Day Five: 4/27
Today was our last day in
London L
Well perhaps it will stop raining. We
had our last breakfast at the K&K George and took the tube to Waterloo
Station. The photo to the left is a
picture of one of the streets in London.
It is really neat how these streets just curve around. There are very few right angles in London.
We are taking the Chunnel to Paris. We had booked passage on the EuroStar train to Paris. The 3-hour train ride was uneventful. Angie didn't freak out when we went through the Chunnel. Steve actually slept through the entire Chunnel. He woke up when the sun hit him on the face as we exited. The best part was the impeccable service in the first class section. They also had these great little 1/4 size wine bottles. Angie wishes they sold this size in the U.S.
We arrived in Paris and were quite surprised that we didn’t have to go through customs or show our passports to immigration. Last time Steve was here, he had to go through customs and was even required to obtain a VISA before he left the U.S.
We had a little trouble trading
in our vouchers for the Paris Visite
card because we couldn’t find the correct booth. On the way out of the airport and towards the Metro, we had to
dodge a guy that was trying to get us to buy him a metro pass. This was quite an interesting experience.
He was helping Steve read the map then he expected us to buy metro passes - including one for him. He was awfully surprised when we used our previously purchased Paris Visite card to get through the metro station. As we walked away, we saw him latching on to the next group of unsuspecting tourists. We took the metro to the closest hotel stop.
After quite a trek over uneven cobblestone sidewalks, with our suitcases, we made it to the Hilton. The walk was worth it because we have an excellent view of the Eiffel Tower from our room. Steve decided to take a nap.
We have included a bunch of links below for the awesome views of the Eiffel Tower. We felt it better to not waste the bandwidth if you were not interested in looking at them.
Tower Views: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Later that evening we walked
around our hotel area and went to the Eiffel
Tower - all the way to the top. There were lots of tourists and there was a
line for the elevator that deceptively wrapped around like Disneyland. Actually, it didn’t take that
long considering it was a Friday night.
The view was wonderful. The
picture at the left shows how cold it was. We bought a cute Christmas ornament
at the gift shop at the top of the tower.
We ate our dinner at the hotel
since we could not find anything that was still open. There was an interesting
piece of yellow fruit on the dessert plate that turned out to be a Japanese
cherry. Steve said it was “all right”.
You can see the picture of the dessert to the right.
We fell asleep to the wonderful lights of the Eiffel Tower. It was a perfect ending to the day of travel.