Goodbye, Hello, Train, Paris!

I am writing this a day late! We were too tired to do anything once we arrived in Paris.  Well, that's not completely true.

Anyway, we had another fabulous breakfast of BREAD!!  Brötchen, Brezen (Pretzels.  I hope I got that one right....they say it differently in Frankfurt and Bavaria and I can never remember which is which.)

It was a beautiful day!

Our view from the guest room window

Brad and Philipp played football for a little bit.  Stefan said "don't put this in your blog!" but I can't let anyone stifle my creativity.  (hahaha)  So they have this neighbor who is totally mean and nutso.  She yells at people a lot.  She didn't like that they were playing catch and having fun so she came out to yell at them and argue with Brad!  I won't go into details, but I will tell you that this is NOT typical from what we have seen in Germany!  The people are so very nice!  There can be a bad apple anywhere.  But the Schäfer's were upset by it.  Brad was really fine and knows that she was just a really unhappy person.

Ok on to more fun.  We got all packed up and Stefanie had to leave for work. That was sad.  But she is a nurse for babies, and the babies needed her!  It was hard to say goodbye since we never know when we will see each other again.

Such great people!

We went to get one of our favorite meals in Germany....Döner!! A Döner is a Turkish dish that is roasted chopped up turkey cooked again on a spit, then cut off into pieces again and served on a tasty bun, or over fries, or on a salad....covered with a garlicky dill sauce.  SO good! 

Here is the Döner guy cutting off the meat! He was funny.

He drew a picture of Brad on his sandwich so he would know which one was his. ha

A picture could never do it justice.

After lunch, we said goodbye to Anna and Stefan and Phillip took us over to say Hi to his parents on our way to our next stop.  They are so sweet!  We could only visit for about 15 minutes, but it was better than nothing!  So nice to see them again.  

We were going next to the Erath's house.  They are halfway to the train station, so Stefan dropped us there.  They have a new house since we saw them last!  It's big and really cool! It was great to see them again!  (Boy, I have said that a lot the last few days!) We had to say our goodbyes to the last of the Schäfer family.  We already look forward to our next visit together, whenever it may be!

We didn't have much time to hang out at the Erath's because we had to catch our train to Paris!  We dropped off our bigger luggage and just took our Paris stuff.  We had a great time laughing with them on the way to the station!  We get to visit more after Paris, when we stay with them for the weekend. They dropped us off at the train station, and we found the right train!  Yay! We got on and weren't sure where to sit.  There was a whole empty car, so we sat in there.  The seats were so big and cushy! It was gonna make for a nice 4-1/2 hour ride!  Then I saw a sign that said 1 Klasse.  1st Class.  Oops. After asking some conductors, we found our correct seats.  lol.  It was still way more room than an airplane and pretty comfy.  One thing I forgot about these hours-long train rides from last time: by the middle to end of the trip, there is no longer any toilet paper.  And the people who had to go #2 just leave it sitting there since there is no TP to flush.  I have no idea if this is a cultural thing, but this happened on both trains when we did this before, too!  YUCK.  Note to self: Go potty before halfway, then hold it.

So we got ourselves all comfortable and settled in for our ride!

Brad did some work on his computer and read a book, and I listened to an audiobook.  The time went by pretty fast!  Then we were THERE!

It was a bit of a hike to the Metro station (subway) and then to the apartment once we got off it.  Brad was being my hero and carrying ALL the bags!  There are so many stairs up and down and up and down for the Metro.  so. many. stairs.

It was dark so we couldn't really see much of the city.  We got turned around and definitely went out of our way trying to figure it out.  A very nice French lady saw that we were lost losers and gave us what I am sure were fabulous directions!  But we couldn't understand a word.  We tried to follow how she gestured.  haha.  We finally arrived and our landlord let us in our adorable apartment.  Philippe.  He was so nice and showed us where everything is. We were excited to look around, so we walked for a few minutes and found a little Irish Pub.  Brad had a couple of beers and we watched lots of soccer.  We came back and went to sleep...we were exhausted!

The Fontaine des Innocents is right outside our door.  It's a fountain built in the 1540's. Wow. 

We were SO excited to see Paris in the daylight.  Such a busy day!  Tomorrow would prove to be even busier!