Paris

Today we went to Paris. We woke up at the super early hour of 4:30 a.m. to catch our train to Paris by 5:30. We had to catch the night bus in London to make the first tube train of the day from one of the stations. Once we made it to the international rail terminal, we ran around to try and find the counter that we were supposed to meet at, which was nowhere to be found. We tried the electronic ticket desk, and that didn’t work. We asked a worker who told us to wait for our group, so we did. We waited and waited. Finally, a little after 6:00 a.m., one guy showed up under a different company name than our tour company to start checking people in. It turns out we are on the 6:55 a.m. train and this guy was able to check us in.

The train ride was pretty cool. We went through the Chunnel (the channel tunnel), which is a tunnel underneath the English Channel, and we got to see some of the English and French country side on the way into Paris. The train went at 150mph, so it only took about 2 hours to make the journey.

We opted for the Paris at your leisure tour, so we got to do whatever we wanted. We started off seeing the Arc De Triumph, which was a lot cooler than I thought. It was huge. It is basically a big archway with war memorials all over it. It has a large statue depicting Napoleon as Cesar as well.

After that we took off toward the Eiffel Tower. On the way we stopped at a café for some lunch. We got ham and cheese crepes, which may not sound that great, but they were amazing. We also got a sweet crepe with ice cream and chocolate on it which was so good I can’t even put it into words.

We then got to the Eiffel tower. We walked up the first two floors of the tower as it was a lot cheaper than the elevator. The views from up there are amazing. Paris is a very big city. It stretched as far as you can see. From the second story, we rode the elevator the rest of the way up. The view from the top is great. It was super crowded up there, but it was a cool thing to do.

After the Eiffel tower, we jumped back on the subway system and went over to Notre Dame. That was a super cool cathedral. Quasimodo (or someone dressed like him) was out in front of the cathedral getting pictures with children. The inside was very dark and gothic, but was really neat. It made me mad that all the tourists were taking pictures of everything, despite the signs asking you not to. It would have been a much more reverent place.

After Notre Dame, we spent the last of our time in Paris at the Louvre. The Louvre used to be the French King’s Castle, which evolved into a huge palace, and now is the biggest art museum you could ever imagine. It was humongous! We spent over 2 hours there and only saw the bottom floors of 2 of the 3 wings. We did see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, and Hammurabi’s code. We also saw tons of old Egyptian, Persian, Roman, and Greek statues and artifacts. It seems the French have a knack for stealing everyone else’s national treasures. We also had dinner at one of Louvre’s 3 restaurants; some, frankly speaking, crappy sandwiches, but a really good crepe for dessert.

After that we were suffering from an overload of art and we started heading back to the train station. Overall, Paris had some cool sites, but was kind of a dirty place. The people on the subway were rude sometimes. It isn’t as nice as London, but has some cool things to offer.

On the train ride home we sat directly across from some RAF (Royal Air Force) cadets. This is due to the awkward seating arrangements that are in the middle of the rain cars. At least we were facing forward this time as we faced backwards on the way there. There were drinking champagne and one of them got a little out of hand and threw his phone on the floor calling it a piece of sh*t for not getting service in Paris. His friends managed to calm him down and saved his phone from being destroyed.

We got back to London a little after 10:00 at night. We were a little hungry after our trip back so we got milkshakes at the store. Mitch’s was a fudge brownie flavor and was incredibly rich. With that in our stomachs we hit the bed for some much needed sleep.