Day 2: Madrid to Paris

We woke up nice and early to catch our flight to Paris. We stopped by a little cafe to grab hot chocolate and churros. The hot chocolate was very thick and extremely rich - we had trouble finishing our tiny cups. Churros, unlike their Mexican counterparts, have no cinnamon sugar and are similar to plain donuts.

We had decided to leave Ariana's suitcase with the Madrid hotel so we didn't have to lug it around the rest of Europe - this was an excellent idea! For a nominal price, we could get around with one large bag plus one small backpack each. That's definitely the way to go.

We flew RyanAir three times throughout our trip - Madrid to Paris, Paris to Venice, and Rome to Madrid. There's no assigned seating, but unlike Southwest, it's simply a first-come-first-serve arrangement where people start lining up at the gate up to an hour ahead of time. RyanAir also keeps costs low by flying in and out of small regional airports - this also means that we needed to take shuttles into the center of the city. We hurried to be the first on the shuttle, and we lucked out because our checked bags were the first couple off the plane. The shuttle to Paris took about an hour and was easy enough - then we just hopped on the metro and went to our hotel.

We had dinner at a little cafe across the street. They made a mistake and served us a cheese spread platter that we didn't order - we enjoyed it for a few minutes before they came up and said "Ceci n'est pas pour vous!" (This isn't for you!) and took it away. Oh well, we didn't get charged for it, and we certainly enjoyed it a lot! Then we went next door to get Ariana's first nutella crepe.

We wandered the city, saw the Pantheon and arrived at the Jardin de Luxembourg just as it was closing for the night - so we went back a different day.

The hotel had no shower curtain and the showerhead was on a long flexible pipe - as much as we tried to stay neat there was always a mess of water on the floor at the end.