Two Weeks in Europe and a Volcano: Part 1

I guess I will always know the answer to the question... "Where were you when the volcano in Iceland disrupted the world's air travel for 2 weeks?".  I was smack dab in the middle of the trouble.

The last two weeks were some of the most amazing of my entire life.  On April 9th me and 4 other friends left Cork, Ireland to set off for Paris, and the first leg of our journey.  Our hostel, The Three Ducks, was a dingy place located about a 20 minute walk from the base of the Eiffel Tower.  Paris was truly an amazing city with so much to do.  The first night we went up in the Eiffel Tower (only a 10 minute line!!) which gave us absolutely amazing views of the entire city at night.  The next day we participated in a bike tour from a company named Fat Tire Bike Tours.  We proceeded to do this in Berlin and we would have done one in Barcelona if we had ever made it there (story to come).  The bike tour takes about 4 hours and covered all the main sites in Paris.  We started at the Eiffel Tower and rode by all the major museums.  We stopped for lunch at the gardens in front of the Louvre.  The bike tour allowed us to see everything in Paris in a very short amount of time.  Later that day we went to the military museum which documents weapons and military from ancient times all the way through World War 2.  At the end of this museum we were able to see Napoleon's tomb which is absolutely huge despite the fact that he was a pretty tiny guy.  After the museum we headed to Notre Dame just late enough so we could not go inside.  We walked around the outside and waited for our friends to arrive.

After the military museum we grabbed some dinner and met up with some friends and took an elevator up to the top of the highest, and only, skyscraper in Paris.  We spent a few hours up there enjoying the view of the Eiffel Tower and the rest of the city. The next day we woke up early and headed to Versailles to see the Palace of Versailles.  This is probably the most magnificent building that I will ever see in my life.  Tourists pour in from all over to go see the palace and the lines were pretty long to get in. (We get in for free being EU nationals under the age of 26).  It is hard to describe how large and beautiful some of the rooms in Versailles are.  The palace is amazing and you can see in my pictures on Facebook just how extravagant this building is.  After an audio tour of the building we headed out to the gardens and Marie Antoinette's house which was a great walk.  The gardens were not bloomed yet but it was still amazing.  After Versailles we headed back into Paris and went to the train station where we were going to get on a night train from Paris to Berlin.

Part 2 to come soon