Sunday, March 1, 2009

He beat me to it...


Scott called from Germany today. He usually calls every weekend so it was nice to have a good long talk as usual. He told us about his weekend - which was spent in PARIS. I would be jealous but I'll be there myself in less than a month.

He went over with three friends from the base yesterday morning. The trip took about 4 hours. They took extra gas cans filled with gas from the base (at comparable price to U.S.) so they didn't have to buy gas at European rates which are quite a bit higher. They got to Paris and seems like they mostly walked around and saw things - didn't go inside anything but got a good taste of things. Eiffel Tower, Louvre, Notre Dame, the Statue of Liberty (the smaller model, not NYC), and Arc de Triomphe were what he mentioned seeing, I'm sure there were other things as well. He ate at the Hard Rock Cafe and also some crepes - stayed in a 2 star hotel not too far from the Eiffel Tower which didn't sound too great according to Scott but it was just for one night.

Today they went to Versailles! He was quite impressed with it, especially the Hall of Mirrors. Took pictures and posted some on his facebook, including one of the "royal crapper" as he put it. Only a Cooper would take a picture of that! After Versailles they made the drive home and he called us about a half hour later.

He told us about all the little scams that are attempted - the gaudy little Eiffel Tower trinkets, postcards with sob stories about being stranded in Paris, the gold rings, sounds like about all of them except for the bracelets at Sacre Coeur. He said he started holding out his pack of gum and saying "You buy? 1 Euro" after which most of them left him alone. He also said that whenever you heard a police siren they all quickly scattered. Much of this I'd already heard about but good to have confirmation.

We talked some about my trip. Now that he's driven to Paris, he's not so reluctant to drive it again to come get me and bring me back. He may do it both ways (with the gas $ coming out of my pocket, no problem there) or just bring me back Thursday night. If he brings me back to Paris on Thursday night, we could stay in my hotel room and then he could spend the weekend in Paris himself if he wanted to. He's still wanting to go IN to some places, most especially up the Eiffel Tower as the lines were way too long for the limited time he had this weekend. So at this point I won't have to worry about where to stay OR how to get there. I'm happy about that. Now I just have to wait a couple of weeks to know for sure that he WILL be there.

I would like to see the base, of course, and the nearby towns. I'd also like to go to Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany and only about 20 miles away. Has some great Roman ruins. Also there's a castle right along the way in Vianden, Luxembourg which sounds quite interesting. I'll have to come up with a few other possibilities but that's a good start.

No comments:

Post a Comment