PARIS:

*Holly paralyzed from crink in neck (for at least 20 minutes).

Riding into Paris via train was very scenic though getting out at Gare du Nord was not so much. The northern train station (Gare=station Nord=north) is in a rather tricky neighborhood at least right next to the station. And we had to leave the station in order to hit up an ATM, as we couldn't find one in the station. Also…. our first real language barrier was front and center as neither of us knew a bit of French other than the phrases we'd been memorizing since London. Funny how the people working in transportation seem to be the ones least willing (or able) to speak anything but french. We had a pretty horrid time trying to get some dang metro tickets from this DMV-type transit lady (who would be going on strike a month later) let alone figuring out how to get anywhere. It wasn't until we got to our hostel that we encountered a Brit expat working at the desk who helped us out a bit. She was very cool, if not only because we could speak to her. We worked very hard to get some phrases down and every time we had to interact after that first encounter (w/ transit lady), I tried desperately to start out in French. This made a world of a difference. The reactions were so much better: "Okay Okay, I speak English" (read=please stop murdering my language, I will tell you anything you want to know). Actually, just our willingness and enthusiasm to try was enough to win over most of the French people we needed to communicate with.
At the Gare du Austerlitz station, where we headed to reserve outbound tickets to Madrid, we dealt with a very nice French transit ticket lady who we communicated with via acting out, pictures, hand signals, my pocket translator, and our phrase book, all in one glorious conversation. This did, however, change the dates of our trip, as we found the day we had planned to take the night train to Madrid was completely booked, but not the day before or the day after. So we decided to head out a day early and only got two full nights (3 days) in Paris rather than a fourth day. Our hostel, Hotel Caulaincourt, was very cool about it since we paid up front they gave us back that nights full fee. We definitely lucked out with accommodations in Paris. The hotel was up in the Montemarte neighborhood, which is the hill overlooking Paris where the famous Moulin Rouge and Sacre Coeur cathedral are. Aside from that main street where the Moulin Rouge is, the neighborhood was spectacular and definitely livable.
However, after the first night, I woke up with an unbelievably PAINFUL crink in my neck (see photos as proof). Which wasn't great timing as we were headed out to Notre Dame that day. I looked kind of decrepit and hunched-back-like as I tried to look up in the cathedral moving just my hips. That was a painful couple of days. We also realized in Paris, that smoking is like breakfast in Europe (especially in Paris). I think over half the population smokes. Also, lapdogs were big with Parisians-lots of lapdogs-even at fine dining establishments where we spied a little Chihuahua purse accessory eating some very good pasta. Oh and the Parisians were also big on Eminem-frickin' everywhere.

We headed out on a night train to Madrid, & since we couldn't afford a couchette (sleeper car) we knew we were in for a long uncomfortable night… I should also mention that Heather was once again on a "break" when they made the call for our train, though this time we made it with at least 8 to 10 minutes to spare. However, sleeping on a glorified dentist's chair for 10 hours, having the train car catch on fire, and racking my brain to recover some of it's Spanish to try and save our lives, really put things in perspective. I would have had no qualms with missing that train.