the trip!
this is probably gonna be a long one, so if you don't wanna hear about my trip, just don't read it :P
friday (the 30th) we got up at 6, showered, and headed to uncle steve's so he could drive us to the airport. me and alexa were pretty tired since we stayed up til like 3, but you'll have that... we had to wait a couple hours for our flight to newark so we kinda bummed around the airport. we had a 5 hour layover from newark to paris so me and alexa tried sleeping in chairs at the airport but that wasn't very easy since they all had armrests... i think my dad took some pretty funny pictures of us trying though! haha
the flight over wasn't too bad, i think it was about 6 1/2 hours.. but it was rough because we landed around 1am our time, which was 7am in paris.. so we skipped the entire time we would have been sleeping. so we got to the airport and got our bags, then tried finding a payphone to call nikki... but we couldn't figure out the phones (doesn't help that none of us speak french except alexa's one year of high school) and had to buy a phone card which didn't work.. lol. then we had to figure out how to get metro tickets which was another adventure... but 3 hours later we got to the street our apartment was on and we saw nikki standing on that corner so we searched for the apartment... it was funny because my suitcase is kinda oddly shaped and kept tipping over.. lol
so we get to the apartment and my dad has to head back to the airport to find sandra who was flying in from portugal. we were running really late and he didn't get there on time and ended up on the wrong metro.. so she got to the apartment and was like where is your dad? haha... he found his way back after a while but it was pretty stressful since our phones didn't work over there.
we didn't really do much else that day, but we did see the eiffel tower for the first of about 5 times that trip :P
on sunday we got up and headed to the museums because they're free the first sunday of every month. we went to the louvre first which was really beautiful but frustrating because there were so many people there! we only went through a little bit of it since it's so huge, but we saw the mona lisa and stuff. then we went to the pompadu (i don't know how you spell it, but it's a sweet modern art place) and on our way there we saw this guy laying out by the Sen (i dont know how to spell that either) river in a thong haha... so we have some funny pictures of him! but the pompadu was really awesome too!! i have like 500 pictures so i'm gonna put some on facebook soon if anyone wants to see them.
after the museums we went to the sex district to see the moulin rouge, and we ate at an irish pub.. and alexa tripped and fell into these other people's table... HAHA... it was reaaaaally funny!
we saw so much other stuff while we were in paris... mon martre, the arc de triumph, notre dame, another church, versailles, the catacombs, the really big cemetary where jim morrison is buried, the eiffel tower, and probably about a billion other things that i can't remember! french people in generally are pretty mean though, not to mention how bad half of them smell. lol it's weird to think that we're one of the only countries in the world where people shower regularly. i guess it's being really ethnocentric to criticize other people for smelling like B.O. but when you aren't used to it it's pretty bad! haha
french food is pretty good--they don't have everything we have over here, and the prices are really high. you have to pay for water (and most bathrooms! ah!) which i found really odd... i think that if you're thirsty, you should get free water. lol
our apartment was also REALLY REALLY nice. my dad must have spent a ton of money on the place.. it was in paris, i think an artist lived there.. but her place had 2 big bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, 2 stories... it was just unbelievable. and you could see the eiffel tower from one side... i can't imagine how much it would cost to live there, but it was really nice for a week!!!
we went to a bar the night france played portugal in the world cup, because we thought it would be exciting and sandra is from portugal. portugal lost though, which was kinda sad, but it was an experience to hear all the french people yelling and stuff! haha
saturday morning (i think) we woke up really early and took the metro to the train station and took a 6 hour trip to heidelberg, germany... it was soo pretty! it took us a few hours to figure out where our hotel was, and we realized it wasn't even IN heidelberg, so we had to wait a while for another train and then we had to carry our bags around this other town til we found the hotel... i'm just glad i didn't pack too much shit! my stupid suitcase kept tipping again though, and my dad's had a wheel melt. lol we asked the guy at the hotel where we should eat to watch the germany/portugal game but apparently there weren't any good german restaurants there.. only italian, greek, and chinese. so we went to this italian place, but they had some german food anyway. i got this stuff called weiner-schnitzel (or something like that) which was actually really good!
the next morning we got up early and took our last shower of the trip (which sucked, since i shower so often haha) and hauled our stuff to the train station again, where we put it in big lockers for the day. then we waited for a bus to take us to the castle in heidelberg which was absolutely gorgeous!! i never realized how pretty germany was- i guess south germany (where we were) is a lot better than northern germany. when we were done w/ that we ate lunch a little place outside and they had these sweet blue-glass waterbottles so me and sandra both stole one... hahaha. we walked around the town for a few more hours before we went somewhere to get a drink and stuff since we were so tired... then we walked around some more and walked back to the train station to watch the final world cup game!
the people in germany are soooo much nicer than french people... even though i couldn't understand anything they were saying. not that i can understand any french either, but at least nikki can understand most of it. lol
we realized there was no where to eat near the train station except mcdonalds so we ended up going to a hotel bar and eating peanuts and soup during the game with a bunch of british guys. haha. italy won, which was pretty sweet, although i bought this france jersey of the guy who headbutted the italian guy.. HAHA. now i'm gonna laugh everytime i wear it!
we were hungry so we got snacks at mcdonalds after the game and got on our train @ midnight... it was an overnight train so there are tiny tiny little rooms with six beds in them.. like 3 beds on top of one another kinda like bunk beds. the rooms are so small that you can barely fit a suitcase between the beds on the floor. i actually slept a little, which was good because we still had a while til we got home. at 7am we got to paris where we hauled our stuff to the metro that took us to the airport. we said goodbye to sandra, which was sad because i got used to her being there all the time.. then we got on the plane at 10 and it landed at noon our time, so it was 8 hours. i kinda dozed off at one point and had this dream that i was playing soccer and i kicked alexa in the ankle.. HAHAHA.. i gave up on the sleeping after that :P
we landed @ noon in newark and then got our bags and some food and our plane to cleveland left @ 2:30... we landed at like 4 and waited til 6 for aunt sue to pick us up... so by that time it was midnight paris time, so we'd been travelling for 24 hours... we got home at about 8, and me and alexa slept for about 12 hours haha
i'm still not adjusted to the time change.. i got up super-early this morning even though i'm tired, but i should be back to normal in a couple days :P
ok sorry for the really really long entry... can't wait to hang out with everyone again since i'm home! :)
friday (the 30th) we got up at 6, showered, and headed to uncle steve's so he could drive us to the airport. me and alexa were pretty tired since we stayed up til like 3, but you'll have that... we had to wait a couple hours for our flight to newark so we kinda bummed around the airport. we had a 5 hour layover from newark to paris so me and alexa tried sleeping in chairs at the airport but that wasn't very easy since they all had armrests... i think my dad took some pretty funny pictures of us trying though! haha
the flight over wasn't too bad, i think it was about 6 1/2 hours.. but it was rough because we landed around 1am our time, which was 7am in paris.. so we skipped the entire time we would have been sleeping. so we got to the airport and got our bags, then tried finding a payphone to call nikki... but we couldn't figure out the phones (doesn't help that none of us speak french except alexa's one year of high school) and had to buy a phone card which didn't work.. lol. then we had to figure out how to get metro tickets which was another adventure... but 3 hours later we got to the street our apartment was on and we saw nikki standing on that corner so we searched for the apartment... it was funny because my suitcase is kinda oddly shaped and kept tipping over.. lol
so we get to the apartment and my dad has to head back to the airport to find sandra who was flying in from portugal. we were running really late and he didn't get there on time and ended up on the wrong metro.. so she got to the apartment and was like where is your dad? haha... he found his way back after a while but it was pretty stressful since our phones didn't work over there.
we didn't really do much else that day, but we did see the eiffel tower for the first of about 5 times that trip :P
on sunday we got up and headed to the museums because they're free the first sunday of every month. we went to the louvre first which was really beautiful but frustrating because there were so many people there! we only went through a little bit of it since it's so huge, but we saw the mona lisa and stuff. then we went to the pompadu (i don't know how you spell it, but it's a sweet modern art place) and on our way there we saw this guy laying out by the Sen (i dont know how to spell that either) river in a thong haha... so we have some funny pictures of him! but the pompadu was really awesome too!! i have like 500 pictures so i'm gonna put some on facebook soon if anyone wants to see them.
after the museums we went to the sex district to see the moulin rouge, and we ate at an irish pub.. and alexa tripped and fell into these other people's table... HAHA... it was reaaaaally funny!
we saw so much other stuff while we were in paris... mon martre, the arc de triumph, notre dame, another church, versailles, the catacombs, the really big cemetary where jim morrison is buried, the eiffel tower, and probably about a billion other things that i can't remember! french people in generally are pretty mean though, not to mention how bad half of them smell. lol it's weird to think that we're one of the only countries in the world where people shower regularly. i guess it's being really ethnocentric to criticize other people for smelling like B.O. but when you aren't used to it it's pretty bad! haha
french food is pretty good--they don't have everything we have over here, and the prices are really high. you have to pay for water (and most bathrooms! ah!) which i found really odd... i think that if you're thirsty, you should get free water. lol
our apartment was also REALLY REALLY nice. my dad must have spent a ton of money on the place.. it was in paris, i think an artist lived there.. but her place had 2 big bathrooms, 4 bedrooms, 2 stories... it was just unbelievable. and you could see the eiffel tower from one side... i can't imagine how much it would cost to live there, but it was really nice for a week!!!
we went to a bar the night france played portugal in the world cup, because we thought it would be exciting and sandra is from portugal. portugal lost though, which was kinda sad, but it was an experience to hear all the french people yelling and stuff! haha
saturday morning (i think) we woke up really early and took the metro to the train station and took a 6 hour trip to heidelberg, germany... it was soo pretty! it took us a few hours to figure out where our hotel was, and we realized it wasn't even IN heidelberg, so we had to wait a while for another train and then we had to carry our bags around this other town til we found the hotel... i'm just glad i didn't pack too much shit! my stupid suitcase kept tipping again though, and my dad's had a wheel melt. lol we asked the guy at the hotel where we should eat to watch the germany/portugal game but apparently there weren't any good german restaurants there.. only italian, greek, and chinese. so we went to this italian place, but they had some german food anyway. i got this stuff called weiner-schnitzel (or something like that) which was actually really good!
the next morning we got up early and took our last shower of the trip (which sucked, since i shower so often haha) and hauled our stuff to the train station again, where we put it in big lockers for the day. then we waited for a bus to take us to the castle in heidelberg which was absolutely gorgeous!! i never realized how pretty germany was- i guess south germany (where we were) is a lot better than northern germany. when we were done w/ that we ate lunch a little place outside and they had these sweet blue-glass waterbottles so me and sandra both stole one... hahaha. we walked around the town for a few more hours before we went somewhere to get a drink and stuff since we were so tired... then we walked around some more and walked back to the train station to watch the final world cup game!
the people in germany are soooo much nicer than french people... even though i couldn't understand anything they were saying. not that i can understand any french either, but at least nikki can understand most of it. lol
we realized there was no where to eat near the train station except mcdonalds so we ended up going to a hotel bar and eating peanuts and soup during the game with a bunch of british guys. haha. italy won, which was pretty sweet, although i bought this france jersey of the guy who headbutted the italian guy.. HAHA. now i'm gonna laugh everytime i wear it!
we were hungry so we got snacks at mcdonalds after the game and got on our train @ midnight... it was an overnight train so there are tiny tiny little rooms with six beds in them.. like 3 beds on top of one another kinda like bunk beds. the rooms are so small that you can barely fit a suitcase between the beds on the floor. i actually slept a little, which was good because we still had a while til we got home. at 7am we got to paris where we hauled our stuff to the metro that took us to the airport. we said goodbye to sandra, which was sad because i got used to her being there all the time.. then we got on the plane at 10 and it landed at noon our time, so it was 8 hours. i kinda dozed off at one point and had this dream that i was playing soccer and i kicked alexa in the ankle.. HAHAHA.. i gave up on the sleeping after that :P
we landed @ noon in newark and then got our bags and some food and our plane to cleveland left @ 2:30... we landed at like 4 and waited til 6 for aunt sue to pick us up... so by that time it was midnight paris time, so we'd been travelling for 24 hours... we got home at about 8, and me and alexa slept for about 12 hours haha
i'm still not adjusted to the time change.. i got up super-early this morning even though i'm tired, but i should be back to normal in a couple days :P
ok sorry for the really really long entry... can't wait to hang out with everyone again since i'm home! :)