Paris: Day 1

Paris

The train ride from Florence to Paris was nuts. I woke up at 8:53 am in our hotel room with clothes and cantaloupe scattered everywhere. Our train, I realized suddenly, was at 9:00. I quickly ran the numbers (thanks, Mr. Jolley) and, if my calculations were correct, figured we had seven minutes to pack, check out of the hotel, and get to the train station. I shook Max awake, gave him the rundown, and we booked it out of the hotel. As we ran down the street, half of our clothes in our bags, the other half falling out of our bags, and the third half in our hands, I remembered that if we missed this train we likely wouldn’t be able to get another one to Paris before our return flight home. Instead, we would have to spend more money on another train ticket directly to Barcelona and skip Paris altogether. Determined not to miss an opportunity to get a Royal with Cheese from Paris (see: Pulp Fiction) and maybe Louvre and the Eiffel Tower if there was time, we got on our proverbial horses and turned the jets on all the way to the station.
The finish was more last minute than Landon Donovan’s World Cup goal. Closer than Michael Phelp’s photo finish. More thrilling than Fairfield, CT going to the Little League World Series. And more exhausting (exhaustive?) than this list of recent great sporting moments. At any rate, we made the train and enjoyed a peaceful ride to Paris.
Upon arrival at 7:30, we realized that the Louvre was free for students under 26 after 6:00pm on Fridays with a passport (pretty specific guidelines, huh? I had to read the rules like 5 times to make sure we qualified, which we did). We went right from the train station to the Louvre and saw some of the greatest works of art in one of the most famous museums in the world.
Afterwards, we stopped at a nearby McDonald’s for dinner. I was beaming when I saw that the Royal with Cheese was on the menu, but when I ordered it they said they didn’t have it (not sure if it was sold out or what, their English wasn’t very good). Needless to say, I hadn’t be this disappointed since I ran out of sports metaphors to describe our train station dash (see above). I settled for a Big Mac and we made our way home for the night.

PICTURES: Me at the Louvre with all our luggage for 3 weeks; Shelman with the Venus de Milo, Me with the Mona Lisa, Us at the Louvre