Sunday evening was when it all kicked off, as we had an emotional goodbye with our families at Manchester airport, before having a lovely pint (cheers Stu) while watching Man Utd smash eight past Arsenal. Fantastic stuff.
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| Bye England! |
When we arrived in Paris, we were due to be picked up by Anthony Rodrigues, someone we met through couchsurfing. Anthony was a really cool guy, and he made us feel completely at home in his apartment while we watched the third Pirates of the Caribbean film (awful). Apparently in France you can decide if you want to watch films in English or French, with subtitles for either language too - space age stuff.
After a not too horrible kip on his couch (Myles) and a "slightly hard" airbed (Dave), Anthony generously dropped us off at the airport the next morning so we could get a train to Paris.
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| Anthony our awesome Paris host |
"Hi, can we book two tickets for the night train to Rome, please?"
"No! System says no! Can't book! Completely full! Can't book!"
Ah.
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| Notre Dame |
Still, we plodded on with our day, with the plan to walk across the city, seeing the sights along the way. As it turned out, Paris was pretty awesome. I had always thought of Paris as a French London, but it wasn't. It was actually good. Notre Dame was our highlight of the day, and far more impressive than the overrated Eiffel Tower. Call of Duty fans would love Paris, simply for the fact that there are a large number of armoured police around these monuments, were all carrying FAMASs.
We headed back to the train station in the evening to see if we could chance the overnight train to Rome, and fortunately, it was no-way near fully booked (surprise, surprise), so we were able to hop in a compartment with a French lad named Keyvan. He was off to Bologna to surprise his girlfriend (the French are always showing us English up eh?), but he was a cool guy, and spoke better English than even us.
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| Dave enjoying the night train |
Waking up in Rome was slightly surreal, seeing as we went to sleep in Paris, but we were soon up and about looking for a) awesome stuff in Rome, and b) a place to sleep for the night. Rome was even more impressive than Paris, and with the help of Dave's trusty compass, we went exploring like we were in Lord of the Rings. Huge, ridiculously designed buildings were around every corner. Extra praise is richly deserved for the Colosseum. Looking at it on the internet or on TV just doesn't do it justice in the slightest.
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| The Colosseum |
After toying with the idea of sleeping in the train station (which we perhaps might've done, had they not played a semi Star Wars theme every 30 seconds through the loudspeaker), we found Hotel Michigan, which gave us a room for the "bargain" price of €15 each. I don't want to tarnish this blog with foul language, so feel free to check out what some other people thought of Hotel Michigan here. Hmm.
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| Hotel Michigan. Better left unsaid... |
