Part II- Paris

Due to us missing our initial flight from New York, we arrived in Paris later than we had expected to. We got to our hotel which is on one of the streets that lines the sides of the Louvre Museum! It was also right next to the metro station, which rocked!

We didn't love the hotel the stayed in and we ended up spending $60 on breakfast at the hotel because they didn't tell us that is was not complimentary before we ate!! That sucked!

Paris was nice! It snowed a lot while we were there so it was cold but it was really romantic too. We didn't do much the first night, just wandered around a little bit. The next day we went to the Louvre. It is such a big museum! It's crazy! We were only there for a few hours but you really need days to see and appreciate everything! It was fun! We went to see Notre Dame. We wanted to go up to the top but they were closed because of the snow. The cathedral was so nice though!

After that we went up to see the Sacre Coeur Cathedral. It's my favorite one in Paris! It's up on the hilltop and overlooks the whole city. It's so pretty and super white, it's gorgeous!!! Jon really liked it too which made me really happy!! That night we walked down the Champs Elysees. It was all lit up with Christmas lights and had a bunch of stands set up just for Christmas! It was great!

The next day we went to Versailles. It is so cool to walk around places where you can see what it was like back when it was actually inhabited. We really wanted to see the gardens but, guess what, they were closed because of the snow. It was sad. Then we went and saw the Pompidou! It is such a cool building. We didn't do anything there, just went up to the top of it. It had an amazing view of the city!!! Even better than the Sacre Coeur because it wasn't as far away! Way cool!

Then we went to see the Eiffel Tower! They were celebrating it's 120th anniversary so they had a light show on the tower every night from October til December. We really got lucky to see it! It was way cool!!! We wanted to go to the top, but again, guess what, it was closed because of the snow! Lol! We could have gone up to the 1st out of the 3 levels but it was really cold and we decided that it really wasn't worth the money. As we were leaving we saw Remy from the movie Ratatouille! We heard a rustling by the trash can and we turned to watch this rat chew through the bag and through some tin foil to get inside the bag. It was pretty funny!!

We were supposed the leave the next afternoon, but we found out the light before that they were shutting down the Chunnel (the tunnel that goes between France and London) because of the weather. We couldn't get any info online so we went to the train station the next day. Sure enough they had cancelled all of the trains leaving that day. So we stood in line at the ticket counter to see what we could do. We were at the train station for hours when we finally left. We had to skip going to London all together and we got the last 2 tickets heading for Milan the next day. We had to stay in Paris one more night. We had a hard time sleeping that night and got up the next morning and went to a different train station to catch our train.

We had to wait in the cold for another couple of hours because, due to the weather, our train was late. We got on the train and our seats weren't together. It turned out to be okay and we still got to sit together but it was a really long, uncomfortable train ride. It was cool to pass through the mountains into Italy though, Jon really enjoyed that. We found out later that we had been really lucky. After we left they shut down both of the train stations for the rest of the day.

Once we got to Milan we had to wait for our train that went to Bergamo, which is where we would be staying for the next 6 days. That train was really late too and it was freezing. During that ride we had to stand for the whole way. We finally got to Bergamo and Jon's friend and old companion, Alberto, and his mom picked us up. I was really surprised that they weren't late. They took us to the mall so we could have pizza for dinner there. On the way there we had to get out of the car twice to push other cars so that they wouldn't hit us getting on the freeway. It was really snowy and bad. When we got there we found that they were closing all of the shops earlier than normal because hardly anyone was there due to the weather. We ended up having no other choice but to eat at McDonalds that night. I really hate McDonalds in the first place, and it was better there, but not by much. So my first meal in Italy was not so good.

The hotel that we were going to stay at wouldn't let us come a night earlier so we had to stay at one of Alberto's friends house. They were really nice to let us stay there. We ended up sleeping on bunk beds. That was when I had my breakdown. It had really been a terrible couple of days and I couldn't hold it in anymore. I just cried. Jon snuggled me and loved me and I quickly felt better.

More to come soon, keep your eyes open for part 3!