Paris Wednesday/Thursday: Nous sommes arrives

After 26 hours of traveling, we arrived in Paris! We really were so lucky that we were about to get out; most flights out of Pittsburgh were cancelled since it snowed 8 inches, but we were able to take our 6:30am Megabus to New York. Our bus had a glass roof which was pretty neat, but let me be honest, I slept most of the the way, while Pieter tried to get the internet to work. The driver only stopped for 20 minutes the whole trip because he was afraid that the storm would catch back up to us. 

This is what 5:30am in Morningside looks like :)

 

Once we got to NYC, we didn't see much, just took the subway to the airport. TSA was a breeze contrary to warnings we had gotten and so we ended up with hours to kill. Our flight to Iceland was delayed so we only had 20 minutes to change planes and go through customs...yikes! But we made it and so did our bags. 

Iceland to Paris, we sat next to a super nice PhD student, Antoine, who was returning home after studying for 2 months in Boulder. Anyway, he ended up insisting on guiding us all the way through Gare du Nord to the metro, including talking to ticket agent for us. Definitely a relief to have someone walk us through the part that I was most nervous about. People who say the French are snotty/mean/unfriendly are completely wrong! I have always had the best experiences with the French people)  On the RER (train into Paris), it was super-duper crowded and two ladies got into a fist fight and then 2 other people got in screaming matches with other people. So much for Pieter's introduction to Paris. Anyway, got to the hotel fine, only had to ask for directions once. 

Then we went off to explore the Left Bank but forgot the camera. We ended up going to Notre Dame and we saw some big banners and such and found out they are celebrating 850 years as a cathedral, so that was pretty cool. After that we went and had a French dinner and called it a night. By the way, after an hour of wandering, we finally found the street where my family always got dinner the last time we were there! I got so excited!