Let the tour begin!

After waking up at my hostel in London bright and early I made my way down to the hostel to meet my 48 other travel mates. As soon as I stepped foot into the lobby I was directed towards the tour guide to check-in. To my surprise, our tour guide that would be leading us on this 23 day adventure was quite a cutie. This would be my biggest crush of the entire trip (while I'd usually be embarrassed to share this, it wasn't a well kept secret).

48 of us piled on a bus that took us to Dover where we boarded a ferry to Calais, France (where I could begin using my broken french). While most people became very sea-sick on this ride, I spent most of the time peering out the window and hopping around the ferry. Once we arrived in France we were greeted by our bus driver, Dave, who would be responsible for carting us around Europe. Dave asked for a show of hands of people from each country and mine was the only one for the U.S., to which he responded "don't worry, we'll take care of you".

Shortly after arriving in Paris, we went to a nice little french restaurant and I tried frog legs for the first time. As you can see, I was pretty skeptical about them...

We took a bus tour of the city and ended at the Eiffel tower... just in time for the light show :)

The next day we woke up bright and early and were free to explore the city on our own. A group of us toured Le Louvre and then made our way down to the finish line of Tour de France to watch the finish, which was an awesome thing to witness... (how often am I in Paris for le Tour de France?!)

While waiting for the cyclists to come through I had a hotdog on a baguette and an orangina.

That evening the entire group met underneath the Eiffel tower to have a picnic.

After the picnic many of us changed and attended the Latin Cabaret. It was on the way back from the cabaret that I danced my way down the aisle of the bus on only the 2nd night of knowing my travel buddies. We returned to our hotel and went to a bar across the street... they were closing the doors as we walked up but opened just for us and it was like our own private party. We danced and sang and got to know the people that we would be spending the next 3 weeks with.