June 25

(10:00)Yesterday was quite the day. We woke up at 8 am to go to the Lourve. After a lot of walking with our packs strapped on tightly we finally arrived at the Louvre around 10:30. We were able to check our bags thankfully, which allowed us to see the entire museum. It only took us five and a half hours. Needless to say, I won’t be needing to see any more art anytime soon. At one point during the walk through, we actually got so tired that we laid down on a bench and we both fell asleep in the middle of one of the galleries. Luckily I was awaken by Ben’s snoring. After the Lourve, we started our attempt to see the Arc of Triumph (I think that’s what it’s called anyway). The only good part of the walk was finding a French sandwich shop. I ate a delicious salami sandwich on French bread with a little grey poupon and Ben ate a hot dog. Nothing like flying all the way to France to experience French culture just to order a hot dog. He did say it was the best hot dog he’s ever had though (although that may be because it was the first authentic meal we’ve had since Toronto). Anyway, after about three hours of walking and not being able to get on the subway, we finally followed another guy’s lead and jumped the terminal and rode back to Versailles to take a nap.

After we made it to Versailles, we went in search of the free public park that we had strolled through the day before. We ended up finding a man-made pond with a grassy park surrounding it. There were a number of small groups of people just relaxing and drinking around the pond. We joined them by opening our bottle of wine back up, and then we remembered how awful it tasted the day before. Pretty soon, masses of people began gathering around this pond. Just before dark we decided that we didn’t want to stay there as there were about six police vehicles directly behind us. One cop had a spot light that he kept shining on the main crowd every once in a while. We walked about a half mile away before deciding that we should go back to the edge of the park to see what exactly was going on there. Nothing was happening so eventually we got our blankets out and laid against a tree. It was probably about 11:00 pm when we had both dozed off. When we woke up, it was 5:30 the next morning. I never knew that I could get exhausted enough where I could sleep six and a half hours against a tree. I was able to take a photo of the Palace of Versailles at sunrise though; hopefully it turns out. Anyway, we never found out what all those people we there for. If something special happened, we must have slept through it. There was litter all over the park when we woke up though.

We started walking at about 6:00 am this morning to find a train going toward the beaches of Normandy. Basically all we did was walk from one information booth to get directions to the location of the next information booth until we finally got on our train a few minutes ago which left at 10:10 am. So that takes us to now, four hours after we departed from Versailles, on a train headed toward Caen, France to see Normandy.

June 26
(4:00) Quite a bit has happened since we left for Caen. Our mothers are going to kill us when they here these stories I’m sure, but here we go.

Shortly after arriving in Caen, we found that the only way to get to the war sites and the Normandy Beaches was to rent a car. After finding out that a car rental would cost us 160 Euros for only eight hours, we realized that we would not be experiencing the Normandy Beaches. We then proceeded to find a park next to a cemetery and I slept for two hours against a tree. Ben snapped off a few photos of some of the bigger tombstones and then we were on our way back to Paris; about a two hour train ride. I did not even take one picture or video all day, yet somehow we managed to turn it into our most eventful day yet. About fifteen minutes before arrival in Paris, the ticket checker came around and checked our tickets for the first time during the entire trip. He explained to us in broken English that we were riding in first class and that our tickets were for second class. We then had to stand for the last fifteen minutes. Once we got back we spent two hours trying to navigate the subway to find a place to sleep. After countless mistakes of taking wrong trains and getting off too early, we just headed back to the familiar Versailles park where we had spent the previous night. We got all situated for sleeping against our tree and then a policeman came through the park with a spotlight, so we thought we should pack up quickly and move toward the rest of the public area, just in case we were in a spot we weren’t supposed to be. After the cop and passed through, we moved back to our spot and began to fall asleep. Ben was asleep and I was just dozing off when I heard a rumbling off in the distance. I feared the worst so I began to put my bag into the plastic garbage bag I had packed. The sky seemed fine for a few minutes until all of a sudden a lightning bolt struck and thunder cracked only about a half second later. That one was close! Ben (who didn’t even wake up on the plane when I punched his shoulder) jumped to his feet from a comatose sleep. We looked up and saw rain coming over the pond. We packed everything up as quickly as possible and tried to find shelter somewhere. Unfortunately, we were about a half mile from anything with a roof or canopy. We were soaked and were struggling to keep our packs dry. We realized at that moment that there was nothing we could do except walk towards the town of Versailles at 1:00 am in a pouring rain. We got quite a few looks from the town folk while we were walking with garbage bags over our shoulders with no shirts or shoes. All we knew was that we needed to find a roof or canopy to curl up under or we would freeze. We ended up staying under a small canopy over the sidewalk for over an hour while we waited for the rain to stop. Eventually it stopped long enough for us to make it to the train station which doesn’t open until 4:45 am. Right now, we are waiting for the train station to open up so we can begin to navigate toward our train that leaves at 7:13 am toward London. Just now, we had a cop stop his car to shine a flashlight on us thinking we might be bums or something I guess. Once he got a glimpse of my laptop, however, he figured we must just be night owls. I can not wait to sleep on the train toward London!