Fully sick mate.

Having ended the last entry on the subject of being sick, it is somewhat fitting then that I begin this entry on the same subject – albeit a different case. I somehow managed to pick up an annoying bug, which has meant that I’ve had to take two days off work and live on toast and water. I’m tired of being sick and I’m sick of being tired; the illness is just so draining. If there is any silver lining, I guess it has given me time to slow down and reflect.

Still, with some luck I’ll be back to health soon and running at full pace again. Sherly has been great throughout all this given that I’m not very good at being sick – I just hate being helpless that’s all.

We’ve been going out for more than two years now. I took her out to a swanky Japanese restaurant (Yu-u) in the city to celebrate followed by a visit to a Japanese bath house the following weekend, both of which were very enjoyable. Sherly has been ultra busy lately with work and uni and I’ve been a bit worried about it all, but I guess she’s always been hard working, so no doubt she can handle it.

Last weekend as part of a ‘get to know my home city better’ kick, I thought I’d check out the Melbourne Open City event, where several heritage listed buildings were opened up for public viewing. The line for the first – the Manchester Unity boardroom tour – was absurdly long and it took over two hours. The time wasted would have bugged me more if it hadn’t been for my foresight to bring my study notes with me. I managed to get through a paper or two, which the old ladies behind me seemed impressed with.

The reason why I waited – and this may seem a little geeky – is that Manchester Unity has a special appeal to me because of the sickness tables that their English parent company produced in the 1800’s. I remember using the tables as an undergrad and felt compelled to see an offshoot of the company that compiled them.

The building was impressive. It was from a completely different time. A time when profit maximisation and rigorous expense minimisation were almost unheard of. A time when insurance companies spent their wealth freely on grand buildings and lavish functions. When name and reputation was everything.

The halls were adorned with paintings and carvings and led to a set of lifts with big bronze doors with embossed Manchester Unity symbols. Small touches such as unique cornice designs for each floor, so that anyone with a good memory could know where they were if plonked on a random floor, confirmed that mass production was a mantra yet to be followed.

Manchester Unity Tower

The tour guide explained that a (rich) dentist now owns the top floor of the building including a three level tower at the top, which he uses for the purpose of a multi level operating room, presumably for Melbourne elitists who want a view while getting their teeth whitened. We were taken along the rooftop and then to the boardroom.

The boardroom wasn’t as grand as I had been imagining, but maybe that was because the dentist had taken down all of the paintings and jewels the morning before he decided to let all of Melbourne walk through. Fair enough too, he obviously didn’t get rich by being dim.

The most fascinating part of the room was a 15m long, single piece glass table top that had been imported from France. The logistics of getting it onto the 11^th floor in 1840 when it is too wide to fit through the doors or windows are just mind boggling.

The building was impressive, but I’m not sure whether it was worth the long wait. Others on the tour seemed to be convincing themselves that their time hadn’t been wasted by emphatically telling people in the queue how ‘lovely’ and ‘worthwhile’ the tour had been as they exited the lifts.

Plaza ballroom

Next was the Plaza ballroom beside the Regent theatre, which apparently had been restored recently after being flooded for many years. The ballroom was impressively grand and as I stood looking across the carpeted floor lit by numerous chandeliers I squinted and tried to imagine a Melbourne in its golden era with society types watching a play and then proceeding to the ballroom in their extravagant outfits.

Anyway, enough about Melbourne – back to Paris.

Please don’t vomit on the Mona Lisa

After my morning walk, I met up with Harry for breakfast. Today we planned to see the Louvre. I was convinced that it wouldn’t live up to its hype, but it proved me wrong. The Louvre is a feast for the soul that everyone should experience at least once in their life. The only problem is that now Australian galleries pale in comparison and it is hard to get excited about the quarterly ‘special exhibits’ that come along and their relatively exorbitant admission prices.

The Louvre

I’m sure I would have appreciated the Louvre all the more had I not been getting sicker by the minute. After a few hours of browsing the artwork, I became more interested in the locations of toilets – the toilet symbol was the Mona Lisa to me. I understand that it is a magnificent old building, but the lack of toilets was farcical. At times I was reassuring myself, “Please don’t vomit on the Mona Lisa; it would be sacrilegious.”

After a few more hours even Chris was getting a little bit tired of the Louvre. We were both a bit ‘cultured out’. I think you really need to see the Louvre over a few weeks rather than try and cram it all into a day.

Our next stop was the Notre Dame. The intense heat of the sun was making things worse for me and by the time we got into the Notre Dame, I was feeling really quite ill. I thought I was going to vomit in the Notre Dame for sure, which would have been even more sacrilegious, so I told Chris I’d meet him back at the hostel and left. I’d run out of water to drink and I only had large denominations of currency and couldn’t buy any, so I staggered around the Paris streets parched and exhausted, trying to find the nearest metro station.

Finally I was able to spot a funky art-deco ‘metropolitan’ sign and walked down the stairs to the underground platform. It was a real struggle to walk back to the hostel and when I got back, I collapsed in my bunk bed and slept until the next day.

Centre Pompidou – The inside-out building

I was healthy enough to see some more of Paris the next day, but still not fully recovered. It was annoying walking past patisseries filled with delectable pastries and just feeling nauseous.

The view from the Eifel Tower

We spent two more nights in Paris and were able to see a fair chunk of the city. Our approach was to see one or two landmarks each day and walk through the streets to explore Paris in between.

Arc de Triumph

It isn’t the landmarks that I remember most of my time in Paris however. To me, Paris will always be associated with relaxing in a beautiful park on a gentle spring day, watching Parisians go about their daily lives whilst munching on a yummy baguette. Paris really is lovely in the springtime.

Eifel Tower