Days 9 & 10: Paris

View from our hostel balcony
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Day 9:  We got in from Oslo to London oh so very late at night.  We took the National Express, England's bus service, from London Stansted to Waterloo Station.  Our train was to depart at 5:34 a.m. for Paris.  We got to London Stansted and instead of sleeping in the train station, we decided to sleep at the airport (London Stansted is actually about an hour and a half outside the city of London) until about 2 a.m. to catch the National Express bus.  Apparently we weren't the only ones who decided to camp out at London Stansted.  It's like THE airport to sleep in!  It's so far out of the city that if you have an early flight or a late flight (like ours) you're kinda stuck at the airport.  With all the sleepers in the terminal, we felt safe and warm! =)  Early next morning, we hopped on the Eurostar Train to ride underneath the English Channel to Paris.  TJ was SUPER excited to go in the Chunnel.  We decided not to fly directly from Norway to Paris just so TJ could ride the Chunnel... and of course, he falls asleep during the train ride!

Walking to the Tour Eiffel to catch our bus tour
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We arrive in Paris at about 9:30 a.m.  It's GREAT!  Our hostel is like 10 minutes (walk) from Gare du Nord train station.  We easily find our hostel and are greeted warmly by the woman who runs the hostel.  She informs us that the room we booked was actually not ready for two reasons: one, it was too early to check in and two, the people who were staying in that room decided to stay for one more night.  She would have to put us in a different room for tonight and then we could have a different room for the rest of our stay.  We were super okay with that.  We found out, to our pleasant surprise, that the hotel's policy is to leave your room key at the front desk everytime you leave the hotel and just tell them your room number once you get back.  We were relieved that we wouldn't have to worry about carrying around the big old-fashioned key.  We left our bags at the hostel and decided to go to a cafe to plan our day.  We found a cute little cafe nearby and TJ had a breakfast crepe and Melissa had a cheese sandwich.  After, it was time to check in so we walked back to the hostel.  We decided, again, to do a hop-on/hop-off tour of Paris so that we could get a general overview of the city.  It was a great bus tour.. it had a free audio tour =)   After a lengthy 3 hours on the bus, we  got off  at  the Place du Concorde and walked the Avenue de Champs Elysee.  It was beautiful.  Of course while we were on it, walking past all the nice designer stores, it starts to rain rather hard.  We duck into a cafe, which is part of a chain of cafes, called Cafe Brioche.  There we had our dinner of sandwiches and coffee and a little dessert tart each.  Besides the INCREDIBLY rude waitress, we had a fabulous dinner and time!  Since we were both so tired, we decided to head back to the hostel for a good night's sleep.  Good night's sleep was ruined when all the 18-19 year old American boys who were all on our same floor decided to come back drunk at around 1 a.m. hootin and hollerin.  Although it woke us up, we were amused by their drunken conversations and quickly fell back asleep.

About to enter the Louvre
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Day 10: Woke up bright and early.. then we fell back asleep for an hour or so... When we woke back up, we headed on down to get our simple, but FREE, breakfast of baguettes (with jam and/or butter) and coffee.  Despite its simplicity, it was DELICIOUS and really all we needed to get us through til the afternoon.  We then headed on out to the Louvre.  We easily spent about 5 hours there admiring all the various works (and still didn't get to make a dent in all of the exhibits!).  Yes, we saw the three most popular things everyone comes to see: La Giaconda, otherwise known as the Mona LIsa, the Venus de Milo, and Winged Victory.  All three were amazing.  But the crowds were overwhelming and we found ourselves really enjoying all the other amazing paintings and sculptures.  They even had an Islamic art exhibition, a Asian, American, and African art exhibition.  We headed into the Asian, American, and African art exhibition which was also very awesome.  We walked, and walked, and walked around the Louvre until our feet couldn't take it anymore.  So, we headed on towards the Ile-de-la-Cite, Paris' center.

Arc de Triomphe
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To get to it, we walked across Pont Neuf ("New Bridge") that is actually Paris' oldest bridge - started in 1578 and finished in 1604.  We walked Pont Neuf to get across the beautiful Seine River to get to Notre Dame.  By this time, we were quite hungry.  We headed on into the Quasimodo Cafe right next to Notre Dame.  This place was GREAT.  We had our very first taste of real French Onion Soup.  Maybe this place wasn't the GREATEST place to get French Onion Soup in Paris.. but for us.. it was AMAZING!  I'm guessing even the mediocre French Onion Soup is amazing for us Americans!  We then crossed the street to explore Notre Dame Cathedral.  TJ was amazed - - he said it looked exactly like it did in the cartoons =)  After thoroughly exploring the cathedral, we decided to go and climb the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the famous Champs Elysee.  We climbed all 250-ish steps up to the top of the Arc to get the most amazing panoramic view of Paris.  We then decided that despite our extreme exhaustion, we'd keep trekkin' on.. so we decided to explore the area right by our hostel - Montmartre.  We climbed up the tallest "hill" in Paris to the very top where the basilica of Sacre-Coeur stood.  We explored the beautiful and once-controversial basilica.  We then headed on outside to place du Tertre.  This is a little square with cafes all around it.  Even though it's not technically a walking-only street, cars barely pass through and people mill the cobblestone-lined street watching artists line the street and do their stuff..  We stopped at a cafe to people watch and enjoy the rest of our evening (since the sun doesn't set here in June until about 11 p.m.) and get, yes, another bowl of French onion soup to share.  We shared that bowl and got a drink each for a semi-light dinner.  It was finally about 10 p.m. and we had to wake up early the next morning, so off to bed we went.  We headed back to the hostel, told them that we were in room 35 to get our key and headed upstairs.  We opened our hostel room door and were incredibly confused.  Before we had left for the Louvre that morning, we cleaned up our room, packed our bags (for safe-keeping), and closed our balcony door (since it rained the day before, our room got a bit wet).  When we entered, there were clothes all over the bed, food on the table, clothes hung on the hangers, and the balcony doors were open.  We stood there, for about 2 minutes, just staring at the room.  We then started to get almost a bit angry as to why they would come in our room and open all of our stuff.  We then looked closer at all the stuff, and through our confusion, realized that none of it was our stuff.  Remember, the day before we were told that we would have to stay in a different room for one night!  We started laughing and headed back down to reception.  We told the guy at the front desk our situation and he was equally confused.  He looked in the hotel registry and found our name near room 38 and told us that the day-shift people never told him they switched our rooms!  We headed to room 38 and, alas, our stuff was there, nice and tidy!  TJ ran down to tell the guy, who was worried our stuff was gone, that everything was all good - C'est bon!  We THEN went to sleep!