Another language...

Ashley and I arrived in Paris on Tuesday afternoon after a full day of traveling. We left Donegal around 8:00am, had a layover in Dublin, and flew to Paris around 2:00pm. We arrived in Paris not knowing what to expect, much less an idea of how we would manage to get around.

We successfully got ourselves out of the airport and on the right trains to find our hotel. It'll only took us about an hour to figure every thing out and travel. I'd say we did pretty well for not speaking French very well. Last evening we walked around the neighborhood our hotel is in and had our first experience of ordering food.

We didn't think to bring our French dictionary, that we conviently picked up in the Dublin Aerport. So, we were on our own with the limited phrases we remembered and my limited rememberance from learing French in grade school. We enjoyed delicious crepes and deserts at a quaint little resturant up the street from our hotel. Our waitress was very nice and patient with us as we attempted to communicate with her on the food we wanted.

Today, we ventured out to find the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, and other tourist spots. We didn't make any plans before we came to do tourist things except to see the Eiffel Tower but we decided this morning that it would be a good thing for us to do a hop-on-hop-off bus or boat tour to assist us in acclimating around the city. We decided to do the boat and had a wonderful time. We spent about 8.5 hours walking around and using the boat to get from one place to another.

Our funniest moment from today is when we went to visit Notre Dame. As we waited in line, I got the hiccups. I figured I would be alright and they'd go away soon. Well, as we walked around Notre Dame I still had the hiccups, so I was trying not to hiccup to loud. At one point, someone got on the speaker system and gave instructions (in French of course) for everyone to be silent and the started "shhhhing" over the speaker system. Well, it got real quiet then....and I'm still trying to control my hiccups...I think I had the loudest hiccup every in the quiet church of Notre Dame. Ashley and I got a great laugh out of this and continued on...

Today at lunch, we stopped in a corner cafe to order paninis. Well, I think the girl working thought I spoke French because I greated her in French. I attempted to order a combo meal..panini, salad, and drink or desert. I ended up with a panini, cous cous, canteloupe, and a coke. Then at the end of ordering, she asked me if I wanted to pay for all of it together. I had no idea how I ordered what I ended up with but we still enjoyed lunch and haven't gone hungry yet.

So, we're off to enjoy a relaxing evening after a day of walking....

We head to London on Friday and back to Ireland on Sunday.