Gay Par-ee!

We apologize for slacking on our blogging (Mary Alston). More people equals more fun! On our first day here, we woke up early and went on a free walking tour from 11am to 2:30ish. There's this company called NewEurope that provides free walking tours in lots of touristy cities because they feel that everyone should have the ability to really get to know a place regardless of your budget. The guides all work for tips, which makes the tours really fun and entertaining as well as informative. This is the same company that did our tour in Edinburgh, for those of you that can remember back that far. We barely can!

The tour was really great. Our tour guide's name was Colin and he was from England. He has lived in Paris for about a year and is leaving tomorrow to bike to Barcelona and live

there. He says he'll look for a job in about a month when he gets there. He was a really neat guy. The tour began at Place St. Michel, which is a little plaza with a statue of St. Michel killing the devil. Sweet. We walked from there to Notre Dame and then all the way down the Seine to the Louvre and then down the Champs-Elysees. In the middle of the tour, we had a short lunch break where we decided to eat something super-French. Or not. Man, McDonald's in this country knows what they're doing! MMMMmmm! After the tour was over, we then met up with Sara at L'Arc du Triomphe and took some perty pictures.

After that, we decided to head to Montmartre because it's a really neat area of town. We were so enamored with Colin, that we decided to go on his Montmartre tour at 6pm.We were pretty

frozen after our first tour, so we basically sat in a cafe for about an hour and a half and thawed out until it was time to get frozen again. The Montmartre tour was really neat because we got to see some really cool things while meandering our way through steep cobblestone streets to Sacre Coeur at the very top of Montmartre. Some of the highlights from the tour include: the Moulin Rouge, the cafe from Amelie as well as the place she did her grocery shopping in the movie, an apartment shared by Vincent Van Gogh and his brother, Theo, Picasso's studio and the Lapin Agile, where Picasso first

began to sell paintings. It was mostly dark by the time we got to the top, but the sky was still a brilliant shade of blue which contrasted brilliantly with the color of the Sacre Coeur. It is one of the highest spots in Paris, so we got an amazing view of the skyline. One thing that was conspicuously missing was the Eiffel Tower! That crazy tower was hiding behind a tree! Silly tower.

There were only 10 or so of us on the tour, so we got to know each other pretty well. We met a young couple from Portugal who told us to let them know if we make it to their neck of the woods, so we may just have to do that! We also met a beautiful British girl named Mel who had the best story of how she got to Paris that we've ever heard! She goes to "uni" in Bristol (south of London) and skipped class to compete in a charity competition where they see who can get the farthest from Bristol without spending any money. She dressed up as a gorilla

and her friend dressed up as a banana and they made it all the way to Lille (a little north of Paris) for absolutely nothing! What can we say, Rachael and Katie are trying to pick up some tips! She told us how she took a train, hitchhiked and took a ferry. Turns out, she and her friend won the competition and had a really great story to tell. She said that one year someone made it all the way to Warsaw! She had to go back to uni the next day, but made the most of her short time in Paris.

After the tour, we were all pretty exhausted so we went back to the hostel and crashed. We woke up around 8:30 yesterday morning and Katie, Rachael and Dan went to Musee D'Orsay, where Sara met back up with us after her French class. We spent most of the day browsing greatness in the museum and left there around 3pm. We walked from there to Notre Dame, where we took lots of pictures and went inside to look around. At this point, we were all pretty exhausted (our weaker companions still battling jet lag) so we decided to head back to the hostel for a little nap. Well, most of us. Katie said she'd come up to the room in a minute but she wanted to check on something. Durned if she didn't come back with a brand new 'do! In the interest of challenging ourselves and trying new things, we've decided to take the ultimate challenge and get our hair cut in a foreign country where we don't speak the language. Armand (who speaks zero English, btw) worked his French magic and this is how it turned out:

When her surprised hostel-mates recovered from their shock (or being awaken from their slumber..) we all got moving and decided to grab some grub. Sara had heard about a neat fondue restaurant in Montmartre where they serve wine in baby bottles. We love a good gimmick, so we were all over that! When we got there, it was a teeny weeny restaurant with two long tables that everyone shares. It was completely full and there was barely room to move so the guy asked us to wait "two minutes!" outside and he would seat us soon. So, we waited. And waited. And then three more people went inside and were seated... hmm. We got mad so we decided to go across the street to a different fondue restaurant. This place didn't serve us our wine in baby bottles, but it was delish so we were cool with it. So much for touristy gimmicks.

We headed back to the hostel after dinner and crashed pretty hard. When the alarm went off at 9am, we decided to ignore it and proceeded to sleep for another 2 hours (Sara had to go to class though, ha!). Mmmmm. Sometimes you just gotta sleep in! When we finally got going, we were in dire need of some crepes so we decided to remedy that situation. Rachael had a crepe with vanilla ice cream, bananas, whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Katie's had pineapple, vanilla ice cream, whipped cream and chocolate sauce and Dan's had compote des pommes which was basically applesauce.

After our nutritious breakfast, we went to meet Sara at the Pantheon. We hung around there and took some more pictures before walking to the Ile St. Louis to get... ice cream! Sara has a book and a friend who both recommended this place so we figured we probably needed to check it out. Definitely worth it! At this point, Katie and Rachael parted with Dan and Sara because Rachael had an appointment for her very own hair cut adventure. Voila! Btw, see how Armand's hand is blurry? That's because he was like Edward Scissorhands he was so fast!

By the time the four of us hooked back up, it was way dinner time. We decided to all go to the Jewish quarter for dinner. We ended up eating falafel and schwarma and it was delish. After dinner, it was only 9pm or so and we didn't want to go back to the hostel quite yet so we walked around and just enjoyed being in Paris. We found a funny photo op. It was really cold, so we ducked into a cafe for some hot chocolate before making our way back to the hostel. We're very sad because Sara had only booked the hostel through last night and they were full tonight so she's staying in a different hostel tonight. We miss you already, Sara!

XOXO K&R