Au Revoir and Heil Rail Europe

Well quite a busy day, in fact this post will wind up covering two days. Had breakfast as usual then went to the room to pack things so we could leave the bags and spend our last day in Paris visiting the Louvre. We chose to walk, was only about a 30 minute walk from the Hotel to the Louvre. Once there the lines started at the corner, down to the gate, across the 'moat' to the court yard, completely around that courtyard and into the next one and halfway around that. We we in line approximately 1 hour.

After finally gaining entrance we strolled past SO many statues, artifacts, pictures, paintings...well you name it. They even had an Afrique exhibit that I had NO interest in at all, but sure as hell we got sucked into it. Went through the medevial portion of the building as well. We ran into Mona, Nike, Venus, and some of the girls.

We also ran into some of the boys here and there.....Alex (was GREAT), Caligula, and a few others I hadn't met yet. Was very interesting, but HUGE (the museum), so stayed about 4 hours and headed for someplace to eat lunch. We were pretty tired from the day before, not to mention standing in line all day this day and walking through the Louvre.

We stopped at one of the first places we found and had cold beer and crepe and watched all the people walk by.

Then we headed back toward the hotel to pick up the bags and try to find a cab to the train station. Had been warned about the people at Gare Du Nord, so kept things close by once we arrived.

We had purchased 1st Class Rail Europe tickets at www.raileurope.com which supposedly included sleepers on night trains, meals, etc. But when we arrived at the train station we were told 1st class was sold out and that it would cost us to "upgrade" to 2nd class. Seven Euro's each for seat or 20 Euro's each for 2nd class sleeper.

Well, feeling somewhat cheated by www.raileurope.com we chose the cheaper of the two. We wound up in a room...bigger than the sleeper on Amtrak, but six seat in it instead of two. Luckily there were only four of us when we started the trip. It wasn't all that bad, got delayed almost an hour in Saint Quentian, but still managed to get a little sleep before we pulled into Brussels, then five people came to our door insisting they all had reservations for our seats. That would have put 9 people in six seats. Well turns our four of them were in the wrong car, so not too bad. Next stop somewhere in western Germany and picked up one more person to fill out the room. NOW sleeping was a little tight, but what the hell...experience RAIL EUROPE.

Now for the funny part....you remember I'd said we met Bob in London....Bob from Brooklyn.
Then when I took a stroll to the lounge car for a drink I ran into Andrew and Anthony from Austrailia that we'd met previously in New York. Once our roomette was full we had Giannis from Greece, Katie from (K)anada, Lydia from Lisbon, and Matthew from Manchester. We also had Miguel from Lisbon, but didn't fit into the scheme of things...so review that....
Australia - Anthony & Andrew
Canada - Caitlan (had to stretch just a bit)
Manchester - Matthew
Lisbon - Lydia
Brooklyn - Bob
Greece - Giannis

...does there seem to be some theme developing? Can't wait to see who we meet next and where they're from!!! ;-)

Well we finally made Berlin and first thing I did was make the reservations for Berlin to Prague and Prague to Vienna...planning to make the rest of the trip from the room. Called the apartment to let them know we were coming and got a taxi to bring us. Is an OLD building, was somewhat aprehensive about what we'd find one we got in, but not bad at all...pics tomorrow on that. Got on the puter right away to make the reservations for the remainder of the trip to avoid the Paris thing...but can't do that...they have to mail them to you and lord knows where I'll be....so complained. See what happens.

Mattias, one of the caretakers of the place suggessted a place down the street for lunch. Only 3.80 for lunch...couldn't say that for Paris or London, so we beat a path there and had Lamb and potatoes with vegtables for 3.80. Not the "German" dish you might think, but will find that tomorrow. Then around the corner to a little bakery they told us was WONDERFUL...picked up a few sweets, across the street to a small market for a couple of beers and nuts and back here to rest.

Will get pics of the surroundings soon and update you there, till then...stay tuned.