Yesterday was a wildly busy day. We were so exhausted from all the fun that we didn’t get to it until right now – on the train with the loud stupid people.
Stay on the darn track jack – no, Frank said, it’s Jaques and he went to get me a …. Cocktail.

I didn’t even make it out of our car when a woman had her leg in the middle of the aisle and when I almost tripped looked at me like I was rude to her. Then I got into the middle car where the baggage is and my bag is just hanging out in the middle of the car like it’s unhappy with France and wants to go home. So I put it back and proceeded on my way to find every other car is sleeping but ours. Also I saw some teenagers curled up in on of the luggage racks and thought if I were 15 I would be doing the same thing, down with the establishment. I finally make it the beverage (the symbol was a wine glass which is how I knew how to find it but Andrea and I made up a new sign for it which is holding your hand in the air like your swirling the martini around). So in the beverage/food car there were clearly two ladies trying to pick men up. Welcome to France! Luckily I didn’t meet the description of anyone they were looking for so I was allowed to pass. I got us a box of Cookies (McDonald’s style but Frenchier and fancier) it also had a picture of an old lady on the package which means that old ladies in France as well as the US make lovely treats (but the ones in France wear bonnets). A “flapjack” which I thought Andrea would like and was very correct. Those snacks and two sodas were 9 euros. Yum…

We got off the eurostar rocket to Paris and stopped into a local McDonalds to sign on in the hopes of finding out where we were going. I assumed we needed to buy something to use their wireless (Wi-Fi pronounced weeee-feeee) services. After several minutes of my fra-nglish conversation combined with charades (while I acted out typing and repeated the words weee-fee, and internet far too many times to even appear polite). All of this excitement going on, only to find out that we needn’t have purchased the most awkward tasting milkshake ever, because Frank was upstairs already using their wee-fee services. My first official French conversation behind me, I was feeling more and more confident that worst case scenario, I could use charades to act out the stupid American I’ve always wanted to be.

We were off on our way to the Metro and figuring that future conversations, at worse, could only be filled with more charades. I love Europe already. We made it to the flat we were staying in and were thrilled to see that it was far lovelier than we would have anticipated. A full beautiful apartment in Paris all for Frank and me, sometimes we really end up somewhere great. We are very lucky.

We headed off to get a snack we found ourselves at a lovely patisserie where Frank had an éclair and I had “une grand chocolate”, I’m very international. Delicious delicious delicious! We stopped by the local grocery store to stock our fridge with breakfasty, frenchy snacks – including our first official baguette, a three dollar bottle of wine, and block of cheese. Delicious delicious delicious. We fashioned ourselves a mini dinner and then headed off to the Eiffel Tower. It is so much bigger and fancier in person then in any picture I’ve ever seen. But most importantly, it’s really freakin’ tall! I know that should be something we realized by seeing pictures or even by seeing it from the bottom, but until we were in the elevator heading up and my ears popped three times we really didn’t get it! Ridiculous! Soooo tall, and windy, and rainy, but don’t worry. More stories will come tomorrow because we were, lucky for you, not blown off the top of the Eiffel Tower!