Beautiful Paris

I am typing this on a French keyboard and all the letters are in the wrong place so it will unfortunately be brief! We arrived in Paris on the Eurostar yesterday and spent the afternoon exploring Montmartre including Sacre Couer and Moulin Rouge. Our hostel is also here and is pretty nice compared to what we were used to in London! Free internet, a shower in our room and croissants for breakfast. Montmartre is also the highest elevation of the city so there are a lot of steps and hills! We feel the change from the relative flat of London. I experienced salty crêpes for the first time last night with cheese, ham and tomatoes... the food here is just so good. (Tough to do worse than English food, though!)

Paris is beautiful even though it has been cloudy the last two days. Things are definitely a different pace here and at night the city is very quiet. This is new and different! We are speaking French as much as we can but usually people will respond to us in English so that has been helpful. The words for "Leave me alone, please" have been helpful as there are a lot of people begging for money or trying to sell souvenirs. I speak German to them sometimes because generally they don't know it!

Today we went to Notre Dame for Easter Sunday along with everyone else in France apparently! It was SO crowded, we just kind of got pushed around until we reached the exit. To say it is a beautiful place is obviously an understatement and it was very special to be there on Easter. Also visited today were the Pompidou Center, Ste. Chapelle, Jardin du Luxembourg, Pantheon Ste. Genevieve, and made a reservation at Gare d'Austerlitz for our train trip to Barcelona (in French!). It was a full day of walking so after a nap; we treated oursevles to a hot meal at a great Italian place (again, English-speaking waiter) and took the subway to the Eiffel tower to see it at night. HOLY MOLY. How incredible! It's incredible lit up at night - we will get to the top tomorrow afternoon but are trying to decide if it's worth it to take the steps (€3) or the elevator (€11). As you can imagine, it's a LOT of steps but the budget is pretty tight! :)

We are off to Chartres in the morning!