It was late when we got there and then, then I felt really lost. See in England they had at least spoke English. They don't speak English in France. Or at least the one worker that was still in the train station when we got off. By a bit of a miracle we found where the bus was we were supposed to get on the bus that would drop us off near the hotel. Unfortunately Paris hotels are a bit hard to find. So we wandered in the direction I thought it was in and then realized we were never actually going to find the hotel (I should add in here in is probably one in the morning). By another miracle someone passed by us, and I asked him for directions, and amazingly he spoke English! And he let me use his iPhone and that got us going in the right direction.
It was not exactly smooth sailing from that point. It still took us another thirty minutes or so to find the hotel. And all of this time we were starving, we smelled terrible (remember there was no shower at the temple, and we had been outside walking all day), and the luggage carrier that Ariana and Tyler gave us was really struggling across the cobblestone sidewalks. But we made it.
The room was very nice but very small. We went back out to try and find food, though at three in the morning options are limited. Turns out, Paris doesn't have many Denny's in the proximity of that hotel. We did however find a scary convenience store where we had the option of buying a small can of Pringles for about $8 or a small bag of chips for $5 or $6. So with two tiny bags of chips we went back to the hotel showered and went to bed (not quite the romantic Paris evening I had planned).
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| First view of the Eiffel Tower. |
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It said that the room had a balcony.
Apparently in French, 'balcony' means 'window with bars across it.' |
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| There was about a foot and a half of space all around the bed. |
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| The view in the morning was beautiful though. |
What seemed like fifteen minutes after I had gone to bed the phone rang. Turns out, it was one in the afternoon! As amazing as the blackout curtains are, it makes it very hard to wake up at a reasonable hour when you're exhausted. So we got up, went and check into a much cheaper hotel just down the street, and it was actually way closer to the Eiffel Tower. The downside was no air conditioning. And two twin beds. But for a third the price, we could make due. And the staff was super friendly which is always a plus. The first day we mostly walked around and saw stuff, ate some fun food. Day two we went to the Louvre which was pretty cool. I mean, we saw the Mona Lisa (not really the most impressive of the pieces of art). There was also a lot of other cool things that I recognized from some of my old art books. We saw Notre Dame, witnessed part of some kind of service there, ate at a place that had good crepes but terrible creme brulee, and paid $17 for a equally terrible cheeseburger and fries.
Despite the mostly bad food it was still so fun to be there. And then came Rome.
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| Our second little room. We ended up pushing the beds together. |
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| The outside of the Louve. |
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| Notre Dame. |
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So we scraped on initials on the front of this lock, put it on the bridge,
then threw the key into the river. I guess it's all the rage :) |
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This is really one of the best pictures of us on the trip.
Too bad the creme brulee wasn't as good. |
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| There's a bit of a crowd in front of this one. |
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| Look how huge this is!! |
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| Just so cool! |
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| Real mummy = real dead person here. Weird. |
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| Delicious desserts. |
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| And a few kissing ones. |
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This is outside the first restaurant we ate at.
It was actually in a movie we saw the other day too, which made us feel awesome and cultured. |
