My apologies

for my rant this morning. Yesterday couldn’t have been more terrible. I felt like I had been over Hartselle’s “Humpty Dumpty” bridge 3230908 times during our flight, and I got sick on the plane from Krakow to Paris. Once we finally landed and attempted our hike to find our hostel, we managed to get completely lost in the middle of Paris and way too many gypsies (WITH our heavy backpacks that, for some reason, are growing with each stop). We had turned down the right road the wrong way… ugh! But what is more, Parisians are not willing to help English speakers AT ALL. They laughed at me and mocked me at McDonald's yesterday as I bravely attempted to order two Royals with cheese and a bag of fruit (yes, I know, we ate McDonald's in Paris... BUT that was our first McDonald's stop on the whole trip). I quickly decided that the French are not my friends.

Today, though, has been much better. We met Ronnie from California (who knows a bit of French! yay!) and Stephie from Argentina at breakfast, and they joined us on our New Europe tour around the city. Ronnie and Zach have been talking history, and Stephie and I have been talking Spanish. Ha!

Stephie is only 17 years old, and it is the tradition in her family—at her age—to go on a big backpacking trip. She is traveling alone, and is staying with her extended family or friends in most of her stops, but the girl and boyfriend she was staying with in Paris “had trouble between them,” so she crashed at our hostel last night.

We just got back from our tour, and my feet are much redder than they were this morning!

The hostel here is not as nice as our previous three hostels. We have made friends with an Italian guy in our room, Fredericko, who is also traveling alone. I am amazed at all the backpackers that are traveling alone! How brave!

I think we are going to take it easy the rest of the day, then Versailles is on the agenda tomorrow. J