Paris

We arrived in Paris at 9am local time on the EuroStar train.  The ride went really fast...we definitely slept the entire trip.  When we arrived we had a big wake up call.  French did not help.  We needed to change money and figure out which train we needed to take to get to our hostel.  All of the French aside, we made it quite easily to our hostel.  After booking it online, they had sent us an email which included specific directions from the metro.  Seriously by the end of our trip we had mastered the metro system.  Anyway, we made it to the hostel, sent an email to our parents, and then began exploring the city.  We started out by walking to the Seine River.  We walked along the river to Notre Dame.  Notre Dame is gorgeous!  We took our time walking in it and then as we were in there they had mass.  So we sat down and stayed for the whole mass...even though we had no idea what they were saying.  So that was a really cool experience.  Another thing that we saw this day was the Bastille.  It was pretty cool, but nothing amazing.  After all of this we went back to the hostel, napped, made dinner, and just laid low.  The "kitchen" of this hostel was ridiculous...it was basically a dungeon.  

The next morning (Wednesday) we got up, enjoyed our free breakfast (which consisted of a roll, croissant, and juice), and started out on our very busy day.  We began the day by going to the Louvre...knowing that there would probably be a huge line to get in.  We spent a good couple of hours wandering around and being amazed at all of the art.  It definitely kicked the National Gallery of London's ass.  My favorite was the sculptures there.  We got to see the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, the pyramid sculpture, the 3 graces, Aphrodite, etc.  After we had been thoroughly overwhelmed by art we walked down the Champs-Elysees.  At the end of it was the Arc de Triomphe.  The view from it was gorgeous.  Our next stop was the Eiffel Tower!  When we got there we went up to the second floor...so not the very top...but it was still amazing.  Took about a million pictures of it.  I couldn't find anyone to kiss under it--like my boss told me to.  Oh well, next time.  Then that night we decided to go out for dinner in Paris.  We went to a place right by our hostel and it was nice to just sit, relax, and have some good food.  It was also cool to be able to observe more of French culture there.  One thing we noticed...people making out everywhere!  Seriously at about every place we went you could find a couple making out.  I guess that's why they say Paris is so romantic.  

Thursday--Nicole and I slept in while the other two girls went to Versailles.  They said that it was amazing to see--but sleep sounded really good to me that day.  So we slept until 11, got up and got some eclairs from the bakery nearby, and then took another nap until the girls got back.  What a life!  When the girls got back we went to some famous cemetery in Paris.  Our big goal of going there was to find the grave of Oscar Wilde.  The cemetery was huge and we had a little difficulty in navigation but eventually we found it.  There were a ton of kiss marks on it (showing their appreciation) and Catherine was brave enough to kiss it as well.  We made it out of the cemetery and then headed over to Sacre Coeur.  It was beautiful and in a very interesting part of town.  There were shops and people everywhere.  We would have stayed and looked around but the girls that went to Versailles were exhausted.  So we headed back to the hostel, got some yummy pastries, and took a nap.  That night we decided to go to the Eiffel Tower at dark.  On the hour there is a huge light show on the Tower that is absolutely amazing!  Anyone who goes to Paris needs to experience this!  I took plenty of pics and videos that I can show when I get back to the States.  Basically, it was the perfect way to end our trip to Paris.  I will never forget it.

The next morning we got up at 4:30, took the metro at 5:30, took a shuttle to the airport at 6:15, departed on our flight at 9:30, arrived in Dublin and took a bus to Galway at 11:30, and then took a cab to the PLH.  We got back to the cottages around 4:30pm.  That was 13 hours of traveling!! (Including the time difference)  The metro was interesting because at 5:30 people are just leaving the bars and wanting to take the metro home to crash.  We ran into a group of teenagers who were just wasted...very classy.  The Beauvais airport was ridiculous.  It's the tiniest airport ever and it took at least an hour to get through security.  Basically, if you want to make your flight you absolutely have to be there two hours prior just to check in and make it through security.  But yeah, that was my adventure to England and France.  Overall everything went extremely well.  We didn't have any bad fortune with transportation which was amazing!  We got to hear about all of those stories from other people on our Ireland trip.  So we feel very lucky--must have been that 4 leaf clover that I found. :)