Oui, Oui Paris

Thanks for the airplane, Barack. JERK.

Before I begin, please forgive typing and grammar erros. I am coming to you from our hotel room's television and the keyboard is odd. Merci. (Thank you.)

When we last left you, we were cold in Scotland. We're still cold. That evening we ate Subway. YUM! They had SPRITE!!! :) We took a quick taxi ride to the train station. I feared oncoming traffic the entire drive due to the whole driving on the wrong side of the road deal. We made it though. The train stations are all open-air. It is as if these people do not think that it gets cold! IT DOES! So we got on our train only to meet some really funny English guys. They were DRUNK, but in good spirits and really quite delightful. One was wearing a paper sack on his head and charging "admission" to the snack car which was singing a Christmas song from your country. I chose "Jingle Bells." We also participated in a Queen singalong. HILARIOUS. When they left, we stayed at the snackbar and hung with our new train friends- Mel and Darren. We talked politics, sports, you name it. It was a lot of fun.

Then that 4.5 hour train ride ended. :( We switched to a boring train for another 1.5 hour ride back to London. We got to London and needed to take the subway to our next station, but the subway was closed. So we walked a fair distance in the rain, cold and dark to our new station. We got to St. Pancras with a cool 4 hours before our train to Paris. Sweet. The train station was FREEZING. SO COLD. BEYOND WORDS COLD. COOOOOOLD. I may or may not have had a temper tantrum. It may or may not have been pretty. Hungry, cold, wet, tired and womenly time do not mix. (I do not want one single poor Jacskon comment as he was too cheap to book us a hotel for the night so we were, in fact, homeless by CHOICE.)

Moving on. We took the train to Paris. I slept because it was about 42 degrees on the train which was tolerable compared to the station. Jackson wore his layer (he told me I didn't need to bundle up for the train journey!!!!) so he was snug and warm. This lead to me sleeping on him hardcore for 2.5 hours while we crossed the English Channel to France.

WOO HOO! We made it to France. We caught ANOTHER train (sre you tired with me, yet?) to our hotel. WHEW. We came out of the station to see the EIFFEL TOWER!!!!! WOOT! (Jackson hates "woot" haha) Anyway, it was only like 10 a.m. so we couldn't check into our hotel yet. We dropped our bags and headed for the TOWER! I had been scared to see it, as you know, due to my pact with God that I could die after seeing it and the Empire State Building (been there 2 times...). I didn't die, BUT I did get hit by lightning. Ok, not hit by lightning. Close. I got SHOCKED! Hard! And it hurt! I was pulling a plug from one of our French converters and all hell broke loose. It was awful. I knew God was sending me a warning about pacts.

We obviously got checked into the hotel and seriously slept like there was no tomorrow. We woke up only to sneak to McDonald's (a cheap, quick place to eat) for dinner. There were dogs in the restaurant. None were as cute as MacKenzie. :)

The next day we overslept and were unable to gain access to the Louvre. SAD. Seriously, I was bummed. We did get to see the outside and walk down the Champs-de-Eleyse (sp?). It was some high-end shopping like you've never seen! The Arc-de-Triumphe was pretty awesome, too. We stopped in a little cafe and had the most delicious panini/sub sandwhiches ever. SOO GOOD! SOO GOOD! Then we popped over to the Notre-Dame. It, too, had a horrid line so we just saw the outside. It was awesome. It was pretty cold by then we headed back to our room for a bit. Then we ventured out to the Hard Rock Cafe-Paris to get my Mom a pin. While there, we met a dude from Mexico wearing a COLTS hat. He proceeded to greet us with, "PEYTON MANNING ROOOOOCKS!!!!!!" I got a photo of Jackson with him. These photos will be posted when we arrive in America.

After the Hard Rock, we stumbled upon a restaurant called "Indiana Cafe." I HAD to eat there. It was so good, too. The funny thing was that the entire restaurant was again decorated with NATIVE AMERICAN pictures and memoribila. WHAT ON EARTH?! Where it the IU basketball gear? The COLTS jerseys? Maybe a quick photo of The General Robert Montgomery Knight? I don't know who told these people what Indiana meant, but they were probably NATIVE AMERICAN art dealers! Wild. Anyway, the food was expensive (a common theme here in Paris), but really good.

We saw the Eiffel Tower's light show and fireworks for the new year. AWESOME! We stood across the river from it and just cheered with right at 40 million other people. It was SOOO FUN! The BEST new year's ever. (We do not intend to try to top it, because it cannot be done.)

Today we packed up and headed to the airport area. We have an early-ish flight so we're all tucked in for the night.

That's a pretty fair recap. I am sure we will add more when the photos are posted.

Europe (aside from their cold train stations) has my seal of approval. We'll return some SUMMER.

Please pray for safe flights for us tomorrow.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

P.S. To those who responded to my last post about how cold it was with your temperatures, I will leave you with a question: WERE YOU WALKING AROUND ALLLLLLLLLL DAY IN THAT FREEZING COLD? NOOOOOO. So hush.