Bonjour

Ok just a quick one this time.  Well I say that now...  Anyhoo we made it to Paris.  A bit of a mission.  We made it to the airport, and then to the tube.  That took about an hour to get into our stop, which is a bit rough when your as tired as we were.  We only got a tiny bit lost, we walked into a hotel to ask for help and he said 'oh yeah you're about an hour away.  Just kidding' great timing for a bit of a typical british sense of humor.  In the end it was just up the road.  The hostel...was probably a typical hostel, but not so much to our liking.  The people at reception were not the most helpful.  The 24 bed dorm involved having bunks stacked three high, and considering we arrived at 11.30, we didn't luck out with bottom bunks.  You also had to make your own bed, which on a top bunk in the dark in a room full of sleeping people is not the simplest task.  Breakfast was a badly toasted piece of bread and some average instant coffee, a disappointment after the good coffee we got in Barcelona.

 So we left there by 9 to head to the station.  Buying our tickets for the eurostar was a pretty big shock, 179 pounds was the cheapest we could get, unless we waited till 8.30pm and still it was only 140 pounds.  And then we realised that was per person.  Ouch said the bank account.  It should be ok though, I sat on the train furiosly doing mental sums to work out how much we needed to save on our daily budget to cover it and its only about 3 euros so no big deal.  Still a nasty surprise, particularly for someone as anal about being organised as me, to just not realise how much it would cost, and to have not sorted out cheaper tickets earlier.  Second panic of the day was discovering that we were supposed to inform our hostel in Paris if we were arriving later than 12 ot they may cancel our booking.  After trying Sophs phone, which didn't work, feeling frustrated that I didn't have my phone which had been topped up for just this thing, and trying and failing with a pay phone upon arriving in Paris, we just legged it to the hostel.  Turns out no big panic they didn't even mention it.

The hostel here is much better than London, though half of you have stayed here before haven't you.  Its clean and the beds are only two high.  Plus as a bonus we got our washing done at a laundromat just down the road, and got the hostel dinner for 6 Euros, cheap and hassle free.

After eating, which we didn't do enough of today (you know you need more fuel in your body when you start getting annoyed with Sophie, I mean its Sophie), we went for a walk along the canal, which was pretty enough despite the rubbish.  Can't say I've had the best first impression of Paris though, so far its been noisy (a lot of car horns), cold, smelly, and we walked past a guy pissing against a wall (probably accounts for the smell).  Hopefully we'll see a better side when we pass back through.  For now, sleep, as it is an early start for Amsterdam tomorrow.