What We Learned in Paris...

1. If at first you are intimidated by being dropped off by a bus in a foreign country that you don't know the language for, don't worry! After about 20 minutes of wandering around lost and feeling rather hopeless, you will soon figure out the metro system.

2. If you get off the metro or the elevator 1 stop too soon, it will be a bit of a wait till the next one comes along.

3. Pastries bought and carried around in a bag still taste good 3 hours later.

4. Pastries from France are good in general.

5. The Eiffel tower is beautiful in the day- breathtaking at night!

6. The elevator ride up the Eiffel Tower is really scary. (and I can ride any roller coaster with the best of them)
7. Going up 4 flights of spiral stairs to get to your hotel room will make you dizzy.

8. Beware the Africans!! They are ruthless, avoid at all costs!

9. The free walking tour is great, and very informative.

10. When already suffering from jet lag, moving farther east into a different time zone doesn't help.

11.The view of the city from the Sacre Coeur is well worth the many stairs you have to climb to get up to it (and the scary Africans encountered)
12. Don't walk the streets around the Moulin Rougue! Just take a picture and go back down the metro.

13. According to our tour guide: if you were to look at every piece of art in the Louvre for 30 seconds, it would take you 4 months to get through, that is with no breaks to eat or sleep and such. And that is just the pieces on display, there are also many many in the basement.

14. The metro is not for those who value their personal space.

15. Notre Dame is amazing.

16. The French hated the Eiffel Tower when it was first built, and it was only supposed to stand for 20 years. Now I bet they would never let anyone mess with their tower.

17. According to our tour guide the French consider you uncultured if you get excited about things and they are not necessarily rude, just stressed out. They never smile.

18. There is a lot of graffiti anywhere there is not a national monument or historic building. It is nice not to speak French so you don't know what all of the graffiti says.

19. It costs over 4000 euro to light up the Eiffel Tower each night.

20. Paris is beautiful!!!

About to go up the Eiffel Tower.

The view from the Eiffel Tower.

Notre Dame

The chocolate turtle on the shelf is over $350. I bet he is worth every dollar:-)On the right the wall is a chocolate fountain. Below is our favorite breakfast stop. I love this picture! That was in the Shannon airport before we left. We were two among a sea of soldiers.

We had a great time in Paris, besides all of the grafitti, it really is a beautiful city. It was so fun to hear all the history and there were tons of fun sites and museums to see. We wish you all could have come with us. We are now safely back in Galway, and I went to my five hour orientation today. AHHH it was so long and the whole time we could see the sun shining outside while we were stuck inside. The worst thing is we didn't even get registered yet, but I did meet some of the other students, so that was one good thing. I am excited to start school on Monday. The class schedules are strange here though, you will have a class on Monday at say 10:00, and then on Wednesday you will have the same class at 3:00. Hopefully I can keep it all straight, otherwise I will probably be missing classes here and there. Hopefully the weather is nice tomorrow because I want to do some hiking.