Day 1: Welcome to Paris
Rose: Hearing, seeing, and tasting French after years of dreaming about it! Also, riding the Eurostar from London to Paris.
Thorn: It rained cats and dogs when we arrived.
After saying good-bye to the Lime Tree Hotel with a wonderful breakfast (the BEST porridge ever - I have been trying to recreate the recipe ever since I had it!), we rode a cab to St. Pancras station, where we went through security and customs before boarding the Eurostar. Shortly after boarding, we were off. . . at outrageous speeds of 288 km/hr! It was a very smooth ride, and since we were seated in "Standard Premium," we were served a refreshing cold lunch. Unfortunately, the scenery was fairly anti-climatic due to rain, fog, and lots of flat land, cattle, and graffiti. I did not even realize we were in the "Chunnel" when we were - it was just all black! I tried to study up on my French along the ride, and despite a short stop along the tracks, we arrived at Paris' Gare du Nord at approximately 3:10 P.M.
Thankfully we were blessed with an English speaking taxi driver on our ride from Gare du Nord to Hotel B Montmarte. I didn't have to say much more than "Bonjour" before we started talking about the United States in English. Despite the rain, we were excited to be in Paris! At 5:00 P.M. we had our orientation meeting and got to mingle with our fellow travelers for the first time. We also were acquainted with our tour itinerary, the French culture and language, our tour guide, Graeme, and most importantly the Rick Steves traveling philosophy! At this time we chose tour buddies and discussed practicalities as well.
The next part of our evening was when the excitement began! We completed a neighborhood orientation walk and ate dinner together at "La Bonne Heure." Conversation flowed freely as we wined and dined with phenomenal French cuisine and got to know our fellow tour members.
Thorn: It rained cats and dogs when we arrived.
After saying good-bye to the Lime Tree Hotel with a wonderful breakfast (the BEST porridge ever - I have been trying to recreate the recipe ever since I had it!), we rode a cab to St. Pancras station, where we went through security and customs before boarding the Eurostar. Shortly after boarding, we were off. . . at outrageous speeds of 288 km/hr! It was a very smooth ride, and since we were seated in "Standard Premium," we were served a refreshing cold lunch. Unfortunately, the scenery was fairly anti-climatic due to rain, fog, and lots of flat land, cattle, and graffiti. I did not even realize we were in the "Chunnel" when we were - it was just all black! I tried to study up on my French along the ride, and despite a short stop along the tracks, we arrived at Paris' Gare du Nord at approximately 3:10 P.M.
Thankfully we were blessed with an English speaking taxi driver on our ride from Gare du Nord to Hotel B Montmarte. I didn't have to say much more than "Bonjour" before we started talking about the United States in English. Despite the rain, we were excited to be in Paris! At 5:00 P.M. we had our orientation meeting and got to mingle with our fellow travelers for the first time. We also were acquainted with our tour itinerary, the French culture and language, our tour guide, Graeme, and most importantly the Rick Steves traveling philosophy! At this time we chose tour buddies and discussed practicalities as well.
The next part of our evening was when the excitement began! We completed a neighborhood orientation walk and ate dinner together at "La Bonne Heure." Conversation flowed freely as we wined and dined with phenomenal French cuisine and got to know our fellow tour members.