Ah Paris

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i got up today and traveled to Paris. the train ride wasn't as bad as the last ones although it did take about 3 and a half hours to get there. I ended up getting inparis at about one o'clock in the afternoon and immediately started to look for a place to stay. I hadn't booked a place before hand so I wasn't reallz sure what I was going to do. I ended up just hiking around for about a half hour before I just couldn't stand lugging around my 50lb pack. At that point I just decided that I would just splurge and get a decent hotel for the night. Aparently the area where I got off the train the hotels were running about 170.00 euro a night (about 210 dollars) so I had to walk around for about another 20 minutes before I found a place that was going for 120 euro. It ended up being the Messena Hotel on Trochet st. It was a really nice hotel, plus they had free internet in the lobby which was great. After dumping my gear I found a map and realized that I wasn't very far from the Mall and all of the sites so I decided to walk down instead of figuring out the Metro system. Big Mistake... I was utterly defeated by Paris. That city is the largest city I have ever seen. I did see the Eiffel Tower, Arc de Triumphe, Notre Dame, etc and it was really cool. It took me 15 minutes just walk around the Louvre to get to the entrance when I found out it was Monday and that it was closed. Obviously that kind of pissed me off. I bet by that point I had walked almost 8 to 10 miles. The rest of the sites were cool though. Especially, Notre Dame. The inside was spectacular. I ended just deciding after that that I would just head back to my hotel and start planning the next day. By that time I'd have to say though that I was in a cranky mood and hated Paris, France, and all French people. It was cool to see the sites but I did not fall in love with the city. Too fast, too big, too many bums (the most i have ever seen in one city) It truly is the city love though. I have never seen so many people making out. I'm convinced that soccer is the national pastime and that tonscil hockey is the national sport. Anyways, I ended up just craving something american and ended up eating mcdonald's and Starbucks, which did make me feel a little bit better.

I ended up booking a hostel in Nice France for the next day and headed back to the train station to buy my reservation on the train and get a eurail pass (pass for travel in 17 european countries without you having to pay, except for the pass of course) That train ended up taking about 6 hours to get there in which I was stuck once again with a bunch of school kids that were oogling a group of american 12 yr old girls that were in the front of my car. Needless to say it got very annoying after a while. the countryside of france is amazing though. to get to Nice the train had to go thru a pass that cut through the Pyrenees mountains and that was a great view. when I finally got to Nice it was about 4pm and I was worried, b\c it looked like the dirtiest place that I have ever been to. I had about a 10 minute hike to my hostel (Hotel Paradis) and things got nicer and nicer. the hostel ended up being right between Louis Viton and Gerorgio Armani, with a Chanel store right across the street. It was real ritzy. It ended up being a really nice hostel and I shared a room with two girls that had just flown in from Ireland. I guess were going to be living there for about 4 months and had been job and apartment shopping all day with no luck. This is the point in my trip though where I think I started to have the most fun. After meeting them I just kept meeting people everywhere and traveling with them, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll have to write more about Nice and everywhere else I went because I'm almost out of time.

also please excuse the typos... in france, italy, and switzerland, they all have english keyboards, but the keys are moved around. It's really weird. They just need more keys than we do I guess.

later.

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