Day 52 - Brussels to Paris

We got up and checkd out of our hostel by 10 and lugged all our stuff down to the main station and then walked down to the main square to buy postcards and souvenirs. Then we jumped back to the station and got on the train to Paris at 11:10.

The train ride was pretty uneventful, but we were both pretty excited to get to Paris (our last major stop together) and were both abit anxious to see what the situation on the ground was goign to be like with the riots going on all over France.

Mom i think was pretty nervous about us going to Paris and tried persuading me to skip France and go to Spain or something instead, but we figured that it couldn´t be bad right downtown Paris where we´d be, and of course, it wasn´t.

We got to Paris around 2:30 (we were on a high speed train) and the second we got out of the station all we saw were cops everywhere. It could be that they always have lots of cops around Paris, but i had the feeling that things were stepped up quite abit because of the situation in the country. So really, central Paris is probably one of the safest places in Europe right now.

So we figured out how to get to the Love&Peace hostel and we walked the 20 minutes only to find out it was booked solid, so we picked another one out of my guidebook that i think somebody from Queen´s told me about called the 3 Ducks and gave them a call. They had room, so they gave me instructions and we took the Metro all the way across town then walked the rest of the way, taking us about another hour in all.

The 3 Ducks is in a great location, right by the Eiffel Tower, but definately was not as nice as other places that we´ve travelled to and stayed at. The rooms were tiny and not that clean looking and were just off a small outdoor courtyard in the middle of the hostel which contained the only two washrooms and showers in the hostel (all outside, dirty, and tiny). so we threw our stuff in our rooms, i showered (Rob hasn´t showered since Amsterdam) and then headed out. We figured we´d check out another hostel close-by to see if it looked better for tomorrow night, the Aloha, and then go check out the tower and eat something.

The Aloha was only a 10 minute walk away and looked much cleaner and nicer so we paid for Tuesday night and then headed for the Tower. By this time it was already dark so the Eiffel Tower was all lit up, and as soon as it hit 6 o´clock, random lights started blinking really quickly all over the tower and this went on for a solid 10 minutes. Was kind´ve cool, but also pretty tacky (same as getting engaged up there....Sean.....jk). So we walked around and underneith, took a few pictures, then started wandering back to the hostel. Along the way we stopped at an Italian restaurant (ran by an Indian guy with two Indian helpers) and had pizza and split a bottle of wine.

Afterwards we went back to the hostel, had a beer at the bar, and met two girls and a guy we were sharing our room with. The two girls, Andrea (19) and Michel (20) are from Sherbrooke, but are first language English, and the guy was a Swiss police officer on holidays for a week and is trilingual, speaking German, Italian, and French, but no English at all. So the five of us spent the next few hours talking mostly in French with a bit of English for Rob. It was pretty interesting talking to the Swiss guy and hearing about some of his cop stories. We both wanted to go find some riots pretty bad just to see them, but obviously decided to just have another beer instead adn then eventually all went to bed.