imagine me laughing like a Frenchman.

hohn hohn hohn! Tous en Paris sont tres belle, non? Oui! Except that it's really, really dirty here. Like, surprisingly so. Still, all the dirt in the world couldn't cover up the fact that it's Paris. Actually, I guess all the dirt in the world probably would bury Paris completely. Fuck. I hope nobody ever does that.

Anyhow, yeah! Our last night in London was a nice one (despite Kristine still being fairly sick in that energy-sapping kind of way--but she's fighting through it, trooper that she is); we did end up going out to dinner at Lazeez in South Kensington--great food, beautiful neighbourhood, and I learned thanks to a window display at a real estate office that only people rich enough to live in a terraformed hydrodome on the moon could ever hope to afford even a refurbished two-bedroom flat within 100 kilometres of Hyde Park. Seriously--most one-bedroom flats were in the 375-600,000GPB range, but a few two-bs managed to crest the 2,000,000GBP mark. Which is, of course, absurd. And it's not like this is the exception to the rule, either; everything in London costs this much. It all begs the question: where the fuck is all this money coming from? How many rich people are there in the world? And it's not even like the only people walking in and out of these things are millionaires with monocles and top hats; they're just normal-looking people, some around my age, casually strolling out of their multi-million-dollar flat in Bayswater. I once thought I'd love to live in London someday, but I now realize that I could probably only afford to live on a park bench.

After dinner, we went over to the Nag's Head in Knightsbridge (which, you may recall me saying earlier, was called London's most perfect pub by Time out Magazine), and yeah, it was fine. Tucked away in a little mews (which is what they call alleys with houses in them here), really small, really old... had a couple pints of Adnam's Bitter, it was... it was all just fine, but nothing spectacular. I don't know what I expected. Maybe a few more guys with pipes and Sherlock Holmes hats or something. Ah well.

After that, it was to bed and then to Paris, where I'm now writing you from. The area our hostel is in is really nice--lots of shopping, bars, cafes; very busy. But our room's window faces a courtyard, so we don't get any of the street noise--just the noise of people apparently throwing garbage cans as hard and as high against the walls as they possibly can. It must be a custom or something. Anyhow, Kristine'll fill you in on the Paris thing. Talk to y'all soon.