This morning we were tired. Probably from all that biking. Then we went to return our bikes and checked out the Cannabis College, came back to the hostel for lunch, and then ran through the rain to the Van Gogh museum where I apparently dropped 50.. :(

Now we have just booked a hostel in Prague from the 19th to the 22nd. And nobody's in line for internet...

2007-06-06 (Wednesday)

After getting off the train last night we wandered out of the station and began staring at some street signs, at which point we met 'Shiania' (not sure if that's exactly right), who was from Australia and also didn't have a place booked yet. But she spoke French. So we all wandered around looking for the place I had seen on hostelworld until about 2AM. Several random people helped us out. Eventually we found it in exactly the place we expected it to be in the beginning but somehow missed the first time around.

It is a pretty nice place. We got a nice room with bathroom and a nice view for 50., and we got it again for tonight, so we are taking this opportunity to wash our clothes.

2007-06-07 (Thursday)

Bit of a mix up with the room we reserved for tonight yesterday. Apparently the receptionist thought we wanted the room for Wednesday night. After drawing a comic and saying "une nuit. juerdi nuit" several times the (different) receptionist gave us another room, which we came back to after a day of reserving rooms for future days and in Amsterdam and getting metro and train tickets.

"This is the sexual room, and there's nothing you can do about it."
- A-Day on our smells-like-paint Thursday night hotel room

2007-06-08 (Friday)

We got on the Metro and moved out bags south to Hotel Gabriel (not quite where Google Maps told us it would be, so we were somewhat confused for a while) after waking up to the carpenter singing, whistling, and pounding together another sex room next door.

We found (with help from the hotel receptionist) a store called "Inno" which sold food, memory cards (~1GB for 13.), and power outlet adapters (yay!)

In the evening we took the Metro to the Eiffel tower. A-Day had to go all the way to the top so we didn't have much time afterwards to check out the Louvre (free for <26s on Fridays!). We tried anyway. Then we had to walk all the way back to the hotel, and my feet became hurt.

I seem to have left out in my journal the Fat Tire Bike Tour we took. It was kind of fun, especially the part where we rode around on a boat and drank a lot of wine. Got some nice views of the Eiffel tower at night and all sparkly or otherwise lit up.

Did I mention that I lost 50. today? But I didn't lose my hat. A-Day found it in the dining room.

2007-06-09 (Saturday)

After eating breakfast and shopping for some food A-Day and I got on the Metro towards downtown and then went our own ways. I wanted to go bike riding around the big green area west of downtown, and I think he went to check out the Louvre and Notre Dame.

It took me a while to find the Fat Tire office, but I finally did and bunjeed my stuff to the back of my rented bike and took off westward. After going down some one-way streets in the wrong direction (I estimate that 10% of one-way streets in Paris point the way you need to go) and biking through some scary intersections I finally came to the big green area, which at first seemed to consist of parking lots separated by islands of forest. It got better as I wandered randomly down the smallest paths I could find.

The bike had to be back by 18:30, and I had taken it out at 13:15, so I figured I'd turn back at about 16:00, and I think I was working my way back-ish at that time.

After I left the park I figured I could simply head south until I hit the river and then follow it northwest to downtown. I passed a bus station and a big lousy highway intersection as I headed in what I thought was a southeasterly direction (it was hard to tell which way was which as A-Day has the compass and the sun was behind a lot of clouds). After biking that way for a while I decided that I may have missed the river, so I turned back to my left, thinking that was northwest (I have no idea if it actually was or not). This led to another street which eventually turned into a highway, and I didn't want to bike on that, so I turned onto some other smaller road, which was probably a one-way street that went the wrong way, etc. etc. After about an hour of this I found myself on a road that seemed familiar. I figured I was now a few blocks north of our hotel heading east, so kept going that way, and then turned north when I could, thinking this would take me right back to the river near the Eiffel tower.

Bike bike bike bike city confusion blaaah.

Eventually I found myself at a bus station, beyond which was a nasty highway intersection.

Crap.

So, I asked some guy which way to the Eiffel tower. He pointed me in the opposite direction from which I was going, I went that way, and sure enough, across the river, there was the tower. Yay!

(There's a nice map of this adventure in my journal here)

Returned the bike, cost of renting came to 8.5. Got my driver's license back, came and sat in the park by the tower some more and took pictures of tourists and "Excuse me speak English" beggars.

I've been thinking a lot today about an idea for a simple-ish side-view game engine with pre-rendered backgrounds.