Dominating Paris

Friday morning was chaos. The alarm was set for plenty of time for us to get ready to go to Paris, but of course we slept through it and woke up 5 minutes before we were supposed to be at the train station. So it was a good thing we had packed the night before, so we threw on our clothes and ran out the door. We finally made it to meet Caitlin at King's Cross, Sam only had a few minutes before the check in closed for her train, so we went our separate ways.  Caitlin and I went to get our converter from UK to Europe...how annoying. Then we made our way to Costa to get breakfast and a drink. I got an iced coffee because I was super hot, and the iced coffee was more like a room temperature watered down coffee. It worked though.

We went and got in queue to get on our train, and had our bags checked and got more stamps in our passports and loaded onto the train. I sat next to a lovely woman that was from Greece. We chatted and then I did some reading for our final that is Wednesday. It wasn't a bad train ride. It was pretty cool though going through the Chunnel, although there was no climax, really you just went through a tunnel and then came out the other side. We finally arrived in Paris at the train station. We met up with Sam right away and made our way to the hotel. It was interesting trying to find our way around with no english...at least we had Sam though who knew a little bit of French. 

So we got to our stop, got out of the station and made our way to the hotel. I was afraid that no one would understand English but fortunately the man at the front desk of our hotel was very nice and knew english. So we were on the top floor, and thank god there was a lift to get us up because going up 6 floors would have sucked. So we got in there and were pleasantly surprised. It was a 2 star hotel, but for the location and price it really wasn't bad at all. We had a balcony with a lovely view.

So it was time for us to head out. (I'm not going to even attempt to spell or even remember what the names of the places that we went to were) We went to a big cathedral on a big hill. It had an amazing view, it was beautiful. The weather was great. It was such a beautiful place. We took some pictures and then made our way through the "red light" district of Pairs to get to the Moulon Rouge we took some pictures and left. We went to the Fat Tire Bike tour place to make sure that we could get into the night tour. We bought tickets, or well....Sam bought me mine for my Birthday! It was great. 

Ben, our tour guide telling us to DOMINATE

While we were waiting for the tour to start we went and got some food, it was cheap but gross. I know where not to eat anymore in Paris. But it filled us up for the tour. So we mad our way back to the tour place, waited around for our group and then it was ready to get our bikes. We got on our bikes and then made our way to meet our tour guide. His name was Ben, and he told us to Dominate Paris! We needed to take over the roads so that we wouldn't get hit. We rode our California Cruisers through Paris. I felt very European, it was a lot of fun. So we went to Notre Dame, and on the bridge we were standing on, there was a lot of locks on the bridge. He said that they were the locks of love. If you met someone in Paris that you wanted to lock your love together you would go to your favorite bridge in Paris, write your names on it, and then throw the key into the river. He said that the locks get cut off every couple of months because it gets so heavy that they start to pull the railings down. 

Then we went to get ice cream. It was all natural ice cream. SO GOOD! And even better, Johnny Depp has an apartment above where we got our ice cream. So we continued around Paris, saw a few more things (like the Louvre) and then finally got to the boat. Boat you ask? Yes, it included a boat tour down the river! We also got red wine to drink too. It was a lovely ride. I eventually gave up on taking pictures because they never came out good because the boat was moving...so I saw the sights and talked to Ben about how I could possibly do it next summer! Super cool idea. We got off the boat, and made a stop at the Eiffel Tower at night. It was about 10 minutes until midnight (the first minute of my birthday). Every hour on the hour the tower would start to sparkle, so Sam and Caitlin got everyone to sing happy birthday to me. So the first minute of my birthday consisted of everyone from the Fat Tire Bike Tour singing Happy Birthday, and the Eiffel tower sparkling. So then it was time to ride back to the office and head off for the night. We dropped off our bikes, and we were hungry again and since our tour was 5 hours, the only thing that was open at 12:30am was McDonalds. 

I got a chicken sandwich and fries of course. Then we made our way to the metro and home to the hotel. Let me just say that I officially hate the Paris metro at night. We were almost to our stop, and then there was this man that was dressed up as snow white and his friends tried to make their way to sit down, well that failed. He fell into Caitlin's lap and as that happened his cheap alcoholic drink spilled all down me. I was not very thrilled to say the least. We made it home FINALLY!! Then it was time to shower, eat my McDonalds and then go to sleep. 

XOXO