Oh la la, hello Paris
Today we had our day to ourselves. Mostly. The planned excursion was to the louvre museum. We were planning on going but didn't want to pay the 45€ to go when it only cost us 10€ each instead. We did end up taking a ride with the group and then ditched them and went in alone. Also, I'm not sure that I am that into art and statues to want to follow someone around for almost three hours telling me what to think. That museum is insanely huge. I knew it was big but wow. We toured a little bit of it. The Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo were easy to find. The Mona Lisa is fairly small and there were swarms of people fighting to get in line to see it up close.
Paris is an interesting place to visit. I really wouldn't want to drive here. It looks like it is complete chaos. Our replacement driver spent a lot of time honking at other drivers. It's also very frightening to cross the street. We've had a few close calls. And that is with following the lights! The funniest part of Paris is all the movie advertisements. Apparently Robert pattinson has a new movie coming out. There are movie posters with him covering this city.
The strangest part of the day is that usually when we go touring we just have an hour or so to tour in a smaller area so you are constantly running into our travel group. So it was strange only seeing strangers wherever we went. I didn't really believe our tour guide when she said we would all be sad to see each other go! The funniest part was yesterday after the Eiffel tower. We had a different driver and tour guide and when we got back to the hotel our usual bus was there. And as we drove up Alberto, our driver came out of the bus and waved. We all ignored the tour guide and all the adults were calling out "it's Alberto, he's back, let's wave" and then everyone waved and poured out the bus to see him. And this is a man who speaks five words of English. You really do get attached to people after being in a small group for two weeks.
After the louvre we did a hop on hop off bus. We saw the highlights of the city. We also discovered that today was a national holiday so all the Parisians are out of town. However that meant that things were closed. I was excited to go to the catacombs. It's a giant ossuary underground with all the bones from the old cemeteries all stacked on each other. Yes, it's completely macabre but I really wanted to see it. So of course it's closed on holidays. So I was sad about that. But the city is still very busy with tourists and the like. So we came back to the hotel room early to get ready for our last leg of vacation.
I think that the thing I will appreciate the most when I return home is my shower. It has been a strange odyssey of having to figure out how to use all of the showers across Europe. Many don't have shower curtains and one even had a fan in the corner of the shower on a shelf up at the roof with a cord hanging down to plug it in. They also had a cord to pull if you fell and were hurt. The water pressure is all over the place. Literally some days we would flood the bathroom a little bit. Th less glamorous side of vacation.
Tomorrow we are off to country number 7. I know, it's crazy that we've made it this far already. We're going home in only a few days. But first we will conquer London. Tomorrow we take the train over and then have plans for the London eye! Which should be highly entertaining.
Paris is an interesting place to visit. I really wouldn't want to drive here. It looks like it is complete chaos. Our replacement driver spent a lot of time honking at other drivers. It's also very frightening to cross the street. We've had a few close calls. And that is with following the lights! The funniest part of Paris is all the movie advertisements. Apparently Robert pattinson has a new movie coming out. There are movie posters with him covering this city.
The strangest part of the day is that usually when we go touring we just have an hour or so to tour in a smaller area so you are constantly running into our travel group. So it was strange only seeing strangers wherever we went. I didn't really believe our tour guide when she said we would all be sad to see each other go! The funniest part was yesterday after the Eiffel tower. We had a different driver and tour guide and when we got back to the hotel our usual bus was there. And as we drove up Alberto, our driver came out of the bus and waved. We all ignored the tour guide and all the adults were calling out "it's Alberto, he's back, let's wave" and then everyone waved and poured out the bus to see him. And this is a man who speaks five words of English. You really do get attached to people after being in a small group for two weeks.
After the louvre we did a hop on hop off bus. We saw the highlights of the city. We also discovered that today was a national holiday so all the Parisians are out of town. However that meant that things were closed. I was excited to go to the catacombs. It's a giant ossuary underground with all the bones from the old cemeteries all stacked on each other. Yes, it's completely macabre but I really wanted to see it. So of course it's closed on holidays. So I was sad about that. But the city is still very busy with tourists and the like. So we came back to the hotel room early to get ready for our last leg of vacation.
I think that the thing I will appreciate the most when I return home is my shower. It has been a strange odyssey of having to figure out how to use all of the showers across Europe. Many don't have shower curtains and one even had a fan in the corner of the shower on a shelf up at the roof with a cord hanging down to plug it in. They also had a cord to pull if you fell and were hurt. The water pressure is all over the place. Literally some days we would flood the bathroom a little bit. Th less glamorous side of vacation.
Tomorrow we are off to country number 7. I know, it's crazy that we've made it this far already. We're going home in only a few days. But first we will conquer London. Tomorrow we take the train over and then have plans for the London eye! Which should be highly entertaining.
Sounds like a great time!
ReplyDeleteI also struggled with the showers in the UK. There were some floods. I guess we are spoiled by our spacious showers!
If you have time in London, go see the Tower of London. It is expensive to get in but it was totally worth it. Just watch out for the undead, they almost got me there.
Amanda