Travel to Paris

Trip Start Sep 29, 2001
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Trip End Jun 13, 2001


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Monday, March 11, 2002

We made our way from Edinburgh to Paris. The smart, time efficient, and probably cheap thing to do would have been to fly Easy Jet over. But we had rail passes and I was still pretty poor. I thought the best thing to do was take the overnight train from Edinburgh to London (free hotel for us, the brothers paid for a sleeper). From there we took a train to Dover (free on the rail pass). We took the Ferry to Calais (I forget how much that was), and then used our EuroRail passes to get to Paris. Now that I think about it, my first trip to Paris had been a few weeks before my brothers arrived. We went for a few days I guess. But I remember vividly my first few moments in Paris. We arrived at Gare du Nord and I was immediately mesmerized by the city. It was evening. The architecture was striking. Even the train station was beautiful. We stepped onto the streets of Paris and began walking toward our hostel. Moments after leaving the station, after walking perhaps a block in this magical city, just as dusk was beginning to settle over us, I saw a guy openly urinating on a sidewalk I was trying to navigate 01 Le Pont Alexander III
01 Le Pont Alexander III
 . I looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this guy. No one had. Or no one cared. Everyone went about their business as if this guy wasn't pissing on our path. So I shook it off (I didn't shake "IT" off, I mean shook off the moment) and went on my way.

Back to the visit with the Phillips brothers. We arrived in Paris and headed off to our hotel. STA had found it for us and it wasn't a bad deal. A cost a little more than a hostel, but it was a good bit nicer.

We spent a couple of days roaming around Paris. I remember one night we went to dinner at a very cool restaurant where not a single waiter spoke a single word of English. We ordered things without a clue as to what they were. We drank wine and talked and laughed. The restaurant was actually a non-profit and was connected to a convent or something to that effect. I don't remember the specifics. It was really quite inexpensive though. It was near the Moulin Rouge and it was a lovely night out.

We hit the Louvre and the Musee D'Orsay. We wandered around the city. I actually don't remember anything eventful or specific. I'll post some pictures of the city, although I'm sure they were taken during several different trips. We probably came in and out of Paris a half dozen times.
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