Early the morning of our third day in Europe, we jumped on the Eurostar at 5:40am to Paris with roughly only four hours of sleep under our belts. Luckily, our hotel was literally a two minute walk from the St. Pancras International Station. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have made it. Good thing I have Robby as my personal alarm clock. He does such a good job at waking me up even though he admits that he's scared to wake me in the morning because he always feels like I'm mad at him. Haha! He's probably right. After we checked in at the station, we wanted to look for Platform 9 and 3/4 from Harry Potter, but we didn't have enough time to spare.
The Eurostar has definitely been the most comfortable train so far. I didn't want the two and a half hour ride to be over.
We waited in line to buy a three day metro pass once we arrived in Paris. The entire time we were in line I was debating whether or not I should talk to the ticket person in French. I finally chickened out and decided to go with English, but Robby convinced me otherwise. Honestly, being in Paris has been my first opportunity to use the French language since learning it in school six years ago. Feeling nervous and uncoordinated was an understatement.
After the tickets were bought and the map was studied, we got on line 6 to Sevres-Lecourbe. Turns out our hotel in Paris was only a two minute walk from the metro station too! We were so glad we didn't have to lug our backpacks around for too long. While we waited to check in, we ate lunch at this cute little crepe place across the street. Robby chose a savory ham and cheese crepe and a sweet banana and nutella crepe with coconut flake for dessert.
Welcome to our tiny, little, traveling-on-a-budget hotel room! It must have been comfortable for us though, because I'm ashamed to say that we decided to take a short nap that turned into a six-hour slumber. We shot out of bed at around 7pm and were shocked at what time it was. We were so bummed that we wasted half a day in Paris, but we caught up on some very much needed sleep.
Arc de Triomphe was one of the closer attractions to our hotel and I figured it would look gorgeous at sunset, so we headed in that direction.
We were excited to have a clear view of the Eiffel Tower from on top the Arc de Triomphe.
As we were leaving the Arc, we asked a couple of police officers if there were any good, reasonably-priced restaurants in the area. They told us that everything in the area is really expensive. Disappointed, we walked towards the metro station ready to go somewhere else when we happened upon a little restaurant right on the sidewalk with a grand view of the Arc. We checked their menu and were happy to find that each dish was under 10 euros. I had a carpaccio de boeuf with olive oil, basil, parmesan, and artichoke (my new favorite thing) and Robby ordered a pizza loaded with just about everything.
We ate, talked, laughed, and watched the view until we were the last ones left. We're liking Paris already.
Big Ben
