NYE in Paris

WOW, I can not believe we are already in 2011. Happy New Year EVERYONE! Where should I begin...I guess our trip to Paris for New Years Eve. We decided to spend NYE this year in Paris. If we can't spend it with family we might as well spend it at the Eifel Tower. We left early early Friday morning, like 2am early. That isn't much fun. The bus was packed with only 6 seats open. Luckily The Mr and I each got our own set of seats, this was good for sleeping purposes. When we got on the bus The Mr was ready to get off the bus because a family was going to be sitting right behind us. Not that there is anything wrong with kids but a 6hr bus ride with crying kids won't be so great. Luckily the kids in the family were well behaved and the baby slept almost the entire way. About an hour outside of Paris we stopped for breakfast. I always wear something comfy for the ride and then change as we get closer. Well, I forgot how gross and dirty public restrooms are in Paris. EWW!! Luckily this stop had a shower area and while it was dirty there was room for me to hang my bag and change without having to touch all the germ infested surfaces. HAHA, no joke those restrooms make me want to puke. Anyways, finally onto Paris. We had a guided city tour to start the day. Saw plenty and took a bazillion pictures. Okay so maybe not a bazillion but plenty. We stopped at the Eifel Tower for a few minutes to take pictures. The clouds were hanging pretty low that day so it looked like someone had just chopped off the top of the tower. It was freezing outside so I was ready to get back on the bus. In all honesty, I could have came back home and been happy I saw the Eifel Tower and took a picture there. After a couple more stops and sightseeing we checked into our Hotel. This hotel was straight out of a movie. It was so small and quiet, just like in the movies. We get out room key and it was room 265. Well usually that would mean second floor. So we decided to take the stairs. Boy were we wrong. We kept climbing because we couldn't find our room. Finally we reached the 5th floor, had to be our floor because there were no more stairs WRONG AGAIN lol. Our room was on the 6th and top floor that could only be reached by elevator, so we took the elevator up one more floor. After fumbling with the random key we finally made it into our room. The room was SO TINY. Literally the entire room and restroom was smaller than our bedroom here at home. And it was freezing. I didn't really care, I threw the extra blanket on the bed and laid down for a nap before getting dressed for the evening. I woke up from my nap freezing cold, thank goodness the thermostat was easy to figure out, I turned that bad boy up. Finally showered and got ready for dinner. We decided to head to Hard Rock for dinner, so that we could add to our European Hard Rock collection. Well, that was another bad idea. After taking a few wrong trains we got there only to find out they were charging a cover. 55euro PER PERSON just to be seated and that does not include food. Of course its NYE so most places were going to be expensive. But that was just too much for us. So we found a cute little train themed pizza place nearby. The Mr had a pretty good lasagna and I had a pizza. They too had marked up their prices for the night but it was still much cheaper than Hard Rock.

After dinner we went back to the Hotel to go potty ( I wasnt about to find a public restroom) and warm up a little. Then we headed out to Eifel Tower. The Metro (subway) system was starting to get crazy busy. The locals get very aggressive and physical. I was pushed with a lot of force by one woman, yelling at me because I wasn't moving like she wanted me to, too bad I had no where to move, I was surrounded by people. She just looked like an unhappy person so I sent her a big smile because I knew it would make her even more mad. I am sure she was cursing me out to her young daughter, awesome example mom! Anywho we made it to the Eifel Tower. A billion more pictures and freezing temps later we were almost ready for the 10, 9, 8 you get the picture, the New Years countdown. Too bad there was no countdown. The lights that light up the tower every hour on the hour went off and we knew it was 2011. Nothing special. No big fireworks show, nothing. Wait, random people lit off their own fireworks in the crowd. One bottle rocket even failed to go up into the air and flew straight into the crowd, lovely. The people in the area got crazy, people were banging on car windows and jumping on the roofs. It was something you only see on TV only, it was real life, right in front of us. We got out of there ASAP. It wasn't a long walk back to the hotel. Along the entire walk were people getting crazy celebrating. We had been warned that it gets pretty wild for hours after the New Year strikes, and they weren't kidding. Finally we made it back to our warm and toasty hotel room. The Mr crashed out pretty quick, I watched BBC News for a little bit, they were showing the countdowns in other cities. The following day we did some more sightseeing and freezing. I really wasn't too excited, I had seen the Eifel Tower and was ready to be home. We did go back to the Eifel Tower and this time we climbed up into it. Later after lunch we headed home, I was happy.

And that is how we spent our NYE. Hopefully next year we can spend it with family back in the states.