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Once again we got up very early for our trains to Paris, we took a train from Interlaken to Bern then Bern to Paris. We thought that the train to Paris was going to seem long but we were in first class (first time in my whole life) and it was actually nice to just read and relax and not have to switch trains after an hour or so. Once we arrived in Paris we trekked through the Paris Metro with all our bags and finally got to our hostel. I'm not sure why but our bags seemed extra heavy on this part of the trip and it was very interesting to try to deal with a bunch of French people, on the Metro, with huge bags and not being completely sure of where we were going. Anyways, we finally got to our hostel, St. Christopher's, which was in the 19th er (the whole city is divided up into er's or districts). We had a private room on the 6th floor and it definitely felt more like staying in a hotel rather than a hostel. It actually felt really nice to be in one place for 3 nights and we took advantage of this and actually unpacked a little.
Once we dropped all our stuff off, we started our quest for food which you would think would be pretty easy considering we're in Paris. However, little did we know that between 3pm-7pm pretty much every good restaurant or café didn't serve food. The receptionist in our hostel recommended this Thai restaurant and we decided just to attempt to walk there. We finally got there but only to be told that they weren't serving food at that time. We also learned that a good portion of the cafés, bakeries, restaurants, ect were closed since the end of August is a popular time to go on holiday. It's completely crazy to me that they just shut down their business for a few weeks why they go away but I guess most of the places are family-run and so they don't have any other options. So here we were, just arrived in Paris, very hungry and just walking around on a desperate search for food. After a lot of navigating and searching we ended up in what seemed like Paris' Chinatown (once again Asian food prevails)! We walked into the first restaurant we saw and within minutes we had delicious food in front of us. It was very good Chinese food and super cheap (only 12 euros for both of us including drinks)!
After our tummy's were full, we revaluated our situation and decided we would just walk around and check out the city by foot (we didn't really think about this when we decided to wear flip flops). We walked all down the Seine River and there was this big festival going on with activities for kids and dance lessons and other crazy stuff. It wasn't until we finally saw the Eiffel Tower that we felt like we were actually in Paris, since up until then we were just wandering around aimlessly and I actually felt rather overwhelmed at how huge Paris is! We walked down past the Louvre, Tullieres Jardins, this carnival, and we were headed toward the Arc de Triumphe but then decided to head over to the Eiffel Tower. By the time we got to the Eiffel Tower, we jumped into the line to take the lift all the way up to the top of the Tower. When we got closer to the ticket booth we realized that the top platform was closed for congestion and got really worried but the lady said that it would probably be open by the time we got up there. We were pretty doubtful that this would happen and actually as we were asking the person at the booth about what we should do, they opened up the top and we were the first people to buy tickets to the top :) Finally something was working for us! The Eiffel Tower was probably one of the coolest things I've done, especially because by the time we got up there it was dark and we were able to see the entire city all lit up! We took a lot of pictures but I'm sure they don't compare to the real thing. We were also up there when the whole tower lights up at 10 and 11pm which was really pretty. We had to wait again to get to the very top but it was definitely worth it and along the inside at the top they had the flags, locations and distances to different cities throughout the world in their respective direction.
By the time we got back down the Tower it was past 11pm and so we decided to head back to our hostel. Our walking adventures basically took us completely across the city from off our map (where our hostel was) to the Eiffel Tower and all throughout pretty much every place in between. We were probably walking for over 4 hours in flip flops after traveling all morning and so basically we were very exhausted. From the Eiffel Tower to our hostel it took probably around an hour which felt like forever to us. We pretty much crashed once we reached our room for a much needed good night's sleep.
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