Europe Update

Cheers everyone! We made it to Europe with no major pitfalls. We started our European tour in Paris. The people were easy-going and the food delish! Our place to stay was way outside the city, next Euro-Disney, of all things! It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be to figure out the local train system. The difficult part was finding our hotel at first as we didn't even have an address for it. Several trains and an extremely expensive cab ride later (he totally ripped us off--didn't care at the time, too tired) we arrived to a hotel---it is a residence also--completely brand new and went for a swim. We then traveled all the way back in to Paris the next day and walked all day long to see Notre Dame, the Louvre (it was closed, but the outside is amazing too), the Eiffel Tower, palaces, fountains, and unbelievable architecture. I think we walked for about 10 hours that day. I was really nervous about getting to London to meet up with my parents, but we got Eurostar tickets for a lot less than we had seen on the Internet--the key was to buy a round trip ticket instead of a one way. We got to London, from Paris, in little over 3 hours. We then took another 3 hour train ride out into the country side. We have been in Bath for 2 days and it has been wonderful. We are in total sensory overload--everything here is clean and inviting. I had no idea how hard Africa has been on us. We went into a grocery store today and spent about 30 minutes giggling over things and just drooling with out mouths open. We went to the movies, get this, they do assigned seating and have "standard" or "premiere" seating for a pound more. Essentially it is all the same, but you pay more for them to tell you where to sit. However, it was wonderful to sit in a cinema and watch a movie in English. We are in a hostel as the B&B we stayed in the first night was too many £. It is not as bad as I had imagined, but it will be nice to be in our own room for the next two weeks. Tomorrow it's time to meet the parents!