Alright, Paris? Effing banned. banned.

The weather's been miserable and rainy since we arrived. Tonight, the cloud cover lifted and the temperature sunk to thirty-something degrees. I'd tell you what that is in celsius, but I've been drinking overpriced eight-dollar pints of beer all night, hence my math/conversion skills are fuzzy and I all I know is that financial aid package can't kick in soon enough.

Good thing I wasn't wearing a sweater...

So we leave this pub down by Chatelet. The metro closes every night at 12:30 am, weekends included. Very convenient. So that leaves a taxi.

Well, the French being French...you can't simply flag down a taxi off the street. No, you need to find a stand. So we walk for blocks in the cold until we finally find one, and there's about 20 people ahead of us with maybe the occasional taxi arriving every two or three minutes. We stood out there freezing our balls off and waiting our turn for about 45 minutes.

Hole says "What is this, fucking LaGuardia?" Amen. Seriously one of the most ridiculously inefficient, pointless, stupid systems I've ever encountered.

When we finally got a cab, shivering in the fall air, the four of us tried to pile in. Trois personne, trois personee! the asshole driver exclaimed. So we had to split up and wait some more.

This, and in France it costs literally 90 dollars to get a fucking key copied (we checked some other shops, since my last rant on this.)

And I know what you might be thinking but believe me: I'm mentally prepared for this and far, far worse once I hit Caracas. But Paris?...

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm tired and pissed (both in the American and British senses of the word), and need to go to bed and wake up with pnuemonia. If you happen to walk by a French person, punch him in the face.