Ok so I have lots to tell you guys! ... and pictures to add but that will have to wait until I have time to kill at Macdo's. My week spent in Spain was awesome! It felt like a real holiday: there with my mom, Laura and Joyce, we went on hikes when the weather was nice (and even when it wasn't!), stayed in to play cards and read, wandered the streets of Sant Feliu, ate out at amazing restaurants and passed an EXTREMELY cold and rainy day in Barcelona. Laura and I even went swimming in the ocean ... very much an in-and-out because it wasn't a very nice day - rainy and windy - but we were determined to do it so we did lol. After Spain we all flew back to Paris to get the train to Tours. THAT is a whole story in itself... there have been people vandalizing the rail lines... like sabotage valdalizing ... so our train was delayed a nice 3 hours. Luckily we had cards, cookies and weren't in any real rush. Once we finally got to Tours we made our way to the cute little apartment that my mom and Joyce rented for the week and then (at 10pm) headed out to find some dinner. For the week that we were all in Tours, I toured us around the city and we shopped (new clothes!! yay!!), I went to class as normal while my mom, Joyce and Laura visited more of the sites of Tours. Thursday afternoon and Friday all day, we toured the chateaux de la Loire. And did we ever! On Thursday we went to Chambord and Cheverny and on Friday we went to Azay-le-Rideau, Villandry, Chenonceau, le Clos- Lucé (where Leonardo Da Vinci spent his last 3 years and eventually died) and Ambroise (followed by a wine tasting mmm!) I may even be missing a chateau in my list... we saw a lot! It was fun and the chateaux are absolutely amazing! I think I am officially chateau-ed out now though. I am supposed to be going to 2 more this weekend but I'm thinking I may have to pass. This past weekend Laura, Joyce and my mom headed to Paris (my mom had to fly back to Canada on Sunday) and after working on a project for school Saturday afternoon, I ended up heading out to Paris as well. It was quite the adventure trying to get to the hotel and I ended up getting picked up in a taxi from a metro stop in order to get there (thanks mom!). Sunday morning my mom and I headed out to Charles de Gaulle airport which also took a while to figure out (thing with the Paris transit system is that once you get it figured out, it's actually quite easy and super efficient but getting it figured out definitely takes a few tries lol). But we finally made it to the airport and had (or thought we had) just enough time for a quick breakfast (mmm croissants!) ... my mom left me a message on my phone later on to let me know that she nearly missed the plane because it took so long to get through customs... so maybe the breakfast stop wasn't such a good idea. Oops! I will have to talk to her in the next couple of days to get the full story. I went from the airport to the Louvre where I met Joyce and Laura (after borrowing a nice man's cell phone to send Joyce a message about where to meet me since my phone died on the way back from the airport... sympa...). We spent a few hours in the Louvre and saw the Mona Lisa etc and then found a little restaurant for lunch (crêpes!!) and then wandered around Paris for a bit (I can't actually remember exactly what we did during that afternoon but hey...). After regrouping and resting back at the hotel, we headed out around 7pm to go see the Eiffel Tower. SOOOOO amazing. We rounded the corner from the metro station and weren't exactly sure which way we had to go and BAM! there it was! All lit up with blue lights with a big circle of stars on the front of it (the European Union circle of stars I'm guessing). I literally stood there bouche bée. It was too gorgeous. We made our way to the tower and took the elevator up it (not a long wait to get the 2nd floor but at least a very cold half an hour waiting to get up to the summit. Very much worth it though. Nothing can compare to our first sight of the tower though. I will remember that forever I'm sure. Wow! On our way back to the metro, Laura and I hit up the carousel where we got to act like little kids riding on the carousel horses. It was fun, especially since the guys running the carousel were laughing at us asking each other how old they thought we were. We didn't care though. I'm glad we did it. More soon... gotta go work on my presentation for tomorrow!! Yikes!