If it isn't a volcano, it's a strike...

What a day we have had! First of all we do apologize for not having pictures in our last post or today. Once you hear what we've gone through, we think you'll understand. However, before we get to that we neglected to mention some of the other students who wanted us to travel to the Louvre and find the Mona Lisa. Credit also goes to Edwin, Juan Z., Darius, and Maria L. We promise to have pictures of her soon up here!


Now for today...we were supposed to take a night train to Florence this evening and arrive there around 7:00 a.m. on Thursday. We decided to take a trip to the train station today just to find out where it was located and see about booking some of our other trips. When we arrived we were informed our trip to Florence was cancelled due to a strike. The man at the station didn't have many options to offer us other than sending us to another train station with the instruction to try to get on another train traveling to Milan at 3:30. We then took the Metro (Paris' subway) back to the hotel to pick up our luggage. After lugging that up and down many stairs, on three different Metro trains, we finally made it to Gare de Lyon, the other train station. The guy working the desk there kind of smiled and shook his head the whole time. Apparently the strike isn't just in France, but also in Germany and Italy among a few other places. He searched for different routes for us to take only to tell us that we can't leave Paris by train until Friday morning when the strike is expected to be over. So, assuming everything goes well, we leave at 7:00 a.m. bound for Rome on Friday (a 12+ hour trip...should be interesting). We are now spending the next two nights in Paris. Not too shabby of a place to be "stuck" in, but certainly puts a wrinkle in our plans.

Since we had some time to kill, we decided to attempt to do some laundry. Remember, neither one of us speaks a bit of French and we happen to be staying in an area tonight and tomorrow that is apparently not known for tourist traffic as all the signs were in French. We finally figured it out and sat down waiting for the 45 minute wash cycle to end. After about an hour and a washer still filled with soapy water, we knew something wasn't right. We copied down the phone number and headed back to the hotel to ask the man working the front desk to call for us since he speaks French. Once we had explained our ordeal, he made the call. Now, we know what we said to him about the washer not working, but I'm not quite sure he relayed it word for word. We did hear "Americana" come out of his mouth and then he laughed (as did the couple listening to his end of the conversation as they walked into the lobby). We were told to push a different numbered button, so we traisped back to the lavarie and did that. Eventually it worked! It was about 3 1/2 hours later, but we now have clean clothes. :)

So, how about a quick update on our adventures on Monday and Tuesday?
Monday
We visited Notre Dame at the request of Jennifer C., Katie, Kevin, Ryan D., Scott G., Karl, Zach J., Nicolas M., Amy, Diana, Alex C., Aidan, Ameena, and Juan. We walked around inside and admired the beautiful architecture. Ms. Garcia took some great photos. One group wanted pictures of the east end of the cathedral and the North Rose window. We are pretty sure she got a picture of both. (We plan to have a post soon with pictures of some of the tasks we were asked to complete. We will include this with that posting.)

After Notre Dame, we walked to the Eiffel Tower. Many of you had this as either your plan A or plan B for Paris. The following students wanted us to take pictures and travel all the way to the top: Diana G., Alex C., Aidan, Ameena, Juan, Scott, Karl, Nicolas M., Zach J., Amy, Nadirah, Ethan, Karen, Yohebeth, Jaelene, Antonio, Eva, William, Isaiah, Joe, Kelsey, Adilene, Kaylan, Keir, and Amador. I had to make it a point not to look up as we climbed the few stairs to the elevator that would take us up to the second level. I knew if I did I would never go all the way to the summit. We walked around the second level for a bit and took some photos. Paris is enormous and so beautiful. We finally got in line to take the elevator all the way to the top...probably one of the longest rides of my life. As terrified as I was, I am so glad we did it. What a sight! It was incredible.

Next on our list was to admire and take pictures of the Arc de Triomphe at the request of Nadirah, Yohebeth, Ethan, and Karen.  We then stayed around that area. We were stunned by all of the people who were out on a Monday evening so late. As we asked we discovered that once a year, on the summer solstice, France has the Day of Music festival. There were bands with groups of people around them on every corner. Almost every band sang in English. Some were singing original songs while others covered some American bands. It was a nice little surprise and very entertaining. As we walked around listening to the music we discovered we had come upon the Pantheon. It was closed, but we did get to admire it at night. Then we found the Metro, with the help of a nice French woman who walked really fast, and headed back to the hotel. One thing we found quite interesting on this night is how much people in Paris LOVE McDonald's. There were McDonald's bags everywhere and lots of people on the side of the street eating Big Macs. :)

Tuesday
Tuesday morning had us heading to the Paris Catacombs. We were sent here by Martha, Dalia, Monica, Lyxantha, and Guillermo. We climbed down 100+ stairs to get into the museum and view the catacombs. This group wanted us to count the number of pictures the skulls and leg bones made throughout the catacombs. We saw crosses, hearts, an archway, a person, and the skull and cross bones symbol. We thought this was a great choice for an adventure. The history behind how it all came to be was very interesting.

Jennifer C., Katie, Kevin, and Ryan D. then sent us to Victor Hugo's house. It turns out only some of the rooms we visited are part of an apartment he lived in with his wife. What they have done is taken more rooms on that level and recreated them to look like different rooms in different places he lived. Some artifacts were donated by his family while others were replicas of what he may have had based on what had been researched in his writings. We learned a little about him that we were not previously aware of.

So, we are thankful that Monday and Tuesday went so well to outshine the day we had today! We will try our best to take a day trip to Florence while in Rome to fulfill the adventures of those groups, but we can't make any promises. We hope you are all having a splendid summer! Again, we promise to post pictures soon!