Off to Paris!

Thurs. Jan. 28, 2010

Oh boy, it has been a crazy day today! We got to the train station to catch our 9:07pm train to the Liverpool airport yesterday night. On our adventure we ran into a homeless man wanting money and was angry when we told him we didn't have any coins. He cursed and walked off. We were a bit taken back by the incident, but felt better when our stop was close. When we got to Liverpool, we took a bus to the airport, arriving around 12am, so we had another 7 hours until our flight. We hung around the airport, catching a couple of hours of sleep here and there until it was time to check in. Our flight only took about an hour, but the time was 1 hour ahead in Paris so it was only 10am. We finally found our way to the train ticket area and scrambles to find our station. Luckily there were 2 young boys directing passengers...turns out they just wanted money, after they gave us cards explaining their situation. We ran into many of those people on the train. We even went the wrong way on the train and had to switch sides of the station. One stop there was a man who played his accordion. No one payed him any attention. It is sad to think that many of these people have to survive off of their talents or begging. When we got to our stop to find "Friends Hostel", it was very busy, crowded and noisy. It was intimidating having people touch and yell things at/toward us, wanting us to buy their items.

Inside Friends Hostel, we got our key to our room and found that we had 2 sets of triple decked bunk beds and our own bathroom/shower. It was actually really nice and we were all excited to be bunk buddies!

Our first adventure in Paris started by walking to Sacre-Coeur, a beautiful cathedral on top of a hill overlooking the city. The view was amazing! While we were walking up to the top of the hill, Annie got hit on by a bunch of Jamaican guys, we just kept walking. We encountered a lot of that, that day. From the very top you could see the whole city and even the Eiffel Tower! We then searched for a place to eat lunch and found a cute little Piano Pizza Cafe where we met our waiter, Mohammed, from Moscow and could speak 6 different languages. He was really nice and joked with us a lot. After lunch we walked around town trying to find the famous Moulin Rouge building and ended up in the most "sex happy" part of town. Much different than any of us were use to=/ We decided to walk back to our room since we were all so tried from such a long day of traveling. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up some bread, nutella, and other snacks, little did we know we would be surviving on that for the next 3 days for snacks and breakfast. When we got back to our hostel it seemed to have gotten even busier! People were up close too our faces, trying to sell us things and some even trying to grab our belongings! We stayed close to one another and held our valuables tight but were relieved to be back in our hostel. Ive never felt so terrified before. It turns out there was a big football (soccer) game against Liberia and Egypt, and that's why so many people were along the sidewalks. Even at 7pm I could hear the noise of the people yelling and talking and car horns beeping. It's a kind of noise I'm not use to, but at the same time it was soothing as we all went to sleep.

The cars drive on the right side here and the stirring wheels are on the left, just like back home. I found that weird since i expected them to be just like in the United Kingdom. Turns out, Britain is the only country that has the method of driving on the left side. It was the weirdest feeling being submerged in a completely different city and country where not many people speak your language and all the signs, menus, and names are written in French. We had to learn a few terms while there in order to communicate with the locals, such as Merci (thank you), Sortie (exit...turns out it was the most useful term we learned!) and parlez vous anglais? (do you speak English?). These terms were very helpful throughout the whole trip!