Planes, Trains, and Automobiles… and a Bike!

Bonjour! The last weeks have gone by so fast! Last week for OP class we went Seaside Traversing. Many of you, like I was at first, are like what in the world is that? It is similar to rock climbing. We were scaling on these rocky cliffs over the Irish Sea. It was a cold day making it hard for my numb hands to grip the rocks, and one time I did not reach the handhold and slipped off of the rock right into the Irish Sea, it was a very cold fall. Even though it was hard and the majority of the time I was scared for my life it was an awesome experience. The scenery was beautiful, and there were a few times we would look out into the Sea and there were seals swimming only 20 yards away from us! Unfortunately I do not have any pictures from this day because it would have been impossible for anyone to have a camera on them during the activity. This week we got to go Mountain Biking. Our leaders Steve and Laura took us to some really great mountain bike trails. Here we learned how to properly control your bike while going downhill, standing! Also learned how to do some jumps over objects, and how to come to a complete stop and start back up again without touching the ground! We would bike up big hills and then get to go downhill winding through the woods on a very narrow rocky path. I had so much fun, and never fell off of my bike!
Last weekend my friend Alicia and I took off and went to Paris! We took just about every kind of transportation to get there. First we traveled through the night on Thursday to London by train. We ran into some complications as our first train was late causing us to miss our connecting trains. We finally made it to London to find out the underground was closing, but we ended up catching the last train there to get us close enough to walk to our bus stop. Walking wasn't so bad because we got to walk by the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliment, Westminster Abbey all lit up. We caught our bus over an hour late, and it took us right to the airport. Here we tried to get a couple hours of sleep on the airport floor, we then took off at 6am for mainland! Once we got to Paris we took their metro system and found our hostel and then the touring began. Our hostel was just down the road from Sacre Coure. There is a beautiful view of Paris from the Sacre Coure, and it is amazing inside. While we were there we got to watch some of Mass take place. We then took the metro to visit The Arc de Triomphe. I was surprised at how large it was, and it is surrounded by a 12 lane roundabout! Lucky there is an underground passage way to get to it. We then ventured to the real Moulin Rouge just to see it. Next we got on the metro and went to the Eiffel Tower. It was not a very nice day so we could not see the top because of the fog. I so surprised at how huge the tower actaully was! After taking pictures and standing in awe we decided we would save going to the top for when it got nicer out. Later that night we made our way to the Norte Dame. It was fun to see it lit up, and the inside was magnificent. While we were in there they were getting ready to start Mass, so we decided to stay and join. It was quite the experience, the entire thing was in French, but they did give us the literagy in English so we could follow along. Afterwards we decided to go see the Eiffel Tower all lit up. Then after being away for hours upon hours we decided to return to our hostel and catch some sleep. The next day we woke up on time to find out the weather still wasn't very nice. We decided to start our day by going to the Louvre, we were very excited because are both huge fans of The Da Vinci Code. I was amazed at how huge the Louvre was. We spent over 3 hours there and did not even get a third of the way through! I felt bad walking by all of these awesome paintings and art and only giving them a glance. We did see the Mona Lisa, surprisingly it was very small on its own wall! I had a lot of fun here. Afterwards we found a little outdoor cafe and decided to have our favorite "French" meal, nutella crapes with a fanta. We then decided to head back towards the Norte Dame and see it in the day time, it was All Saints Day and they had a celebration going on. We then just spent time wondering around looking at all of the sights. We went back to the Eiffel Tower for like the fourth time of the weekend, finally going all the way up! We decided to walk up the stairs for the first 2 levels. Once we got to the first level we found the post office and dropped off some post cards! When we reached the top the entire tower began to flash which was pretty amazing! After the Eiffel Tower we got a bite to eat and decided to call it a night. The next morning we had to wake up early to catch all of our forms of transportation. We started by catching the metro then the train to our airport. We had a really hard time getting through the airport, and waiting in line forever in securtiy when all of a sudden they decided to switch our gate 10 minutes before take off! With all of the problems with our flight in the airport we ended up taking off over an hour late. Luckly we caught our bus just in time, we then caught the tube to the train station. Unfortunately the train we had tickets for was full so we had to wait for nearly an hour to get on the next train. While on the train we got diverted, causing us to have a long day of travel and finally arriving in Bangor late at night. We had a blast in Paris even though neither of us can speak any French which made it hard for us to communicate!
We just had Bonfire Night here in Bangor which is a holiday in the entire U.K. and there was a huge firework show the other night which was a lot of fun. My parents arrived safely today, we are already having a blast together and I can't wait for the rest of the week!

To check out more pictures just go to this link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/30488030@N04/sets/72157608713633760/detail/