Paris: The wine is actually cheaper than the water!

2 - 5 of March. This chunnel trip to Paris was my Christmas gift from Justin and it turned out to be a great weekend! We left from the London St Pancras station on Saturday afternoon. Met an interesting French couple on our train ride...the guy was a pastry chef and had worked with some famous Chef that I don't really know of but Justin did. We got to our hostel: St. Christophers Inn. It was very busy but nice and we actually met two girls that went to UW Madison (originally from Minnesota). We ate at a Thai place that night which was very nice and then we ended up finding our way (thanks to some random French pediatric surgeon we met) to an area with different clubs and bars. We got rejected from two of them because first, we weren't in proper dress (I guess our bright turquoise and green jackets don't fit in around France - we later realized everyone wears dark colors) and second, because Justin looked too sleepy. He looked pretty awake to me but whatever!!! Sunday and Monday are kind of a blur because we did so much site seeing! The highlights that you may be familiar with: the Eiffel tower at night was very pretty (we went around midnight). We saw the view of Paris from the top of Tour Montparnasse. The famous Arc and Champs-Elysees street were very gorgeous at night as well. We went on an hour boat tour and of course enjoyed some French cuisine. I absolutely loved crepes and pastries. Mmmmmmm I indulged in way too many sweets but I went down a notch in my belt so maybe all that walking helped me out? We did not tour the Louvre museum but we did see quite a bit of it from our boat tour and before we left on Tuesday. I included a picture of one of my favorite parts about London - the lock bridge. Couples can buy or bring a personalized lock which they lock up to the bridge and then they throw the key in the river symbolizing that their love is eternal. Cheesy, yes, and no we didn't do it, but I thought that it looked really artsy - especially with some segments of graffiti. Our HUGE mistake... ordering two glasses of water (we actually ordered one but of course with the language barrier he thought we ordered two) which ended up being €8. The part that made us excited yet angry was that a bottle of wine got as cheap as under €2....Ouch. Monday night we bunked up in a sketchy hotel...stained walls, really old quilt with more stains on the bed, and scary bathroom arrangements. It was kind of fun though since it made us feel more on vacation in a foreign country. Neither of us came out with any weird rashes so it's alright :). Some other interesting moments happened in the metro as well - Justin lost his ticket, we ended up having to buy more even though we thought we bought 3 day passes. So we ended up coming up with a little system in order to get us both through with one ticket - pretty sneaky :). All-in-All great trip! Awesome Christmas gift from Justin. I really enjoyed it and I was completely exhausted when we got back to Winchester yesterday. I really didn't learn any French and most people just laughed or smiled when I tried to say anything simple. Au revoir!!!