May 27th, 2011 - London

We had a relatively late night last night and got so much done this week already, so we decided to sleep in a little so we'd be refreshed for Paris!  We started our day with breakfast at the hotel.  They serve it in the basement, which was the servant quarters at one time, most likely.  After breakfast, we packed our bags and checked out around 11:00 am.  We had them stow our bags behind the front desk for us, since our flight wasn't until later in the afternoon.  We walked the short walk to Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens for one last time and then walked to find somewhere for lunch.  We decided on a pub near Portobello Market.  We finished writing some post cards to our family while we waited for our lunch to arrive.  Laura liked her chicken sandwich - mostly because of the delicious spicy mustard on it, I think.  I didn't like my steak sandwich at all though.  It was really bland and the steak was very chewy.  At lunch, we talked about how even though our hotel room wasn't very big, it was plenty big for what we needed it to be and in a great central location.  It was very clean and had a good breakfast to start each day.  We thought it was funny they still had a real key for us to get into our room instead of the access cards.  We had to drop it off and pick it up from the front desk each time we came and went.

After lunch, we headed to a nearby pharmacy to get some toiletries we had already started to run out of.  We dropped off the postcards at the post office, grabbed our bags from the hotel storage room and headed for the airport for our flight to Paris.  We got through security with about an hour before our flight, but found that they hadn't assigned our gate yet.  Heathrow is a huge airport and we didn't even know what terminal we'd be flying out of yet.  Finally, 10 minutes before our flight was supposed to take off, they put our gate up on the monitors.  Fortunately, it wasn't far from where we were waiting.  We ran to our gate, only to wait about 15 more minutes before they started letting us board.

We arrived in Paris-Orly airport about an hour later, only to find that it was very difficult to figure out how to get on the right train to our hotel.  I had looked up directions from the airport to our hotel before we left, but got the directions from Charles DeGaulle and we instead flew into Orly - so those were of no use.  This was the first of many cities with a language barrier we had encountered so far and we weren't quite ready for it yet.  After talking to two different information desks, we finally boarded a bus to a train station terminal closer to the city.  Trying to figure out what stop to get off was a challenge.  When we arrived at the train station, we had trouble figuring out what train tickets to buy from the kiosk, so we went to the ticket window.  The first agent didn't speak any english and instead just pointed us to the second agent.  He helped us get the right tickets.  We headed through the gates only to find it confusing which gate to go to for our train.  We stopped a fellow traveler who pointed us in the right direction.  Once on the train, it was just a few stops before we got off and our hotel was just a couple blocks from there.  We checked in and then headed to a nearby cafe for dinner.  We were still unsure what the dollar to Euro exchange rate was, since we had been using pounds in London so far.  I thought it was 1.5 Euros for each dollar, so I thought our 30 Euro dinner with wine and beer was pretty reasonable - only $20!  However, the next day, I double-checked to find that it was 1.5 dollars to each Euro, so our meal was actually $45 instead - not quite as good of a deal!  The cafe was neat though and we sat at a table outside on the sidewalk.  Our hotel (and cafe) were very close to the Eiffel Tower.  We could see it from our table and at 10 pm, it lit up and started sparkling!  After dinner, we walked to the park of the Eiffel Tower to get a better look.  We were surprised to see people drinking wine, beer and champagne outside.  Then I noticed a sign with a picture on it, saying no alcohol allowed - apparently, they just look the other way, since there were plenty of police in the area.  We headed home shortly after since we were both exhausted.  Our Paris room was a little smaller than our small London room, but was still plenty big for what we needed.  Being close to the Eiffel Tower was a huge perk!