Bonjour

Hello
I think I left off in Barcelona with the last real post, so I'll start with the train.
We took two trains to get to Paris from Barcelona. They were both nice. The second one was huge and had two levels. We were on the top level. Took a nap for a little bit, but there was a group of guys from mexico who where in our car on both trains who were super rowdy and loud. They were drinking diablo verde, absinthe, and having a grand old time. They were pretty insulting to a couple of girls from Australia, but otherwise harmless. They invited Amy and I to join them in saint-tropez at one of their houses. We passed on that. But it was nice to be included. Ha.
Met a girl on the train who spoke French so I had her write down a bunch of ways to say that I am a vegetarian. I guess people don't understand what a vegetarian is and will give you chicken or fish instead of red meat. She wrote down the phrase "I like vegetables" as well. So maybe I'll get a giant plate of vegetables some where.
We made it to Paris after 8 ish hours on the train and found our way to our apartment, with help from the girl on the train, she was great. We are doing airbnb again here, cheaper than hostels for our dates, I blame Bastille day.
We are in the fourth floor, really the fifth since everyone in Europe considers the ground floor 0. Our room is nice and is a good size. The rooms in Valencia and Barcelona were better though because they had storage options. Here I just have all my things sitting on top of my bag... It sort of works. The real challenge with the apartment is the bathroom. The toilet pretty much touches the door and the shower. Tiny. The kitchen is pretty small too, there is a hot plate for cooking things. The hot water tank is really small too, amy had some problems with getting the temperature to work and ended up taking a freezing shower. I let the tank fill back up and managed to have warm water if I only let the water trickle out of the shower head. Difficult, but it worked. We are trying to figure out how to rate this apartment on airbnb in our review. Something along the lines of "stay here for one night and don't plan on showering or cooking..." we'll see.

Wednesday night after we dropped off our things in the apartment, we went to see Harry potter. Boom two days earlier than the states. Get it France. It was amazing. They show the movies in English with French subtitles so that worked out really well. There was a mix of French and English speakers in the audience. Everyone responded to the movie together, laughing, crying, gasping, etc. Total bonding moment. the movie was so good I cannot wait to see it in England. So pumped.

Thursday we took a 3.5 hour walking tour and got some good tips on when to visit the touristy places. The louvre is free on Fridays from 6-10pm for people under age 26 so we did that tonight. The walking tour was good, saw a lot of the major things to see. The tour guide was from Philly so it was weird to hear such a familiar accent. We met two Australian girls on the tour and made plans to meet up later that night to picnic and watch the Bastille day fireworks. We had no idea that we would be here for Bastille day when we were planning the trip but that was a nice surprise. They have a parade, which we saw a tiny bit of from our tour and they fly all the helicopters and military planes around for a while. They also had a music festival thing at the Eiffel tower and shoot fireworks at night. We went to watch the fireworks from sacre couer at the top of Montmartre. We thought we would have a good view and so did a lot of people from France, unfortunately there was a giant tree blocking the view for everyone, but we saw sine fireworks off in the distance outside of Paris. We had a great time picnicking though. There was a group of guys playing tribal music and we met a bunch of nice people from paris who were excited to talk with us in English. Talked with a drunk Parisian girl about gossip girl for a while, that was nice. We are going to do the pub crawl put on by the walking tour people tomorrow night. After the firework fail we went back to hang out with the australian girls and their hostel friends from Kansas at their hostel bar. Their hostel was super nice. The beds all had curtains in them that you could pull shut while sleeping, really nice. And they had a bar and a little restaurant on the first floor. I used the bathroom in the basement and walked upstairs and apparently interrupted something shady in the bar because some giant guy started screaming at me and pushed me away... Suspicious. I ran away from them so everything worked out. We crashed in a couple extra beds in the hostel and woke up early to leave so no one would get in trouble for having guests over. Took a nap when we got back to our place and wandered around today.

We went the Eiffel tower with the intention of going to the top, but the line was insane so we decided to skip it. Might try again later otherwise you can go in notre dame for free, so we will go to the top of that and have that view instead. We walk around until six when we could get in the louvre for free. Found a little carnival outside the louvre. They take carnival games and rides to a whole new level. They had a water flume type ride and a giant gorilla. I took some pictures.

The louvre was nice. I dont think i'm cut out for museums though. I wanted to see one statue and got pretty bored after that. Might have been too tired from our walking around to really enjoy it. But the winged Nike statue was amazing. Took tons of photos of that. Saw the mona Lisa, she was lame. I don't understand the fascination with her. I mean, it is a nice painting and all, but not that impressive. There were other paintings in the same room that I thought were better... Oh well. Saw a hilarious hermaphrodite laying on a bed sculpture. So great.

After the louvre we picked up some more bread and cheese and a mystery risotto in a pouch. It was okay.
Everyone in France has been really nice so far. We try to throw in a few French words and accidentally use a lot of spanish and everyone has been okay with that. 
Tomorrow the plan is to go to the Paris flea market. It is supposed to be giant and amazing. If only I knew how to haggle in French I bet we could get some great deals. Tomorrow night is the pub crawl with the two Australian girls. Should be fun!

Au revoir!