Paris

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Hey Everyone!! First off, Im at an internet cafe in Paris and NONE of the keys on the keyboard are in the same place as what they are on our keyboards back home (and some arent here at all!!) so this is going to be short since its taking forever to find the right keys (and overlook any random letters or other symbols that might be on here when I post this).

I was planning to upload the pictures from Ireland/London/Paris but there isnt a place to plug in my memory card so ill try to do it later if i can a different place with internet. Just wait till you hear about our day yeterday.. briefly heres how it went: got off train; went to our hostel; had to leave our bags in a dungeon; stepped in dog poop; had chocolate pudding, pasta, and chips for supper cuz its all we recognized; seen the eiffel tower-which was awesome!!!!! weve had better days haha ill try to update again later with more details of the day (which you guys are going to get a really good laugh over) and hopefully some pictures

--amber and samantha







****UPDATE JUNE 7, 2009 ****



We're in Amsterdam right now and actually managed to find FREE internet at the library!!! So we'll update everyone on what all happened in Paris. First off, internet costs around $5 an hour so that was getting really expensive so thats why we haven't been able to update with very much. Paris was ok, it would have been MUCH better had we stayed somewhere else. Heres our thoughs on a few things:

The Language:
The first day in Paris we basically walked around totally confused since neither of us knew French. Most the signs were in French so we managed to learn the basic words. We've both agreed that French is one language we never have any desire to learn because it makes no since!! Luckily, we had no problems at all finding our hostel and taking the trains & subways, we have became quite good at doing this. In fact, we often get people coming up to us asking us for help as to where to go, since we apparently look like we know what were doing.

Safety:
When we first arrived in Paris at the main train station we were surprised to find the military police walking around the station with machine guns!! These guys were at all the main train stations and at all the main tourist sites. You would always see them walking around in groups of 3's looking around making sure everything was ok. At first it was a little shocking when we seen this, but it was also nice knowing they were around just in case. Actually, we never once felt unsafe in Paris, the police were EVERYWHERE. So our overall experience on that was good.
-Something funny that happened concerning the police-- We were sitting in the grass in front of the Eiffel Tower one day and we heard police sirens. Everyone ran when they seen the van full of them come pulling up and we had no clue what they were doing. Next thing we know they pull up right in front of us, hopped out of the van, look at us and scream "Perfecto!!!! Your Beautiful!!! Beautiful!!!!!" then they got back in the van and drove off. We still have no clue why they did this but it was pretty funny. Not everyday something like that happens.

Food & Smelly People:
We have an electronic translator thing but Dumb and Dumber could never remember to take it out with us when we'd leave our hostel for the day. So when we got hungry and tried to read the menus posted up outside the restaurants we had no clue what the food was. None of it looked really good from what we seen and it mostly smelled bad. Actually, the entire city smelled really bad. This surprised us. Becky, you were wondering if they wear deodorant. Most seemed like they did, but unfortunatly for us, quite a few seemed like they didn't. When we went to the grocery stores, we noticed there was hardly any deod. there to choose from. And when we were at our hostel, they would take a shower in like 3 minutes. Who can take a 3 minute shower and actually get clean!!!??? Now we know why French people smell so bad.

Highlight of our trip: The Catacombs!!!
For anyone who doesnt know what this is, basically its this underground maze of tunnels that are hundreds of feet below the streets. This is where they dumped thousands of dead bodies. There's one place in Paris thats kind of on the outter parts of the city that allow people to go down in them. We managed to find it and it was the most interesting thing we've probably done yet. We took the subway to one of the last stops, got off, and as soon as we came up the steps we seen the building where you went through to get to them. We were surprised to meet some other American's there (from Arizona) who had also managed to find it. We began by going down a hundred or so spiral steps (we were sooo dizzy when we got to the bottom) and we continued to keep going down hill on a slope for around 20 more minutes. They told us we were further down than any of the subway or sewer lines at that point. It was really creepy because we both basically had the place to ourselves (and the thousands of dead bodies). The way we had to go was clearly marked so there was no way to get lost. There were bars over certain areas blocking people from going the wrong way. There was also water dripping from the ceiling in certain spots (not good for our hair!! haha). We weren't allowed to use a camera with flash so the pictures I took could have been better, but for the most part you can get a good idea of what it was like.


Our Hostel: (this will be long, we need to vent to someone)
Worst place EVER!!!! I think our entire stay in Paris would have been better if not for this place. Where to begin???? Well first off, they have a "lock out" from 11-4 during the day so they can "clean". When we arrived it was during this time so they had us to take our backpacks "downstairs". What they didn't tell us, was it was really a dungeon!!! No joke, this place looked just like some dungeon like place that you'd see on a movie. It took for ever to get down the random steps and hallways that took us to this place. The Catacombs were cleaner than this place was and it smelled WAY better if this tells you anything. So we left our stuff there and went out for the day. When we got back we went to our room. Surprisingly, it was actually pretty clean. Only problem was, there were NO ELETRICAL OUTLETS!!! We went the entire week in Paris without a hairdryer or straightner (and you know how we are!!! this was really difficult) and we had no way to charge our cameras and phone. What kind of idiots make a room with no eletrical outlets!! Oh wait, I forgot, there were some in the bathroom (which had 3 showers which were to be shared among 20 rooms). These outlets were "conveniently" located at the ceiling where we couldn't even reach them. The showers didnt drain right so the only way to use the eletrical outlets would have been to stand in puddles of water. Yeah, smart idea. Also, there was a garden hose in there??? We never figured that one out. One night when taking a shower, the lights suddenly went out. Apparently the people running the hostel decided it was too late to take showers that night so instead of telling us this, they just flipped the breaker and left us in the dark to finish our showers. We took our time when they did this just for spite =] Also, one day it was raining and we didn't know this until we went outside. We ran back up to our room to grab our umbrella and the guy that ran the hostel yelled at us (in French) when we walked in our room since it was a couple minutes after the lockout and he stood at our doorway until we left the room with the umbrella. We didn't see any reason for him to do this since it was clear what we were doing. These were the RUDEST people ever. We could keep going with the complaints we have about this place.

Other things we done:
-We went to the Eiffel Tower several times. It never seemed to get old. We also took a TON of pictues of it (which you have probably already noticed). We were very excited.
-We also went to the Louvre Museum. Most people would spend half the day there looking at stuff, but not us. I'm not certain what we were thinking going to a museum since neither of us have any interest in that stuff. We basically went in, found the Mona Lisa painting, took a picture, and got out of there. Oh, and we decided to eat our breakfast when we got there. Leave it to me (Amber) to make a mess (I'm just like a kid). I had my Welch's Grape Juice and I *thought* the lid was on it, so I started to shake it up. Ooops.. apparently it wasn't so next thing we know, there's grape juice all over the place!!! Oh and we got the aftermath of all this on film so everyone can get a good laugh when they see it when we get back. Leave it to me to spill my grape juice all over one of the most important museums in the world.
And this wasn't the first time I did this (you'd think I'd learn). While we were waiting on the train to Paris in London, I went to open my Dr Pepper (which is VERY hard to find in Europe) and it shot up in the air when I opened it (guess thats what happens when you run all over London with a drink and try to open it haha). Sam said she feels like she has a child that she has to take care of and that she was disappointed that I keep "ruining all my good clothes" and "causing scenes everywhere we go".

-- we'll leave you with this. the library were at is closing (its almost 10 pm here).. we'll update again tomorrow.


---Am & Sam





*****UPDATE JUNE 8, 2009****

-Back in the library, its Monday morning around 10:30 here.. here's a few other things that we done while in Paris

-On the first day, we went straight to the Eiffel Tower after we checked in at the hostel. After this we decided to just 'wander'around. This is basically what we've been doing everywhere we go and it seems to be working out pretty good for us. For those of you who don't know, we printed out our own maps and all the information that we'd need for the trip ourselves, so it was basically up to us to make sure we had everything we needed. Somehow we managed to get 3 or 4 copies of the subway maps but no acutal maps of the city with the street names. So day one during our wandering, we got a little confused as to where we were. Well, we knew we were at area around the Louvre Museum, but we had no clue how to get to the closest subway from there. We were tired, hot, and really hungry at this point and I was wishing so bad that I had a map. (picture this) A gust of wind comes, there is sand blowing everywhere, you would think you were in the desert if you didn't look up and see the Louvre, and I see something blowing on the ground in the distance..... I say "Samantha!! IS THAT A MAP!!??" I was so excited, so in what felt like slow motion, I go after the 'map' on the ground. She stops me midway ands says... "No buddy, thats a JUICE BOX"... we both got a good laugh out of this. Leave it to us- luckily we managed to find our way back shortly after this.

-Another day we decided to go see Notre Dame Cathedral, which is one of the oldest and most visited sites in Paris. It was really pretty, especially all the stained glass windows. We'll upload some pictures of it when we get to a computer that will let us. Well.. you know we couldn't just go in here and be normal tourists and see the site. As we were leaving, everyone was dipping their hand in this dish of water by the door. Sam was in front of me and she did it so I just went along with it. I didn't really think about what it was so I just used the water I had on my hands to fix my hair (it was still a little messed up from our earlier visit to the Catacombs). Sam turns around and says "You idiot!!! Thats HOLY WATER!!! Quit putting it in your hair!!" Ooops.. another one of my many brilliant moments. She was so disappointed, she feels like she can't take me anywhere.

-While in Paris, we had several women come up to us who would say "Do you speak English?". When we'd say yes they'd pull out a paper and hold it up and it said they were from Bosnia and had no money, hungry family, etc. It was getting old because each one of them had the EXACT same paper they would show us. We didn't really believe them because of this and therefore we didn't have much sympathy. So on the last day as we were leaving Paris, we were at the train station trying to figure out what platform we needed to be on for our train to leave. One of these women approached us again with the same paper. When she said "Do you speak English?" I responded (before she could hardly finish the word 'english') with what Sam described as the clearest, most American sounding "NO" she had ever heard. Obviously if I didn't understand her I wouldn't have answered so quickly. Sam then has to say "yes" and at this point we were both laughing so hard because of what I'd done. You should have seen the look on the womans face. She was so confused about what we had both said and we could do nothing but walk away laughing...

-We think this is all the main things from the Paris part of our trip. If we think of any more we'll add them below this. Hope you got some good laughs.

-Am & Sam

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Comments

[Renee]

What a way to keep us hanging!!!!
Hurry we can't stand the wait . We want to laugh. You have us all waiting. Love you both, be safe. Mom

[Becky]

Catacombs!
Oh my! Did you go all the way in the catacombs? We want more photos. Love Becky