Paris again

Our first full day in Paris started out strong. We went to the Louvre to see the Mona Lisa and purchase our two day museum pass so that we could see everything in Paris! The Louvre was open late on Thursday, so we didn't spend much time there Wednesday morning, we just saw Mona and headed out for our walking tour of the city. We were really excited for the free walking tour, seeing as our Munich tour was so informative and interesting. This one started out good as well. We got to see a lot of Paris and the guide was very enthusiastic, but three and a half hours later, we were ready to move on from the tour and see Paris for ourselves. We left the tour early and headed towards the Arc de Triomphe (our guide was still talking, and probably went well over 4 hours).

The rest of the day was very busy, running from museum to monument trying to get use of our two day pass. That night we made dinner at Whitney's hotel - french toast! Yum!! Everything was dirt cheap, except for the syrup that cost us €6 >_< But it was totally worth it :) That night, Whitney stayed in to rest from our busy day and we ran to the Museé D'Orsay to catch one more museum and showed up 10 seconds too late :( We were so close, the night guard was just leaving the building to stand in front of the door when we arrived. Instead, we headed off to the Eiffel Tower where we stood in line for an hour and a half and right before we got our tickets, they stopped selling tickets to the very top of the tower - luck was just not on our side that night. But it was no biggy, we were tired and the second floor was view enough for us. We ended up getting in bed by 1:30 after that long day, making it difficult to get up the next morning.

Our second full day in Paris was a little more sluggish, and all three of us probably only made it through thanks to the 3 liters of freeway cola we all chugged together, as well as the multiple, sugary pastries we had throughout the day - gotta love the sugar high :) We climbed to the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral first thing to enjoy the view of Paris in the morning. Then it was off to another tour of museums to finish out the use of our museum pass. We saw Da Vinci, Van Gogh, Renoir, Monet - tons of great paintings. We finished out our day going to the Luxemburg gardens and the Louvre. We were all kind of dead as we went back to Whitney's to make spaghetti dinner. That night we went to a place Whitney was told about that was supposed to have amazing macaroons, called Lauduree. It was on the Champs Elysees, so we grabbed our macaroons and headed back to the Arc to eat macaroons and look at Paris at night. That night, we got back to the hostel at about 10pm and as Karin went to grab some things from her bag, she realized that her entire backpack was completely soaked! We could not figure out how this could happen until Kendra found a note from one of our roommates saying that she had flooded the bathroom and bedroom whlie taking her shower and because we had the bottom bunks and our things were on the floor, some of it was soaked. We started airing things out and found that both of our books were balloons :( No worries, we can still read them. But the whole excursion set us back a few hours in sleep seeing as we had to stay up later hanging things up only to get up extra early in order to pack (we usually do it the night before leaving).

The last day was spent in Versaille on a bike tour (Whitney's fantastic idea!). We met at Whitney's hotel so that we could safely store our packs before our tour. As we exited the elevator, we realized there was an interesting smell in the air. Karin thought it was burnt rubber, while Kendra thought it was burnt hair. We got to Whitney's room and were greeted by a frantic Whitney and a barely awake Evan. Turns out, Whitney had tried to make coffee that morning and didn't realize the bottom of the tea kettle was plastic. It had caught on fire and she had fanned the smell and smoke out the door and windows! We hope she doesn't mind us telling this story, and hope that she didn't end up paying for it, but it was a bit of a highlight for our Versaille trip :) The rest of the day was spent riding bikes through the beautiful gardens of Versaille and learning about the history of the chateau. We had a picnic in the front of the chateau and ate chicken and camembert on a baguette and Whitney and Kendra enjoyed a nice bottle of French chardonnay. Afterward, we left Whitney in Paris and rode a night train to Venice.

Photos from several albums have now been updated for your viewing pleasure :)