PARIS EPISODE DEUX

ok considering we are two countries ahead of the blog we thought we better update before we start getting too far behind haha!

last blog we finished with monday night (haha clearly you can see we are getting behind here), well we woke up tuesday morning and packed our stuff as we had to change hotels (stupid us only booked two nights originally and wanted to stay another night but didnt realise that basically everything in paris is booked out midweek...weird i know!).

we caught the metro to the other side of the city to the worst hostel (although we were totally unaware of this at the time) and dropped our stuff off. we then headed back over the other side of the city to visit jim morisson's grave and pay tribute to the legend!! we kind of didnt think that the cemetery would be gigantic and that finding one little grave would be hard...but it was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. finally we noticed a crowd of people and made a beeline to see if we had found jim's elusive resting place....once we had paid our respects we headed back towards the notre dame to join a free walking tour of the city.

Chloe insisted that we make note on the blog that we had the BEST rolls on our way to the walking tour.

The walking tour itself was awesome, we learnt so much about the city while getting to take in the big sites that Paris has to offer. Our tour guide was this American guy who had lived in Paris for the past few years, and he pretty much knew everything about the city!! Although it got kind of annoying that he continually kept promoting all the other tours and amazing pub crawl that his tour company offers (these tours weren't free though haha). We heard little stories from how King Louie used to play with cannons in the royal gardens when he was five and ruling the city haha, and how Hitler had tried to devise an elaborate plan so that he did not have to "bow down" to Napoleon Bonaparte when he visited his gravesite but as fate would have it his hat fell off and he ended up "bowing" to Napoleon haha ohhhhhhh and how Hitler wanted to blow up Paris but because of a Nazi General he was fooled into thinking the city had been destroyed.

As you can see it was a real history lesson!!! The tour went for about 4 hours so we were pretty exhausted but we were determined to climb the Eiffel Tower that afternoon/evening. The weather had been pretty miserable and overcast (hahah pretty much what everyone at home is enjoying right now I'm guessing!!!), but it began closing in and rain seemed a real possiblity :-(

Regardless we left our tour group at the Champs Elysees and briskly strolled to the Eiffel Tower. Firstly, seeing the tower in real life and standing underneath/on it was the most surreal feeling ever!! Ok so when we got to the tower it began raining (lucky for us!!) but we still brought our tickets anyway and began the climb up. For someone scared of heights this was not the most fun for Adam. By the time we reached the top it was pretty much pouring, even still the view was amazing!! We could see everything!!!(While getting soaked haha!!)

Lucky for us we got to take a lift down to the bottom (those stairs would not have been the most fun going down in the rain). And then we spent a few minutes just taking in the sites before heading to the Arc de Triumph. The rain had stopped by then so the walk there wasnt too bad, except we were exhausted and our legs were numb considering we had been walking for the entire day. The roundabout surrounding the Arc de Triumph would be the scariest thing to drive through ever!! There were like 8 lanes, but no road markings so cars were everywhere. There was an ambulance crew positioned at the roundabout just in case. We were told by our tour guide from the walking tour that there is an accident on that roundabout almost every half an hour and that most insurance companies in France will not cover you for driving through the roundabout hahhaa!!!

After that we decided it was pretty much time to call it a day so we headed back to the hostel. We picked up some groceries on the way home and made ourselves the best beef curry ever...thanks Uncle Ben's! With a little bit of energy left we dragged ourselves from the the hostel back to the Eiffel Tower to see the nightly light show on the tower. We managed to get there just in time, it was soooo cool! The tower is awesome during the day but at night it is completely different, the lights show it in well a different light haha! We stayed in the gardens sitting near the tower for a while, all rugged up in our little jackets (just like I can imagine you all are back at home now haha!!), then we decided to call it a night and headed back to the hostel.

We had not realised earlier but the wing of the hostel we were allocated to was full of a group of school students...ARGH!!! They stated up all night and made noise, but to what really capped it off was the teacher who stayed in a bunk in our room was the LOUDEST snorer ever...worst! Chloe somehow managed to sleep through the chainsaw but Adam got rudely woken up by him, pretty spewing! After many attempts at trying to discreetly wake him up so he would cease snoring and many attempts to just get to sleep Adam resorted to listening to his iPod to drown out the noise! In the morning on Wednesday we woke to the delightful sound of loud French teenagers shouting outside our room. The showers we had that morning were without doubt the worst showers we have on the trip, it is too hard to explain why they sucked so badly so maybe just ask us to tell you about it when we get home haha!

We had plans on Wednesday but it was a very sad day so we simply decided to take it easy and made our way to Belgium. The adventure to catch our train to Belgium was well an adventure hahaha, we kind of left it a bit late and underestimated how long it would take to catch two metro trains to get from our hostel to the train station where our train was to depart from. So when we finally got to the train station Point Nord we had to run with our packs on and carrying plastic bags full of snacks for the train from one side of the station to the other, we would have looked like the biggest losers ever!!!!! Somehow Adam managed to buy his Paris magnet and Chloe managed to get a plastic spoon so we could eat our snacks and we both got onto the train, definite miracle! It really sucked though that it had gotten hot by that time in the afternoon and we were still wearning our coats from our morning stroll in Paris so needless to say were were the sweatiest people on the train hahah.

Ok boys and girls that concludes another enthralling episode of Adam and Chloe's blog, keep an eye out for the Belgium edition featuring Bruges and Brussels.

Lots of love,

Addy and Chloey