Today we woke up in London around 6.30 (they don’t use colons in describing the time). Dad and I hopped out of bed and got really for the journey, on what was my first train ride ever. Once on the train, I had the chance to catch up on some sleep, summer reading, and sightseeing. My Dad continued reviewing his French, teaching me words and phrases, such as ‘Je ne parle pa francais’, etc. I forget that means but it sounds cool. I think I’ll say it a lot in Paris and see what happens. We were under the channel for about 20 minutes, but don’t worry; they gave us snorkels and fins…just kidding. It seemed like no time at all and we popped out into…FRANCE! Dad was especially excited because this was a new country for him – one that he had read about and heard about in French class a long time ago. It was a new country for me too, so I was excited. There was lots of farm land, but it looked pretty brown. We didn’t know if this was normal or if they were having a drought. The train ride flew by. The train itself was very quiet, and my only complaint was they needed pillows because the headrests were too high for me. In no time, we were entering Paris and saw the beautiful Sacre Coeur on the hillside to our right. We hope to see that up close and personal later in the trip.

Next we had to navigate to our hotel. Having mastered the London Underground, we found the Paris Metro was still a challenge. Particularly hard was figuring out which way to go once we found the line we were looking for. But in no time we found Line 4 south and disembarked at the intersection with line 9, taking it west to Trocadero station. We then hauled our suitcases a couple of blocks to our hotel on St. Didier, a little cross stree in the direction of Arc de Triomphe. I always hate that part about dragging the suitcases through the streets because I feel like such a tourist – I just want to blend in. Ah well. The good thing was that we found our hotel quickly AND they actually had our name down on the reservation list this time so we didn’t have to switch hotels. Thank goodness! This little hotel is cute. We are on the top floor in room quarante-deux. It is a tiny room with two tiny twin beds and a tiny bathroom with a tiny…well, you get the picture.

Time to play touriste. Nous avons marche a le Tour Eiffel, a nous sommes mange une hot dog en route! Sorry I forgot my accent egu on mange… Haven’t I learned French quickly? OK, OK, my Dad’s actually typing this, but I’m dictating some of it -).

We decided to climb the steps of the Eiffel tower, I mean le Tour Eiffel, then take the lift to the top. Did I mention it was a HOT day? Lotsa lotsa steps later, we arrived to the cool breezes of a couple hundred feet up for splendid views. We had enough money to get to the top (Kevin!) but there was a power outage, and the line built up horribly, so we decided to go back down and try another day (or night…). We then marched down the left bank, finally crossing over in front of the Grand Palais and wending our way up to the Champs Elysee. I designed a Toyota Aygo paint job in a Toyota shop (very fancy) and entered a competition to win a Macintosh computer. It had nice green, purple and blue stripes with pink accents (sorry Grandpa) and black areas. On the back door were the ‘theatre’ faces – happy and sad, and I named it ‘Playgo’ (my Dad thought of that – isn’t he clever?).

We continued up the Champs to arrive at the massive Arc de Triomphe. We climbed up a huge number of steps (did I mention it was a HOT DAY???) to the top for an exhorbitant price, but the view was worth it. Finally, we headed back to our tiny hotel room, picking our way through a Lebanon protest group (quite loud and a little scary!), eating our way through a nice Italian dinner, and finally crashing into bed. The end. More tomorrow!