Paris 2009, an interesting experience.

Rachel and I arrived in Paris with no idea where we were going to stay, but that actually added to the excitement. I remember walking up the stairs of the tube station to be greeted by the sight of the Eiffel tower, which was a very surreal moment, to be in the shadow of such an Iconic landmark that until this moment I had only ever seen on television.

 The people at the tourist information point were very helpful in terms of providing maps of the city and they gave us a booklet of all the youth hostels in the area, being on a budget I wanted to find the cheapest one in there, and so once we spotted it we headed on over there, I don’t think either of us envisioned how long the walk would be, plus the heat was sweltering and our bags, although not exactly big were quite heavy. Paris in June is so hot!

 Four hours later we were still none the wiser as to where this hostel was, did it even exist? But due to the fact we pretty much had no money and so needed the cheapest we could find we persisted on the search. After some particularly bad directions from the locals we surprisingly found it and booked ourselves in for the same night, eighteen Euros for the room which in all fairness was actually a stationary cupboard with a bunk bed in. We then bought a 3 day metro ticket and decided we would use it as much as possible, so get our money’s worth, and to save our legs from dropping off!

 For as long as I can remember I had wanted to climb the Eiffel tower.  It had always been on my ‘to do’ list, so that is exactly what we did. We took the stairs half way up and then took the lift to the summit, those stairs are so tiring!! I’d say you have to have a decent level of fitness to climb them, in fact on the way up we overtook a morbidly obese American man who was struggling to get up, I actually felt quite sorry for him and as we were coming down he was still half way up, and we were at the top for quite a while.

 The Louvre was just amazing! I really was in awe of some of the magnificent paintings; I have always had a love and appreciation of art.

I have no idea why the Mona Lisa is one of the most famous paintings in the world; if I’m being honest I don’t think it’s that great, it is protected by bullet proof glass and two security guards. It is actually quite eerie. However I would still recommend going to see it.

 The whole first day in Paris was magical; we managed to learn how to get around quite quickly after a questionable start. We passed a nice looking restaurant, in fact it was really quite posh but we thought we just have to experience was it’s like to eat in a fancy French restaurant so we just did it. Plus, we had hardly eaten a thing all day and were actually starving. I had a really nice duck dish.

 One thing I noticed pretty much straight away about the French is that they just looked a whole lot healthier than the English do, and I didn’t see a single obese French person.

 So after a great day, we decided to go back to the hostel and sleep, now this is where it gets interesting...

We arrived at the hostel around half eleven if I remember correctly, no problems finding it this time luckily. We asked the man at the desk for our room key to discover after a lot of fumbling around behind the desk that he had actually given our room away to someone else!!!

We told him "Well you'll just have to go into our room and tell them that you have made a mistake and that they have to get out because we booked it first"

"I can’t do that, they are sleeping" he said

"Well wake them up! We booked our room this morning! Our luggage is in the storage room! Here is our receipt!! Look!!"

"I made a mistake" he said” but it’s no longer my problem, it’s your problem"

When he said that I was fuming as you can imagine, and so was Rachel, we were not going to go quietly, someone was sleeping in our room that we had paid for, we were knackered and all we wanted to do was sleep.

Rachel was so funny!! I found it hard not to laugh

"je suis annoyed!" she quipped

"je suis tired" I added

"je suis screwed" we both said in unison as we looked at each other

He kept on saying "it’s not my problem, now it’s your problem" so we threatened to call the police

It was far too late in the day to find someone else to stay; we couldn’t roam around Paris all night!

We were prepared to stay at that desk all night arguing with this guy till he was forced to sort out the problem that HE had created.

In the end we ran up the stairs when his back was turned and found a room with two spare beds! That wasn't actually too difficult, we had somewhere to sleep! An hour or so later we were drifting off to sleep then two Chinese girls came in the room, “what are you doing in our beds?"

*now this was one of those really awkward moments as you can imagine*

er..."the guy at the desk gave our room to someone else so we decided to find some spare beds, we didn’t realise they were yours"

"Well where are we going to sleep? They said nervously"

"er, well okay, I’ll go and sleep in Rachel’s bed with her if you two sleep in this one!! Don’t say anything to anyone about this" I told them, "keep quiet!"

So reluctantly these two girls had to share a tiny bed between them, and Rachel and I slept in the other one.

The next morning I was awakened with a pretty horrendous sight, a morbidly obese American girl completely naked standing above my bed, not a pretty sight, to this day I have no idea what she was doing there.

The next morning we sneaked downstairs and went to the desk, it was a woman there this time, she was a lot more reasonable and understanding, Rachel told her that because this knob had given our room to someone else we had to roam the streets of Paris all night, and she actually believed us!! So she agreed to give us the second night for free! All’s well that ends well, so they say.