I know what you're thinking. "Hold up, mate! Paris? For Travel Drinking? Surely some mistake? That's not a city
for going on the archetypal bender; that's the City of Luuurve."
Fair enough, boys and girls, I don't think I'd disagree with any of that (except I would have
spelt 'love' correctly). But just because a destination isn't Lairy-Night-Out Central doesn't
mean it can't get you royally intoxicated in grand style. You've just got to know where to '
regarder'. (Yeah baby! Whoever thought GCSE French would come in useful?) So, ever my
goal to be the intrepid, roving piss artist, this month I thought I'd present myself the challenge
of seeking out an alternative side to gay Paris.
Perhaps more of a deciding factor was that someone had paid for me to go anyway.
Securing my all-time personal best for 'Worst Attempt At Immersion In Local Culture' I happened upon an Irish
pub, just north of the River Seine, called The Green Linnet. And it was an even worse attempt than you'd believe.
There was a sign on the front door proudly stating "We Speak English". And they weren't kidding! Not a single
notice inside was even written bilingually; English all the way - even the sign for the toilets.
So I sat drinking my Guinness, with a game of pool rattling along in the corner, listening to the other punters chat away about football, and it occurred to me that maybe a more Gallic atmosphere could be found further away from the tourist-magnet Seine. North into The Marais was clearly the way to go.
I downed my pint at exactly the moment that an extremely well-endowed lady decided it was time for a game of
pool. As she leaned forward to break, I figured that one more for the road wasn't such a bad idea.
Now, I promise I'm not making this up - I swear the first bar I stumbled across in The Marais was that weirdest of all
foreign watering holes, the English Theme Pub. This one went by the excellent stereotype-mocking monicker of The
Frog And Rosbif. Which leads me onto a point I don't understand about the French...
The derogatory English term for the French is 'the frogs'. The derogatory French term for the English is 'les rosbif' - the roast beef. (Stick with me; I'm building bridges here.) The thing is, the French do actually eat roast beef. I mean, the term 'the frogs' scans logically in the pejorative sense because that's a part of French cuisine which is idiosyncratic to them. But they eat roast beef as well! It would be like us calling the Dutch 'the potatoes' on the grounds that they eat potatoes.
The Frog And Rosbif itself feels like an English pub in the sense that it feels like an English chain pub, like a Firkin or a Wetherspoon's or an All Bar One. Consequently, it was awash with drunken towny proles. But it's worth a look if only for the drink names: a beer called Inseine, a blonde pint called Froegarden (advertised by a frog drinking Hoegarden) and - my personal favourite - a darker coloured beer called Dark de Triomphe.
Yet further north and, fuck me, there are a lot of sex shops in Montmartre! And a fair few theatres presenting the sort of live entertainment that you probably wouldn't go to see with your mum. Including, of course, the Moulin Rouge, topped by its characteristic red windmill. (Aha! Apparently it means 'Red Mill'. And a 'moulinet' is a winch. And 'fesses' are buttocks. There you go - thirty seconds in front of a French dictionary is all it takes.)
Not having recently robbed a bank, a visit to the Moulin Rouge was a little out of my price range, so I had a
bit of a wander around a nearby establishment that couldn't possibly have been more different - the pristine
white cathedral of the Sacré-Coeur. If you ever get to visit, take the opportunity to do the roof walk - it's
exactly what you think it would be! For only a few euro, you get to clamber up the longest spiral staircase
of your life and out over the cathedral's roof. Pretty cool, huh? And if you can make your way up and down
the gables without bursting into a refrain of Chim Chim Cher-ee then you have more willpower than me.
I found a café close by, which advertised that it sold a lemonade charmingly called Pschitt! (their exclamation mark, not mine). This gave me the chance to tick off one of my "things to do in Paris" boxes. I'd promised myself that, while I was here, I would try a meal of something just plain weird, that you wouldn't look at twice anywhere else in the world. After a couple of pints and a walk across a cathedral roof, I was ready to eat a horse. So I did! Hamburger de cheval. Actually it was almost a perverse disappointment; it tasted remarkably similar to beef. I washed it down with a jolly nice Bordeaux, and headed south to Le Grand Axe.
The Grand Axis is a straight, five-mile long boulevard running all the way from the majestic Louvre at the
heart of the city out to the business district at La Défense. It passes the imported Egyptian Obelisk at Place
de la Concorde as well as the ornately-decorated 160-foot Arc de Triomphe, and a large portion of the Axis
constitutes the shopping paradise that is the Champs-Elysées. On December 2nd, the anniversary of
Napoleon's victory at the battle of Austerlitz, the sun rises and sets in line with the Grand Axis, producing a
beautiful golden halo over the Arc de Triomphe.
See? I can do serious travel writing. I'm not just some one-dimensional lager lout.
Speaking of lager, though... On the Champs-Elysées I noticed a branch of McDonald's. Now, it may have been a while since I saw Pulp Fiction, but there's one line from the film that's never going to leave me:
"And, in Paris, you can buy a beer in McDonald's."
Oh, please God, let it be true.
Yes! You can! How cool is that?! A little transparent plastic cup of Kronenberg to go with your Big Mac meal. I just opted for the Kronenberg.
I know this has nothing whatsoever to do with Travel Drinking, but I couldn't visit Paris without saying something about The Eiffel Tower. That just wouldn't be right. Because big towers are really cool, and that's the end of it!
And here's the point I want to make about Gustav's huge erection: for a 1977 publicity shot, Arnold Palmer teed
off from the top.
Ok, say it like that and it sounds like just the kind of wacky stunt that those crazy golf types are always up to.
But, hang on, didn't anybody ask what seems to me to be a fairly important question? WHERE'S THE FUCKING
BALL GOING TO LAND? I mean, what happens if it smacks some poor bugger in the head? That's a golf ball
being given the chance to reach terminal velocity! Why didn't it occur to anyone that this was a silly idea?
Presumably the Parisians of 1977 were all unharmed, or this would have turned into a more famous story.
"Arnold 'Killer' Palmer Rains Death On City"
In the evening, I wound up in the Latin Quarter, just south of the river. Specifically, a club by the name of Paradis Latin, where one can enjoy a meal, a bottle of wine, and an evening's cabaret in genuine old-school Paris style. And yes, it was a topless cabaret. But conscious of having ended two articles in a row in decidedly breast-related fashion, I thought I'd better finish up today with a demonstration of observational diversity.
The tights-wearing male trapeze artist had a lunchbox the size of Boulogne.
Ta ta.
