Ah, Paris!

Bonjour Paris! What a beautiful and charming city. A perfect romantic getaway for the first stop on our European adventure. Yesterday was undoubtedly one of the longest days (we hope) of the journey. We spent our time in the airport pre-departure walking/running/jumping/skipping backwards on an isolated people mover, aka a giant treadmill. We most definitely spent about half an hour on it, and broke a clear sweat. Awesome. 

Even that wasn't enough to knock us out though. We popped a few sleep-eeze and gravol, and still were awakened to the sound of "you want to eat?" "you want to eat?" "du champagne?" "croissant or breakfast burrito?" "you want to eat?". NO I DON'T WANT TO EAT. You just fed me. Please let me sleep. Thanks. 

At the Louvre

We made it in one, stomach-stuffed piece, secured our luggage (all intact) and made our way to the train. Luck was on our side when we arrived at the train station and were able to easily book all of our connecting trains for the whole month. Great success!

(Ps our webpage is currently speaking to us in french. Ah Paris!)

We eventually made it to our hostel, not thanks to les directions horribles from the hostel, mais thanks to our broken french and lost-looking faces we were able to get help from pedestrians. Merci beaucoup!

So fast!

Breathtaking walls of Notre Dame

After dropping our heavy backpacks we took off for a whirlwind adventure around the city. We saw the finish of the Tour de France along Ave des Champs-Elysees, toured Notre Dame Cathedral (Kelsi and Heidi we have gorgeous pictures for you!), walked through the courtyard of the Louvre, ventured into Place d'Armes for a pitstop, through Luxembourg Gardens, and then picked up some fresh bread, Brie, and bottle of wine before heading over to the Eiffel Tower. 

Third and fourth bottles of wine of the evening.

This was the first bottle of red wine of the night. We forgot to bring along our Swiss Army knife to open our wine or cut the cheese (aha). We spied a couple of girls with mec backpacks and a bottle opener, and said "they look Canadian!" Our Canuck friends, Caitlin and Heidi are coincidentally from St. Catharines and Kingston respectively. What a small world! We spent the night drinking, chatting, and matchmaking with the Eiffel tower stunningly glowing behind us. Life doesn't get much better than this. 

This morning we slept in and awoke to killer headaches even though we slept 11 hours and drank a lot of water. Popped some tylenol, vitamins, coffee, and PB on toast and these girls are good to go.

Today's menu: visit l'Arc de Triomphe, a budget bus tour of the city, visit to Mussee d'Ordsay, wander around Marais, and rendezvous with Heidi and Caitlin for falafels at 7pm. 

Salut!

C'est magnifique!