The Best Laid Plans...

Well, Things today did not go quite as planned. We woke up on time this morning and made our way down to the train station to book reservations on the trains that we wanted to take from Paris to Nice and then to Rome. The ticket agent basically started laughing at us when we got up to the window. I knew that booking tickets at this time of year would be difficult, but I had no idea that absolutely everything south of Paris (as in Spain, Cote d'Azur, and Italy) would all be booked solid for at least the next week. It made our rail passes basically worthless because there were no trains to use them on. I spent about five minutes freaking out about how we had no way to get to Rome and no place to stay for two nights and then we got ourselves together and figured it out.
After a couple hours and some time at the Internet cafe, we were able to change our reservation in Rome to begin tomorrow and booked a flight on Air France to Rome for tomorrow morning. The only thing that was a little dicey was where we were going to be staying tonight. Our hotel was completely booked, but the receptionist called around and found us a room at a very reasonable price down the street. In fact, the hotel that we are staying at tonight is much nicer than our previous abode. Their prices are usually higher than I would consider, but since they hadn't booked this room, they gave it to us at a more reasonable price. So, despite some setbacks, we were able to work out our plans satisfactorily. In fact, this is probably better than our plan for two overnight trains between Paris and Nice and Rome and we get to spend a whole extra day in Rome. I had been thinking we wouldn't have enough time to see everything I wanted to get in before leaving Europe. It's too bad we won't get to see Nice, but at least we aren't stuck permanently in Paris (seeing as our plane takes off from Rome and at 12:30 today we had no way of getting there).
After working out all of our plans, Ben and I wandered around Sacre' Couer again and looked at some of the art painted in the area. I picked out a couple of paintings by an artist I really liked, which hopefully will survive my packing job. Now we're just chilling out and enjoying our first day with Internet in a good long while.
Love,
K