The Diary of Barista Tourista Barbie

Diary of a plastic tourist

Here is a shot of the Red Bus, also known as Les Cars Rouges. You pay a flat fee, get a 'passport' and a pair of earphones to plug into the canned travelogue and then you can ride all over Paris and take in the major landmarks.

Of course we had to ride upstairs. It was sunny and warm and great fun. We admired the hordes of tourists around the monuments--like the Eiffel Tower but avoided the huge crowds this way. You can get on and off the bus for two days with a pass, but one day was sufficient for us to kick back and leave the driving to them.

This is a picture of the bus as it goes by the Galleries Lafayette, a huge French department store. A very odd experience that was, in the jewelry department there were absoloute swarms of heavily swathed and thoroughly covered up middle eastern ladies just shopping their little hearts out. My fellow travelers mentioned that many of them smelled rather like they'd been left out in the sun too long with no deodorant, but what do I know? Everything smells like plastic to me. But boy, could those girls ever shop!



Here I am on the bus going down the Champs Elysee. The street was packed with foreign tourists all looking for the rich shops--Cartier being number one.

You could spot the French, they were well dressed and wore absolutely appalled expressions when confronted by the heaving mass of shorts and backpacks, Japanese, American, Arab, English and other assorted tourists "doing Paris". We lasted about ten minutes on the street before we had enough pushing and shoving shoppers. Heck, you can do that at any big mall in America any day of the week.

posted by Rocket Davis @ 2:54 PM