Last night Teresa and I took the Eurostar to Paris. We were only in the Chunnel for about 20 minutes and the rest was on land. Once we got to Gare du Nord (the station) we managed to walk the 5 minutes to our hotel. The receptionist didn�t really speak English, and neither did anyone else we ran into.
This morning we got up and ate breakfast here. We ate baguettes and some ham and cheese. It turns out breakfast is 8 Euros so we won�t be eating it here anymore. We took the Metro (subway) to the Louvre Museum. There was no one there! We spent about 3-4 hours looking at all the amazing artwork. We saw the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, and tons of paintings from artists we learned about in Humanities. It was the coolest museum I�ve ever been to. Around noon we left to catch the hop-on-hop-off bus to Notre Dame. We spent some time at Notre Dame and shopped around that area. Stuff is a lot cheaper on the streets here than in London. We decided then to ride the bus on its 2 hour route through the city. We saw most of the famous sites in central Paris, but we didn�t get off at any. We finally hopped off at the Eiffel Tower. It was awesome to see it up close. We bought a ticket to the top of the tower and rode the elevator up. It was a bit scary going up, but the view was worth it. We rode back down to the second level (there are three levels you can go to) and walked down the rest of the way. We were starving by then so we went to a little caf�alled Le Dome. Our waiter didn�t speak English so we just pointed to a crepe we wanted to try. He kept talking to us in French but we had no idea what he was saying. The meal ended up being really expensive, but it was good to try a real French crepe. We decided to stick around the Eiffel Tower until it was lit up for the night, so we walked across to the Palace de Chaillot where we could get a good view. It started to rain so we ran underneath a small overhanging, but we were still getting wet. Luckily we were stuck there with a friendly Canadian who conveniently spoke French as well. When I noticed an open semi truck parked near by, he offered to ask the men inside if we could join in to stay dry. They let us join them and we learned that they were heading back to Milan after just finishing a Valentino fashion show. I wonder if Valentino will ever stop by Indianapolis? When the rain stopped, we walked to the Avenue des Champs Elysees and gawked at all the ritzy designer clothing stores we saw. It got dark around 10 and we made it back to the Palace de Chaillot where we watched the Eiffel Tower. Every hour it sparkles with lights for about ten minutes. It was extremely beautiful. We then took the Metro back to our hotel for some rest. So far, Paris has been wonderful! More to come tomorrow!
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