Day 4 - Paris

Today started off with a surprise. We were going to let ourselves sleep in and wake up at 8:30 rather than our normal 5 or 6. I am the only one in our group with an alarm clock and am in charge of waking everyone. This morning I learned that my travel alarm has to be open to make the alarm go off because I awoke to the cleaning people coming. I thought it was strange for someone to just be walking into our room and then leave, then I looked at the clock and realized it was 11:30!! Meaning we were supposed to check out an hour ago, so we basically rushed out of there and set off for the Rodin Museum. We did the obligatory poses with “The Thinker” and saw some amazing sculptures. For lunch, we bought some sandwiches at the café that was in the gardens of the museum. I found that 80% of my diet here in Europe has consisted of baguette usually with ham and chesse. The French put butter with this combination and it is awesome, I highly recommend. After lunch we headed over to the Monet museum but it was closed so we went to the Modern Art Museum but that was also closed. Word to the wise, when in Paris don’t plan on going to museums on a Tuesday because apparently they all take their day of rest on Tuesdays. Seeing as how we were not aware of this, we just walked around some more. This always ends up being my favorite thing to do in other countries because you get more of a feel for what the culture is like as opposed to what the tourism market makes it. We ended up doing our favorite thing in Europe and found somewhere to eat. Kimberlee and I went for gelato. We have both found that when food is very expensive and you have no money, apparently your stomach shrinks from lack of food. This has been pretty beneficial to us in the money department, which was root of this in the first place. Funny how things come full circle like that. This gelato shop was awesome! First of all, beautiful, beyond delicious gelato and second of all, an awesome Italian gelato shop in a gorgeous area of Paris and it is playing “Born in the USA” over the speakers. The irony was too much for Kimberlee and I so we filmed it. After we all finished our meals of sorts we started heading back to our hotel to get our bags and head back to the train station to catch our night train to Madrid. Note for future European travelers: When taking a night train just splurge for a sleeping car. It is really not worth it to try and sleep with all of the lights on and legroom that is not even adequate when sitting up. This day did end in as much bliss, but it had been pretty blissful.