Baguettes and Germans

8/8/10 10:29 PM Paris, the city of loooove, the Louvre, the Eiffel tower and… great italian restaurants? Apparently so. There were little pizza places all over the place. Oddly enough, of all the places we stayed it was Paris that I came became the most comfortable in. No, I can't speak of lick of French, but staying in the same place for 2 days in a row and covering the same ground was nice. It also helped that Paris had lots of wide boulevards and parks and generally had a more "American" feel than Florence did. And by "American" I mean London, which only felt American because they spoke english there. But still, by the second day of spending time by the Louvre I really felt at home almost. You know, if home was filled with guys wearing sweaters tied around their shoulders, but that culture for you! Speaking of culture, our Luigi told us that the French probably wouldn't be too kind to us english speakers, probably wouldn't speak english. That matched what I had heard previously so I prepared for the worst. Surprising, everyone was very nice, very helpful, and many spoke english as well. Maybe that's something that's changed in recent times, or maybe it was just the locations we spent time in. At the very least no one went Wei wei wah and through a baguette at us.

Speaking of baguettes, I saw people walking around with them EVERYWHERE. Very few barrettes though.

Speaking of everywhere, we went all over Paris. We saw everything from Notre Dame, to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, and much much more. We also traveled most of it by foot. While is certainly is the best way to really see everything, my feet are much the worse for the wear. Traveling by foot meant we also passed a lot of stet vendors. I think we now have enough mini Eiffel Towers to build one rather larger model. Expect to receive one with your Christmas card this year. I personally really enjoyed Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Both of them were very beautiful and awe-inspiring to look at. As for disappointments, the Mono Lisa was a big one. I knew that I wouldn't be able to get too close to it, but 15 feet is pretty far away for a painting as small as that. For those of you that want an idea of what I saw, go to google and search Mono Lisa in the images. The thumbnails that show up show about as much detail as I saw. The Louvre was very interesting overall though, and well worth the trip.

Currently I'm on a train traveling through the French (German?) countryside on my way to Berlin. For some reason we expected to book our luggage when we got there and we all packed cary on bags. However, you don't book luggage on a train ride. So, we got to our compartment and realized that we had a comically large amount of luggage for such a small place. I still not sure where all of it went, but we're fitting in here somehow. I'm off to bed now. Tomorrow I get to see Tim again!

8/10/10 1:28 AM Got to see Tim today! And spent the day in Berlin! More details to come.