Au Revoir Paris! Guten Morgen Vienna!

We’re typing this blog while on a night train leaving Paris en route to Vienna. But Woodmere Gang, (you ask) your schedule from way back when said you would be going to Berlin after Paris, why are you going to Vienna now? Well, read on, folks and find out!

Friday morning we woke up and had to find another place for the night. We had originally planned to stay in Paris through Thursday night and leave Friday, but we have just had the best time with Dan and Sara that we decided to stay through Saturday. Our hostel was already booked up for Friday night so we had to find somewhere else to stay. Dan booked us a room at the Hotel Belfort (sounds swanky, we know, but…. not so much). We checked out of our hostel, and set off to find a UPS where we could mail some Belgian chocolate gifts and vino home. We were able to fit it all in one very small box but it would have cost 99.00 Euros (about $135.00) to mail them. Soooo to all of our loved ones to whom we had promised to bring some delicious gifts? Sorry bout cha chocolate - it ain’t gonna make it. If it makes y’all feel better, though, it was delish.

However, not to worry casa de Koplin! Dan has the kosher for Passover vino and it is heading home to Orlando with him and will be to you guys in time for Seder.

We headed back to the hostel to drop off our would-be shipped items, started muchin’ on some delicious Belgian chocolate (I guess we just have to rub it in now. The first apology goes out to Jeremy! Your chocolate went first and man, was it good).

We then headed off to Versailles. The palace at Versailles was first built by King Louis XIV aka the Sun King. He thought the Parisians didn’t really like him so he went ahead and got out of town and built his own palace thus the Palace at Versailles.

It’s pretty Roccoco-ed out: lavish rooms with fabric covered walls, gold trim, heavy furniture and frescos on the ceilings (aka, bliggity bling). We went and toured the inside and saw the Hall of Mirrors as well as the King’s sleeping quarters, Marie Antoinette’s sleeping quarters (mmm.. cake!), as well as Dauphine’s sleeping quarters.

The interior of the palace was interesting but the best part of Versailles is the gardens.

We walked around for a bit and saw some lakes and smaller gardens then found the mothership of the gardens, a long lake, lined with trees and gardens on either side. It was pretty spectacular.

We walked around one area for a bit and saw a couple of different fountains. Since it’s still winter, everything is really dry and the statues are covered up (some even look like they’re wearing mittens) to protect them from the adverse weather. We then passed several people on golf carts. Turns out, you can rent a golf cart for 30 Euros and see the gardens on wheels! We think this is aimed toward American tourists. We decided that was a bit out of our price range, but then we stumbled upon bicycles! What better way to see Versailles then by bike? (Maybe golf cart, whatev) So we rented some bikes and got pedaling.

There is no possible way that we could have seen all of the gardens in the short amount of time that we had. To anyone out there planning to visit Versailles someday, skip the palace and just check out the gardens.

They’re free, way cooler and much more fun! It’s not like you can touch anything inside. Look in a book!

After our biking adventure, we headed back to Paris. Dan and Katie were pretty tuckered out:

We met back up with Sara and had some dinner then went to the Louvre. On Friday nights, the Louvre is free for anyone under 26 so we definitely had to hit that up. Free is our favorite price! We split up so everyone could see whatever they wanted. These are some of the pics Rachael took:

After the Louvre, we all headed back to the hostel where we all first met to dine on the rest of the Belgian gift chocolates. However, we didn’t get too far. We were all pretty exhausted and the daunting realization that we still had to tote all of our stuff to another hotel before going to sleep (it was already 10 pm) hit us pretty quick once we got back to the hostel. So we didn’t dine on the chocolates just yet. We picked up our backpacks that we had left in the luggage room that morning, and headed off to Hotel Belfort. We got to the hotel and played on the interwebs for a bit before hittin’ the hay.

Katie and Rachael still weren’t really sure where they were going next after Paris. As of 48 hours ago, the plan was to go to Berlin, maybe see a big wall and eat some more schnitzel, but thanks to the glorious Facebook, we learned on Rachael’s newsfeed that Jonathan Parks, will be in Vienna. Why have two awesome reunions in Europe, when you can have three?! (Dan and Sidonie were the first two, for those of you not keeping track.) So the Woodmere Gang is now en route to Vienna to see Jonathan Parks! Thanks, theatre, for making the world a smaller place!

We had planned to wake up Saturday morning around 9:00 but we really didn’t start moving until 10 am. We headed off to Gare de L’Est and bought tickets for a night train to Vienna. The coolest part? It’s only 20 Euros for a bed! Yeah that’s right, we have a bed and transportation for the next 11 hours and don‘t have to pay for a hostel. Score! Also, since it departs after 7:00 pm and arrives the next day, the two travel days count as one on our EuroRail pass. Cool, huh?

After getting our tickets, we met up with Sara in the Latin Quarter and ventured off in search of crepes. We ate at a restaurant named Creperie Saint-Germain and it was delicious!

We then headed off to the Eiffel Tower to get some daytime pics.

Then we decided that we’d seen everything Paris had to offer so we walked around for awhile. We stumbled upon a patisserie that had a very inviting window display, so we spent some money in there before continuing our walk. Sara had the brilliant idea to pull out her handy dandy map and find us a park to eat our sweets in, but when she did, we realized that the Rodin Museum was only a couple of blocks from where we were. Idea! Let’s go look at some sweet sculptures to kill time! The ticket price for the museum was 5 Euros, but it was only 1 Euro to see the gardens so we paid that and went out to the gardens.

There wasn’t really a whole lot to see so after about five minutes, the four of us posted up on a bench by a little pond with a statue in the middle and three peculiar ducks. We ended up sitting there long enough to get to know the ducks’ personalities really well. We noticed that one kept getting out of the water. Did he not like the water? Maybe he’s a shy duck or maybe they were playing a rousing game of Marco Polo. We think this was the smart duck since that water did look pretty darn cold. We then realized that the other two ducks weren’t letting the other one into the water. When someone came to feed the ducks some bread crumbs, the two ducks in the water would chase off the loner duck. When the loner duck tried to get into the water, the other two chased him away. We began cheering for the loner duck and decided that if we could, we would definitely punch the mean ducks in their duck faces. Unless the loner duck had done something wrong, like murdered one of their duck friends, which maybe why the other two ducks were not playing nice with him, which if this were the case, he deserved to be chased off.

Yeah, that’s right, a good long paragraph was just dedicated to three ducks. Hope y’all are enjoying this blog as much as we are.

Well, after all that duck business, we figured we should probably get moving and make our way to our respective train stations via the hotel to get our bags. We got our bags from the hotel and learned that most restaurants weren’t open yet because the French like to eat late. We knew there would be food at the train stations so we went to Katie and Rachael’s first, where they put their bags in lockers, and then to Dan’s so that we could get food since he had to be there a little earlier than we did. We dined on salad and French fries (Katie) and spaghetti with meat sauce (Rachael and Sara) and beef stew business (Dan). It was pretty good. We headed back to the train station and said our goodbyes to the magnificent Dan Dansby and then Katie, Rachael and Sara went back to the other train station. We got our bags and then found our platform and bid adieu to the lovely Sara Siegel. (We’ll see you in Cinque Terre, Sara!)

When we boarded the night train, we met our roomies, a cute German couple about our age and some German dude a bit older than all of us. We found it a little difficult to sleep on the train, but mostly because we were worried someone would try and steal our junk while we were asleep. We were surprised, though, when we got the 20-minute warning of our arrival in Munich, so we must’ve slept okay. All in all, the night train was a neat experience, which we’ll be glad to repeat, we just need to not worry about our stuff. The best part was traveling and sleeping at the same time and not having to pay for a hostel.

When we got to Munich, we realized that we had arrived an hour later than we thought we were going to so we had to wait an hour before another train could take us to Vienna. Katie vaguely remembers being stopped at one station during the night for what felt like a long time and hearing frequent announcements before getting moving again. They were all in German, so we had no idea what was going on, but no biggie. We took the extra time to have breakfast and write some postcards before hopping our next train to Vienna!

We’re seeing a whole lotta snow on the ground outside the train, so we’re a little concerned about the temperature, but we’ve survived so far so we’re sure we’ll be okay.

We checked into our hostel in Vienna and had some lunch at a restaurant next door. We started to head toward the museum district when we got a call from Jonathan! We decided to meet at a popular gelato place called Zanoni & Zanoni near the Vienna Opera House. We got lost for a little bit there, but finally found him! We each had some delicious gelato then followed Jonathan and his Shorter gang to the Vienna Opera House. When in Vienna, do as the Viennians do and go see some opera!

Tonight they were performing 'The Flying Dutchman' by Wagner. We stood in line for the student tickets for awhile only to find that they only had two seats left and the rest were standing tickets. That means, you guessed it, we stood up the whole time. Fortunately, this is one of the shorter operas out there so it wasn't too bad. From what we could see, it looked and sounded really good.

After the show we went out to celebrate one of the Shorter gang's birthday. We made plans to meet up with them again tomorrow and pretty much piggy back onto their Vienna adventures.

After hanging out with the Shorter gang, we headed back to the hostel and here we are updating the blog. Good times. Hope yall enjoyed all the pics in this one! We'll eventually get all of the pics loaded up to another site so you can see them all.

Peace ninjas!

XOXO K&R