris

"You are a very good, err, mate." Lise. (That cracked me up. Foreign people using slang always does.)

"Bye Max." Chris.

Maria came with me to the station so I didn’t get lost. We chatted on the train about the trip, Albane, Jul’s friends and uni. I'll miss her a lot too, I've grown very fond of her over the past week. She got on the first train with me, then put me on the second one, hoping I'd be able to follow the simple instruction to stay on until the last stop. I hugged her, we said goodbye, and she told me I'd have to come to Madrid soon. Yes please.

Predictably, I did not follow the instructions correctly, getting off at terminal 1 and 3, because I briefly thought trois meant two. They sound very similar. I had to wait 15 minutes for the next train. It didn’t matter much, it was just annoying. The airport is very confusing, and I ended up walking through the entire of terminal two looking for the departure gates. I found them with help from an easyjet man, and got to the security section. It was here that I encountered airport cat- a cat being carried around by a woman in the airport. Airport cat kept me entertained whilst I waited in the line for border control, then I waltzed through baggage check. The gates are just above the security area. I sat down at gate C83, took out my book and read Camus' account of current affairs.

When we were called to board, a little kid came up behind me and kept grabbing my bag, he was a cutie. There wasn't any room above my seat so I had to put my bag a few seats down, not a problem though really, just awkward. The woman next to me seems nervous, not like the guy from last time, though.

I've spent the whole flight updating this to include events after the brunch yesterday, and we're currently descending. We should land in 5-10 mins. I'll get back to my reading now, I think. Or maybe I'll edit this. We'll see. I edited. We're flying over Stockport right now. Theres B and Q. And the pyramid. I pretty much saw my house. There's the Hilton. Manchester is decidedly shit compared to Paris. Landing. Impact. Doosh. I think I'll end this here, what a trip, can't wait to go back. Bring on Paris 2.

Cyprus