Munich and Paris - Part two

On Saturday morning, Laura went to a rotary meeting out of town so Jack and I thought we would also head out of Paris. We booked some train tickets to a town called Bayeux (pronounce Bayoo for those as ignorant of French as I am) in Normandy. We stayed at a really nice hostel that was full of other travelers.

Bayeux is really nearby to the D-day landing sites so it is full of history. We went to a war museum and the British cemetery on the first day. We arrived back to our hostel with the intention of cooking fish, but there was a lovely smell wafting from the kitchen so we followed a big bunch of people into a dining room and sat down. It took us about 5 minutes to realise that they were all American and all knew each other. We found out it was a group of exchange students who had dinner provided, luckily they were very welcoming and shared their 5 course meal with us for free!

The next day was Sunday...France is closed on Sunday. There were no tours to the beaches available, barely any shops open and it appeared...not much to do. One thing that seemed to always be open was the museum of the Bayeux tapestry (remember year8/9 history? 1066 and all that?) We spent a few hours there, it was pretty cool.

We found a place that hires bicycles out so we decided to make our own way to the beaches. We rode and rode and rode until FINALLY we found Omaha beach, one of the American landing sites where nearly 10,000 allied soldiers died. Completely buggered, our legs barely holding up and with our train departure time fast approaching, we had a 20 kilometer ride back. We stopped off briefly at the American cemetery on the way which had thousands of graves.

The ride back nearly killed us, we only just made our train by 15 minutes and couldn't find a seat so we found a nice 100 decibel seat on the floor between two carriages (for 2.5 hours). We also neglected to book accommodation that night and once again, ended up sharing a single room between the three of us (Jack slept on the floor...again). Luckily this time it was about 1/3 of the price (and 1/3 of the size!...you couldn't stand up because the ceiling was slanted...Jack had to sleep with his legs in the air!)

Monday in Paris, we moved accommodation to a far more spacious hotel room in the centre of town. Laura and I decided on a girls day and left Jack on the internet and to walk around Paris. Laura and I went to Starbucks and went shopping - I ended up with a few more presentable pieces of clothing and Laura ended up with a lot more pieces of clothing! We met up with Jack again and headed to the Latin Quarter for dinner where we also met Cat. The Latin Quarter is very lively at night time so we soaked up the atmosphere before heading to our luxury hotel to sleep.

Tuesday, we went to the Eiffel tower with Cat and took the elevator to the top. Afterwards we hung out in the park in front of the tower and had a baguette. We also went to the Arc de Triumph and finished of with ice-cream on Champs Elysee at Haagen Dazs - the best ice-cream in the world!

On Wednesday Laura left to meet her family in London and Jack and I met up with Cat at the louvre and did a nice walk around the centre of town. In the evening we moved to a cheaper (and far dodgier) area of town called Montmartre. We have only been staying here one night and have already seen prostitutes, fights and a million bums. Also about every 10 minutes there are large groups of police officers running or driving down the street. We had dinner in Montmartre with Cat and Marika.

Today we caught up on some lost sleep (i.e. we slept till about 3 in the afternoon) and then caught the metro to the middle of town for some starbucks, Internet and dinner!

Tomorrow we are getting the plane to London and from there...who knows! We are thinking about moving to Scotland but it depends where we can get a job and whether or not we like London.

Sorry this has been so long, I hope someone makes it this far! (Hi mum and dad!)