Ah, Paris! How beautiful. I can say pretty much the same about all of the places we've been since my last post, although from what I've seen this is pretty much the most well taken care of of the four (Dubrovnik, Pula, Venice, Paris). I think I left off the night of our arrival in Croatia, from which at least a week has passed already. How time flies. Anyway, our first day in Dubrovnik we walked through just a small portion of the old city in our efforts to recuperate from some tough travel. It is absolutely gorgeous. The streets are white marble and kept impeccably clean, all of the mainly visible buildings have been "remodeled" (more later) within the last ten years, and basically the whole thing is dedicated to tourism. In the 1990's Dubrovnik was attacked by their neighbors over the mountains, for reasons I don't know, and barely a roof within was spared damage. We found a chart along the walls depicting the exact number of direct hits,  indirect hits and burnt down buildings, and the amount was staggering. Another way of counting was to get up above the area and look at the red roofed buildings, all of which are newly built. The original construction included brown tiles. Almost every single building was capped with a beautiful red terra-cotta roof. A major feature in Grad Dubrovnik is their outlaying wall, which takes around an hour to walk around fully and showcases all of their stunning ocean views. 

From Dubrovnik we boarded a ferry to Reijka, which we stayed on for about 23 hours total, during whihc time we managed to eat two six course meals (prix fixe, not just us being piggy) and play countless hands of Quiddler. After a very short sleep we arrived at the shipping town and immediately bought bus tickets out. Reijka is not exactly charming. However they do feature a very 'interesting' neo-gothic church that managed to fool me for about a minute until I looked at their building materials and lack of buttressing. After about three hours of greyhounding it we arrived in Pula, and were much more pleased with the atmosphere. A nearby travel agent set us up at the Hotel Histria, part of a resort group that occupied a small peninsula. The whole affair was pretty strange as our hotel was the only one open at the time, so there were about five others of the same (large) size that were completely empty and shut down. For the first day it was sort of lonely and depressing until a huge group of Germans arrived for a tennis camp, which was about to take place at the also huge sports complex about a quarter mile away from the hotel. We spent about six hours there total in three days, playing badminton (not too shabbily) and tennis (horrific to watch). Dinners at night were in their dining hall, where you could buy a buffet dinner for 3 euro, or about $4. Very cheap, and mostly good. We had a train to catch in Venice in another two days so we left after three nights, at around five in the morning, on a commuter bus. I can now say that I have been to Slovenia, although we were only off of the bus for about five minutes while we were waiting in line for customs and such. Our arrival in Venice came at about 10:30, and we were quick to disembark the bus and find our hotel, which was extremely close (there was some confusion on which bridge to take, however, as my mom refused to understand that no matter which bridge you take you end up on the other side of the canal, and wanted to take the footbridge all of the way around the water rather than the one right in front of us). The Hotel Principe was absolutely gorgeous, decorated in the Victorian style, and right over the Grand Canal. I was personally the most happy with it because I was priveledged enough to get to sleep on a bed instead of a couch, as I had been for the last few days. The couches are one of the many reasons that this trip is wearing on me. It is amazing how alluring even the worst of beds can be after sleeping on fold out couches for a third of the last few months. Anyway, we only had one night in Venice, so we toured our area for a while then relaxed and enjoyed our view. The next day we did some major wandering and shopping, with our only sightseeing being St. Mark's square, which was fortunately (or maybe not) without the pigeons that used to plague the central area. So. From Venice we took the night train, with a triple sleeper compartment, all of the way to Paris, where we arrived at about 8:30 am. By this time we are well accomplished in Metro traveling, so we took our line directly from the station to a stop about a full block from our new place of residence. The Blue Marble bike tours agency (thanks from everyone to Liz Chilton, who recommended it to us way back in the planning stages) is also host to three magnificently tiny boarder apartments, which are absolutely perfect for our needs. My parents and I were there by ourselves for the first night before I was able to move in to the place Debra and I would soon be sharing, and then another before they could get in to theirs. Our first night and their second were spent in Duane's, who arrived our second morning. He was pretty much ready to go from the start, so he and my dad went out and toured around the area. That night we had some magnificent Indian food that is located about 100 yards away from our front door (so are two Thai, one North African, and a bevy of French restaurants). The next day Debra got in, verrrrry late, after a few subway ticket mishaps, etc. She too was rearing to go, so we took her on another tour of our neighborhood, which plays hosts to at least a dozen different restaurants and lots and lots of different market situations.  We've spent quite a bit of time already window shopping for french food. Our time has been spent in generally the same way, as we (my mom and I at least) haven't managed to accomplish anything too major (such as as entire museum) yet. However, my dad, Duane, and I visited the tomb of Napoleon (amazing) and the veteran's hostel that he had built that accompanies it. Attached is the army museum, which plays host to dozens of uniforms from countries around the world, as well as ancient weapons and a great exhibit on the two world wars.