Paris

Well, we didn't miss our train to Paris from London, which I'm sure at one point Turner and I both thought we might though we didn't speak a word of it to one another. It left at 2 pm, and we were gonna try to catch a few sights on the way out before getting to the station. We wanted to tour Westminster Abbey, but when we got there it was rainy, busy with tourists, and miserable and we were short on time so we decided to head to north London following a tip that we gleaned from the hostel.

The place in north London was Primrose Hill, way way way off the beaten path for tourists and probably the best vantage point for the city in all of London. I can't imagine a better one. It was awesome. By the time we got there, however, we both knew we only had a maximum of 3 or 4 minutes to actually look around, because our train departure time was quickly approaching. Long story short--we made it on time.

On the train we sat by an older British couple from Manchester. They were extremely well traveled and knew quite a bit about Europe and the U.S. (his U.S. travels far exceeded mine and turner's even). I never caught his name (turner might have), but I believe he was a member of Parliament. We had some great conversation which made the 2 hour ride go by pretty fast. I didn't really want to get off (turner especially...he was the main one driving the conversation because I was wiped out...so he did most of the talking) when we arrived in paris because i was learning so much from this guy.

Once in Paris, the language barrier hit us pretty hard. We suck at French. Been studying the phrasebook pretty hard so we can at least order at restaurants.

We found the hostel easy enough...it's called St. Christopher's and it's by far the nicest one yet. Pretty expensive (25 euro a night). After getting to the hostel, we went to find a place to eat. Ordering was a debacle. We should have had 'stupid americans' across our foreheads. We'll definitely be prepared next time we do something like that again. Luckily, the guy behind the counter spoke serviceable english...but I could tell him being forced to speak it was like running bamboo shoots under his own fingernails.

After that, I was so tired I went back to the hostel and fell asleep at 8.30. Woke up at 3.30 am and couldn't go back to sleep. Went to the lobby though and was able to catch the end of the Brewers and Phillies game live. I was pretty excited about that. Apparently France has live ESPN feeds.

Gonna go try to get lost in Paris now...

au revoir
kirby