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I have been in Canada for about a week now. Just one final post to summarize the last England activities. On the final day we left Charlbury pretty early in taxi van for London. When we arrived in London Beth and I split from Shawna, who was going back to Canada, and Maria, Mark, Jenina, and Mareika. We took our big suitcases to the International Student Hostel and paid to have them kept there until we got back from Paris. We had some time before our train to Paris so we went to Kensington Gardens to see the Peter Pan statue. It was one of Beth's must see things. It was hidden away in the corner of the park, but eventually we found it. The signs seemed to be leading us in different directions than where the statue actually was. After Kensington Gardens we went to see Buckingham Palace. It was pretty nice and we saw a guard all dressed up and marching back in forth in front of it. There were lots of nice flowers around.

Eventually we made it onto our Eurostar train and went through the chunnel. In Paris we didn't do much the first night because it was kind of late when we got there and was dark. The next day we went to see the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. After that we walked down the champ elysees and stopped in at a huge MacDonald's for supper. After that we saw the grand palais and the petit palais, went and saw the obelisk before finding a metro.

The next day we went to the louvre and saw all of the cool things there. We spent quite a while in there but eventually Beth got really tired of being there and I had seen everything that I wanted to see (Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Hammurabi's Code). After the Louvre we walked along the seine and went to Notre Dame Cathedral. It was really neat because they just started some sort of service just as we arrived. I think I liked St. Stephen's Basilica in Budapest more, but I liked Notre Dame in a different way. It has a different style. After Notre Dame, we just walked around exploring, hit the metro, and went to sleep.

The next day we left Paris and headed back to London. We almost missed our train even after arriving with plenty of time because we were waiting at the wrong place. The signs were not the greatest and after some running through the train station and mad scrambling with our papers and the immigration cards we caught the train. Our tickets were not exchangeable or refundable either so we would have been in big trouble if we had missed it. It was SO close.

In London we headed to the ISH and claimed the rest of our luggage. We spent the rest of the night at the hostel rearranging the stuff in our suitcases while watching star trek and eating the excessive amounts of food that we bought with the rest of our British money. The actual travel day wasn't that bad once we left England. It sucked at first because we had to lug around our bags and Beth wasn't actually able to lift her big suitcase very easily. We were fortunate and many people stopped to help her carry it up the stairs when I wasn't able to do it easily. Another complication was the Piccadilly line was partly closed to Heathrow so we had to rearrange. At first we didn't see any other way, but I noticed another express line leaving from Paddington. It cost us 21 pounds each instead of the 4 or 5 pounds that the tube cost us, but we were still on schedule after all of that. The flight was fine. The volume on my tv screen didn't work and I couldn't hear voices so I used Beth's headphone splitter to share her screen and sound with her. Most of the time I played Professor Layton on my DS so it wasn't a big deal that my tv didn't work. It was nice to finally be in Canada again and as soon as we had been through security in Ottawa we were at a Tim Horton's. Shortly after we saw hockey highlights on the airport tv's so we knew for sure we were in Canada. It was nice to be home, but it is way colder and there is no green grass or flowers. Overall the trip was amazing and I hope to visit again sometime.