Snow!

I have to backtrack a bit to Paris day 3...

We woke up early again and booked train tickets for the following day to Normandy and Interlaken and then headed for the Louvre. There wasnt much of a line at all. We saw the Mona Lisa and many other amazing works you have seen in your textbooks all your life.

I failed to mention due to the ridiculous French keyboards that we finally met up with Anna and Robin in Paris the morning of the second day. Anna had lost her cell phone...it could have been stolen, but we arent sure so it was impossible to reach find them. Anna has some good sleuth skills and tracked down our scent. TR was told on the Paris metro we stank. Most of the people in Paris were blunt like this. TR did not stink, but perhaps we did a little after traveling for so many hours...anyway moving on...

I should also mention these keyboards are perfect, but for one fatal flaw, the Z and Y keys are different. I apologize for the lack of punctuation and sloppiness of this e-mail, but it is the best I can do with the keyboard I have.

After the Louvre, we went to dinner at Sergent Recruiters. I highly suggest this place to anyone going to Paris. We paid around $50 each and were given a whole basket of fresh vegetables, 10 different sausages, soup, and paute-- or however it is spelled. There is no spellcheck here. Next course consisted of the main dish. I had the beef. It was excellent. The potatoes were heavenly. After the main dish we enjoyed six different cheeses and bread. I should mention it was basically all you could eat and drink. We enjoyed excellent French wines throughout the meal. We actually tried every type they had, red, white, and rose. Some drunk Norwegians were down the way singing acapella songs. They were def. drunk. We enjoyed the first song, but I think our table got annoyed after that. I somewhat enjoyed it because I thought it was really funny. In fact when two of them walked by I asked if they would take a picture of our table. The woman kept touching me and talking. She admitted to being drunk and was really funny. Anna for some reason didnt enjoy the Norwegian woman as much. Overall we had an excellent Parisian dinner.

The next morning we woke up at the crack of dawn and rode the train to Caen in an attempt to see Normandy. Well Caen just has a museum about it, but we wanted to get to the beaches. Keep in mind normally these tours cost around $200-300, but we decided those were just toursist prices. We keep forgetting we are tourists. At Caen we make the last minute decision to go up the tracks to the next city because we find out it is closer to the US cemetary. We travel up the tracks and find out most of the tours are closed on Sundays...great. It became apparent we were within 15 miles of Normandy and we were going to be stuck in a bar until the next Paris train came at 6.30. We went to the bar and made friends with a very nice Canadian who dropped eh every 5 seconds. He spoke to the bartender in French and whala we had what must have been one of the only cabs running at the time. For less than 100 Euro--130 US dollars. We got a private tour of the US cemetary and Utah Beach. It was very sad.

There are so many graves. The memorial was very beautiful, but it is still horrific to think about all the soldiers that lost their lives...

We got back on the train later that afternoon and headed back to Paris. We got our luggage from the hotel and caught the overnight train to Interlaken. We were in a four person sleeping car. It was just us three for the first little while until ¨Old Sketch Guy¨ as we called him entered our cabin. He was with the train attendent and said he wanted the lower bed which I was in. She asked me nicely and I agreed, but I did in fact give him a look. We had after all made reservations and he had not. Anyway, sleeping on a train isnt the easiest, but we were so tired it happened. We had a connection at Basel and I must say the Swiss trains are amazing. We might have been the only passengers on the train. The scenery was breathtaking the entire ride.

We walked to our hotel this morning in the cold rain and were greated at 7.30 am by the owner of the bed and breakfast with orange juice and a full Swiss breakfast. The people in our room were still there and didnt leave until 11. After breakfast this left us to walk around town. As we were walking the weather got worse and worse. Huge globs of snow began pouring onto us. I was still in shorts so people were giving us the funniest looks. We walked a couple of miles and saw different stuff in the town and finally returned to our beautiful room for a 4 hour nap. We hadnt told them we were going to be here until 5 pm. We have a room with 4 beds and bathrooms and showers are down the hall. We have a balcony that overlooks the Alps. This place is absolutely incredible. We are now rested and about to venture out for food, drink, and to meet people.

We are always moving and seeing new things, but I think this and Munich will be great places to sit back and enjoy the culture. I hope everyone is well in the States!