France

Day 24 - Saturday, June 5
Bonjour!  Parlez-vous Francais?  Non?  Well, that's o.k., I usually prefer English anyway.  In the morning we left the five cities of Cinque Terre and headed for St. Raphael, France.  This ended up being, in my opinion only, the worst day of the trip.  Thus, it happened that the best day of the trip was followed by the worst.  The train stopped at every stop imaginable.  Although the actual distance between Cinque Terre and St. Raphael is not far, the train trip took almost nine hours!  Stop here.  Stop there.  Switch trains.  Stop here.  Stop there.  Ad nauseum.  It was awful.  Make sure that you find out how long the train trip is!  Take a train at 4a.m. if you have to.  Just don't waste an entire day on a train ride that should be less than two hours.  Oh, wait!  That's not all.  We happened to get on the wrong train.  We ended up in Cannes and the train started heading back to the Italian border...it would not go to St. Raphael.  Thus, sick of the train, we settled for Cannes.

Day 25
Ahhh!  This day was a relaxing day along the French Riviera roasting under the Mediterranean sun.  After our train fiasco the day before, lying out on the beach and people watching (if you catch my drift) was the ideal recreational activity.  At about four we ate and then went back out on the beach.  It's a good thing the girls brought sunscreen...otherwise I would have looked like a British tourist...well, minus the speedo.

Day 26
We caught a night train to Paris from Cannes.  The total trip would last about eight hours.  The only problem was that the couchette conductors were on strike.  Welcome to France.  Thus, we had to take a regular train with upright seats.  I didn't mind so much and happened to get quite a bit of sleep.  However, the girls said that that was the worst night of the trip.  None of them got any sleep.  Boy, were they cranky when we arrived in Paris!  We grabbed a croissant for breakfast, and began our hotel search.  We found a two star hotel with a room available immediately.  Although two stars was above our standards, we splurged and stayed there for the remainder of our European vacation.
 

Day 27 We started in London and finished in Paris, Europe's two largest cities.  Our sightseeing blitz krieg began immediately...well, after the girls woke up from their nap.  The Bastille, Notre Dame, the Louvre, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, the Eiffel Tower, and the Hotel Des Invalides.  As you can tell from this picture, it was not quite so warm up in Paris.  Actually, it was quite cold.  Over 300 meters high atop the Eiffel Tower we were freezing.  We didn't get to go into the Louvre because of a strike - only in France.  That night we watched Shakespeare in Love at a French movie house and ate dinner at Chilis.  After a month, I think we were starving for a bit of American culture...believe it or not!

Day 28 - Wednesday, June 9 our last full day in Europe
In the morning we headed outside of Paris to King Louis XIV's Versailles Palace.  We then ended our last night in Europe by going to a cabaret.  That was one wacky show!  Very disturbing...I'd recommend it.  After one month in Europe, I was sporting my new Czech haircut (less than two dollars) and a full beard.  Hey, I was on vacation.