London and Paris

Hello Everyone! Wow what an adventure this trip has been! Here is a mini journal of what I have done so far...

London: So I arrived in London the day after the terrorist attacks and it was a little hard to get to my hotel because my hotel was located near Russell Square where a bus blew up. All the roads leading to my hotel were closed so I had to take the tube to Hyde Park and then get on the bus to one of the main streets and walk down about 5 or 6 blocks. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be and the city was preety normal despite what had happened. I checked into my hotel and headed to the contiki basement to relax. I ended up meeting some girls that were on a different tour and we went to eat sushi together at a restaurant nearby and went to a near by club to check out the nightlife. The next day I ended up running into one of the girls on my tour (Holly) and I asked her if she wanted to explore some of London with me. We started off towards the direction of Trafalagar Square, then we went to the London Eye, then across the bridge to Big Ben, the Parliment, Westminster Abbey, St. James Park, and Buckingham Palace, and back to Trafalagar Square and the Hotel all on foot! Later at the pre-tour meeting, I ran into Jessa and Sandy and we ended up on the LONGEST walk of our lives to St. Paul's Cathedral. I was so bummbed I couldn't go inside because it was closed but it was so beautiful anyway. I definately want to come back to London it was amazing!

London-Dover: Woke up super early the next day about 6am to catch the bus at 7am. MANNNN I was sooooo sore and sleepy!!! But I made it on the coach and headed off to Dover to catch a ferry into France. Met a few people on the Ferry that lived in the area I grew up in which was kind of cool and one of the girls actually played baseball with a girl I went to High School with! What a small world!

Paris: After getting off the Ferry into France, we spent the rest of the day driving into Paris. Played a kind of speed dating game on the bus to get to know the other people on the tour and to pass the time. We reached the hotel where the area was kind of ghetto (some thing I expect now for the rest of the tour) got checked in and headed off to a group dinner. The place was only supposed to be 15 mins walk away from the hotel, but our tour guide got lost and we ended up walking around the city for about an hour and a half. After dinner we were soooo glad to see our driver Brendan with the coach and we took an Illuminations tour around Paris to get a feel for what we wanted to see on our free day. I ended up going to Notre Dame, Les Champs Eleyes, the Louvre, and the Arc de Triomphe... my roomie (Ronnie) and I ended up huffing up the 500 spirling stairs to get a nice view of Paris from the top of the Arc! It was insanely beautiful! I love it! So worth all of the pain it took to get up there. We headed back on the metro to get to our hotel but we ended up getting lost for another hour on our own. The ironic thing was that I ended up using hindi with 2 pakistani guys to get back to our hotel. They even walked us all the way back which was extremely nice considering they were walking the opposite direction when I stopped them. I got ready really quickly and went with Trevor and Shree to see the Moulin Rouge show! It was an awesome show and I definately will come back to Paris to see the rest of what I missed.
The next day we got up really early for a long bus day towards Barcelona via Bourdeux and had a stop to see Chambord Palace. At the rest stop, Ronnie and I had a great Salad and a Super Yummy Nutella Crepe! We Reached Bordeux in the evening had some dinner and went back to the hotel to relax for another Long day on the bus towards Barcelona!

Barcelona and Nice will be the next entries since now my time is running out! Getting ready to go to dinner in Monaco and see Monte Carlo Will keep you updated!