I’m in Paris!
I love this city and yesterday was a simply amazing day – sunny, 66 degrees (aka perfect) and the awesome school group I am travelling with did a bike tour of Paris. I recommend this bike tour over every other attraction in Paris – on a sunny day.
Unfortunately one of the girls touring with us came down quite ill, so she missed out on the whole day. I really felt sad for her but news is that she’s doing well today, so that’s happy news. Whilst the Paris touring continued today, I jumped on a tour bus to Bruges, Belgium, for my own little private-amongst-fifty tour. Funny little story – having to visit Bruges for company research purposes (scoping out hotels to make sure all is well), Ned decided today was the best day for having one less counselor with the Paris girls. Only thing was that the last train heading back to Paris would leave Bruges at 3:10pm or thereabouts…not really enough time since I would only arrive at perhaps 11:30am. But I found this 50-seater coach day-trip from Paris – it would give me a longer time in Bruges, save hassles of changing trains at Brussels, and would only cost about $20 more. So I was probably the only party-of-one on the tour today, more work than pleasure, but gladly eating up the bonus information from the guide. Found out later there were strikes on Paris rail today – so I definitely made the right transport decision.
Bruges was very pretty. At first I was in horror of being shoulder-to-shoulder with a bunch of older people not really looking where they were going…but then I walked to the other side of the road where no-one had realized the pavement was empty. Very much a quaint “tourist town” – this concept shouldn’t always be a bad thing, and again wasn’t in Bruges’ case. Chocolate stores were everywhere, the canals and cobbled roads were full of movement and beautiful heritage – and I always love seeing lots of bicycles.
Krakow on the weekend was good, but lonely. Being such a Catholic country everything was shut on the weekend (Easter), apart from hotels and restaurants. On the bright side, those were the most important things for my research purposes. I had a light lunch in Market Square at the oldest operating restaurant in Europe (since 1342 – all class), I did a great bike tour on Sunday, and I hung out with a small group of English-teaching Australians on Friday night. Jet lag really, really affected me over this weekend (two bad stints this year – getting worse as I’m getting older), and although staying at a hotel was comfortable, I missed having people around me – like at a hostel. It was good to join everyone again in Paris on Monday.
Back to the states on Saturday – it has been GREAT being back in Europe, particularly Paris. I’ve felt quite tired at times but I’ve also sprung back with energy soon afterwards. Busy again in the states – but fun as well – POSSIBLY seeing Wilco the day back (pending how tired I am and if I can get a ticket off a scalper for a reasonable price) and then off to New York City on Sunday – work and pleasure.
Aurevoir.
