I have just a few additional notes about Paris that may prove to be useful to any future travellers or for anyone who is just interested.
The first is about the Paris Metro. The stations are easy to find when you're walking around the city. Much like the Tube in London, they have a uniform sign. It's red and it says Metro. Some of them have a pretty Art Nouveau design to them. Tickets. Well, there is the Carnet which is 10 one-way tickets for €10,50 Euros. Which is not bad at all, and if you are there for three days it's just about right. Callie and I split a Carnet, which means we had five tickets each. On Sunday, our final day, we only needed two more one-ways. So all together we used 7 tickets each. The rest of the time we walked and it isn't very hard to walk around Paris. It's one way to learn your way around the city.
Now that we've talked about the tickets, let's talk about the subway lines. There are a lot of lines. It isn't hard to find ourself around the Metro. Though unlike the London Tube, you have to know exactly where you are going. The lines in London have names such as Picadilly, Ciricle, Distric, Northern, and so on. Names that have something to do with the area that they go through. In Paris they use numbers or letters, like the A line, or the 1 line. Not so mnemonic.
In London you have say the Circle line and you either want to go Eastbound or Westbound. In Paris you have to know which end station you want to go. For example, consider going from the Gare de Lyon train station to the Louvre museum. Well, you can take the 1 line, which is in yellow. Before you get on any train, you find this line on the map and you following it all the way to the end of the line and it will say what station it is. When going to the Louvre from Gare de Lyon the end station is La Defense. This means you take the La Defense 1 line train until it stops at Palais Royal Musee du Louvre, which where you get off for the Louvre. Does that make sense? Once you've done it once or twice, you'll get use to it.
The next thing is the language barrier. Don't worry too much about it. During the summer there are a lot of tourists who will know English. In fact, this is a little side note, during the summer is when school is on holiday so a lot of people leave the city for vacation, but then tourists come and replace that number of people and then some. But, there are also some French people who know enough English to help you. At a lot of patisseries or other places to eat near common tourist sites they will know English. If not, to order food you can just point and they'll understand.
At the Metro ticket offices I didn't talk to anyone cause Callie always bought the tickets. Though I must say, if you see that the trains stop even when they are not suppose to and there is someone speaking on the PA, and you notice that everyone else is making their way towards the exit - this means that you must follow them. This happened to us on Saturday when we were trying to get to the Chateou Rouge station. The station was being evacuated by the police! Which a real surprise cause we all noticed that there was a lot of police men and women around the area of the station. I don't know why we had to evacuate, but all I can say is don't just stand around wondering whats going on. Just follow the locals.
The third note that would like to make is about planning. Of course, I'm sure that everyone makes a list of things that they would want to see when they go on the trip. I had meant to make such a list, but because of other things I forgot to. So when we were on the train to Paris I was asked what I would like to see I said "I don't know." It turns out that I really wanted to go inside the Paris Opera house and to visit Oscar Wilde's gave, though because I really didn't tell anyone we never made time to see these things. So please prepare a list ahead of time of places you really want to go. I don't mind that I didn't get to see some of things that I wanted to see. This only means that I'll have to come back to Paris for a second time, and I find nothing wrong with that.
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