May 29th, 2011 - Paris

This morning we got up, got ready, had some fruit that we had picked up at the super market next to our hotel and checked out of our hotel room.  We left our bags with the hotel and headed to Starbucks.  We/I got a caffe mocha and we walked on to the Arc du Triomphe.  We walked and walked and finally got there.  The walking is always fun and pretty to see all the architecture and streets.  We noticed on the walk that all the stores were closed because it was a Sunday.  The Arc du Triomphe is a beautiful war memorial in the middle of a traffic circle/wagon wheel of streets.  It is much larger than it looks in pictures.  We took some pics and then crossed the street via an underground tunnel, so that we could walk through the middle of it.  While walking through the tunnel under the very busy street, we passed the Polizia patrolling in the tunnel.  They were wearing fun uniforms, berets, and had their big guns (assault rifles) drawn and just walked around with them in their hands.

After the Arc we walked down a fun busy street called Champs-Elysees.  It had very ritzy shops on each side.  We were starting to get very hungry so we decided on a ham & mozzarella panini to split.  Mark also grabbed a cheeseburger from "Quick" (a fast food joint, immitation Arby's or McDonald's) and a sprite for us to drink.  He forgot to specifically ask for any ice in it, so we didn't have any in the drink.  We looked in a pharmacy for moisturizer for me because of course I ran out, but couldn't find any.  On our walk home we passed two pretty museums that we took pics by and checked prices to go in but we didn't end up going in.  We walked over a beautiful bridge and ordered gelato from this really nice man who sold gelato out of the back of his old truck.  He was the 5th generation in his family to sell gelato out of the back of that truck.  He said he "now has 2 fans from Misery!" when we told him we liked his ice cream.  We walked on and walked through a castle and pretty garden/shrubbery paths.  We got a lot of good pics.  We had been walking for about 4 hours at that point - maybe 5 - so we decided to head to the hotel to relax and take advantage of their free internet because we wouldn't have it for the next 3 days.  We relaxed for a little bit and then we left again to get something to eat.  We found this great little pizza shop with one guy making the pizzas and 5 tables inside.  He had a moped with a delivery box/warming box on the back that he would jump on in anyone wanted a delivery.  We got the pizza to go and walked to the Eiffel Tower park area again.  We sat on a bench and shared the pizza.  Prior to finding the pizza shop we had stopped in a little fruit market and got some fruit, a water and chips for our train ride to Munich tonight!

After the pizza, we headed back to the hotel to gather our bags and head to the train station.  At this point in the trip, we wanted to get to the station early - like an airport.  We quickly learned though, there is no reason to get to the stations early :)  We boarded our train a couple hours later and headed to Germany.  Our train left Paris at 8:20 pm and arrived in Munich, Germany at 7:16 am.  The overnight train was very neat.  We both really enjoyed it.  But you don't get a very good night's sleep.  We sat on one of the bunk beds and watched the sun set out the train window and then went to bed around 10:30.  We woke up in Germany!  Actually, we woke up many times before that :)