PAIR-EEEEEEEE!

We said goodbye to London today.  We had a good time while we were there, but we are not sorry to say goodbye to the heat.  The train took us under the English Channel to Paris.  I expected it to be more interesting than it was, but the “Chunnel” was dark and I actually took a short nap while we crossed under it.  The train we rode was a high speed train and I am now firmly behind any measures to fund the high speed rail system in California.  Riding a train for 3 hours from Sacramento to LA would be awesome.

The best part of our hotel in Paris is that it has air conditioning!  We did not sleep well in our London hotel last night due the heat so hopefully we sleep well tonight (I expect we will).  We rode the subway to the EiffelTower this afternoon.  We’ve seen millions of pictures of it before, but actually being underneath it was amazing.  The tower is over 1000 feet tall and awe inspiring.  We got in line to ride to the top of the tower when it started to rain.  About 10 minutes into our wait, there was a huge lightning bolt with an immediate thunder clap.  We thought to ourselves, of all the places to be during a lightning storm, the Eiffel Tower is probably not the best place to be, so we got out of line and headed back to our hotel.  We’ll go back over the next few days.

We found a nearby grocery store and scored a couple of large bottles of water for 0.19 Euros.  That’s probably the best deal we’ve gotten on our trip yet.  Afterwards, we went to dinner across the street from our hotel at a restaurant called Wajda and had a great meal.

After dinner, we decided to jump back on the subway and go to the Arc de Triomphe, another famous Paris landmark.  It had started to rain again as we exited the train station, so we found a nearby café and bought a bottle of wine and just enjoyed the moment in Paris with a gorgeous view of the Arc de Triomphe.  Rex commented that it was probably the best day of the trip so far.