Bienvenide!

We are Antwerp-bound on a high speed train currently, should be home in about an hour now. Paris was quite the whirlwind adventure, two days was not enough to appreciate everything that city has to offer people. For our Friday agenda we began with a tour by a paid tour guide who was absolutely phenomenal. He’s an American that moved to France to be with his French wife so we could actually understand his accent. We only covered a small area but he told us lots of stories and made the whole tour funny. My favorite was when he compared one of the French kings to Charlie Sheen because he knew how to party. He said even if you don’t like Charlie Sheen you would still go to his party if he invited you. Anyway, this king had a big party one night to celebrate the completion of his first stone bridge to the island of Paris (home to castles and Notre Dame). He had spent years taxing the sale of wine to help pay for the bridge so to reward his people, he told them all of his alcohol was free to them that night. Well they took advantage of that and had a lot of fun. To remember it the King had a portrait artist come in and sketch all of his friends and their silly faces. When he looked through them he decided the best way to remember the night was to put all of the pictures into stone along his brand new bridge. Now, there are over 300 faces carved into the bridge, most of which are quite silly. Our tour guide says he was the first one to use Facebook to tag pictures of his friends on a wall.  Another fun fact is that in almost all cases, when looking at a statue of a person on a horse, the horse gives away the manner in which the person died. So if the horse has one front and one back leg up, the person died of unnatural causes (murdered, etc.). If the horse has all for hooves on the ground then the person died naturally. And if the two front legs are in the air then they died in battle or heroically. And that is just a taste of all the great things he told us about France. I wish we got to spend more time there, the city is giant! After that tour we were on our own for the rest of the day. So we grabbed a quick lunch and then headed off into the world, alone in Paris basically. We shopped for souvenirs, visited the Eiffel Tower, bought some more souvenirs, checked out the Louvre since it was free for students after 6 pm on that special day, and then Hard Rock Café for dinner. We had the coolest waiter there and the food tasted so good, it was amazing to have food that tasted just like home again. But we’re going back there on Sunday, except in London now. That is the original location so that should be a great time! We also found a bar that was rocking the old music and the people were loving it! They listen to mostly American music here, which is also a treat for us. But after a few newer songs the list just got older, I think we danced to “hit the road Jack” and I kind of felt like I had aged 10 years or gone back in time. But we did meet some very nice people so I don’t know that French people can be stereotyped as completely rude. But I think that is true for everywhere so I’m definitely learning to disregard stereotypes because chances are good that we will meet plenty of people that completely counter that. And I hope the people we talk to feel the same way when they see that we’re not all Jersey-shore characters. (Although we have a group joke about becoming more like Jersey Shore characters). Today we have the day off, we’ll be back in Antwerp around 2:30 so do some laundry and get everything packed for London! We have an early train to catch but I think we’re feeling ready with all the practice we got in Paris on the Metro train. We haven’t made many plans for London so we’re meeting to do that tonight. We are going to see Wicked on Monday night so that should be a good time, I’ve heard nothing but praise for theater shows in London. I will have my computer in London so I will write more once we’re off to another country!

Love,

Jenacious