Tripping 1: Paris

Not drug abusing, sorry. This text is about some organized and unorganized trip options I've or haven't participated.

First check-around was that 3 day train trip with guys of course and couple one day trips to cities in couple of cities located in this region. Since then I've done some more.

Paris trip organized by Studentwerk. For 99€ bus transportation to Paris, tour guide, and one night accommodation. Sounds good, no? Practically it was organized so that we left Karlsruhe around midnight on Friday by bus to arrive in Paris at 7 a.m.. There we drove around a little bit and the guide was telling nice but scarce details about historical locations. Perhaps 12 o'clock we finished touring with a bus, having spent a break at ho(s)tel. We took a metro from hotel to city center and the guide disappeared on that instance. After asking a round a lot (nobody knew exactly) I was quite sure that we were to meet him some hour later at Notre Dame. There then we had a rendezvous and headed to Eiffel tower. The guide offered to book river boat tickets to whoever wanted to participate, at group discount. At that point we had some separation of group and spent like one hour negotiating what we should do as some would like to go to the tower, some others not and whatsoever. After probably 2 hours of wasting time altogether in Eiffel park, we finally got to the tower. There our group was divided even more and I tagged along with some 3 or so guys for the river boat. After the boat, we as a small group decided to walk to Arc of Triumph and I took a metro with only one person from there back to hotel.

The next day we had scheduled departure at 1 p.m.. (already!??) and we were to hit Louvre at 10 o'clock for about one hour (laugh). One hour for a museum trough which a walk would be some 14 kilometers is almost an insult. Well on the good side, we had the guide again with us and therefore got past the fast growing line and for free. I separated from the group and walked around fast for that one hour and met some of the the guys again at metro stop on my way back to hotel. Louvre: check.

Summing up: 
- Bus trip is no sleep. I was horribly tired and hungry when we were walking around Paris. Not exactly fun. There was no organized, predetermined, pause for eating in any point. I finally bought my self an 7€ Panini-kind-of-thing from the usually terribly expensive area surrounding Eiffel tower. It was comparably good investment containing quite extreme amount of cheese and filling me up so well that I got to sell remaining part to one fellow.

- I made one major idiotic act myself by buying new shoes just before the trip and using them there. They hurt my legs like hell! I didn't really care for a slightest bit to walk a meter more when we finally had reached the arc of Triumph.

- We didn't see Versailles at all and few lucky of us spent a little more than one hour in Louvre, others were there in that long queue and never reached indoors in time.

- We saw couple of historically important buildings from outside and got some very brief and almost negligible information of them, mainly expressed in German. Visited 2nd stand of Eiffel tower.

-Stay was in bunk beds of hotel Ibis budget wing. It's like a hostel facilities without the fun social interaction of hostels.

- I had couple of Hungarian friends there who I tagged along with, but there were some 3 more Bulgarians also who didn't speak proper English, nor German. So quite soon that whole group was speaking only Bulgarian, leaving me to annoying position.

- Wasted awfully lot of time because there wasn't actually any schedule on that trip after the bus tour and except for the Louvre.

Judgement: Go by yourself hitchhiking or something and stay couple of nights in some hostel. Definitely a city worth visiting but not in this way.