"I think I might lose a finger today"

Courtney's Travel Tip # 11: Bikes + -1 degree weather = possibility of losing digits.

Now I exaggerate (who's shocked!!!). That negative degree weather was not in farenheit. But farenheit or no farenheit, high 20's while riding a bike is still freaking cold!

Yesterday was our bike tour of Chateau Versailles. Now don't let the name fool you... this is not a Chateau, it's a grand palace bigger than anything I've ever seen. But we'll get to that in a bit.

First let me backtrack to where we left off. I think the last thing I was able to put in was Sacre Couer. So on to the Arc de Triumphe and Champs Elysse we went! At the Arc I had my first real "National Lampoon's European Vacation" dejavu moment. The Arc is literally in the middle of a street that insurance companies WILL NOT insure you to drive in. It's in the fine print that if something happens to you while driving it, you're screwed. So imagine two girls trying to figure out how to WALK across a street that is too crazy to insure. We walked around it. Tried a metro station. Came out of the entrance of the same metro station that we originally arrived in, and voila... right in front of us is the underground pathway to the Arc. I definitely was thinking of Chevy Chase saying "Look kids... Big Ben! Parliament!" as he got stuck in the circle the whole time. But we got there without killing ourselves so mission accomplished.

Courtney's Travel Tip #12: If you want to hear American music, come to Europe. Nothing is more bizarre than sitting at a sidewalk cafe called "Unisex" for an afternoon coffee and hearing Sweet Home Alabama playing on their speakers.

Courtney's Travel Tip # 13: The audio guides at the Louvre SUCK! We went to the Louvre from the Arc de Triumphe and got the audio guides so we could figure out what the hell we were looking at. Now the art- AWESOME. The audio guides, didn't work at all! Caz had trouble with her headphones and the batteries died on mine. Now you would think that this is not a huge problem except that the Louvre is one of the biggest buildings I've ever been in and getting back to the same place twice impossible. I want to say that we had to use Caz's compass at some point to figure out where we were! But it was still a fun experience and I can now say I saw the Mona Lisa. Yep... saw it, walked right on. Not much to say about it.

So on to our original travel tip about the bikes and cold weather. Let's start at the beginning... Yesterday morning we got ready for battle. I am not kidding, I was wearing 4 shirts AND a coat. We walked through the Champs de Mars (the park in front of the Eiffel Tower) on our way to the bike office and I think there was some hesitation on both Caz and my parts as to whether this whole thing was a good idea. When I say cold, I don't even know how to describe it. I'm a Florida girl, and when you find that your nose is running and you don't even know it, I think that pretty much sums up how we were not quite prepared for this.

Our tour guide was a wandering guy from Wisconsin. I think he might have said he was homeless, but I'm not sure if he was serious or not. He did keep offering us his clothing to wear though and seemed to have all of his worldly posessions in his bike saddle bags.

THEN we got on the bikes. So not only were we riding in 20something degree weather, we were riding through the streets of Paris. It was like warfare. We all had to regroup at each stop light and strategize on how to get to the next one. Taking a bike on a train... NOT EASY! But we made it out there (in one piece but I think that just might have been because my blood froze and I couldn't have broken if I wanted to!)

It was all worth it when... we got crepes! Yeah, I know you expect me to say when we saw Versailles, but the crepes make everything better! (Or maybe it's the nutella!).

BUT... once again, my 30 min is up. REFER TO: Travel Tip # 10!