Bienvenue a Paris!

We arrived in Paris on Monday the 26^th via the Eurostar, a train that travels directly from London to Paris and passes underneath the English Channel along the way. The train departed from London’s newly renovated St. Pancras Station around 3:30 and arrived a la Gare du Nord in Paris only 2 ½ hours later. After checking into our first hostel, Woodstock, we set down our belongings and greeted the city of lights with open arms. By greeting the city with open arms what I really mean is we found a place to eat. We settled on a small (petit) restaurant with a wonderful view of Sacre Coeur, a cathedral in Monmartre posied on one of the highest hills in Paris with glorious views of the city at sunset. Our vista was further enhanced by the “string hustlers” tugging at people on their way up to the cathedral. I refer to them as string hustlers because of their rather forceful halting of unaware visitors, particularly the male counterpart of a male-female duo, and assault them with string which would be hastily “French” braided to their wrists with remarks such as “it is beautiful,” “your wife will love,” etc. and then request the 2 or 3 Euros for their beautifully crafted wrist adornment. I’m sure it is an incredibly frustrating situation for both parties, but from afar I delighted in conjuring up my own conversations that were taking place which I won’t go into here. After the dinner and complimentary street performances we retired back to the hostel to post the remainder of our London bloggings and get an early night sleep.