One idea... save enough to spluge on one or two night in a cool hotel
before you leave. The experience is very different from the low cost
places, and one you will find very interesting. I've done both, and I
like both. What I don't like is the medium priced hotels. They tend to
look down at you, whereas the other ends are reasonably happy to
receive you, and sometimes are extremely nice to tourists. That's my
experience, anyway.
Before you go, you might want to check out a site that has some very
interesting interesting pictures of Europe:
http://www.informationeurope.com
There are some hints about how to get along in Europe and have fun, and
has good hints and links to some regular places and some unusual
places. For your journey, check out especially the section on Our Visit
and then France. It has some really fine pix and insights into Paris.
For your euro rail pass, which is now called the Eurail pass and is no
longer called the eurorailpass, http://www.euro-rail.org is the place
to start. The site leads you step by step into how to get the best deal
on your europe train pass from Rail Europe. You could save a lot by
looking here first. It makes things really simple.