bastille day!

good afternoon everyone

lisa and i are in paris now. we are staying in a little hotel that is good so far. it's cozy and it's nice to have our own washroom complete with shower once again! and, we are there for - nights so its very nice not to have to pack for almost a week.

we arrived on the eurostar high speed train from london that goes through the chunnel on friday afternoon. going through the chunnel is dark and boring but its cool to think that you are under ocean. there was zero difficulty getting into france which was quite welcome. we arrived at our hotel and bumped into sarah and julien (lisa's friend sarah from high school & her boyfriend) a couple of hours later in our hotel lobby as they were staying at the same place. they left this morning, too bad, but it was fun to have some friends around for a couple days.

on friday night we had dinner and then took the metro to the eiffel tower and sat on the lawn in front of it and freaked out a little because its a pretty awesome thing to be doing at night! i was concerned that the ,etro would stop running but it didnt. we got back on at around 1 and took it all the way... to the wrong end of the city, finally realizing our error just before we hit the end of the line. thankfully there were still trains running so we jumped on going the other way and went 27 stops back to our hotel. oops! my first big navigational mistake!

yesterday we slept in a bit and went to pere lachaise cemetery where famous people are buried. then we took a train to monmartre and climbed up the billion steps to the sacre-coeur church on top of a big hill that gives a monumental view of the city of paris. OH!!!! i almost forgot the most exciting part! paris is HOT! like 30 degrees hot! after ".( weeks of hoping for something over 20 the sun and the hot is most welcome, even though i feel like i am melting.

anyways, we hung out for a while on top of the hill before descending and going back to our hotel to relax before going out at night. july 14 is bastille day so there were fireworks planned at the eiffel tower at 10:30 (which were awesome).

i found out on thursday that jason was in paris and on friday i got a message from dave that he and behrang were here too. yay! we tried to figure out a way to meet up by only using internet which was slow and painful but then, walking to pere lachaise cemetery we bumped into them in the street! random!

i will post now because i'm not sure when my time will expire. more to follow later if my time is up.

cheers! simon