We knew we’d have a big day of driving ahead of us, so after not a really early morning we first head down to an Internet café. To grab addresses of hostels in Paris.
On the road and we’re driving through the alps and through France, and really feeling it in our back pockets. We spent AU$150 in tolls on this day alone, it really is crazy.
We hardly stopped except for half an hour to have luke-warm sausages and old chips for “lunch”.
The last of the tolls we passed through was a bit of trouble. We’d been paying by Visa card for all the previous ones, but this lady flatly refused to take it, saying that none of the booths at this toll would. This was a real problem because Mark and I had only a couple of Euro between us, and needed to make 18! On go the hazard lights and we franticly search through pockets in bags and all sections of suit-cases to find all the Euro we could scrounge. When we were humble and sorry and funny about it the lady in the booth saw the humour in it and was friendly towards us – I think she was about to give us a slight discount before we produced the last few coins to make up the total.

Driving into Paris we go to look up the address of one of the hostels, and I realise that I’ve forgotten to change TomTom’s maps around and we don’t have any detailed maps of Paris at all, only highways in and out of the place! Great, now what? Well the traffic’s terrible so we have a bit of time to think about it.
We remembered that the hostels were near to the Eiffel Tower, so we started there once we found it (it’s big, but not that big ya know). After driving around it for about 20mins we randomly happened upon one of the streets we were looking for. Or at least drove past it and spent 5mins driving round the “block” (there is not a single square or rectangular block in the whole of Paris it seems) to get back there. Once again the luck of the Irish (Mark must be Irish) came through in full flight because the first street car park we saw in town was right out the front of the hostel we’d just found. Amazing, and quite handy later on.

We rock in, pleased as pie that we’d actually stumbled upon something we were randomly driving around searching for, but our spirits were soon slightly dampened when the friendly receptionist told us they were well and truly booked out. She suggested another place that “always has rooms” and showed us how to get there by train. We told her we had a car and that if there was a chance we’d get a room the next night we’d just as soon sleep in it. She suggested that we do that very thing, and by the way the showers are up those stairs and breakfast is downstairs wink-wink. She also said that if we come back after the 2am curfew then there’s likely to be a bed or two available where someone has booked but not shown up.

We head on out towards the Eiffel Tower (taking a long way of course cos it’s our first go) in the hope of a big screen being there with the France Spain game on. Nothing. Then Mark and I eerily re-enacted what a few of my tour mates and I did the previous year in trying to find a train way from the Eiffel Tower to a few stops down where we were told a decent night district was, and there was likely to be a screen.
45mins later we arrive at the end of the 15min train trip. Our main problem was that we didn’t have any Euro, having spent it all on the last toll we’d just passed. Oh well, we finally made it, and once again there was no big screen but there were lots of excited Parisians flowing out of pubs all around.

Pretty interesting game. We were slightly disappointed to see the French get up, but it made for a great vibe after the match. We were quite famished, and it really is great how you can go out for a meal at 11:30pm at night (and we weren’t the last to arrive) in Europe – it’s a top lifestyle.
I ordered duck and Mark steak. I was somewhat surprised to see them both come out in the same sauce, and somewhat disappointed to see it was a pepper sauce that suited Mark’s steak perfectly (his was a lovely meal) and mine like a bill does a platypus.

After knocking off a delightful bottle of wine at the same place we made our way back to the hostel and were half in luck – there was one bed available! Mark had already said he wanted to be the one to take the cheaper car option and I wasn’t keen on that idea so it worked out tops.

Getting ready for bed in the dorm a certain girl came in and we started chatting. Her name was Candace, she was from Canada and the two of us hit it off from the start. We shared a few stories before agreeing to meet over breakfast and going to bed.