Well our travels have almost come to an end. We just checked out of our Paris hotel and we are sitting in the lobby to kill time. Our flight for Athens leaves at 10:00 tonight, arriving around 2:00 a.m. It's gonna be a long night of traveling, since we can't check into our apartment until 9 or so. I'm not looking forward to it, but I am looking forward to settling down in Greece for a little bit. Four days in London and Paris was a good length of time to see everything, but not great for getting used to the daily routine and culture. Anyways, here's a recap of what happened during our last days in Paris:
Tuesday
-Tom Zimmer left early in the morning to head to Scotland, Tom and Craig to Sicily. It was odd to not have them around all day.
-Josh and I lucked out with our hotel rooms. We were supposed to check out of our 3 person room and trade down to a 2 person, but the hotel manager let us stay in our previous room with no extra cost.
-We headed to the train station to go to Versailles. Versailles is in the suburbs of Paris, so it was about an hour train ride.
-Got to Versailles around one and got tickets to the Palace tour. The tour was very cool, but we both thought it probably wasn't worth the 15 euro. We also thought the ticket included the gardens, but we found out that it was extra.
-We paid for the gardens anyways and walked around for a few hours. One of the nicest kept landscaping projects I've ever seen. They were huge. If we were ever to go to Versailles again, we would buy tickets to the garden and not the palace. You still get a good view of the palace from the outside.
-Finally got home around 8:30 after a long and crowded train ride. Reminder to everyone: don't take Metro 4 around 8. It's crazy and it smells really bad.
-Went to bed pretty early and enjoyed my last night in Paris.
Wednesday
-Got up and checked out of the hotel. We are planning on heading to a park to just kill time since we have our luggage in tow.
Stray observations from Paris:
-I'd been told by others that Paris was not a great city because of how snotty the people are. From what I saw in six days, that was completely false. Everyone we interacted with was very friendly, especially the hotel staff.
-I was surprised at how much French I actually remembered from high school. I was able to order food and read signs with no difficulty.
-The leaves fall early here, it almost seems like it's October.
-Hardly any insects around anywhere. We were able to sleep with our window wide open every night and not have to worry about mosquitoes.
-We ate so much bread this week. There were bakeries on every corner selling two foot long baguettes for a euro. It was delicious cheap food.
-Again like London, the streets have no order here. We wouldn't survive without a map. At home I think of our city grid system as boring, but it really is useful. Nowhere here will you find 45th Street followed by 46th Street.
-We figured we walked about ten miles a day. Our quads and calfs are in great shape.
-Made it this far without doing laundry. I think I can survive about three more days.
I'll get settled in my Athens apartment tomorrow. Hopefully I'll have a good internet connection there to blog. If you want to Skype just let me know, I'm sure we can find a time to make it work.
Thanks for following the blog! More to come.
Au revoir, αντίο
Dan
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