Internet access has been somewhat patchy this week so here's a nice long blog to catch you up.

On Sunday I left Brugge (with a hefty supply of chocolate and waffles) and headed towards Luxembourg. The trains were pretty easy as they run every half hour from Brugge to Bruxelles and then hourly to Luxembourg, making it one of my easiest train trips yet. I also had a couple of American girls from the hostel to travel with to Bruxelles which always makes the trip more fun. Luxembourg turned out to be an incredibly beautiful, albeit boring, place. The old town of the city still has much of its stone city walls standing and the old town is on the top of a massive hill with very deep valleys surrounding it. The valleys are covered in vegetation, most of which is in pretty autumn colours (deciduous trees are very exciting). I have been trying to upload some more photos but my blog doesn't seem to want to upload any. I might try again when I get back to London and have a bit of spare time, otherwise there will just be a very large photo showing when I get home. Anyway, the only sight-see-y thing that interested me very much in Luxembourg was the Casemates: a series of tunnels and caves inside a huge stone bridge that were built by the Spanish. Handily, it was right near my hostel and was only 2Euro to go inside, although the guy at the reception offered me information about the Casemates in every language except English and looked at me similarly to the way one looks at a squished bug when I said I only spoke English. All the information on the signs and stuff was also not in English so I didn't learn anything about the Casemates that wasn't in my lonely planet. It was very cool though and I spent some time in one of the little caves fidgeting with the timer on my camera so I could take a self portrait. It did occur to me at some stage that I wasn't really sure where the exit was and that I hadn't seen another person for half an hour or so and that was slightly worrying, but I managed to find my way to the exit. I spent the rest of the day wandering around the Old Town which was lots of cobbled streets and expensive shops. Although there was a shop called Josy that sold plants and pets, so I enjoyed that.I had an extremely awesome 3 course meal for dinner at the hostel for the princely sum of 9 Euro, which included soup, salad, steak and chips and dessert. It was fantastic apart from the extreme b**** who ran the cafe. She was perfectly lovely to the French speaking customers who I assume it was my limited French which caused her to be a cow. Either way, I found people in Luxembourg to be generally rude to the English speaker so I was pretty glad that I had decided to only stay one night.

I caught the train to Paris on Monday and had my first experience of exactly how unhelpful the French are straight away. When getting on the metro train in the direction of my hostel, one French guy wouldn't move into the carriage, despite ample space, resulting in the doors closing on my pack. Second French guy sitting right next to the door points at my bag. Thank you, I was aware that I'm stuck. No one did anything to help me until I actually said "Can you help me please?" in a somewhat terse voice. Anyway, I found my hostel which is right next to Sacre Couer and had a late lunch/early dinner of baguette and cheese near Sacre Couer. I went to see the Eiffel Tower in lights before settling in for an early night.

Tuesday was a fun and hectic day. I went on the free walking tour which was, as usual, very good. I'm learning a lot of WWII history from each walking tour and am slowly putting all the pieces together as I travel around Europe. It was unfortunately pouring with rain the whole time and I spent the day with very wet feet but it was fun nonetheless. After the tour, Mikki, a Canadian girl on the tour, and I went to the Eiffel Tower and took the lift to the top. It was only after I got in the lift that I remembered that I hate lifts and have a slight phobia of them but the journey to the top was relatively short and the views at the top were quite spectacular. I liked it much better than the Empire State. We then went to a cafe and indulged in both savoury and sweet crepes for dinner, which was fantastic. We finished the day with a pub crawl, which was alright but not spectacular.

Wednesday was a nice slow day, computing, reading, etc. The Lourve is open late on Wednesday evening and is cheaper so I headed there for the evening. I did visit Ms Lisa and Ms de Milo but the most interesting things at the Lourve for me were all the ancient Greek and Roman busts and sculptures. The labels of all the artwork were in French but it was exciting to see a name that I recognised and knew something about thanks to my classical studies at uni. My personal favourite piece at the Lourve was a painting of one of the ancient Greek stories. Agamemnon was a big-wig in the Battle of Troy and returned triumphantly to Greece only to find that his wife had found herself a new boyfriend. The wife wasn't exactly pleased to see him so she murdered Agamemnon in his sleep. The painting was of Agamemnon snoozing and his wife (whose name escapes me) lurking outside his door with a knife. I then had a nice quiet evening at the hostel, chatting with other travellers and drinking ridiculously cheap Spanish wine (2 Euros per bottle).

On Thursday I was due to catch the night train to Barcelona at 8:30pm and since I didn't feel like lugging my stuff to the train station around peak hour, I dropped the stuff off around midday and went to amuse myself for the rest of the day. I went to the Catacombs of Paris which are old quarries that got filled up with bones a few centuries back due to some sanitation problems caused by the cemeteries. Bizarrely, the dude in charge at the time ordered the bones to be arranged decoratively. So, when you get to the Catacombs, you spiral down a few hundred steps and then walk through about 20 minutes worth of stone tunnels before you get to the bones. Then there is another 20-30 minutes worth of bones stacked up in very ornate and sometimes extremely strange ways. My personal favourite was a section where the skulls were arranged into a love heart shape. I took some photos while I was down there but, once again, no flash photography allowed and I still haven't acquired a tripod so they're a bit blurry. Additionally, the only things to lean up against were bones and I didn't feel like hassling the dead to improve my photography. Seemed like bad karma. I also went to the military museum (where I got told off for sitting on a patch of concrete - bloody French) where Napoleon's tomb is but it was 8 Euro to go in and I wasn't that interested in the rest of the museum. I bought a coke instead. Then I just hung around the train station until my train left.

Paris is a lot dingier than I expected and seems to have a permanent layer of dirt across every surface. There are also an extreme number of people trying to sell s*** to tourists and, being a girl travelling on my own, they tend to hassle me a lot, as do the Parisian men. People who are selling things also have a habit of grabbing your arm which I vehemently dislike. I spend a fair bit of time walking quickly and saying "Non" a lot. There is, of course, the French to put up with as well, who are chronically unhelpful. So generally, Paris is not one of my favourite places. The metro system is really good though. It's similar to the London Underground which is handy in a new city. Public transport in Hamburg was so confusing and had no written information to help tourists so I eventually gave up and walked. So my overall report of Paris is that it would be much better if it wasn't full of French people.

Oh, and as a souvenir of France, I bought a book entitled "M. Malchance". Prizes (probably a hug on my budget) for the first person who can tell me the English equivalent.

I am now in Barcelona, having survived my first overnight train experience. I managed to get about 6 hours sleep or so which isn't too bad and managed to avoid being robbed. I put all my valuables in the bottom of my sleeping bag and slept on top of them. I was the only dickhead on the train in a sleeping bag but at least I still have all my stuff. Spanish people already seem much nicer than French people. The girl at the hostel let me eat free breakfast here and then have a sleep on the couch before check in.

Love, hugs, etc.