Hello From Europe!

 

 

We are officially  in Italy after a long, but fun day in Paris!  Brad from Eurosport Tours picked us up and all of our bags had arrived so all was well.  We had a wonderful first dinner and the breakfast this morning was superb as well.  We will be heading over to Como this morning where we will spend out next week.  Here's a recap of our first day!

We departed from Minneapolis last night at 8 pm and landed in Paris at 11 AM (4 AM our time) and hit the ground running.  We had an eight hour layover so we figured instead of hanging out in the airport we would visit a few of Paris’s wonderful sights.  We were picked up by Jacques (our bus driver) and Ann (our tour guide) and they did a great job showing us the must-see sights in a short 4 hour span.  We had a quick lunch and a bus tour of the historical side of Paris.  Ann let us stop at the Eiffel Tower so we could take pictures and buy a couple souvenirs (I bought 10 Eiffel Tower Keychains because they were 5 for a euro…I’m having a bit of buyer’s remorse wondering what I’m going to do with all of them).  We ended the tour by stopping at Notre Dame Cathedral which was absolutely stunning on the outside and in.  I’ve heard so many things about it, but you really can’t find words to describe how magnificent it is.

Jacques got us back to the airport with plenty of time to spare.  We were happy about this because having 41 English speaking tourists trying to figure out how to print off our boarding passes proved to be a bit more difficult than we were expecting. We did find a very helpful English-speaking employee that got us situated so all was well.

 If the first day is any foreshadowing, this is going to be a great group to tour with.  Everybody warned me about how hard this first day would be.  Between a night flight, jet lag, culture shock and having 41 different personalities, I was warned to prepare for the worst.  However, today was a pleasant surprise.  Everyone seemed to adjust to any stress or any curve balls we were thrown and we just soaked up Paris and made the most of it.  Can’t wait to see what Italy has in store for us!