Tuesday 14th February

4am, you should only see this time on the way home from an epic night out. The birds weren't even out yet, but I'm not sure how many birds other than pigeons live in London.

Our train from Paris was at 5:40am; we checked out of the hotel and made our way to the station, which was literally a stone throw away from the hotel. The train was ok, not much to see as it was still flipping dark and half of the journey was spent in a tunnel!

We exit the tunnel safe and sound and had lost an hour in our life. We arrived at the Gare du Nord train station, the first thing I personally noticed was the 1000s of Selecta vending machines (can I not escape?!). We decided to book our next train journey as we were at the station, as we have an interrail ticket we do not have to pay for the train, but we do have to book it. So off we went, I was thinking what I needed to say in French, but lucky for me they had English speaking kiosks. So I went for the latter! The direct train we wanted was booked up, damn. So we have got a train to Brussels and then on to Amsterdam. So we have our next tickets ready for Thursday afternoon.

The next mission was locating our sleeping location, walking out of the station trying to locate what street I was on, this was surprisingly easy worked out our bearings and off we went. Google maps said it was 36 minute walk, which was fine as it would be saving us money buying a taxi. We are in the North-East of Paris on the outskirts. On first impressions this part of Paris isn't the nicest of areas, but we are warming to it. We walked along the cannel as our hostel is right next to it. It looks like the artic though, massive chunks of floating ice. Big enough to sink the Titanic again. (We have since learnt that the last 2 weeks Paris has experience -10 to -15 temperatures and it has only just warmed up.) Google maps have a tendency for taking you to a completely different place; we experienced this first hand today. We walking to a complete dead end, where they are re-doing residents homes. Luckily I had my iPod and managed to find where we should have gone. We only walked an extra 10 minutes so not too bad! But still! I even admired the building that is our hostel on the way past. On first impressions, it's pretty big. We managed to lock our bags in the lockers in the basement and we sat down to rest our feet, as mine have nearly died. It was lunch time when we got ourselves sorted and went venturing out for food. The benefit for getting lost was that we located the nearest supermarket. The hostel hasn't got any kitchen facilities so we have just brought breakfast and lunch for the next couple of days. Lunch consisted of half of a massive baguette and chorizo. Yum! We went venturing out trying to locate some decent food locations; I have found hundreds of patisseries and the most good looking cakes/tarts you'll ever see. This will be our lunch tomorrow!

We managed to check into our room and got ourselves settled; I passed out for 3 hours, after waking up for 4am and walking for miles I couldn't keep my eyes open. After my snooze we got some food downstairs and chilled out. Tomorrow we are going to try to see the sites; we have decided to get the Metro as it will be a mission to walk from the hostel!

Wednesday 15th February

Today we woke up at 8am, with the intention of leaving around 9am as the sites get pretty packed very quickly.

We left at 9:30ish and headed for our nearest metro station. We couldn't find it. These things aren't labeled too well. We carried on down the road till we found one, brought our tickets and off we went. The metro isn't too hard to work out and we got to the Musée Louvre around 10ish. It was pretty busy but not as bad as I had imagined! The Louvre is split into four floors and three sections. We got pretty lost trying to locate an exit, I will never criticise that Festival place is awful again! We checked out the Mona Lisa portrait, which is painted by the wonderful Leonardo da Vinci which is the main highlight of the museum. It was jammed packed. It was covered with thick glass to protect the painting from any more thefts!!! We strolled around looking at the sculptures of Greece and Africa, and walking through the French and Italian painting rooms.

We also checked out the famous Greek statue Venus de Milo (the one with no arms!)

The Louvre itself was a piece of art, each room had amazing artwork on the ceiling and fantastic architecture. We had enough after a couple of hours and decided to move on.

We walked to the Notre Dame Cathedral which wasn't too far away. It started to rain, seems you can't get away from this miserable weather! The Cathedral is very impressive, the art work and detail on the outside of the building was amazing. Each statue had its own face and pose, it must have taken years to complete. Construction started in 1160 where the original cathedral was demolished and in 1163 the Notre Dame construction started. The final elements were completed in 1345. They are going through some more renovation; they are installing 8 new bells to install the original sound of the bells.

We walked around the base of the Cathedral with our tasty crêpes! We walked across the river and caught a boat down the Seine, as we were too lazy to walk! (It's a huge city ok?!) It was nice and warm in the boat which was a selling point! We got to see lots of the sites along the river side! We stopped off at the Eiffel Tower and started to queue for the lift to the top, but the north pillar was closed for repair and the east pillar only goes to the 2nd floor and via stairs. After all the walking I had done so far, I was not 'game' for this. We decided to come back tomorrow early and get on it.

Instead we walked to the Arc de Triomphe, it was a long walk. By this point I had worked through the pain of my feet hurting, but walking up the 284 steps to reach the top, I am not joking when I say this, I nearly died…! The lactic acid that was going through legs was killing me! But the view was worth it!

Another thing I have noticed is French drivers are crazy! Also the pavement is all fair game for scooters to just drive along to bypass cars during rush hour. Being a pedestrian is dangerous in Paris!

We walked down back to the ground, I felt sick, and I hate walking down stairs from great heights. We decided to walk down the famous Avenue des Champs-Élysées. There were some fantastic shops; unfortunately I cannot afford the likes of Luis Vuitton!

I was dead, and needed to go home! We picked up some food and €3.00 wine (which we later found out Stu picked up cooking wine, I will never trust him again!) and have chilled out in the common room.

We sat in the common room for the rest of the night chilling and talking to other travellers. There were a lot of Brazilians, Argentines and Americans/Canadians. They were being extremely loud singing (badly) British songs, after about 5 songs of Queen, Oasis and Bon Jovi I went to bed as it was our last day in Paris tomorrow and we needed to see the Eiffel Tower!

Thursday 16th February

We woke up early packed our bags, as we had to check out of the hostel by 10am. We locked our bags in the lockers and enjoyed the free breakfast on offer before heading off. We got to the Eiffel Tower at around 11ish and queued to get in. We got our discounted tickets (the benefits to being in the EU free access to the majority of Paris's sites!) to the 3rd floor. I contemplated walking up to the 2nd floor and getting the lift up to the 3rd floor but the 600 odd step staircase didn't excite me! Apparently there is 1770 if you walk from the base to the top, but they don't allow the public to use these stairs any more.

It was pretty chilly up top, there wasn't much sun about today but it was clear enough to get a good few of Paris. Bluerrghhh I don't like heights too much. After feeling queasy we escaped back down the lift. This whole trip took a good 3 hours, as there was only 1 operational lift it literally took ages to get up and down. We went back to the hostel to grab some food and get ready to catch our train to Amsterdam. Our train left at 16:01 and we managed to find it all ok. We had seats 95 - 96, which didn't exists…at all! Who books you into a train with seats only going up to 94? So we spent the next hour and 25 minutes in the most uncomfortable fold down seats.

We arrived in Brussels (does this count as an extra country I have visited? I have technically spent 45 minutes on Belgium soil…so I'm going to take that!) and waited around for our next train to depart. This is a local train, so free for all on seats. So our 3 hour journey to Amsterdam was a bit more comfy than the previous journey!

Overall view on Paris:

The locals are grumpy, even when you do attempt to speak French they just reply back in English. The city is beautiful and the food is great! If you're still under 25 you get discounts on all the sites or even better free. The only attraction we saw that we had to pay for was the Eiffel Tower. We have managed to save a lot and spend the money on nice food and transport we wouldn't have taken. If we weren't under 25 it would have been a different story!

Total miles from UK: 68

Transport taken:

Trains = 1

Our photos (you don't need facebook to see these):

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150795487623986.506697.501883985&type=3&l=a2bdbe8e0a