Hi friends and family! So since I am a day behind I am going to write about two days in one. It will just be the highlights, so hopefully I can keep this short and sweet.

My last day in London was perfect. I walked around Hyde Park, almost got attacked by Pigeons, and had a quite good cup of coffee (ok so really I had two cups of coffee…don’t judge). From Hyde Park I took a stroll to Buckingham Palace, and while I was too late to catch the changing of the guards, I was able to take a tour of Buckingham Palace’s State Rooms. From their I met up with a friend from K-State and was introduced to a proper Friday night in London. It was another rare nice day full of lots of walking. At least I can say I’ll be in shape when I return home in October.

Day 5 (or today) can be known as the traveling day. I woke up and packed up my stuff ( which is a lot harder the 2nd time around) nothing quite fits the same way. I then thanked my lovely host and headed down to the tube to catch a ride to Kingscross station to head to Paris. There were some slight delays, as one of the trains was not running, so I was feeling pretty frantic once I finally made it to Kingscross station. Thankfully, I was right on time, and had no issues going through security to board my train to Paris.

Paris is beautiful…at least what I’ve seen of it. Once I arrived at the Paris Gare Du Nord train station I had to buy a ticket to ride the Metro to where I am staying in Bastille. Some of the ticket machines were not working and by the time it was my turn to work the machine I accidentally bought 6 tickets. Yeah I don’t really know how that happened, or what I pushed but I did get on the right train and did not get lost to my airbnb #2.

After getting settled in I walked around my new neighborhood for the next 4 days and drank some lovely wine and ate some delightful cheese for dinner. I feel like I am truly getting a sense of what it means to be an outsider in another country, especially when you don’t speak the language or know the culture. Communication is such a big thing, and when you can’t communicate easily with other people it makes you feel pretty lonely. Thankfully I have my trusty Google Translator app and I don’t mind looking or sounding like an idiot, especially if it means gaining new friends. Well bonne nuit family. I will update again soon.