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.

Ireland Part Deux!

So one full week later I finally get around to this. I left off at the end of Friday night, right? Right. Saturday morning we got up bright and early to get on the bus that takes you to Limerick where we were going to change buses to go to the Cliffs of Moher. We had a slight freak out as we nearly missed the bus out of Dublin, but we didn't and had a fairly comfortable four hour bus trip. When we get to Limerick we realize there is something wrong. The bus to the Cliffs left just 10 minutes before we got there... and the next one leaves in a little over an hour.... but it wouldn't be getting back until AFTER our bus to Dublin would leave without us. Yeah. So we ended up just staying around in Limerick. A city we had never heard of. But it ended up being a very VERY cool place. We meandered into the best cafe in the world, Greene's. We all had Thanksgiving Dinner, no lie, only they called it turkey and bacon. Turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, stuffing, carrots and all of it was so tasty! I didn't have that, but a sammich with the turkey and salad and cranberry sauce. Goodness, it was so good I remembered a week later. Later in the day we went to King John's Castle, which was made fun by the fact that they let us climb all over every thing. AND the boys got to help the worker guy Sean launch the catapult into the river. I got a video of it, and here it is on Google Video. They'll be internet famous! If you listen closely you'll hear Sean say "thee" instead of "you" to Shane and Willie. He was pretty awesome. Sean let us climb all over everything we weren't supposed to climb on. We split up in the afternoon and Cassie, Shane, Willie, Emma and I went down along the river. The boys were looking for clovers. We ended up finding wild blackberries (Tasty!) and wild horses! Then it started raining. Hard. It was kinda terrible and then we lost the other girls, Katie, Shannon, and Alison. Cassie and the boys went down one side of the road and Emma and I down the other. Emma and I ended up going into a church to see if the girls had gone inside. Inside we found the nicest old ladies who hadn't seen our friends but chatted with them a little while. They told us to be careful, that Limerick wasn't what it used to be. We thanked them for their time and headed out to Cassie and the boys. When we all met up and went to a pub to watch the rest of the rugby game and warm up/dry off. Shortly after we headed back to the bus station, met up with the others and got on our bus home. We were probably the most annoying people on the bus, but it was a nice trip. Deffinately worth the bus trip, even if we didn't get out to the Cliffs of Moher.