Calm the hell down...

Bonjour tout le monde!

Ok, so I have on good authority that some of you (who shall, for now, remain nameless) think that I am dead because I have not written a new blog in a couple of days. And so I say to all of you - CALM THE HELL DOWN! I am, in fact, still alive, but I have been busy and have had quite a hard time finding a place to use the internet for less than 7 euro/hour, which, for those of you who dont want to do the math, is about 12 dollars/hour. In other words, it's a bit, or a lot, excessive.

So, since I left Cologne and the chocolate museum, I have moved to France, where I started my travels in Bayeux, a very small town very close to the D-Day Landing Beaches. The town itself is pretty crap... I went to the Tapestry Museum, which boasts the only record of William the Conqueror's conquest, but it was pretty boring. The thing is, you walk in and right at the entrance is a very long written history of the tapestry. Then you get to watch a movie - 14 of the most boring minutes of my life - telling you story again. Then you actually get to see the tapestry, which is pretty amazing if you stop to consider the work that went into it, but you dont really do that, cuz you are listening to an audio-guide telling you the story AGAIN! By the time I got to step three, I was really just looking for the exit of the museum... I was pretty over it.

Anywho, the next day I went down to the beaches. In the morning, I joined a guided tour of the Canadian sector - Juno beach, the Canadian war cemetary and the Canadian war memorial museum. It was all pretty cool. The cemetary was especially cool, cuz they had maple trees, which made me feel like I was standing in my own front yard. It was shocking to see how many graves were there, though... I knew lots of people lost their lives here, but oh dear! Then in the afternoon, I wandered over to the american sector with Ange and Dan, a Canadian couple I met at the hostel. It was cool, too. The beach was very similar to Juno (sand and water - shocking!) but the American cemetary is soooo much bigger. It's not quite as nice though... more crosses, but not so many trees and flowers and stuff. But impressive nonetheless.

After that, it was off to Paris, and let me tell you, Paris at night is EVERYTHING it's cracked up to be! It's soooooo pretty... and I havent even seen it all yet! On my first day here, I couldnt get into my room till 5 so I wandered pretty aimlessly... I stumbled upon the Moulin Rouge, but it was day time, so I will have to go back and get a proper look at it. I met a Canadian girl at the hostel (bloody Canadians, they're everywhere!) and we've been hanging out for the past couple of days. Last night, we were looking for food, and we just happened to find the Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Louvre and the Arc de Triomphe. Pretty hot.

Today, I went to the Versailles Castle with another Canadian... oh my!... It was HUGE! I thought my first castle was big, but it was nothing compared to this one. The Castle itself is enormous (Louis XIV lived here as well as his entire court of 6000 people), and then the gardens! Holy! They just go on and on and on... We walked through them for about an hour, and we still didnt get to the end... There was more. But here, we found "The Queens Appartments" (and by appartment, she means mini-castle). She actually had these appartments built because when she walked through the gardens during the day, she was too tired to come back at night, so she would sleep there and come back the next day. It's nice to be rich.

Anyways, so those are the basics of my adventures for the past couple of days... tomorrow, I am doing the really touristy stuff with my new Canadian buddy, ie. the Champs Elysees, Champ de Mars, Arc de Triomphe and that large metal phallic shaped tower that goes by the name of Eiffel. Should be a good day!!

See you later!

Steph :)