Le premiere jour à Paris, la cité de l'amour.

C'est vraiment la cité de l'amour, non?  Et la tour Eiffel, c'est magnifique.  Voyez notres fotos ici, s'il vous plait.

We were sad to leave our hotel in Amsterdam.  It was probably the nicest place we had to look forward to.   It may have been a bit off the beaten path (Priceline likes to lie about things like location), but it was worth it.  The TV knew my name.

Getting to Paris from Amsterdam was incredibly easy.  Being total geniuses, Sophie and I are finally starting to get a hang of the European rail system.  That or continental trains are way better.  You decide.  We arrived in the Paris Gare du Nord, or "Park of the North," where the nine-hundredth person gawked at my toe shoes.

This particular lady gawked at my shoes while she was letting her dog piss all over the platform, which was sort of disappointing.  "Yes!  They are cool!  No!  I don't want your dog to piss on them!"

Sadly, that was not to be our last experience in Paris involving urine that was not ours.  After a bout of confusion with French signage (does the down arrow mean forward or backwards?) we made it to the platform of Metro 4, where a homeless person laying on a bench, apparently not sleeping after all, pulled out his package and started peeing into the crowd of people walking by.  If I had stuck with physics, I would have been awed by the purity of the urine's parabolic arc towards the concrete.  If I had gone into medicine, I would have suggested that the homeless man drink more water.  I have never seen people move faster.  I think it's the cigarettes.  Sharpens the reflexes.

Those of you who have used Priceline before know that the absurdly low prices come with weird caveats.  Sometimes it's a smoking room.  Sometimes it's a water-damaged room.  In our case, our room in the Best Western Aida Marais was on the sixth floor, meaning it was not accessible by elevator, but only creepy stairway, there was no air conditioning, the thief-accessible window didn't close and we had no shower curtain, or even a place to put a shower curtain.  Based on the smug faces of the hotel's other visitors, I am quite sure that the other rooms had all of these things, as well as private masseuses and jewelry buffets.  Oh well.  We got a really good deal.

We didn't really expect to get much done our first night in Paris, but the train travel was so fast and easy that we had loads of energy and so set out to do Things that Tourists Do.  First stop: Notre Dame!  Wow! Cool!  We didn't go in, though, 'cause it's free on Sundays.  Second stop: Les Jardins du Palais Royale!  Hooray!  Je voudrais un petite verre du cidre, et un salade des fruits, s'il vous plaits.  Le cafe, c'est super!  Third stop: L'avenue des Champs Elysees!  Not as cool as the other two!  Listen to the song.  Final stop: La Tour Eiffel!  Magnifique!  But you already know all about that.

To top off the night we ordered crepes from a street vendor in le quartier latin.  Sophie had hers with confiture framboise (raspberry jam), and I had mine with confiture abricot.  The End.