Paris, Partie Un

Belgium needs to find something a little
cooler to get excited about.

This was by far the least hectic days of the next four in Paris, so this will be a short read.  We made the long journey from Amsterdam by stopping in Brussels for lunch.  You really do need to get a waffle for lunch.  I grabbed one with belgian chocolate and bananas on top.  If you go down the side streets or near the little boy piss statue(national pride in a little boy peeing statue), you can find cheaper ones that are the same size and just as good. From there we continued on through the incredibly boring Belgian countryside (passing a few nuclear power plants as we crossed into France) and finally got to Paris in the early evening.

In Paris, I had an awesome room in the top floor of a hotel in Puteaux, called the Puteaux Kyriad.  The only problem is the hotel was in Puteaux...a 25 minute metro ride away from the center of Paris. Luckily I had some time on my hands for the next few days.  Puteaux is also where you will find La Defense, and most of the skyscrapers in Paris (except of course Montparnasse.) We established our group meeting point for the next four days at Notre Dame, and orientated ourselves with the metro, which is really quite easy.  For the first night, we decided to eat in the latin quarter, which is diagonal across the Seine from Notre Dame, and is known for cheaper (14 Euros will get you a 3 course meal and free wine) yet quality food.  A lot of the restaurants serve french food, but most are owned by foreigners.  Ours in particular was a greek run restaurant, as are a vast majority of the restaurants. You also must plan ahead when going to a restaurant because the meal will often take 90 minutes to 2 hours to complete.

Notre Dame: Pretty sunny for a picture at 9 pm!

We all got a good night sleep so that we could survive the whirlwind of the next 4 days.