and at a resting point.

So Morgan and I made it to New Jersey this evening. We left North Carolina this morning, and took our sweet time going down the road. We took pictures today, which I'll probably post tomorrow night. For lunch we decided to get a little adventurous and not just stop at the nearest fast food place. We instead when into the city of Alexandria and had lunch on the warf in the old down town portion of the city. It was a gorgeous day out and we ended up eating at a pretty fancy resturant. Though our waiter did give us an awesome tip on how to get around DC the quickest heading up north. He was still a shade hung over, which was funny for us. The food was great, but we needed to get going as we were trying to get me into the city tonight. Which failed, 'cause it'd have been way too late for me to comfortably ridden the bus into the city and played tourist all the way to Cassie's apartment. As I'm pretty sure Mom or any number of people would have killed me for doing that. But I'm being antisocial, so post ends here. Photos tomorrow I promise.

Paris

I wasn't too very excited when I was packing for Paris, even before I learned that I was going to have to pack all of my belongings up. I dunno, I'd never really wanted to go to Paris as I'd not heard amazing things about the people or atmosphere of the city, just nice things about the monuments. Really though, in all honesty I did not meet one person who was anything ruder than indifferent. Plenty of people who could care less, but no one went out of their way to be mean, and in fact most people where really nice. We traveled by Chunnel Train to Paris. Trains are my new favorite form of travel, and yes I know that they crash more than planes, but I just feel much more comfortable traveling across the ground rather than the sky. The train wasn't one of the new super fast trains, those started this week, but it still it didn't take too long to get there. When we got to Paris we were immediately shuffled onto a bus for a 3 hour long bus tour. It was fairly interesting and informative. Like to the fact that Marie Antoinette was beheaded across the square from where Louis the 16th was beheaded because the ground under the guillotine was becoming unstable as it was over saturated with blood and the rotting bodies where obscuring the view of the platform. Gross, but interesting. We did this long, sleepy tour because we couldn't check into our hotel . Everyone fell asleep by the end of it, me just long enough towards the end to not know where in Paris compared to everything else our hotel was located. When we all awoke at the hotel we got checked in and up to our rooms. You were automatically sitting next to on the train and rooming with your roommate from the study center, and as Emma stayed behind, that meant Cassie was sharing the room with me. Yay! The room was TINY. Not unlivable, but if you had tensions with your roommate the people in the hall would be able to feel it, because there was no room for it inside. But as we were only really in there to sleep it wasn't bad. Cassie and I ended up hanging out in there for a short time before heading out to dinner before the guided tour of the Louvre by one of the art history Professors from the study center. A number of us went, which is never good with me. I'm not fond of groups larger than four, as they tend to include more than one annoying person and no one will make a decision that the rest of the group will all unanimously agree on. Of course this happens when were are all cranky and hungry. Finally choosing a place that had a menu in English we sat down to one of the most strained meals I've ever had. The food was all pretty good, it was the company. Some times there are people you have in your life that you like alright, for small amounts of time and there is never any reason in the world that you want to have two of them in the same place at the same time. This is because you know they will feed off each other's annoying qualities. Which is what happened. I was about to punch someone. But we ate quickly enough and scooted off the Louvre without incident. We saw the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo, an a bunch of other amazing pieces. It really made me sad that we ended up powering by a lot of wonderful art, but I'm telling you after 3 hours of walking around in there and not covering more than one wing I was art-ed out. I really didn't care anymore, which I acknowledge is sad. There was really just too much there to take it all in. They say that it would take someone years to look in to each and every peice in the Louvre. That and I plan on using it as an excuse to go back some day.

Return from Paris

I got in from Paris about 8pm my time Saturday night. I must say that I throughly enjoyed Paris, and hope to go again with a little more time. Four days is fairly long, but I feel as though I barely scratched the surface of everything available to do there. The food was amazing, the people were all very patient and very nice, and the company was top notch. I spent yesterday captioning, tagging, and uploading my photos to various places. Facebook has a good number, but my Picasa page has all of them. Even the repeats, as I am fond of taking five pictures of the same thing. I used both of my camera cards and had about 500 photos on them. A lot I deleted or were from other things like Emerald Banquet or Lake Ella (also posted up this morning for anyone who wanted them). Well about a hundred were. The others I've sifted through, leaving just about 350 photos that are of decent quality and clarity. I'll go into detail about my trip when I get home from work and the play Casanova tonight. Note to self: Get the new Casanova BBCTV series, as it is hillarious. We watched most of the first episode in class today.
Ok! Off to work!

Bus Rides and Street Festivals

Today I got up early. I am quite proud of myself, as I actually got up early enough to go on the 8:45 am bus tour of London that the study center provided. I took A LOT of photos too, a whooping 121 that if you click here you can view. They are under London Bus Tour. I was too lazy to move them over to Flikr, but I'll move my favorites over later. Our guide was an amazing little British woman who had lived in London her whole life. She showed us all the usual sites, and a few times we got off the bus to take photos. I'm really really glad I went on it. I took a bajillion (yes that is a real number) of photos of Parliament and London Tower, which by the way is not a tower at all. That confused me. Yes there are a few pictures of ducks in there for the sister. I hope she enjoys.
Well after that all my flat mates and I spent an hour viewing and labeling all of our photos while we could still remember everything we had seen. We had a don't-be-a-jack-butt-to-your-flatmates meeting at 3 and I had a Theater Program orientation at 5. All of the others left just after our flat meeting, as none of them are in theatre to go to the Regent Street Festival. I had to go to the theatre thing, so I couldn't. I just ended up hanging around my room and conference calling the Boy and the Parents + Sister before the meeting. After a fairly informative and quick meeting with the theatre crew I ended up heading out with a bunch of the theatre kids to find said Indian Street Festival. That we had heard was to be a Spanish street festival. It took us 45 minutes to walk there, but only 15 to walk back. We had inadvertently taken the really long scenic route. It was ok though, actually a pretty fun walk. The street festival was getting ready to close up by the time we got there, and we went into Piccadilly Circus to find a restaurant that our tour guide from earlier had told us about. We found it, and it was everything she said it was. Cheap, filling and awesome. It was called Stockpot. I didn't get a picture of the outside but I have a feeling that I'll be going back. After eating and talking there we all headed back and into our perspective flats.
But it's late now, and I'm dead tired. So good night all, and I'll post the rest of the pictures in the morning.