14 Oct

Day 1 – Traveling to Paris

After saying goodbye to all of the fam on our British Isles Cruise, Ally and I were headed to Paris!

When we arrived at the bus station, I realized we had forgotten to print our train tickets when we arrived! Whoops!

Cell service was weak, so it took me a few minutes to look them up, but with some help from Stephen via text, we got them!

Our bus to our train wasn’t for a few hours, but they assured us taking an earlier one was no problem.

Waiting!

On the bus!

And at the train station.

When we arrived in London we tried to change our EuroStar tickets to an earlier time, but no luck there.

So we camped out and got some burgers.

Stephen sent a picture of he and Erin’s lunch:

He and Erin also apparently saw Arwin from Suite Life of Zac and Cody in front of them, so there was much excitement over the celebrity encounter. 

We sat in the restaurant and ate and read for a couple of hours.

Then we shopped a little, and then moved over to Starbucks to wait some more.

I also got my London Starbucks mug! 

Finally it was time!

We went through customs before we entered the train waiting area. The funny thing is, my computer decided we were in France after we went through customs and AOL changed everything to French!

Also amusing to note that AOL still thinks I’m in France and is still in French. I kind of like it, so I haven’t changed it back.

When it was our turn to board, we walked down to our assigned car. A conductor was waiting to take our tickets and he was about as friendly as could be. He told us where to put our bags, when dinner would come, and more.

And we’re on!

Chunnel, here we come!!

Ally was actually quite disappointed in the Chunnel. She was sure we would be under there for a very long time, but with other tunnels we went through it was hard to even tell which one was the Chunnel!
The train was super nice though!

I had a survival Kit Kat bar.

Ally had survival Skittles.

We had a choice for dinner and drinks.

And then we were finally in Paris! Eek! I had not been to Paris since I was young, and Ally had never been, so this was super exciting.

After we got off, we wandered for a little while looking for the correct Metro.

We finally found it with the help of our trusty Metro app. I cannot recommend those Metro/Tube apps enough when travelling abroad. Just plug in your desired destination and the app told you exactly how to get there.

We were so glad we only had small rolling bags on the metro!

Our hotel was a few blocks from the Eiffel Tower!

There she is!

The bed looked a little tempting, but we decided we needed to go see the Eiffel Tower!

I was silly and left my camera too. I thought I would have other chances to get good pictures of the Eiffel Tower. I did not. So fail.

We walked!

There it is! And where we would eat dinner!

Dude! There’s a ginormous soccer ball in the Eiffel Tower!

She’s just beautiful.

The European Championships were happening while we were in paris, so in addition to the soccer ball in the Eiffel Tower, there was soccer everywhere! There were so many packs of roving, chanting fans! It was a fun atmosphere though.

We decided to come back another day to go to the top (fail again), and went to find dinner.

We stopped at this great little pizza place.

They were showing soccer on the awning:

This bread was amazing.

After we ate, we walked back to the hotel, stopping in a couple of gift shops on the way, and went to bed!  

Disneyland Paris – Couldn’t Not go to Disneyland Paris! June 17-20, 2016 
Day 1 – Traveling to Paris 
Day 2 – Paris! 
Day 3 – Disneyland Paris! Finally!