Bonjour

So, this morning we got back to the hotel at 8:05, 25 minutes to spare. It was quite an adventure from the very beginning. There are so many trains that were able to take us from Hannover to Paris, but we finally decided on the direct overnight train that left Hannover HBF at 10:15 and arrived in Paris at 9 in the morning. We all went out dinner then headed home to pack before leaving for the weekend. I looked at the clock and realized it was 9:50, which meant our train for Paris was leaving in less than 30 minutes. We scrambled the rest of our things together and sprinted to the train station. We arrive at Hannover HBF at 10:12, barely on time. Our train wasn’t there yet, but we decided to wait up on the platform just in case. However, we soon find out that Joanna left her eurorail pass back at the hotel. So she runs back to get it and makes it back to the train station in under 15 minutes, which I might say should be a record time. We’re really confused because I stayed up on the platform and the train never came. So we decide to go talk to the DB help station and he says RUN the train is about to leave from platform 4. So we do exactly as he says, we run to platform 4 hop on the train and soon as I get the suitcase in the train takes off, we made it barely in time.  So, we’re finally on the train but we have no idea where to sit because we didn’t make reservations. A train man comes walking down the hallway and we ask him where to sit and he said, “ Do you have reservations”, we say “No”. He then repeats “No reservations” and we reply, “No.” He was very confused but definitely the nicest train person we’ve met. He explained to us that to ride on the overnight train you have to make a reservations, however he told us we could just pay him and he would let us sleep in the cabin.

    We finally arrive in Paris and go drop off our luggage at the “Aloha Hostel”.  Then it was time to go explore the city. We started our adventure at the arc de triumph and then pretended we could go shopping down the street champs de elyss. After lunch we decided to go see the Eiffel tower, which I must admit I was most excited about. The Eiffel tower is the iconic image every person thinks of when they hear of Paris, France. We get off the train and maneuver our way towards it. There were street people everywhere following us, beginning us to buy their souvenirs. Unfortunately, it was really icy and cold so they only allowed us to go the first viewing deck of the Eiffel tower. It was still an amazing view, something I definitely will never forget. The next day we went and toured The Louvre,  It is an immense gallery of art that would take someone a week to actually read and see every masterpiece.  However, we only had two hours to tour so we hit the highlights, the winged victory, mona lisa, and a few others. After we were done at The Louvre we headed to the train station to catch a train back to Hannover.

  Well to keep it short the train station hated us. Even though we had a eurorail pass they told us there was no way we could make it back to Hannover or Koln that day. So, we ended up buying a 74 euro ticket just to be able to leave France and go back to Koln.  From Koln we took the train to Bonn. However, our train didn’t leave from Bonn til 1:30 in the morning. So we decided to make the best of our night and headed to our favorite place in Bonn, Billa-Bonn.