Goodbye London, Hello Paris!

Waking up this morning was a little bittersweet. I was just starting to really get adjusted to London, the tube, the food, etc and now we were having to leave it already! However, I know that we still have so much left to see on our trip, so we have to move on. This morning we loaded the coaches (“Buses” are not buses over here. Buses are city transportation you pay for. Coaches are the nice charter buses that we think of in the States) and headed off for Paris. I tried to sleep, very uncomfortably I might add, on the 2-hour drive to the English Channel.
Once we got to the Channel, our coach drove into an open train that would take us across the Channel, 90 feet under the sea floor! It was very claustrophobic, and I’m very glad that doesn’t bother me too much or else I would have been really freaking out! The Chunnel ride only took about 35 minutes, and then we were in France! We drove for about an hour before we stopped at a rest stop in France. I ate some pizza, kiwi, and strawberries ;) and it was good… at the time. I started feeling bad on the bus ride right when we departed again though, so I resorted to taking 2 ibuprofens and one Dramamine. Let’s just say I got super tired super fast. I think I was able to sleep for about 2 hours on the bus ride which was greatly needed and much appreciated. It made the time fly by so much quicker. Once I awoke we were driving into the outskirts of Paris!
We finally made it to our hotel, the Marriott Paris Rive Gauche Hotel. Its SO NICE!!!!!! SO MUCH NICER THAN THE HOTEL IN LONDON! Apparently we lucked out too, because last night our trip advisor got a call that our original hotel that we were planning to stay at in Paris, the Paris Republique Plaza Hotel, was going on strike so we would have to find somewhere else to stay! Who does that?!?! Anyways, luckily the Marriott had enough rooms to accommodate our large group. AND… bonus! It has fabulous wifi signal with Boingo! LIFESAVER!!!
We got settled into our rooms and then met back downstairs in a conference rooms for our Paris orientation meeting and group presentations from Paris (the city), Galleries de Lafayette, and Apple Inc, France. They were all very entertaining with cute skits! I hope we do as well as they did when we have our presentation in five days!
After presentations, we met Dan in the lobby and he showed a large group of us how to use the metro system, and took us to the Eiffel Tower. We got there just at dusk, so we had a wonderful view! The tower was so much bigger than I imagined it to be! It’s so grand… and also so masculine looking with all the steel. I feel like I was expecting a more dainty looking tower, although I don’t know why. It was absolutely breathtaking nonetheless. We walked up to Trocadero’s Plaza and took lots of pictures. We waited around until about 10pm when the light show on the tower started! It wasn’t as intricate as I thought it was going to be… there were no patterns to the lights, it was just a constant sparkling, but it was beautiful. I videotaped a minute or two of the ten minute show to show mom and dad when I get home ;). We then left the tower, bought a few souvenirs, and headed back to the hotel to make it a night. A long day of travel is tiring, and I have a lot of journal entries and blogging to catch up on! Night!