Eden Magenta Hotel Paris

... wanted to find somewhere to off load my bag… in a locker perhaps? Yeah that didn’t happen, I didn’t end up in an actual bus station. So I’ve been lugging around 35-40 pounds for about….4 hours. Walking around in circles. Fun. I could’ve planned this day out better.

I’m seriously tired, seriously concerned, and totally stoked. This is an amazingly messed up day in Paris. I would've planned that better...

... br> After that, we stopped by our hotel to store the food - which we had to sneak past the reception - before we head off to Notre Dame, our one stop before Sacre-Coeur. But we ended up spending alot longer at Notre Dame then we thought we would, and we were just a little pressed for time, which is probably we experienced an unfortunate lapse of judgement - deciding to rent the bikes on the street so we could get to our destination "faster ...

... once you can get around all of the vendors hawking mini Towers.

We got to the Eiffel Tower at 10pm and in order to avoid the 4 hour wait for the elevator we decided to walk to the top of the 2nd floor, only 700 stairs, ugghhh, but we made it eventually and the views were of course spectacular. We were in the tower when the light show went off which was very cool.

Crashed/Tired/Too Much Walking/Hurt feet

... a great little hostel and finally, walking up to the Sacre-Coeur which afforded breathtaking views of the city. Yep. That did it for me. We were lucky in finding accomodation in Montmarte - the artist's quarter... This city truly embraces it's artists, it's so awesome to see! Wandering around, we came accross countless stalls all with paintings of the city or people wanting to draw portraits... For a birthday drink, we came accross a great little cafe ...

... to Luxembourg Gardens and grabbed some crepes. Hartley and I can't get enough of the crepes. Banana chocolate crepes are amazing! We relaxed by the fountains there and enjoyed the band playing close by. We would have liked to have relaxed there some more, but it was pretty cold and we kept moving to warm up. We headed back to the hotel to shower and get ready for dinner. We went to a really good falafel restaurant that was a few ...

In a strange but fun coincidence, my next door neighbors Bob and Patrick are in Paris. Bob is here on a 3-month work assignment and Patrick is visiting at the same time as I am. Patrick arrived last night in time for the Nouvelle Star but I'm not sure how much of that he remembers -- jet lag is a wonderful thing. As the two of us are on vacation we spent today wandering around the Marais district while ...

... were sitting there enjoying our bottle of "Cote de Rhone" we asked the waiter if we could have a snack to go with it (something simple like bread or cheese) and he pointed to something on the menu called "Croque Monsieur". Even though it was French and we had no idea what it was, we were really hungry. So we decided to give it try. We were expecting a plate with cheese and crackers on it and the waiter brought us a huge plate. On one side were salad greens in vinaigrette ...

... needed to slow his roll...goodness! We both got there relatively early on Thursday morning, as Mike got an early flight and I had taken a night train. So, with just about zero sleep in both of us, we decided to walk the entire city....great idea. But yeah, it was actually a great idea as we were able to see all the major sites including the Arc de Trimphe, Eiffel Tower, Notre-Dame (from afar), Hotel des Invalides, the Grand Palais, Ecole ...

... that would have been quite appropriate. Some guy tried talking with the bus driver as well, but without success because the driver didn't speak English, and this guy didn't speak French. He overheard me speak french, so he got me to ask the driver when the bus back to the airport was that night. Go me and my translating. I think he thought I knew a lot more that I did and followed me to the metro stop before he went in another direction. Finally, a European country I can actually ...

... nos devolvio todo...que suerte!(otra rareza de francia; aun ponen el precio en francos; y peor aun; pueden estafar con sus precios en francos a los turistas incautos!) Lo que mas ha cambiado de Paris; es que ahora se ven muchos mas soldados y policias con perros vigilando las calles; y desaparecieron todos los basureros, ahora esta lleno de bolsas plasticas; solo para que no pongan bombas. Bueno y lo ultimo, es que la primera vez que vine era invierno, asi que no senti ...