Bonjour!
Paris is absoultely beautiful. Every street is different from the one before it. We woke up a little bit later than expected but everything worked out. Breakfast at the hostel was great and for lunch we bought a bread at a bakery with tomatoes and fresh cheese. The Eiffel Tower almost seems fake because of how many times I have seen it in pictures.
I half expected to encounter some sort of hostility from the people in Paris, mostly because of all the talk about how much they hate americans, but other than the anti-Bush sentiment, i can honestly say i have seen little proof of this supposed hatred.
We have been walking all day and it is wonderful. There are leashless dogs running around everywhere and people wandering the parks right by the eiffel tower as if they have seen it so many times, they don't even notice it's there.
The little french that i know has proven fairly useful, but for the most part people speak pretty good english.
Twelve hours of sleep certainly helped me get re-energized; it feels great having the freedom, to just walk wherever we want and, as nathaniel said, not have to meet up with a group at a specific time and place.
I had some sort of false impression that we would meet a lot of people doing something similar to us- the pilgrimage, or a different walk oriented trip- for the most part, though, we have met numerous people who are staying in paris or taking the rail to get to various countries. Our two roommates last night were college students from PA and they had visited 12 countries and 18 cities in 30 days.
While Paris is great, i am very excited to leave for spain tomorrow. I cannot wait to experience the Camino after months of planning and thinking about it.
That is all for now.
Au'revoir,
Christina