Vegas & The Aftermath - Diary

[Doobs]

Have a great day tikay wherever it may take you

Food looks awesome

Thanks John.

Care to guess where we are going?

Iceland

Oslo to get that train? 

[booder]

Emerging from the upstairs bathroom, I get asked "What do you think then?"

"Think of what?"

"The nice new stuff in the bathroom?"

So I scuttle back in to check.

Lovely dear, Thanksgiving towels & scented loo roll. Amazing what bargains you can buy on Black Friday.

WTF

[Rod Paradise]

Read an article about Ryanair that put a smile on my face.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/25/how-avoid-ryanair-pricey-exras-fly-free?CMP=fb_gu

Going by this I've cost Leary money, which is great!   

[Mohican]

Better brekkie this time, in Huxkeys. £9.95 if you don't mind.

What you have there  is the ingredients for half a breakfast sandwich, an expensive one at that. Is be extremely underwhelmed if I had ordered a breakfast and those prison rations turned up.

[RED-DOG]

Better brekkie this time, in Huxkeys. £9.95 if you don't mind.

What you have there  is the ingredients for half a breakfast sandwich, an expensive one at that. Is be extremely underwhelmed if I had ordered a breakfast and those prison rations turned up.

This.

I've had bigger pieces of bacon than that stuck in my teeth.

PS- I wish you would learn to post pics that we can quote.

[tikay]

Most of you will have used SkyScanner when looking to book airline flights, it's one of those really handy, free to use websites that we tend to take for granted.

Earlier this week it was sold to a Chinese firm for........£1.4 billion.

Isn't that amazing?

There's a long & convoluted explanation from the founders here as to why they sold. A one word statement would have sufficed. Money.

And why not? Good luck to them. They'll be able to afford to move back across to Edinburgh now, too. 

http://venturebeat.com/2016/11/24/skyscanner-gareth-williams-ctrip-acquisition/


The business began in Edinburgh, & moved across to the poor side of Scotland - Glasgow - later to take advantage of cheap labour presumably.

[tikay]

Read an article about Ryanair that put a smile on my face.

https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/nov/25/how-avoid-ryanair-pricey-exras-fly-free?CMP=fb_gu

Going by this I've cost Leary money, which is great!   

Nobody costs Sir Michael money.

We all have a great deal to thank him for, he made low cost travel in Europe possible & now runs, arguably, the world's most profitable & successful airline, & probably uses the most modern & up to date fleet of aircraft, too.

Let's have a little respect for the Great Man, please. 

[tikay]

Mohican & Red once again betray their ignorance of business practices & the real world with their oh so predictable chuntering about the price of a breakfast at an Airport.

Airport retailing is a really odd business model. The rents are sky high, & on top of that, the retailers have to pay a "tax" on turnover to the Airport operator.

Set against that, it is the Mecca of retailing - a guaranteed flow of customers all day every day, most of whom have time on their hands, hours to waste, & a pocket full of money. BOOMIO.

As to the Breakfast, it's a "when in Rome" variant, Airport brekkies are expensive, but this was, relatively, decent value.

Not enough bacon? For another £3 we could have had 2 extra rashers & an extra sausage.

Tell me that's not a bargain.

[tikay]

Better brekkie this time, in Huxkeys. £9.95 if you don't mind.

What you have there  is the ingredients for half a breakfast sandwich, an expensive one at that. Is be extremely underwhelmed if I had ordered a breakfast and those prison rations turned up.

This.

I've had bigger pieces of bacon than that stuck in my teeth.

PS- I wish you would learn to post pics that we can quote.

Stop with your moaning & be grateful I'm sharing my magnificent photography with you. I'm like a modern day Cliff Michelmore or Judith Chalmers.

In retaliation, I'm not going to tell you where we went now.

[tikay]

Our first stop yesterday was at a place called Montmartre, which featured quite a nice little Church, called Sacre-Coeur. (There is an accent thing over the "e" of Sacre, & the "o" & "e" of Coeur" are sort of joined up.  No idea how to type them, but Tal will know).


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sacr%C3%A9-C%C5%93ur,_Paris

It's really quite nice, but it's at the top of a chuffing great hill. (220 steps). Luckily it has a Funicular Railway thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montmartre_Funicular

beyond the church is the artists quarter, Place du Tertre. Not sure I've ever seen a tourist spot so plagued with street urchins, vagabonds, three card trick & "find the lady" conmen working their grim magic & fleecing tourists.  

 

[tikay]

The church is so high the top of it is engulfed in clouds, which is why you can't see the top of it in some of my photos. These are my own photos, not those of a pro photographer, by the way.

[tikay]

It seems that wherever you go these days, Online Bookmakers are plying their trade.

[tikay]

We never went to the top of the Arc - way too many stairs. It's most impressive though, almost a carbon copy of the much much grander Marble Arch in London. 

[tikay]

Next, we had a spot of lunch at the Café King George on the Champs-Elysees.

It's almost next door to where the now sadly departed Aviation Club de Paris was.

Have to say, the Champs Elysees is a really impressive road by any standards. Still cobbled, too.

From there, a short walk down Avenue George V, past all the really posh hotels, & then, suddenly, this sticky up thing hoved (or is that "hove"?) into sight, a sort of budget version of Blackpool Tower.....

 

[tikay]

A weird surprise awaited us at the point where we first saw the Eiffel Tower.

This sort of gold monument thing (top obscured by clouds) sits on a roundabout right above an underpass.