Paris! Paris!

My trip to Paris begins at 5:45 when I wake up, get dressed, eat a granola bar, and meet the other 76 people outside who are in the first group to Paris. We then walk to the nearest tube station and ride one stop to the National Train Station. Our train, the Eurostar, leaves at 7:30 and we board and leave pretty quick. Much, much easier than travelling by plane. I sit by my friend Liz and we chat for awhile and then she sleeps and I do my version of sleeping which is about as close to actually falling asleep as I can manage. I was fine though because I had made sure to get 6 hours of sleep the night before (don't worry, I usually aim for 9, yeah life is good).
About 2 hours later we arrive in Paris! As we walk out of the train station it immediately looks so Parisian! We don't look right though, as to avoid seeing a McDonald's. From there we board a nice, big tour bus to take us on an hour tour of Paris and then to our lunch spot right across from the Louvre. We have a few minutes before our reservation so we all take off to take pictures in front of the Louvre. We then have a lunch we were quite impressed with. For starters we had a baked crissont filled with cheese, maybe brie, along with a small salad. Then we had baskets of bread. Then we had chicken stuffed with seasoned pork or something with mushrooms in a wine sauce, and hash browns. Finally we got this white chocolate custard bar which was also delicious. It was a good first lunch in Paris.
From there we loaded back on the bus and stopped by a lookout point for the Eiffle Tower. We all took a bunch of pictures and watched some guys with a boom box dance and act, it was pretty entertaining. From there, we were taken to our hotel, just 2 blocks from the Eiffle Tower, we could see it out our window if we got right up against the edge lol. So we got all checked in. I was assigned a room with 3 other girls, 2 whom I knew, one of which was Liz who I was pretty good friends with. All of us got along great, but I wasn;t worried considering we weren’t really going to be in our hotel room much anyway. Liz and I didn’t want to waste anytime in there in fact, so we got right to getting ready to go out for the night. We both put on some cute dresses and then met up with her other good friend Mary Jane.
It was about 4pm now and we made our way on the Metro to the Champs d’ Elysses. For those who don’t know, this is the main shopping and dining street in Paris and it culminates at the Arc d’ Triumph. It was great. We walked, and shopped, and ate. Yes, we actually found a store on the Champs d Elysses, Promad, where we could afford what they were selling! In fact, they were having such a huge sale of cute clothes, that I nearly had the whole store in my arms as I walked into the dressing room. I ended up buying about 6 really nice tops and a dress for under 70 euro! Yay. Oh and before that Mare Jane and I split a grand marnier (sp?) chocolate and almond crepe, flambé style! Yum.
So after shopping Liz was really hungry because she hadn’t eaten in a while and she was really set on having a big, fancy French dinner. We found this nice place with tons of outdoor seating under read canopies and we had dinner there. Liz had a this weird rabbit thing with a pickle herb jello salad for a starter. Then she had fish, and then crème brulee for dessert, which we all ate a bit of. MJ and I both had this really good chicken, mine with fries and hers with pasta. By then it had finally gotten dark enough for us to go to the top of the Arc d’ Triumph and look over the city. Sadly, by the time we got there it was 10:35, 5 minutes past the last time to go up!! We didn’t even realize it was that late since the sun had just set about 45 mins ago. So we were all rather bummed, but it was pretty cool just being there, underneath it all lit up.
After a little bit there we went back to the hotel to drop off our bags, grab a bottle of champagne, and then headed to the Eiffle Tower!! It was gorgeous! Seriously, it looked like it was a video game animation or something. It was so big and it was this weird blue color. Also, every hour for about 10 minutes the whole thing lit up with blinking lights because on Monday it was going to be Bastille Day (their independence day). So the 3 of us kinda just sat/lied there in the grass in front of the Eiffle Tower for almost an hour. We got back to our room about 2 am and went to sleep.
The next morning Liz left early to go to the Lourve and I got up about 9:30. I had breakfast downstairs with my two other roommates and after that I went swimming at the indoor pool at our hotel. I had really been looking forward to that, I've been missing swimming this summer. Then I got ready for my day in Paris, not knowing who or what I would find. Luckily, in the hotel lobby as I was checking out I found some stragglers like myself checking out. So I ended up joining them in their picnic at the Eiffle Tower. I took off for a little while and left my extremely heavy backpack with them as I walked along the river a ways.
When I got back to the people from my group and my bag I had to go to meet Katie who was done doing her shopping stuff that I didn't want to do. So we decided to meet at the station where we had to go to take the Eurostar back to London because it was already getting late and I was soo tired of walking with my heavy bag and getting lost that I wanted to just get to my final destination and not have to worry about it anymore. So when I finally got to the station I was quite relieved and quite hungry. We walked a ways to this random place with some outdoor seating that had crepes on the menu. Katie and I split a ham, cheese, and egg crepe and split a chocolate nut crepe for dessert. Both delicious.
After we had finished I needed to get to the station to meet up with the other 70 kids to get back to London. But first, I had to use some of my extra euro on yummy French pastries! I bought a chocolate éclair that wasn't creme in the middle, but was like chocolate pudding! I got a choc chip crissont, a strawberry tart, a doughnut puff, and a bar of chocolate. Hmm, I think I was ready for my trip back, haha.