Born in the USA &; American in Paris Pt 2

0Josh • 31st Oct 2006 • blog entries, travel

I was reading that last post, the one that I wrote after we visited all the Athens sights.  Even though it was just a few days ago, it feels like its been forever, and even longer since we were in our nice Condo at Crete.  I’m writing from JFK Airport again, same computer terminal in the admirals club that I sat at during the beginning of our trip almost 2 weeks ago.

Our second day in Athens was very short, we got up and packed our things with just enough time to explore the shops and have breakfast at the cafe before heading out.  We were enjoying our Frappes at a cafe when it started raining! We knew this was our sign to head out!  We left Athens in the afternoon and arrived in Paris around 7pm local time.  We checked into our hotel near the airport and tried to figure out how much time we had before the trains and hotel shuttles shut down for the evening.  We took a chance and at 9:00 decided to take the hour long train into Paris.  The one thing that we wanted to accomplish our second time around, was to go up the Eiffel tower.  There are many other things that we still want to do in Paris, but your options are limited when its 10pm and you’ve got about an hour.

We went up to the second level, for time and finical considerations…along with the fact that the Rick Steeves book said the best view is from the second of the three levels. It was an amazing view of the city, something well worth all the trouble that we went through to get there.  If we wanted to catch the last shuttle from the airport (where the metro train runs to) to our hotel at midnight, we were going to have to take a quicker train route back.  We had things figured out, but were helped by a Eiffel tower security guard who saw us looking at our map and offered to help us.  This guy was about our age, and was very helpful at getting us on the right train.  It was interesting to talk to him for a while about the US, and his views on our foreign policy….not probably what we were expecting from someone in France.

We got back to the hotel beat, and went to bed around 1:30am….and set the alarm for 6:45am Paris Time.  We got up in enough time for a wonderful breakfast before heading out to the airport this morning, and are now in the middle of a 24 hour travel marathon back to Seattle.  That’s right, by the time we get back to good ‘ol SEATAC at 9:30pm PST, it will be a full day since waking up in Paris…..

We got another pass for the admirals club, so that is making our 6 hour layover in New York manageable….that and the fact that Clay Aiken was here earlier.