Wuppertal to Paris - Closing the loop

We have now made a complete circle through Europe, arriving again in Paris (actually, it looks more like a figure-eight).

Thanks again to Toby (as well as his brother Sascha and Anna!) for letting us crash at their house and showing us around Wuppertal. The schwebebahn was fascinating, and the ice cream was delicoius! We got to enjoy almost everything exciting that Wuppertal had to offer, beginning with their annual festival which had the streets packed with booths and people and music. We went to the stadium where we watched some capoeira demonstrations (capoeira is a Brazilian fighting dance that's pretty amazing to watch, sort of breakdancing combined with martial arts) and some judo and some model airplanes. We also spent a little bit of time hanging out on their fabulous IKEA couch, where we played (or rather, Toby & Will played) Grand Theft Auto IV, and Sing Star, which is competitive karaoke. We also got to eat a lot of nice food- döners and German sausages both. We got to go rock climbing at Toby's gym, which was really fun, as was celebrating his birthday a month late (his birthday was in August!) where we got to meet a bunch of his German friends! One final highlight was mini-golf, where Meghan got not one but TWO hole in ones!

One day trip that didn't turn out the way we planned was our visit to the castle. We set out a little bit late in the day, and by the time we arrived, the castle had been closed. Then, we miss read the bus schedule, and had to walk back to the car (maybe about 40 minutes through the woods) in the dark!

After a great visit with Toby in Wuppertal, we took a handful of trains and made our way back to Hotel Picard, in central Paris. Typical of our crazy schedule, we had a brief night of rest before we set out to meet Meghan's mom at the airport at 6:00am. It's much easier navigating a city the second time around, and much less stressful when you have a place to stay and at least a couple contacts. As soon as we had checked into our hotel, we got ahold of Marie (my roommate's brother's girlfriend who we met up with the first time in Paris)... but unfortunately we wont be able to meet up with her again. Maybe next time we're in Paris! Anyway, back to the airport: Atypical of air travel, Meghan's mom arrived almost an hour early... but typical of air travel, her bag did not follow her, and is somewhere in the lost baggage twilight zone. Hopefully the bag will be recovered and delivered to our hotel in Tours, where we'll be headed by rail this afternoon.