Today was our first day in Paris. The only available train was at 1:30 so before that we went back over the Imperial War Museum and looked around some more for about 2 hours. We had already checked out of our hostel so we had to walk with our backpacks. Luckily the museum could hold our bags for us so we didn’t have to carry them around while we were there. At around noon we headed back over to the Waterloo Station to catch the Eurostar to Paris.
When we arrived in Paris I felt pretty intimidated not knowing French and all. But we managed to find the ticket counter and bought our tickets to and from Normandy. We then proceeded to find an ATM and internet café. We asked the lady at the info booth and she pointed to the left for the internet café and to the right for an ATM. We found the ATM she was pointing towards but couldn’t find the internet café. We gave up on that after walking up and down the road a bit and went down to the metro station to try to figure out their system so we could get to our hotel. I’ve got to admit I feel a little silly talking in French because the only time I ever did it was when I was a kid playing.
So we found our street on the map and figured out what stop we would need to get closest to our hotel. When we got off the metro we walked up to the street level and stopped to look around until we figured out which direction we needed to walk. Quite exhausted we found our street and walked down it hoping that it was the only and that it didn’t continue somewhere else and we were in the totally wrong area. Luckily there it was, Hotel des Allies. We went and checked in and dropped off our stuff and went back to the metro station to buy tickets to Notre Dame. We got off the train and headed up the stairs, turned around and there it was. It was enormous and really pretty! We only saw the outside since you have to pay to go inside and then inside you have to walk up 450 stairs and you can imagine that 450 stairs didn’t sound very inviting.
We planned to do a city boat tour so we walked down the end of the pier to where they sold the tickets for it and got in line. There wasn’t a very long wait so we got right on. It was just starting to get dark and lights were all coming on around the city. The boat took us up past Notre Dame and down to the Eiffel Tower and back. The lights on the Eiffel Tower were on and for a while they were sparkling. It was amazing and far larger then I imagined. I think the plan is to go up to the top on Monday. The boat ride took about 1 hour and it was around 10pm by the time we pulled back to the dock. So we got off and headed back to the metro to go back to the hotel. When we got to the station it appeared that the ticket counters were closed. It seems we were about 30 minutes to late to buy tickets so we looked at the map and decided to try to walk it. After missing our street and taking the long way around it ended up being about 2-3 miles.
We were both completely exhausted by the time we made it back and we hadn’t found food yet. We ended up buying 3 bananas, a 7-up and a beer for dinner at the little store by our hotel. We laughed about what it must have looked like to the guy at the store when we bought 3 bananas and only 2 beverages since there were only 2 of us. We thought it would have been funny to buy and extra drink and give that and the extra banana to our invisible friend Raul and since he obviously doesn’t exist the banana and drink would have fallen on the floor. Ok I think we may have been a little delirious because that was a lot funnier last night. After we ate it was off to bed for us.
