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Have you ever slept in a storage closet in Paris? Lord knows I have and that was the highlight of that God forsaken city. Although most stereotypes of the French don't necessarily turn out to be true, the experience isn't worth the insane amount of Euros' you will inevitably spend on outrageously priced goods in a city full of public urination; that is unless you like to write anecdotes on the topic.

The whole tale started out while my buddy, we'll call him "Kenny," and I were serving a lengthy 15-month tour in Iraq. We were sitting on a cot guarding some Iraqi nationals and talking about what we were going to due with our hard earned cash after we got back to the States. The subject of backpacking through Europe came up and it seemed like the perfect vacation for some young and horny 20-somethings who haven't seen a decent looking girl in quite some time. After we touched down and were officially released from duty, we were up in the air again about to conquer yet another foreign land.
We touched down in London, and after a few adventures there, more to come later, we boarded a train crossing through the Chunnel headed straight for the City of Lights. After listening to some French kids arguing over who was the best European Idol, or whatever it is that French kids quarrel about, for the entire trip, we got to the Gare du Nord train station at Nine o'clock at night. With only a vague idea of where we should stay the night, we did what any enterprising soldier would do drink our asses off and stumble to wherever we could find a place to stay. After a few 5 euro pints of Stella (roughly seven or eight bucks for a damn beer!) we decided to quit while we were ahead and find a place to crash. My guidebook told me that a good place to stay was right down the road. My judgment at this time wasn't all that great so we stumbled down the road for about an hour hoping for the best.
I'll admit, we were cocky as hell at this time and weren't afraid to show it to anybody we came across. Kenny was showing any girl he saw, fine or ugly, his passport and told them that it had a guest pass. One chick decided that we were too thrashed and she would help us find the way to the hostel we had in mind, although Kenny thought she said that she wanted to go into an alley and do what comes natural, too bad for him. We finally made it there only to find out it was completely full except for the baggage closet. Of course we obliged to this seeing as we had been sleeping underneath trucks

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