strasbourg, france

Well, there's not a whole lot to say here! We've both kind of been dreading France in a way, because we had heard from other people that it is especially hard to communicate here. Supposedly people will pretend they don't speak English, just so they don't have to deal with you. With our phrasebook ready, we arrived in Strasbourg, which is practically right on the border with Germany. We had found a REALLY cheap hotel online, so we went with that as opposed to a hostel, because it's nice not to have to worry about the security of your belongings as much. Well, it turns out it was cheap for a reason! It is WAY out of town, probably the equivalent of flying into Vancouver, then having to get to your hotel in Richmond. Doesn't really sound like a big deal I guess, but it's a lot harder when you it's night time, you have no idea how to get there, don't speak French, and have to rely on public transit! We got on a tram, only to realize that there was nothing at the stop we were told to get off at. The bus didn't come for another 45 min, so we decided to just find a taxi. Of course there were no taxis to be found. We got back on the tram and headed in the direction that we had just come from, where hopefully there was more action and more cabs. We ended up just going into another hotel and getting them to call a cab for us. 21 Euros later (yea, it was THAT far away..) and we had arrived at the Formule 1 Hotel. LOL. You know, Formula 1 Racing! Our room was tiny, but good enough. We decided to just spend three nights because we didn't want to have to go through the hassle of getting to the train station the next day already.

The next day we hopped on a bus - (yay we had figured it out!) and headed to town to get some food and look around a bit. We also had to call and confirm our hotel in Paris since they never got back to us by email. Mike and I rock-paper-scissored it to decide who would have to call. He lost and made the call, but he got the answering machine. I wish I had a copy of that recording... hehe.. He said it all in French, and actually did a pretty good job! He managed to say his name, and that we wanted to confirm our reservation for the 7th of October. We ended up calling again later and getting an actual person. This time it was all me, because Mike insisted the first time had counted as his turn! Sheesh. That was a time I was glad for once that we had to take French in school! I was able to say a few things, and the lady spoke some English, so between us we did alright. She was SO nice, and kept saying Oui Oui, Michael et Shanon, no problem, no problem! LOL... I guess we'll find out when we get there!

Today we did absolutely nothing and it was GREAT! They can't make us speak French if we just hide in the hotel all day.. muhahaha! Just kidding.. after the last couple of busy days, we just needed some time to relax. We stayed in our pjs all day and we watched a ton of stuff Mike had downloaded. The only time Mike left was to grab some pizzas for dinner (we had PB&J for lunch). We went to the same pizza place for dinner the night before as well, it's the only thing around here!

Tomorrow it's on to Paris!