Got up at 5 am this morning, didn’t sleep too well the night before. It was warm, humid but dry at the same time. I kept waking up every 2 hours. By 6 we were downstairs with the rest of the group, there are 42 of us on this tour. We weighed our luggage (allowed 20 kg), loaded the suitcases and boarded the coach. And we’re off! Our trip has begun!

We took a ferry to France at the port of Dover, it was a very large ferry, holding tons of trucks, cars and most importantly our coach. Dave had mentioned that the coach would be with us everywhere, I didn’t know he really meant it literally, I thought we would change coaches every once in a while between countries.

Inside the ferry we found gift shops, cafes, bars, restaurants and a money exchange bureau. After exchanging for some Euros, we grabbed a slice of pizza and a juice. I’m not a juice drinker, but Diem and I were determined to stay as healthy as possible so that we don’t get sick, so that means eating my fruits and juices… yuck…

Contiki Paris Cabins

The 90 minute trip took us to France where we reboarded the bus and started the drive to Paris. We first stopped by the Contiki village where we’ll be staying for the next couple of days. It’s a very small camp, consisting of about 20 cabins. The cabin holds 2 people in each of the 2 rooms. The rooms are Tiny!! It’s just a room containing 2 bunk beds, that’s it. Once we got our luggage into the room there was no room wo walk. No wonder they only allowed one piece of luggage I dubbed it Camp Snoopy after some of the dorms at college.

After putting our stuff away we went out for welcoming wine, escargot (French for snails), and dinner. The escargot was gross, you had to pull the animal out of it’s shell with a toothpick. It looked like the big snails I use to see all over campus after it rains. The escargot was cooked and topped with some funky green, moss looking topping. I tried not to think or look at it before popping out the thing and swallowed it. Yum… not really….Esther wanted to make the experience memorable so she ate two of those suckers.

Inside of cabin

After dinner we went on an evening tour around Paris. We went all over the place, checked out the Louvre, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triumphe, Eiffel Tower, the Concord and a whole bunch of other buildings, I couldn’t possilby remember all of them as Dave introduced them while we drove by. We all clambered to the side of the coach to take pictures through the window. Most of my pictures didn’t turn out so well with the glare from the window and all. I’m sure we’d get a lot of chances to take pictures tomorrow, but being first day and all we’re all pretty excited.

We had a stop at the Eiffel Tower for about 20 mins to take some pictures. The structure is huge, I’ve been to the Tokyo tower in Japan and I had thought it was about the same size, but The Eiffel Tower looks much much bigger. The coach dropped us off on the far end of the tower and picked us up underneath the tower. While we walked across the park towards the tower we saw the coach park underneath it, it looked so small in comparison.

We also took a spin around the Arc de Triumph. There are 12 streets entering and exiting the roundabout. Dave turned up the music and Richard took us for a really fast spin around the roundabout (a few times) scaring the heck out of all of us. It looked like total chaos. I thought we were sure to hit something. Especially those tiny two seater cars the French seem to love.

The city of Paris is really beautiful; most of the buildings are very old and have a lot of intricate decorations. Everything had a lot of detail, the windows, doors, walls…It sure would be nice to live here.

Sunset in Paris

By the time we got back it was quite late, some people stopped by the bar for drinks but I went back to shower and sleep since tomorrow is going to be another long day.