Want to buy a rabbit for 10 cocoa beans?

The laundry situation is getting dire. Tomorrow we are going to stop putting it off... Oh, just to note because we've been getting multiple questions about this, when a blog post says something like, "I (Erin) am sitting in the hostel...", then I (Erin) wrote the entire blog post, otherwise if it is not indicated, all three of us wrote the blog post together. So here are my (Erin's) impressions of Paris so far. The city is HUGE. Way bigger than Amsterdam, in Paris it's louder, the buildings are taller, the streets are wider, the traffic is heavier. Amsterdam was easier to navigate because we were able to walk everywhere and there were many roads without any car traffic at all. It's harder to get a grasp of Paris because we have to take the Metro (especially because my legs are incredibly sore from the workout yesterday...) and every time we emerge from the Metro station the streets look exactly like where we got onto the Metro. Biking is almost non-existant in Paris. They started a bike program, where people put coins into a machine and can rent a bicycle to commute with, however the program has not been very successful. All the bikes were still parked perfectly in their bike racks, we didn't see one in use...

So after a crummy breakfast of cornflakes in warm milk, we arrived in the city, grabbed some food and headed for the map shop. In one section of the city there are about 15 "Au Vieux Campeur" stores, each one specializes in a different area of camping. One sells all hiking boots, another shop sells all sunglasses, another sells all tents, one for backpacks, etc. The shop that sold the maps was amazing. We found a bike route that goes across France from East to West starting on the coast near Nantes and finishing on the Switzerland border at Bale. The route follows the Loire river on mostly bike paths and is about 1350 kilometers long. We decided we'll take a train from here to the begining, and then follow the route. I am excited to have a preplanned route, and I've been enjoying visiting smaller towns so I am excited for that as well.

We met up with Beth, a high school friend of McKayla and mine and a fellow Hamilton student, who is studying abroad in Paris for the semester. We also briefly walked with Kylie, another friend from Hamilton! It was awesome to see a familar, friendly face. We went with Beth to the Choco-Story museum. There we read about the entire history of chocolate (cocoa beans were origingally used as offerings to the gods and as currency in the Mayan era, then turned into a spicy drink, then a sugary drink for the wealthy in the 1500s, then became a solid, edible product in the 1800s). We saw a demonstration of how to make chocolate and tried some free samples. I was hoping that we'd get to try sample chocolates made with different cacao (originated from the word kakawa) beans, so I was a little bummed that we only got to sample white, milk, and dark chocolate, which I am already very adept at distinguishing amoung... After, we grabbed some groceries and headed back to the hostel. Amie cooked up a delicious, rice, bean, lentil, and vegie dish that we topped with Emmental cheese. Emmental is my new favorite, I kind of get the feeling that Emmental cheese is the cheddar of France (because they do not have cheddar here). It's a swiss-like cheese, that's not as sharp as cheddar, but more flavorful than swiss, with a nice bite like parmesian. Tomorrow we'll do our laundry, and I'm hoping to experience some more of the touristy aspects of Paris, like the Eiffel Tower and Champs Elysees!