Day 4--Paris, Train, London

July 12

Before we went to sleep, we set the alarm for 6:00 am. We would be running on only a few hours' sleep but we knew that we would be able to sleep on the train and we wanted to catch the Louvre before we went to London.

Jenny woke me up in a hurry and informed me that she must have slept through her alarm or turned it off when it went off and it was 8:00 am!!! Oh no!!! We showered (in an overdeep tub without shower curtains), dressed and got out of there in a hurry, but not without taking a few pictures ;). We got the few hours of sleep that we thought we would not get, so it all worked out.

We got out of the room, and there was a door near our room that I was curious about so I tried it, and it opened. I had seen the door each time I went up/down the stairs but always thought it was a suite of some kind. Guess what it was!?!? An elevator!!! I felt stupid because I took the stairs a total of 3 times (1 time with a HUGE backpack) before I realized that there was an elevator! I would have definitely liked to take the elevator up with that backpack. Ah well! We took the TINY elevator down to the ground floor. It could barely fit us, along with our backpacks.

We took off for the Louvre, hurrying because we thought that it opened at 7 am. We had originally planned to leave our bags in the room to go to the Louvre, returning when it was time for us to take our train back to London, but the incident with the alarm slightly changed our plans. We brought our bags with us. Thankfully, the Louvre had a free backpack/luggage check. There were several other backpacks/luggages there.

When we got to the Louvre, there was a line for the entrance. I went and stood in line, thinking that they only let a few people in at once, but in actuality, it had not even opened yet. If we had come earlier like we planned to, we would be standing in line waiting for it to open, so it all worked out at the end.

The entrance to the Louvre (two of the three pyramids)

The entrance of the Louvre is located in one of three glass pyramids, with the lobby being under the plaza and the museum in the gigantic 3 sided building. Once we entered, paid and placed our bags in the check, we headed to see the Mona Lisa since our friend Cookie went a few years ago and said that it was packed. We got there early enough when there were not too many people there and was surprised at the size of it. I thought it would be bigger than it actually is. Satisfied with the Mona Lisa, we took off to explore the Museum. We got lost several times when we wanted to return to the entrance. We would see a sign saying the exit (Sortie) was this way and follow it with the other signs then the Sortie part would disappear (the arrows for directions are a little confusing in Paris, we quickly figured out the minute we tried to navigate the subway system. The "down" arrow means go straight not go downstairs). We finally asked a guard for soem help and he directed us to the exit. We wanted to see the Roman/Greek statues, and they happened to be in the same direction as the sortie so we hit two birds with one stone. By this time, we were staving because we were not able to get some breakfast with our late wake up time. We got some breakfast at the museum (I know, I know... not real French food, but it would have to do), wrote in our postcards and took off for the train station, of course after getting our bags from the bag check.

You can see the Mona Lisa in the center.

Mona Lisa as seen closer.

At the Paris Nord train station, we bought stamps and looked for the mailbox to mail our postcards. We had to ask two people before finally locating it in the station--a tiny yellow box in the middle of the station with taller people hovering over it. We almost missed it! At least we got the post cards mailed with a Paris postmark!

We had some difficulty finding the train to London. It did not list any track number, but instead, said "Eurostar" which is our train. We walked til we saw an Eurostar train parked, so we waited in front of the gate. I went to change my money from the Euro to the Pound since I would not be needing the Euro anymore when Jenny ran to me carrying BOTH her bag AND my bag telling me that she saw the entrance for the Eurostar train and we had to go through customs so we hurried and almost did not make it! Whew! Good thing Jenny has a good eye for figuring things out or we would have missed that train.

We were glad to leave Paris, however beautiful it was, and go into a territory that has a language that we both knew--English! I took a nap (again!) on the train and missed going under the English Channel (again!).

We got to the St. Pancras station and were relieved to see everything in English. We did not have to work so hard or so much to understand signs. We ate lunch at the station because they had free Wi-Fi and we wanted to find Platform 9 3/4 before we left since it was in the same area. I checked my Facebook account to see if my friend who lived in London contacted me regarding a meet up in London. He left me a message telling me to meet at this pub near this station today. I assumed he meant in the evening but when I checked later at the hostel, he meant at 1 pm. I was still on that train, so we missed the chance to see a friend who I had not seen in 13 years and meet some British Deaf people! :(.

Platform 9 3/4 for you Harry Potter Fans! :)

We found information about Platform 9 3/4. It is located in the King's Cross station's train section not the underground section. After walking what felt like forever through various halls, we finally found the sign for Platform 9-12. We walked towards it and turned left when it said Platform 9. There was a sign there saying that due to renovations, Platforms 9 3/4 has been temporarily relocated and gave us directions to it. We followed the directions and saw it! There were several other people taking pictures with it before us and they took forever before it was finally our turn. We took a few pictures and took off for the hostel. For you non-Harry Potter fans, Platform 9 3/4 is the spot between platforms 9 and 10 where you went through a wall to get to the train tracks behind it to get to Hogwarts, the school for wizards. The hostel was much easier to find than the one in Paris and we were glad to see that it was more organized too! We reserved a room that only slept 2 people so we had our own private room with a shared bathroom.

Since our plans for what we thought would be the evening but actually happened while we were on the train changed, we decided to take advantage of the time and go to the London Eye so that we could do other things the next day. We bought tickets at the hostel for a little cheaper than it would be at the Eye and it would enable us to bypass the line. We took the tube to the Eye and was faced with Big Ben upon departure of the tube. I did not expect it to be RIGHT THERE! We walked over the bridge and got to the London Eye after pausing a bit to get some ice cream. It tasted more like frozen whipped cream, which I liked but Jenny did not.

Me on top of London with Big Ben in background.

We went to the customer service desk, got our tickets and went on to the short line for the Eye. There was a long long long line to buy tickets, and we were glad we got them at the hostel. The ride took 30 minutes, made one cycle and gave us a 360 degree view of London. Each "glass capsule" held 25 people. It was cool to see London from up above and we were surprised at one thing... How many cranes there were! It seems that London is renovating its city because there were cranes EVERYWHERE. I think Jenny has a picture where she found 5 or 6 cranes in one shot!

Satisfied with our London Eye ride, we went to the Pub that we were supposed to meet my friend at although they would not be there. The pub is in Trafalgar Square, with 3 fountains and a monument. We entered the pub and got ready to order when the waitress told us that they are finished serving food so we went to another pub across the street and they were still serving food, thankfully. We were STARVING. I got a hamburger and Jenny got fish and chips. My hamburger came with a choice of drink--soda, water, wine, beer or mixed drink. That is something that we do NOT have in America--free alcohol with your meal.

After dinner, we went back to the hostel and knocked out!

For pictures of Day 4--go to http://picasaweb.google.com/suzyki/Day4ParisTrainLondon?authkey=Gv1sRgCIr4r_-ZudiZag&feat=directlink