Day Sixteen - Paris, France

Day Sixteen – Paris, France

Today was our last day in London! Well it doesn’t even really count as a day in London because we spent the entire morning in Kings Cross Station before we headed to Paris. For those Harry Potter fans out there, yes that is where the “Platform 9 ¾” is and we saw the buggy in the wall where they go to Hogwarts J I’m not a Harry Potter fan myself but it was still really cool to see where they filmed parts of it!!

We had quite the experience in the station. Let me just tell you…

We had to check out of our hostel (and that hostel was an inexperience in and of itself…message me if you want the dirty details on that :P haha jk) by 10 but our train didn’t leave until 2 and it was just a couple blocks down the road so we had lots of extra time to hang out in the station.

What did I do first? Starbucks of course. Let me describe this experience to you. First of all, they didn’t take my Starbucks card. Rude. Then, somehow my order for a tall iced coffee with cream and sugar and one pump of mocha (the usual….the people at the Berry and Rome Starbucks know my order…sorry bout it) turned into a tall iced Americano with cold milk and two pumps of chocolate. That was one nasty mix let me tell you. Apparently they don’t use cream in Europe…add that to the list of ways to spot Americans….and mocha equals chocolate there. So just don’t order that drink is the moral of this story.

Then, we were pretty hungry so we need some Pret. Oh what’s Pret, you may ask? It’s what we call our new favorite restaurant, which we’ve only found in London at this point: Pret a Manger. What that means I have absolutely no idea but it is a piece of heaven. It is literally on every corner…sometimes 2 or 3 on one block and now I know why.  It’s basically the English version of Panera (Morgan and Anna we can go there all the time when we go to London together of course :P). It’s really inexpensive and really amazing. We all ate there a million times…it was seriously heavenly. I’m opening a Pret in the States I’ve decided. Next Enterprise, let’s go.

Well after that delicious lunch I remembered that I wanted to type stuff on my computer while we were on the train but my computer was dead so I needed an outlet to charge it while we were waiting in the station. I went and asked the information desk where outlets were (which would be commonplace in an American train station) and he acted like I was crazy…didn’t even know what I meant when I asked for outlets. He told me to go across the street to the post office to charge my computer. That seemed strange to me but so did a lot of things at this point so I was like whatever and I dragged Caitlin over there with me since she had to ship home some clothes anyways. 

What another ordeal. They didn’t have any outlets in the post office – so I don’t know why the train man told me that – but I convinced the man at the counter to let me charge my laptop behind the counter for 30 minutes for one pound haha…sketchy. But he didn’t steal it. Phew.

So in the mean time, it takes Caitlin a solid 40 minutes to figure out how to box her stuff up and ship it home. In her words, “what should’ve been the simplest process in the world turned into the biggest headache.”  It not only took her 40 minutes, but it cost her about $150. Wow. Thanks England. Ask her for more details it’s funny haha.

So anyways, we finally got on the train which goes through the “Chunnel” which is a tunnel through the English Channel and we made our way to Paris!!

After setting into our hostel (which is much better than the last one thank goodness!), most of us went out to see the Arc de Triomphe which is a memorial to the French soldiers from old wars…underneath this monument is where their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is.  We saw a beautiful sunset and a magnificent rainbow right behind the Arc. Why does this monument remind me of Passport to Paris? (shout out to my MaryKate and Ashley fans out there)

Then after that, we went to see the Eiffel Tower at night and we got to see it do it’s magical sparkly thing at 10 o clock!! The video will describe it best J I’ve dreamed of going to the Eiffel Tower my whole life (Mom and Dad I know you’ll laugh at this haha) and it was so awesome to finally see it!! We walked around the Seine River for a little while, Marley and I got some great chocolate ice cream, then we called it a night.

More Paris adventures to come later!!!! Until next time,

MC