Bonjour!

We made it to Paris without incident. The plane flight was fine Amy and I had the row to ourselves so it was quite comfortable. I actually was able to take a nap while Amy stayed up all night listening to music and working soduku puzzles. Upon arriving in Paris things were going fine we got our luggage made it through customs, really easy, and was even able to catch a cab. Then it all went into crazy foreign land. Our cab driver didn’t know where we needed to go and didn’t speak English, not that you could expect him to. So after a few moments of not understanding I called the apartment lady and she told him where to go, a great idea from Amy. If it weren’t for Amy I’d still be wondering around in that cab. Once we arrived at our apartment building we first accidentally went to the wrong apartment and confused some elderly Asian man. Then we found our apartment and realized that we are right next to a schoolyard full of loud kids playing all day long. After settling in to our noise filled apartment we set out to meet up with my friend Kyle. We quickly learned we didn’t know how to do anything. Amy and I couldn’t figure out how to buy a metro ticket, even though Amy figured out how to get the machine to work in English. It turns out to use your credit card in Europe it needs to be a European Credit card with a special chip. So the metro ticket machines wouldn’t take out credit card as payment, neither will the train kiosks. This makes it really easy for non-French speaking people to buy tickets, because instead of using the friendly English speaking machines we had to use a French-speaking ticket agent. Luckily Kyle and his girlfriend AnaLaura being so helpful rescued us in the metro and helped us buy tickets. Then later that night after arriving back at our apartment at 2am we couldn’t get the key to work in the door. We must have tried for ten to fifteen minutes while I tried not to wet myself; I had to go to the bathroom so bad. I left to find a bathroom while Amy sat and figured out the door. After walking quite a way, I realized nothing would be open so I walked back to find that right after I left Amy got the door open, which was a quite a relief.
The next two days Amy and I have been in the company of Kyle and AnaLaura who have been great hosts and showed us so much of Paris. Now that it is Monday we are on our own as Kyle and AnaLaura are back at work. So far so good we were able to order lunch and buy toilet paper and we can get around Paris pretty good now by metro thanks to a few lessons by Kyle and some good tips from AnaLaura. Today we are taking it easy and tomorrow we will venture out, hopefully going to a museum or the Eiffel tower, which up to this point we’ve only seen from afar.

For pictures click here

Until next time, Stephen and Amy