Day 1 – Travel to Versailles

 Our European vacation started on Friday, Feb 14 2003 at 3:30pm because that’s when I left the office to go home since we had a 7:30pm international flight to London out of SFO.  I got home at 4pm and saw Brian, Henry, and Mags wandering outside like they lost a contact or maybe two cats?  So, the first I did was to help chase Bitch who thought we were playing hide-and-seek.  However, nothing worked until Mags broke out some really smelly food and Bitch came running to eat!  Fucker was just shy, so we grabbed him right away. 

 Anyways, we took off in Henry’s little Protégé to go to Tony’s house in San Mateo, so that he could give us a ride to the airport.  We barely managed to squeeze all of our North Face backpacks into the trunk.  Tony met us and drove us to SFO with plenty of time to spare and even had a chance to take picture of us.  We checked in and waited to board the plane.  In the meantime, Henry decided to buy some Johnny Walker to tide him over for the trip at the Duty-Free shop.

 After boarding the flight, British Airways had a delay for some reason, but we ended up on the runaway for like an hour.  (By the way, this seems to be a recurring theme for this airline, but how can we complain since we got $100 ROUND-TRIP tickets?)  Ok, you’re probably wondering what kind of seats we got for $100 tickets, right?  Well, actually, they turned out to be quite nice!  We got the Coach Plus seats which are actually an upgrade from the regular coach class – wider seats, more legroom, adjustable headrest, foot-rest, and leg-rest.  Everyone also gets their own personal LCD to watch movies or play games. 

 Anyways, we got lucky on this deal because there was a glitch on British Airway’s website in November 2002 for like 5 hours on a weeknight.  That’s when Maggie’s friend Nancy called to tell Maggie to buy the tickets for the trip.  Maggie was reluctant at first to buy even one ticket, but in retrospect, she should have bought 10 tickets like her friend.  (Man, we could have gone around the world for like only a few hundred bucks!) 

 The flight to London was so delayed that we missed our connecting flight to Paris, so we had to wait an hour for the next flight.  We went a café to eat and since I was being stupid, I thought all the prices looked pretty reasonable (ex. 7.95 for a breakfast).  So , I ordered a couple of items, since I was hungry.  Turned out that the prices were in British pounds, not dollars or Euros, and I ended up paying like $30 for lunch!  After lunch, we got on our flight and I slept through the entire flight to Paris. While waiting for our baggage, Maggie was making a remark how she hated this part of the trip because she never knows if her luggage will come out.  Turned out that ONLY her luggage got lost in London!  British Airways told Maggie that her luggage was coming on the next flight over, so we had to wait another hour.

 Finally, we got all of our luggage and we took a taxi from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Versailles.  Since our stupid hotel was in a cul-de-sac, we couldn’t find it at all despite wasting 20 min wandering around Versailles at night.  So, we went to Hotel Trianon (this is where Nancy was staying, very swanky place) which all taxi people seem to know, where we asked the concierge where our hotel was.  So, we put on our backpacks and hiked it back to our hotel, which turned out to be the EXACT place where we were when decided to go to Hotel Trianon.  We were staring right at our hotel, but the street name was wrong, so we thought it was the wrong hotel, but actually, the cul-de-sac had another street name, which was the address of the hotel.  Stupid us!  At least, check-in was pretty easy (Guess they don’t get that many Asians around there) and the triple we got was pretty roomy.

  

Day 2 – Touring Versailles

 We got up bright and early the next morning even though we all went to bed around midnight and decided to head out for breakfast.  We met up with Nancy and Jerry at their hotel (Hotel Trianon) and found a café around the corner.  Cost us 6.50 Euro each for our breakfast of 1 croissant, 1 baguette w/lots of butter, 1 glass of OJ and 1 cup of tea or coffee.  Dude, it was expensive, but dang the croissant was good!  The baguette was quite good too, except it had too much butter.  After breakfast, we walked over to the palace of Versailles which was right by our hotel.  Bought an all-day pass for like 14 Euros and started the Versailles tour.

We took way too many pictures of this place, so feel free to cruise right through.  Mostly we took pictures of the famous parts of the castles/palace and the exterior garden.  The place is huge!  In addition to the main palace, there are two smaller mansions that was used for hunting season and side resort.  We saw the Halls of Mirror, King’s bedroom, Dauphine’s bedroom, lots of square rooms, big hallways, guards room, and dining room, but no kitchen or bathroom.  Kinda odd how a place so big have no bathrooms.  Must suck for the king when he has to go really bad. 

Anyways, after a full day of walking and standing around looking at old stuff, my feet was tired and sore.  We quit early from Versailles and decided to check out the surrounding town instead.  After walking around aimlessly, we decided to try to take the bus around town, but as you can see from the pictures, we kinda got lost.  Afterwards, we chilled at the hotel and called Nancy (at her hotel) through our walkie-talkies and figured out where we’ll be headed for dinner.  We ate at restaurant where they specialized in beef.  We got the fixed menu dinner for like 25 Euros per person.  Unfortunately, each of us relied on the waiter to recommend stuff and he recommended the same thing to 4 of us.  That was dumb!  Although not much variety, the food was pretty good.  It was a good ending for a long day and we headed back to our hotel to rest up.  (on a side note, we didn’t book any rooms for this night or the next night, since we didn’t know what we were going to be doing.  Luckily, our hotel wasn’t very full.)

 

Day 3 – Touring Loire Valley, visiting chateaus

 Once again, we got up around 7ish and we headed out to get breakfast.  This time, we decided to go look for bakeries instead of cafés.  We found a bakery on the other side of town and it was so much cheaper for stuff!  0.8 Euro for a croissant or 1.25 Euro for like a whole 3 ft baguette!  We ordered crepes and lots of pastries and sat down in a café for coffee (French espresso) and tea because it was too dang cold to eat outside!  Oh, did I mention that the temperature here hovered around 0 degrees C during the day and wind-chill factor drops it down even lower!  At nights, it gets even colder, around –5 C or so.  So, the other people put on two layers of pants, but I decided that it was too bulky, so I just suffered with one layer.  (Next time, I’m going to wear thermals!)

 After breakfast, we hooked up with Nancy and Jerry and headed to the rental car place near Versailles main train station.  We had decided to go to the Loire Valley to check out some castles and the best way to do that was to drive.  So, Brian rented a Nissan Altema, a four-door hatchback, checked out of our hotel, and started driving.  Unfortunately, we got lost heading into Paris and had to fight traffic back out of Paris, so what should have taken 2 hours to drive, took us like almost 4 hours before we reached our first chateau (castle).  We exited somewhere in the Loire Valley and found a supermarket, the first one we’ve seen so far!  We bought stuff to make sandwiches and basically, had a picnic in the parking lot.  I was so hungry, I actually had pate on baguette for lunch.

 After lunch, we drove to Chambord, a famous castle in the Loire Valley.  It was famous for its enclosed (fenced-in) forest which was the largest of its kind ever built and also, the castle has always been a home to famous/powerful people like generals and nobility.  The rooms inside were huge and tall, but dude, it was really cold.  It also sported a dual spiral staircase (helical-shaped like DNA) running through the main keep.  After taking a whole bunch of pictures, we left Chambord to go to Cheaumonceaux, the river castle, but as the time went by, we realized that we weren’t going to make it before it closed, so we started stopping by every chateau on the way there and taking pictures.  Please take some time to listen to the voice annotations because I have no clue what any of the castles are called. 

 We reached Cheaumonceaux after dark, so we decided to stay in that town for the night.  Luckily, it wasn’t exactly tourist season, so the local 3-star hotel had rooms at only 48 Euros per night per room.  (We took 2 rooms)  We had dinner at a local restaurant across the street from out hotel.  At only 12-16 Euro, I thought this was the best-value meal that we had so far.  The food was actually quite tasty and to our liking.  Also, with the fireplace right behind us, it felt as if we were dining in the olden days.  It was a good meal and we went to bed right afterwards, since the town was pretty dead….almost too quiet, kind of like one of those scary movies situated at a small town. 

  

Day 4 – Traveling from Versailles to Amsterdam

 We woke up at 6AM for a departure around 6:30AM because we had to catch a train to Amsterdam and according to our research, the last train of the day leaves at 1PM.  So, we drove through the country-side, stopped by another supermarket for breakfast, where we got some really good ‘juice with milk’ drinks, and blazed down the expressway at 100MPH.  We made it back to the rental car place (Hertz) before 10AM and the guy charged us $115 for a one-day rental!  That’s crazy expensive and on top of that, we paid 40 Euros to fill up the little car and that was diesel, too!  (Refresher - $1.15 = 1 Euro)  We bought our train tickets to Paris and our high-speed train tickets to Amsterdam for $160/rt/per person!  (That’s more expensive than our plane tickets!)

 We made it to Paris du Nord train station by noon, where we bought baguette sandwiches for lunch.  Henry and I made the mistake of buying semi-raw lamb with brie baguette sandwich which literally made me gag, so we had to chuck that.  Luckily, we bought several sandwiches, so lunch wasn’t a total loss.  We finished lunch just in time for departure on Thalys high-speed train at 1PM.  The seats on the train was pretty nice, kinda like Southwest seats.  There was a mini-bar car where you can buy over-priced drinks.  (Did I mention that soft drinks here cost 3 Euros vs 1.5 Euros for coffee?  But if you buy them at the supermarket, they cost like 0.5 Euros. Crazy, huh?)  It took us about 4 hours to travel about 500 miles to Amsterdam with 3 stops in between.  On the brochure, it said that the train normally travels at about 300kph!  That’s like over 160MPH!    I think that’s the fastest I ever traveled on land.  We took video clips to show the speed.  Other than that, we just read novels or slept on the ride there.

 We arrived in Amsterdam around 5ish and immediately got lost because all the signs are in a foreign language, not French or English!  We wandered around a bit trying to figure out where to go to get our return trip ticket times changed.  An hour and 9 Euros later, we figured it out.  We went to the tourist center right outside of the train station and the salesperson convinced us to buy a 1-day Pass (24 Euros ea), which included most of the tourist attractions in Amsterdam.  We grabbed a cab who took us to our hotel (HEM Hotel Amsterdam).  During the ride, the cabbie was really pitching a strip/whore club and also giving us a history of Amsterdam too.  Yeah, unfortunately, we didn’t take him up on his offer because we were hungry and tired.

 We arrived at the hotel and found out that our room had two twins and a roll-away, but worse yet, was that the bed was super-soft (like a pillow) and the small heater isn’t working well.  (Did I mention that Amsterdam is COLDER than France?  Think Tahoe during a snowstorm!)  So, we decided to separate the mattress from the box spring, so that each of us has a bed to sleep on.  We walked over to the local trolley car stop and rode into one of the four squares in downtown Amsterdam that has restaurants.  We walked around in the freezing cold trying to figure out what to eat for like 10 min before we found this Dutch food restaurant.  The food turned out to be quite hearty, full of potatoes and sausages.  Only Brian managed to finish his plate of food, even though all of us were starving prior to dinner.  We finished dinner around 10PM and decided to wander around a bit. 

 We saw a Sex Museum and decided to take a look at it.  There were some pretty interesting facts about sex in there.  For example, it showed how the perception of ‘beautiful’ women have changed with time.   It showed the different garments that guys and girls wore and a variety of sex tools through the ages.  Anyways, after we exited that place, we continue to wander around Amsterdam because if we stopped moving, we believed that we’ll be frozen to the ground!  =)  So, one way or another, we managed to wander into the Red Light District where prostitutes sit behind a glass door that leads into a small room.  Each doorway has some kind of red light above it and if the curtain wasn’t pulled, then the girl would be sitting/standing there trying to get seduce you in her lingerie or other sexy clothing.  Although we didn’t take that many pictures of them (that’s kinda rude, I would think), the girls came in many different colors and sizes.  It was the BEST window-shopping experience I ever had! 

 We walked down the entire street and came across a Live Show bar.  The doorman outside was a very good salesman and convinced us to enter for 25 Euros and 2 free drink coupons each.  We went in and saw a girl finishing up her act of dancing naked while riding astride an audience participant.  Pretty cool, so we took a seat near the front.  Unfortunately, the next show came out and it was the Banana Show.  A HUGE black woman started to dance (ugh!…barf!!) and asked for audience participation.  Somehow, she focused on Brian and he got dragged on stage and when she asked for a 2^nd participant, Mags and I pointed to Henry, who steadfastly refused to go up.  This next part amazed me…..the lady came off the stage, grabbed Henry, and threw him on the stage!  Then she made them dance with her and started peeling a banana.  She put the banana on her crotch and told them to eat it!  Brian went first and took out half, then as Henry was going for it, the lady pushed his head all the way down!  Dude, I’ve never seen a head bob back up so fast!  I think Henry and Brian were seriously disgusted. HAHAHA!!  After that show, we saw a live fuck show where this guy and girl comes out and actually have sex on stage.  Although it sounds erotic, personally, it looked like a lot of work…..I mean, dude, the guy has to dance, stay hard, and have sex in front of an open audience!  The next show was about some writing show with this blonde girl.  After doing a little dancing and stripping, she came looking for a participant.  This time, we all pointed at Henry and he was actually pretty happy to go up.  Dude, the lady started stripping Henry on the stage and we all closed our eyes because we were afraid that we’re going to see “little Henry’!  Ok, I’m going to skip the next part and go straight to the ending which was that the stripper stuck a marker in her crotch and wrote on Henry’s chest.  (Please see picture)  After getting out of there at something past 2AM, we went back to the hotel by taxi and dropped right to bed.

  

Day 5 – Touring Amsterdam

We woke up around 9ish and got downstairs just in time for our free breakfast buffet that’s included with our room.  We packed our day packs and headed out to use our 1-day pass that we bought.  We headed to see the diamond cutters of Amsterdam where we got a tour on how diamonds are made.  Then they locked us in a room and showed us some really expensive diamonds.  One 5-carat diamond was worth almost $200K!  That’s the one that Mags had on her finger in one of the pictures.  They showed a variety ranging from 0.5 carat to 5.2 carat.  The 1.5 carat that Mags liked was worth $18K!  After that, we checked out Van Gogh’s Museum where we saw even more expensive paintings and sculptures.  We didn’t take too many pictures here because it was kinda boring to look at old paintings.  After hanging around the museum for almost 2 hours, we went to have lunch at some café, which had decent kabob food, and headed to the boat tours, which was part of our day pass.  The boat tour was supposedly pretty good, but I zonked out halfway through it because I was tired and the boat had this nice rocking motion.  Before I fell asleep, we saw Anne Frank’s house and went down a few major canals.  I remember the commentary telling us that one unique thing about Dutch housing is that they all have this crane at the top of each building.  This is used to move furniture and big items in or out of the buildings since the stairways for these building were super-narrow and steep.

After the relaxing 1-hour ride on the canal, we headed over to Anne Frank’s house because Mags really wanted to see it even though it wasn’t on our day pass.  Paid 7 Euros to see this girl’s rickety place.  Anyways, Anne Frank’s hide-out wasn’t so bad.  It was actually quite spacious and comfortable.  The only thing they didn’t have is a shower, but everyone got their own bed and somewhat of their own space.  (One thing that sucked about visiting museums in foreign countries is that the commentary/captions are not in English!)  At the end of the self-guided tour, there were these computer terminals running self-guided 3D program of Anne Frank’s house with captions in English!  I stood there for like an hour, reading up on stuff, while everyone else was in this big interactive theatre that asked questions to the audience and the audience responds by pushing these buttons in front of them. 

It was about 5PM by the time we go out of there and since we couldn’t decide on where to go, we went to the ‘big’ mall in Amsterdam.  It was actually rather small by our standards, but it was definitely bigger than all the little stores that’s along every street or street alleyway.  By now, we were all pretty tired, so we decided to head back to the hotel to rest up before dinner.  While the other three took a 2 hr nap, I chilled in the hotel’s lounge and read my novel.   By 8PM, I figured they had enough rest and besides, I was getting hungry, so I woke them up and we went to have unlimited baby-back ribs for like 18 Euros per person.  It wasn’t that good, but it was filling.  After dinner, we couldn’t decide on what to do, so we started wandering around again.  We walked around taking random night shots of the night-life and other architecture stuff.  Then we decided to head over to this certain square that Henry wanted to go and since no one had a better idea, we started walking. 

On our way there, Henry and Brian got thirsty, so they decided to duck into the next bar that advertised Amstel beer.  Leave it up to Henry to guide us right to the only gay bar in Amsterdam!  (Actually, I’m not sure how many there are, but dude, what’s the chances?)   I waited outside while they polished their beers in record time and in room-full of smoke.  We continued to walk, but we kinda got lost.  So, guess what?  We wandered right back into the Red Light District….gee, I wonder why that’s so?  =)  This time, we went down a side street and we saw a lot more chicks in the alleys in even tinier rooms!  We eventually found this strip bar where the entrance fee is 5 Euros, so we decided to go in.  Inside was basically two bars and 2 girls were dancing on the bigger bar.  The bartenders were female and topless as well!  Henry loved it!  He had like 6 beers!  After sitting around enjoying the show for a bit, each of decided to get a lap dance except for Henry, he was enjoying his beer too much.  Dude, the lap dance was pretty awesome!  Unlike the States, you can touch the girl all over and it only costs 10 Euros!  My girl was pretty cute with a nice butt.  Brian said that his was chunky and he didn’t like that.  However, Mags got a really nice dance, complete with whip cream!  You can ask her for the details. 

By 3AM, we were beat, so we wandered out.  On our way, I was damn curious how much the girls charge in the little rooms, so I went up to one with a British baby T-shirt.  I asked how much she charge and she said, “50 Euro for a suck-and-fuck.”  (I think I forgot to mention that people in Amsterdam speak English, although their written language is Dutch.)  Then I asked how much with no fuck, she said “50 Euro”.  Then she asked if I wanted to come in and stay a while.  I decided not to…..darn!  =)  But, dang…that’s pretty cheap!  I mean, in the States, you can’t even get 3 lap dances for that amount of money!  Anyways, we stopped by for some gyros and called it a night. 

  

Day 6 – Traveling from Amsterdam to Paris

We got up and out to the hotel’s dining room right before the breakfast buffet closed.  No one really got enough sleep considering that each of us got only 4-5 hours, but we’re cheap and we didn’t want to miss the free breakfast.  After checking out of the hotel, we hiked with our backpacks to the street cars to go visit the windmills since we had some time before our 1PM departure for Paris from the train station.  After walking around about 20min, we found the windmill museum.  We put our packs down for the tour, which gave us a history of why windmills were constructed and how it worked.  Did you know that most of Amsterdam is under sea-level?  I mean, they were under sea-level for the last few hundred years and they used windmills to help pump the water out from the ground, to a few feet higher where the next windmill does the same until it clears the dikes, which holds back the sea.  All the windmills are coordinated, so that each windmill’s canal doesn’t overflow.  We were shown the actual windmill that is powered by the wind, which in turns a rod that moves a shovel like apparatus that scoops up water and dumps it on the next level.  This particular windmill had just broken all of its gears, so it’s basically not operational.

By 11:45AM, we had to leave to walk back to the street car, ride it to the train station, and catch our 1PM train.  We made it with 15 min to spare, so we grabbed lunch which consisted of Pizza Hut, pastries, and sandwiches.  We ate on the train in one of the few rows that had a table.  The train ride was going well until some passengers got on at the next stop and this mommy-lady came over to my seat.  She rudely asked if that was my seat, but Brian answered from me and said no.  She then asked us to move so that they could sit.  Well, I was kinda peeved because:  a.  she was rude.  b.  I just got comfortable.  c.  I wasn’t even sure if those were her seats!  Anyways, we moved to our proper seats after looking at our tickets.  (I didn’t know we had assigned seats!  I thought it was like Southwest, grab the any seat you like.)  This rest of the train ride was uneventful as we were either reading or taking turns sleeping.

We arrived in Paris around 5:30ish and grabbed a taxi to our hotel, since once again, we couldn’t find the street where our hotel is suppose to be on.  Turns out our hotel is right next to a major street and it was just straight down from the train station about 17 blocks.  Due to traffic and stupid station fees, our fare came out to be around 25 Euros.  Anyways, after checking in to Citadines Apart'hotel Les Halles, which was right in the heart of Paris by the Sienne River, we found out the room was kind of small and there’s no way that we could stay 4 nights here comfortably.  I went to talk to the lobby people and they said that we would need to pay the difference between the 2-person suite (we tried to go cheap) and the 4-person suite.  After some haggling and some calculations, I realized that what I booked through Expedia was really cheap, so it was worth the upgrade since it turned out to be like 200 Euros per night for the 4-person suite.  We decided to go to dinner first and decide afterwards, since all of us were starving.  We ate at some diner around the corner which served some pretty nasty French-Mexican food.  We headed back to the hotel after dinner because all of us were pretty tired still.  We upgraded the room to the 4-person suite, which turned out to be pretty nice.  Henry & Brian got a room with 2 singles and Mags & I got a bedroom with a queen bed.  The suite came with its own little kitchen and separate toilet, which really helped speed things in the morning or evening.   I showered and fell right asleep, since I didn’t really sleep that much on the train.

  

Day 7 – Paris:  First day

 

Our first day in Paris!  Henry and Brian got up early to buy some baguettes and other pastries for breakfast.  We had breakfast in our suite’s kitchen and we got up and out the door by 9AM.  We wandered around by the Louvre for a little bit before we found a small café.  We ducked in and had our morning coffee which everyone else seem to love, but I just drank tea.  After that, we walked through Louvre's gardens, across the Siene River, to the Invalides, where Napoleon's grave is.  

We walked through Invalides' military museum which was quite extensive.  Lots of armor, medieval swords and other weapons.  It included basically most of France's military history from the 1700's through WWII.  Took us a while to walk through the entire place and by the time we finally got out, we were starving since it was like 1:30PM.  We walked around the area looking for a cafe to eat and we found this crowded one a few blocks away.  Turns out the place wasn't very good, just your basic tourist trap food.  Well, that's what we get for eating right next to the Invalides!  

After lunch, we walked to the Eiffel Tower, which was only a few blocks away.  Lots of pictures as well, but we didn't go up on the tower because the lines were way too long.  We continue to walk towards the Arc De Triomphe, crossing the Siene River, and walking by a big museum.  We decided to stop and rest at the Arc De Triomphe because Henry and Brian wanted to go take pictures from the top of the Arc.  Mags and I waited at the base because we were tired and it was like almost 4PM.  After some pretty nice shots of the huge turnabout around the Arc De Triomphe, we walked down one of the bigger streets that led into it.  We saw car dealerships, McDonalds, and big-name stores like Louis Vuitton.  We finally got tired and decided to call it a day and head back to our hotel.  We were going to walk it, but we decided to just take the subway.  (Subway is pretty cheap around Paris - 1.30 Euros takes you anywhere in Paris!)  We realized that our hotel is right by two very close subway stops because it was a major junction point.  That was pretty cool, except since it's a junction point, there's more than one exit and we keep getting lost.  =)

We went shopping at the Supermarche (Supermarket, though it's kinda small) and bought lots of drinks and more bottled water.  On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by a Internet cafe, where we sent some emails and chatted with a few people.  We didn't stay long because 5 Euro per 20 min.  Afterwards, everyone took a quick nap until 7ish.  We decided to go to a restaurant near the Arc De Triomphe, so Brian, Mags, and I went out to eat.  (Henry was too tired and lazy to get up)  We took the subway and wandered around the area where the restaurant is supposed to be, but it took us 20min to figure out where it was.  As we approached it, I saw a Rolls-Royce, BMW 745Li, Jaguar XKR, MB S500, and a bunch of other pretty expensive cars parked in front of it.  I was thinking, "uh oh....looks expensive!".  As we approached the door, it was opened by a uniformed doorman with a maitre'd in full tux waiting to greet us in the lobby of the restaurant.  We asked about the fixed menu, but they said it was Friday night, no fixed menu.  (We had a lot of these in France because the price usually includes a 3-5 course meal, taxes, and gratuity.  This place would have been 40 Euros.) We decided to leave because the regular menu is like 60-120 per entree and there's no way I'm paying for that.  Instead we had dinner at local restaurant chain that served American-like food.  It was decent food for a reasonable fixed price.  Not too impressed though.  Anyways, after dinner, we went back to the hotel to get some much-needed rest.

 

 

Day 8 – Paris:  Second day

This is the first day that our group decided to split up, so that each group can do their own thing.  (In case you're wondering how to differentiate the pictures, any pic with initials 'HC' or 'BC' are either Brian or Henry's pics.  Pictures without initials are my pics.)  I think Brian and Henry took off about an hour earlier than we did.  We got up at a leisurely 9AM and went out for breakfast by 10AM.  We decided to just head over to Notre Dame Cathedral and see what could find on the way there.  We reached Notre Dame after a short 15 min walk from our hotel and didn't find anything good to eat.  We checked out the cathedral and took a whole bunch of pics of the flying buttresses.  Then Mags decided to wait in line to go to the top of the cathedral.  

Since there's a limit of only 25 people allowed to go up to the top of the cathedral at a time, the wait was quite long.  We waited in line for more than an hour, paid 7 Euros each and climbed like 400 steps to get to the top of the tower.  (Be sure to look at the movie clips) We saw the big bell that supposedly the Hunchback of Notre Dame would ring, but they said that the bell is so huge and heavy, that it would very unlikely that anyone could ring it by themselves. After Notre Dame, we took the subway to go to Sacre-Couer, another stately cathedral, which also happens to be the highest point in Paris.  Since Sacre-Couer is near the northern border of Paris, the atmosphere is different.  We found a bakery almost right away and bought a ton of pastries since we were kind of hungry.  We started munch on a strawberry tart as we walked up the long steep steps up to Sacre-Couer.  The view from there was beautiful and also very touristy.  A whole bunch of people were sitting around just enjoying the view since the actualy building was sacred, so you can talk or take pictures in there.  Afterwards, we walked down to go the restaurant that we planned on going.  However, after walking for about 40 min, we couldn't find the place, we decided to just walk towards the main shopping area to eat since I was starving.  Just when we reached the Y intersection of the shopping area, we found the restaurant we were looking for, ....BUT it was no longer serving lunch since it was like 3pm already and it won't open back up until 6pm for dinner.  

So, we wandered around a bit more and finally ducked into a deli/cafe shop and had our lunch of sandwich and something I can't remember.  It was decent food and at least I wasn't hungry anymore.  We continued walking around and realized where we were!  We found the area with all the strip clubs and sex shops are!  We checked out a Sex Supermarket where they have shopping carts for you to shop with, magazine stores, and video stores.  Man, Europeans have a wide selection of stuff there and they're all kinda pricey!  As we were walking along the street, we saw this guy who was doing the card gambling thing where you have to guess which card that he is moving around is marked.  I stood and watched for a bit.  This guy betted 50 Euro that he can guess where it is and he got it right, the card guy gave him 50 Euro.  Dude, I almost bought into it until I realized that the same guy kept walking around and gambling every once in a while.  Looks like con artists to me.  After that, we took the subway back to the hotel to rest up a bit prior to heading out to dinner.

Dinner was at this fancy restaurant with Nancy & Jerry.  Nancy had made reservations for us, but I think we got there a little early and had to loiter outside while we waited for them.  After a while, we decided to just get seated because the people inside was starting to look at us funny.  Dinner was reasonably priced at 40 Euro for a 3-course meal per person.  However, since this place specialized in seafood and I didn't like seafood that much, the meal was rather mediocre to me.  The dessert I got was really good though and I think everyone else liked their dishes much more than I did.  Oh and yes, I was really tired during the meal and I fell asleep.  (Sorry, guys!)  Afterwards, we said good-bye to Nancy & Jerry (since they're headed back to USA the next morning) and headed back to the hotel and went to sleep since we were all pretty tired from day's walking.

 

Day 9 – Paris:  Third day

By this morning, Mags and I decided to be lazy and sleep in a bit because we definitely have been doing too much running around.  So, we got up and went to the local bakery to grab a bite to eat and some coffee.  Then we headed to the Louvre and took a whole bunch of pics in the courtyard of the Louvre.  We went in and checked out the a small section of the Louvre, which is pretty much the route heading towards the Mona Lisa.  However, before we go to the Mona Lisa, we stopped and had lunch in a cafe inside the museum.  The food turned out to be quite decent actually, nothing like museum food here.  We went around, saw the Mona Lisa and swung around back to the entrance.  The museum is so huge, it took us about 30 min to just walk out of the place.   By the time we got out, it was like 2ish pm.  We started walking back to the hotel, but we got side-tracked by more bakeries.  We stopped and grabbed some chinese dumplings and then a French bakery.  We spent another 15-20 Euros there, buying almost any kind of pastry that we couldn't find in the US.  

Afterwards, we stop by a park and ate some of the pastry.  And while I was eating my pastry, I accidentally dropped our camera onto the packed dirt in the park.  Our C-700 got a small scratch on the lens since I didn't cover it while I was taking pictures of the pastry.  Mags got kinda pissed at me, but it wasn't my fault that I had to hold everything!  After filling up on pastries and feeling a little queasy, we headed back to the hotel, which was right around the corner.  Mags decided to take a nap, while I stayed up and read my novel.

About around 4:30ish, I woke her up and asked her what she wanted to do.  She decided that we should go the flea market past Montmarte, so we can look for my Doc Martins shoes. (I have a pair of square-toe boots that needs to be replaced soon)  Since we have no clue had to get anywhere, we went downstairs to ask for directions.  The front desk person also informed me that I had a balance on my account, so I paid for the rooms (everyone is paying me back later, no, I'm not treating), so that our check-out tomorrow would be faster.  We jumped on the subway and headed to the flea market which turned out to be much easier to find than I thought.  We went several shoe places, but no one had the Docs that I wanted. Still, looking, Mags got distracted by a leather shop.  The vendor guy is like totally nice nice and was helping Mags pick out a new leather jacket.  After 15 min, the guy brought out the exact jacket that Mags was looking for and she pretty much showed it too, ruining any good bargaining power that I had.  The guy wanted 240 Euro for it, but after some bargaining, it dropped to 160 Euro.  I decided that it wasn't worth it and told Mags to leave.  

We walked around the flea market some more, but it was near closing time (6pm), so everyone was packing up and heading home.  In the meantime, Mags was sulking because she didn't get to buy her jacket, so I said, let's go back and see what we can do.  We headed back there and he was just starting to close up.  He saw us and directed her right to the jacket.  We started haggling again, but after 10min of haggling, he was adamant of 140 Euros and would take nothing less.  (I was offering 125 Euros and said that's all we got)  So, somehow, I managed to 'find' another 15 Euro and voila, Mags got her jacket.  The dude even took a picture with us.  He was a good sales guy because even after the sale, he was modest and praised how good of a shopper we were, but without going overboard in compliments. 

With little happy Mags and her jacket, we headed back to the hotel to drop off our stuff.  On the way back, we dropped by the supermarket and bought a whole bunch of food items like coffee and other French items.  After putting down the stuff in the hotel room, we decided to head back out to get a river tour.  (In case you're wondering where Henry and Brian was, they were off having Greek gyros and doing their own thing)  We went to a river tour company by the Eiffel Tower and tried to get on the 8:30pm boat, but right before we got there, they had a power outage and so, they couldn't sell tickets.  We waited around, hoping they would come back up, but no power.  Then several buses pulled up and started unloading people and they started walking through because they got tickets from their tour guide.  After all the people were in line, we approached the tour guide lady and asked her if we could buy a couple tickets off of her.  She said she couldn't, but she could give 2 tickets to us for free!  So, we got on board the 9pm river tour  FREE!

The river tour was pretty, but we been to most of the places of interest already and it was freezing.  I think I fell asleep halfway through the one-hour tour.  After we got back from the tour, we started looking for a place to eat, so we walked around the Eiffel Tower area, kind of getting ourselves lost a bit.  Since it was past 10pm, very few places were open still on a Sunday night. However, we got lucky and found this Thai-Chinese place.  Wow!  I didn't realize how much I was craving Asian food!  I still thought that was one of my best meals in Europe. After dinner, we found that the subway was right around the corner and jumped on that to head back to the hotel.  We got back near midnight, starting packing all our stuff and went to bed ASAP.

 

Day 10 – Traveling home from Paris