The adventure begins... Paris

So it has been five days already since we have landed on the continent known to all as Europe. We flew out of Toronto on Tuesday night (7PM ET) and arrived in Paris Wednesday morning at 10AM (Paris time), where our journey, and thus our blog, begins.

The weather was rainy in the City of Lights, but the temperature was warm, so weren't going to complain. After all, we just enjoyed a first class trip overseas where we were fed copious amounts of food and alcohol. Speaking of which, let me tell you a little bit about our flight:

When you fly first class (or Club Class as it was with Air Transat), they treat you pretty darn well. We were welcomed on board with a glass of champagne, followed by a snack-sized mixture of nuts and cracker-ish type foods. Needless to say, they were good. We then had a pre-dinner Heineken, only to be followed by our gourmet dinner - side salad, brie and crackers, a dinner roll, the main pasta dish, a glass of wine, and a delightful cream dessert - made by President's Choice. Wine, coffee, and tea were the after meal beverages to choose from. A couple hours later, they brought us breakfast - a mixture of fruits from strawberry, melon, and pineapple, with a muffin and glass of orange juice. Did I mention that they also had dessert wine between dinner and breakfast? Guess I didn't - but they did. First time I had tried ice wine... interesting to say the least. They finished up the flight by giving us a hot towel (I thought that only happened in the movies, so I did what Adam Sandler did in The Wedding Singer and just wore it like a bib as a joke). It was delightful though.

Cheers!

So there was my aside about the flight to Paris. On to the actual day we spent in Paris:

Having not slept one wink on the plane, I was a little disheveled, but still able to understand and speak French, which meant I was able to get myself, April, and Ryan all day passes for the Paris transit system - only 18 euros each.... worth it though. We found the right train to get on to take us into the city and right to the train station where our train would be leaving from (9 hours later). Did you know that it is difficult to carry around two giant suitcases full of clothing? Well, it is, especially when all of the buildings in France are old and do not believe in elevators, and the majority of escalators were out of service. Ryan got to help out April a lot in lifting her luggage - thank you by the way!

We finally found the luggage storage section of the train station, and scoured around to find exact change to pay for two lockers (9,50 euros per locker - that's a lot of change). Anyway, after buying a couple of bottles of water, we were good to go. Suitcases and backpacks shoved in and stored away, we went off to explore Paris (i.e. waste time until our train left that night at 9:17). First things first, we needed to buy our tickets for the train. Using my superb French skills, I got all three of us youth discount cards for the French rail system, as well as the cheap tickets on the overnight train to Nice. Kudos me! We then had another 7 hours to kill, so we went out on the transit system - a little confusing might I add.

We found our way around after wandering the streets for an hour and visited the Eiffel Tower, literally visited it - said hi, walked underneath it and left. Our legs were pretty tired to say the least. A walk along the Seine led us to have more tired legs, so we hopped back on the subway to Notre Dame. Goodness gracious - it was free to go in! That's my kind of sight-seeing, easy on the wallet. Anyway, we manoeuvred our way through the crowds and saw the pretty basilica and all its glory. We looked for Quasimodo, but had no luck finding him. We decided we'd had enough gay Paris (pa-ree) for the day, and so we went back on the subway to the train station to hang out there for a few hours. You may think that we're crazy to have done that, but if you didn't have any sleep in 30 hours, you would have agreed and done the same thing.

Back at the station, we got our photos taken in a photo booth for our youth cards (4 euros for 4 photos - a little much) - but it needed to be done. Cold and tired, we hit up a restaurant in the train station and ate some delightful sandwiches with orangina and a fruity tart for dessert. It was good considering we hadn't eaten all day. Alright, so we're finished our food and we're warm finally that we're inside - what do we do now? We have a lot of time to waste still. Well, we got coffee from a different restaurant so we didn't fall asleep. You talk in French, you do your best, but then the waiter still talks to you in English - whatever, you tried.

The coffee was over - now it was time to pay and go to the bathroom. 50 cents later, we're peeing in a beautiful bathroom with attendants and fancy sinks, etc. That's what it is everywhere - you have to pay to pee. Understandable considering it's tourist central and their water resources may be just a tad more scarce than ours and all. But it can be such a hassle! :(

We then got our luggage out of the locker and waited around on some benches with our tickets for the next hour and a half trying desperately to keep our eyes open. Sooooooooo tired.

But as you may have guessed, the train came and on we got - luggage and all - FINALLY!!

Next post - Nice, the first few days.