A Todo el Mundo

Today was quite the action packed day. We woke up and headed to Parc Axterix, a theme park outside of Paris. There were a bunch of cool rides as well as fun Disneyland style characters and streets. Kristy was giddy with joy while Nathan was a little disturbed. We went on a couple of really amazing roller coasters, and then on a log ride called the Grande Splatch!!! Kristy was soaked… so much that the next riders were screaming in fear in French.

Then we got back into Paris and headed to the Louvre. Although it was insanely overrun with annoying tourists of every sort, it was pretty cool. Well, we saw the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo… which we felt were a little overrated (haha we are so cultured). Then we spent quite some time wandering to find the exhibit that housed art from Africa and Latin America. It was mostly better. Surprisingly less people were in that exhibit though. Who’d have thought?!

After that we went and finally got our beloved baguette. In the grocery store, there were some confused English ladies looking for Brandy. They were asking a confused French guy that definitely did not speak English. So we interjected and tried to help them. As they walked away, we heard them say how “a lot of the young Parisians speak English pretty well.” I guess we can pass as Parisians with amazing North American English.

After a nice nap, we ventured out to the Brasil Tropical Cabaret. The area was a little shifty. We felt quite uncomfortable… and even more so as we walked into the dark cabaret club with its glowing red lights. We sat waiting in the lobby for someone to seat us, and were questioning what we were thinking. But, it turned out to be not so bad once we got in. The show was pretty amazing with lots of Brasilian awesomeness. But then there were also the gross Parisian men. Who were insanely loud and obnoxious. But, regardless, we enjoyed the French spoken with a Portuguese accent and our complementary champagne. We even got to show up all the other people with our sweet latin dance skills. And then the Macarena came on… so we ran away.
THEN! We got back to the hotel room. And sitting on our bed was the most wonderful symbols of Paris. A FREAKIN’ RAT!!!! Or possibly a mouse. Either way, totally gross. Kristy pretty much freaked out and jumped around the room. It was a lovely ending to the day.

This morning we got up shortly after 4am and headed to our morning bus to Paris. We were so impressed and somewhat disturbed when the bus left 2 minutes early... its nothing like south america when the bus is guaranteed to leave late.

The bus ride through the French countryside was pleasant, but we slept through a lot of it. Arriving in Paris, we hopped onto the Metro and made our way to the hotel. By now, we are so good at travelling here that we could even help some of the French people.

We ate lunch at La Rose Bleu... and had a very French meal. Then we wandered to see the Sacre-Coeur. We walked up and down many of the streets. Soon enough, we realized that Paris has a TON of sex shops. More than we ever thought could possibly exist. After that we finally were able to check into our hotel. We headed to the room for a quick nap and ended up sleeping for about 4 hours before we realized that we should probably get out and see something. So we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We were thoroughly impressed.

It was so ornate and way bigger than we had imagined. We climbed the curling staircase to the top and had an amazing view of Paris as the sun set.

We watched as the lights on the Eiffel Tower came on in all their blinging glory. Soon, we walked to the Eiffel Tower.

However, it was really unimpressive. It wasn't really that pretty, and there were a million and a half tourists. So we pretty much left right away and took the Metro home. We stopped to get a baguette... but alas, they were sold out. We have come to realize that everything we thought we knew about Europe is exactly right. Seriously, every second person in Paris is carrying a baguette and if not, they are wearing a barette.

Anyways, we had to settle for croissantes. We also got some wine, pate, and tiramasu. Now we are sitting in our room watching French television and drinking wine out of our travel wine glasses. The cool air coming in from our balcony is really refreshing after the amazingly warm day we had.

C'est la vie!