Leon's Stag Do

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Saturday 29th - Sunday 30th May 2004. Leon's Stag Do - A Tale of Two Cities. Started off with food and a few drinks in London, then on to Paris for a (supposedly) all night bar and club-a-thon. Didn't quite work out exactly as planned though...

16:47:34 We'd met at two in the afternoon, but for an assortment of reasons I didn't get around to kicking off the pictures until this one, at getting on for five. Here we are enjoying some canteen style Japanese food in Satsuma.

16:49:25 Leon gets up close and personal with his bento.

16:49:37 Greg, Gav and Adam all tucking in.

17:26:01 It's important to schedule in at least one kanpai at this sort of event, and what better beverage for the task than a round of hot sake.

17:26:05 Sake being universally enjoyed... ish. Craig's face has been quite expertly obscured there by Adam's (?) hand.

17:26:55 Here I'm imagining how a Charles' Dickens character might approach a flask of hot sake. Luckily I'm partially obscured by Greg, which makes for an interesting picture. Of sorts. Ish.

17:50:16 Nice group picture outside of Satsuma.

17:54:07 At this point we'd decided we better high-tail it to Waterloo to catch the Eurostar so we split up and flagged down a couple of taxis. Gav wasn't keen about sitting in the middle for the purposes of this picture, incidentally.

17:54:27 Two people in a taxi really.

18:37:04 In the bar in Waterloo station, called Bonaparte's or something. It was of course necessary to sink a quick beverage before boarding the train. Note the subtle insult Leon is quite expertly delivering here.

19:17:02 On the Eurostar now, small tins of Kronenbourg all round.

19:32:17 I think I might try to sell this to Eurostar for use in their advertising campaigns.

19:56:08 Four of our group, including Stewart busy perusing some "reading matter" bought for the journey.

19:57:14 Me and Adam, and perhaps another slightly less convincing advert for Eurostar.

19:57:23 Greg and Craig, who were located in the seats behind ours. Both looking very serious here.

21:48:20 No real reason to take a picture of these electricity pylons, other than Chie likes them. I guess this must indicate we're in France by this point. Have adjusted the times of the pictures from here in on accordingly.

21:52:15 To fill in the time, we had a game of poker, betting for real hard cash. You can see by all the matchsticks Gav has here he took an early lead...

22:31:02 ...and basically won mercilessly over and over again until we were all broke.

22:43:35 Gav wondering what he is going to do with his vast winnings, whilst Stewart points in a seemingly significant fashion.

22:48:10 Not sure what the point of this picture is. I think I may have just wanted a shot of the empty cans.

22:53:49 Looks like we've arrived at Paris Gare Du Nord now...

23:21:22 The all-important examination of the local vending machines.

23:43:01 Our first port of call upon arrival in Paris was this Irish Bar, in the same region as the club we had planned to go to later...

00:13:39 I didn't feel like I was soaking up French culture a great deal at this point.

00:26:13 The outside of the Irish Pub.

00:36:21 Unfortunately, the evening took a turn for the worst at this point, as Leon became quite unwell, and said he needed a hotel room to go and sleep it off. Here we are languishing around the hotel while Gav sorted Leon out a room. After just one pint in Paris our stag do was now without a stag!

02:14:49 Of course, bizarre though it sounded, it didn't stop the rest of us continuing with the stag do in Leon's honour. So here's the club we spent the majority of the evening in, from about 1AM until 5AM when it closed. Only got one picture though. Sorry about that.

05:24:55 After leaving the club around 5ish, the remaining survivors - Stewart, Gav, Adam, Craig and myself, decided it would be a good idea to go and find some food somewhere. So here we are eating pizzas and kebabs for what, given the time, was effectively breakfast.

06:06:31 After breakfast we thought we'd take a wander down to the Seine for a little stroll. You can just see the Eiffel Tower in this picture, to prove it definitely is Paris.

06:07:19 The last picture, and as you can see by now it was basically daylight. After this we basically plodded back to the Gare Du Nord, and hung around until our train home turned up.