Leeds and Paris

Hey everyone. First, this is Joe's brother, Evan, not Joe. I guess he's too lazy to write this blog post so the duty has been passed to me for the week. I've been meaning to do this earlier but it took me a while to find the time without falling asleep. Sorry...

Seven days. Three European countries: Chicago to Manchester. Manchester to Leeds. Leeds to Paris. Paris to Rome. Rome to Florence. Florence to Pisa. Pisa to Cinque Terre. Cinque Terre to Lake Como. Wow that was tiring just to type.

LEEDS

So Thursday, we (Mom, Dad, Lauren, Shawn, and I) headed to O'Hare and, after an hour long delay due to a broken door, were headed off to Manchester. It took a while, but we got to Manchester pretty early in the morning. After a good 2 hours of train rides (which included stopping on the tracks? I guess they do that in England..), we got to Leeds and met up with Joe. We had arrived! From there, we had a pretty relaxing day- we ate, we shopped, we toured Leeds, we ate some more (fish and chips are delicious!), and we all crashed after a long day or 2 of travel.
The accents were another highlight.

Sorry, not too much to report from Leeds since we didn't do much.

PARIS DAY ONE

Joe and I were put under a lot of pressure to be (he and I stayed away from the other four at his dorm room while they stayed at a hotel) on time in the morning. Naturally, we were the first ones ready- Lauren and Shawn's wake up call never came, so I guess they had an excuse. Eventually, we all gathered our things and we were off to Paris!

Here's where the trip started getting c-r-a-z-y! We landed in Paris and took a metro to the station nearest our hotel. From there, we were on our own with a map and 6 huge luggage bags and 6 carry-ons. It seemed like we were wandering around aimlessly for a while and we had no way to communicate since everyone spoke French! There were so many people and so many stories of pick-pocketers we were all getting really anxious. Somehow, Joe and dad navegated us to our hotel. We were all extremely excited.. until we walked in the hotel.

Some shady hotel manager hands us keys to 2 rooms 3 stories apart and we headed up the old, narrow, creaky stairs to the first room. We looked around and it was dingy, dark, tiny, had no electrical outlets in our room, and no room to move around in the bathroom. Needless to say, it looked NOTHING like the hotel mom saw pictures of online! Despite how bad the room and the service seemed, we figured we'd grit it out and enjoy Paris all the same. That was, until we saw Lauren and Shawn's room. Up 3 more flights of stairs with broken lighting, we walked in to their room only to see it's size was smaller, it's lighting was darker, and the paint on the ceiling was peeling- now, we had a problem. After an hour or two of looking for a new hotel and the most ridiculous argument I've ever witnessed (it involved the hotel worker laughing at us and Lauren getting extremely upset), we had decided to spend one night in the original hotel and the second night in a MUCH nicer hotel down the street.

After all that, we were running a little late for our reservations for the Eiffel Tower so we grabbed some crepes and sandwhiches on the go. I know Joe already explained how amazing Banana Nutella Crepes are but I would like to second the notion; they are AMAZING! Then, we went to the Eiffel Tower. I'm going to be honest, I've always thought the Eiffel Tower was kind of stupid because I never thought it looked very tall. We pulled up the tower, and I was amazed for mutliple reasons. First, the tower was insanely big and breathtaking. Second, we immediately saw a man with about 20 purses running away from the police and plowing people down. And third, as soon as I stepped out of the cab, I had people approaching me asking me for money and harrassing us into buying stupid things that we would, under no circumstances, ever buy (cheap plastic models of the Eiffel Tower or other things of the like).

Once I got over all that shock, we went to the top of the tower. What an incredible expirience. The view was amazing and we saw our first awesome sunset in Europe. I'm sure you will all see pictures, but really, it's something I can't explain and pictures can't really justify.

After the Eiffel Tower, we ventured to the Bastille area to get some dinner and crepes. After that, we went back to our hotel and, given how much we all hated the hotel, went to sleep as soon as possible.

In short, day one in Paris left me in shock and awe.

PARIS DAY TWO

Trust me when I say the FIRST thing we did on day two in Paris was change hotels. Once that was all done, we went to Notre Dame. It was a really cool church but I felt kind of weird walking around while a service was going on. I felt insanely rude and intrusive but still enjoyed how ornate and detailed the whole church was. Next we visited the Louvre which I was really looking forward too. I enjoyed it, but it didn't quite live up to expectations mostly because the Mona Lisa was so small. Interestingly, one of my favoryite things in the Louvre was the building itself. After the Louvre, we went to the Arc de Triomph and Champs Elysees- I'm kind of running out of adjectives to describe things with but the arc was impressive and the Champs Elysseys had a lot of cool stores and items but cost a lot of money. We were doing really well on time so we firgured we'd go to Mount Mart and watch sunset from there. We now had 2 straight days of really cool sunsets. (this is going to be a common trend on our trip. So far we have sunsets from the Eiffel Tower and Mount Mart) We watched some street performers while Joe ran into someone he knew from U of I which we all found to be really strange and cool at the same time. His friends are officially global.

After all those festivities, we did some street shopping and ate dinner before visiting Moulan Rouge and the whole strip. For some reason, the most memorable things from that portion of our dat was a really colorful candy tent that we bought gummies from. I know all Joe's friends were making fun of him for focusing on the food, but I think I may be worse.. we ARE brothers after all.

Okay, the computer is dying and I'm taking a long time to write this so I think I'll wrap this post up here. Next stop: Rome!

I know I ran through all those really quickly, but trust me when I say even the most dull things we saw were breathtaking. The entire trip is increible and I'm so lucky to be able to go on it! Already, the trip had been more than I could have ever hoped for and we still hadn't even begun our Italian adventures. I especially want to thank my Aunt Jeanie and my mom for spending so much time planning this whole thing. It's been awesome and, aside from a few inevidable bumps when you travel this much, has gone without a hitch. I couldn't ask for a better tour guide than Joe Rook (even though he takes us the wrong way a few times in every city).

Alright, I'll try to write again tomorrow night. Until then...

God Bless,
Evan