Who said Paris is rude?

Bonjour, Merci, and Au revoir seemed to be all of the French that I know! I must say you've never lived until you've asked for directions to a McDonalds in French. This by the way was when we lost Tina and went into panic mode to reconnect the group. I was so worried that I even went to the bathroom in the mens room and didn't realize it until I noticed the urinal as I was washing my hands!!!! OOPs, stupid Americans! The hotel was cheap, no AC (none of the transportation had AC, always travel with a bottle of water!) After a 15 minute train ride in what I would consider the most confusing transportation system I've ever been on, we found ourselves in center city Paris! I LOVE PARIS, the people were friendly, helpful, and super sweet!!!!! Again we walked EVERYWHERE!!! And holding true, our favorite spots were the gardens!!! Paris has gorgeous gardens!!! Unfortunately for us we missed out on the Dave Matthews Show but the boys got to see him again. I'm sure they'll fill you in. In the mean time we ate at a cute little restaurant, I was hesitant to get a salad because salad dressing is different here. They like to put mayo on lettuce. For the rest of the evening we waited for the boys so we could all take the train back to the hotel. This would prove to be a huge mistake after we missed the last train for the evening. Bikes would have been an easy solution because every ten feet are bikes that you can rent by the hour. Although not for us, because in Europe you need some sort of smart chip on your credit card to use the machines!!! So we continued to walk through Paris at night and at times we took the roads less traveled. But not to worry we made it to our favorite park where Christina and I cuddled for warmth spending the rest of the night sleeping under the stars. At about 5am the trains started running again ad we countinued our trip back to the hotel. This time having less respect for the subway system, we began hopping the bars and slipping through the cracks. Apparently this is normal practice for the locals and we now know why! After running through countless numbers of turn styles, climbing a ridiculous amount of stairs, and several trains later we decided it would be wise to spend an extra night at our cheap hostile. Only this night we decided to just buy some wine and sit on the roof top while eating stale pretzels, now that's a dinner!

Of course, we waited until the last day to visit the Louve and the Eiffel Tower. The louve is huge and would have taken 62 days to see every piece for at least 30 seconds a piece. So naturally we only wanted to really see the Mona Lisa and some Egyptian pieces. Thanks to our quick thinking, we noticed that there was re-entry into the museum. So Tina and I stood at the exit and found four tickets to the Louve (well acutally like 12 tickets because we weren't sure if we could use the European Union passes), allowing us free entry!!!! We're on a budget people!

The Eiffel Tower was amazingly tall and very popular, you would probably be wondering how it is that we lost it while we were walking!!! One minute it was in plain sight then the next it vanished!!!!! Haha... it took us like another 20 minutes to find the thing! Check out the pics!

After our day in Paris, we took a night bus to Amsterdam. Again saving us another night in the hostel. I'm not quite sure if it was worth it between the cramped space, urine and BO smelling, hot bus! We are so ready to camp, I've had enough of the city life for a few days...

Till next time....

~cheryl