The reason I haven't had a chance to update is because I spent most of the week with Anna and Papa at their hotel, and there have been French girls staying here and using my room as well, so internet has been out. I have it now, though, for the moment. On April 3rd Anna and Papa flew back home safely, and I flew to Barcelona, where I waited about 8 hours to get on a flight to Paris that had been delayed for two hours. I left at about the time I was to have been there. The picture above is where I spent my entire day. I finally got to the airport to find Scott and Keith waiting on me, which was not the original plan, I was supposed to be waiting on them, but whatever. We hopped on a bus hoping to go where we needed to and took a 45 minute ride into town. Once off the bus we stopped to look at a map to try and find our hostel, when a couple came up and asked us if we needed any help. They were really nice and the man even called our hostel for us, and got directions (exact metro stops and walking meters) straight to our hostel. It was incredibly nice and considerate of him, and as far as we know there were no strings attached. We finally made it to our hostel in Montemarte (not really the greatest part of town) and then went out to get drinks, for which we paid 8 euro a piece. I cannot say I was not warned. Somehow we crashed and awoke the next morning to free breakfast (toast and hot chocolate...mmmm.) and were soon joined by James, pretty much an awesome guy who lives in Paris at the moment, and is Scott's girlfriend's cousin (disclaimer, on this trip the guys had all kinds of weird connections, which made it fantastic). So he was our tour guide for the two days we were there, and we were all agreed that it would have been nowhere near as fun had he not been with us. He made it a blast. Thanks James! First he took us to the palace of Versailles. This is where King Louis XV (I think) built his very large estate, gilded golden facade and all. (I know facade is spelled wrong, but I can't figure out how to put in the special c). Versailles took us all day. We looked in the palace and out in the gardens and fountains and the big lake that the king made so he could have floating dinner parties. We also went to Marie Antoinette's estate and Hamlet where she could be a shepherdess. It was all very interesting and beautiful. I really enjoyed all of the chandeliers. After that we went to get some supper and got some kebabs with french fries in them (I took mine out and ate them separately.) I suppose I shouldn't call them French fries, they just call them fries, in fact the rest of the world calls them fries or fried potatoes or something like that, except in Germany where I saw a menu with "french fried potatoes", but all of this doesn't matter, because they were actually created in Belgium. But I'm getting to all of that, right now I'm still in Paris, day one. After our kebabs we went to the Notre Dame Cathedral, just to get pictures of the outside. It wasn't as grand, nor large, as I thought it would be. I suppose i've become desensitized because the cathedral in Seville is what I thought a cathedral would be like, and coming from probably the largest in the world, I'm not going to be impressed by much else. Still, it was cool to see the inspiration for Victor Hugo's novel, and to enjoy the peaceful Seine flowing right beside it. Of course, soon after we trekked to the Eiffel Tower, and we went up to the top, because I was not going to the Eiffel Tower to sit on the ground, there was no point in that. Unfortunately my camera is terrible, so none of my pictures really turned out well. But here is a video of it sparkling, which it does on the hour, for about 5 minutes (we got to see it three times).