Part one of a great adventure!

Photos:

Part 1!

On to the rest of the story. The day my mom left, I got on the train back to Castuera after doing just a little bit of shopping. I came home and had a nap and then got ready to go out with the girls. I wore a sweater that was only supposed to be a sweater with leggings and my new leather (okay, fake leather) boots. I looked HOT.

The foreigners came over with alcohol and we played King’s Cup, which was way fun when people don’t always understand all of the English you’re putting out. Well, life is just more fun when people lightly misunderstand you. Not like big misunderstandings, but small ones anyway. I got a little carried away with the alcohol and spent five or ten minutes over the toilet (don’t worry, I was just queasy, nothing came up!) before heading out with Milena to the bar. We stayed there and danced and caught the eyes of boys until about 3am and then we headed over to the dance club for more than four hours where we were glad to have our German friend, Philipp, to watch over us as the boys moved in closer and closer all the time. Outrageous.

I went home at 7:30am and slept well into the afternoon. That’s a night out in Spain and sheesh, I can’t do that often. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it (other than the man trying to become my boyfriend the whole night), but it would kill me if I did it more than one night in a row.

Two days later, on Tuesday, after not being sure if he would make his planes or not, I went to the train station to pick up David H. He got off the train all in one piece! It was amazing! This was after a lot of work for him, getting everything ready at home and getting a flight canceled and begging the United Airlines workers to help him out and barely making flights with minutes to spare and figuring out trains all by himself. It was a relief that he was in one piece.

Annnnd then two days after that we got back on a train and went to Madrid to spend the night in Cat’s Hostel (we only slept like three hours) and we got on a plane to Paris. It was complicated because there weren’t any buses or metros running that early in the morning, so we had to get to the airport by taxi, which was probably more expensive than either our hostel for the night and then our flights to Paris. Ridiculous. But it was done.

And we didn’t know that “Paris Beauvais” actually meant just Beauvais… it’s a city almost an hour outside of Paris that all the bargain airlines fly into. A bus ticket from that airport to the center of Paris was 15 euros each. Then we had to catch the metro. And this is all fairly blind, mind you. We had no maps, didn’t speak French, and mostly had no idea what we were doing. But we made it to our hotel, which was not ready for us, and we went out to find something to eat. And of course we were slapped in the face with food prices right off the bat. I mean, I was expecting it to be expensive, but it was still a slap in the face. 9 euros for a lousy bowl of onion soup? Okay, it was great soup though. But still.

And right off the bat we got another slap in the face with the cold. It’s not that it was COLD like it gets in the Pacific Northwest (like well below 0), it’s just that it was a new kind of cold that we couldn’t get away from. It was wet cold that sinks into your bones and doesn’t come out. But on top of that, we had to be out in it all day if we wanted to see the city at all.

We got checked into our room, which was an awkward process because the lady said it was ready but we went up there and it was only mostly finished. We lacked towels and cups. Once we actually got into the room and the maids finished, we explored the room a little—its tiny but deep bathtub, the radiator we could control that was literally a wall of heat, and the porn channel that streams without apology for anyone who wants to watch. Welcome to France.

So we learned how to use the subway of Paris and it was one of our favorite places. We would escape into its recesses in order to get somewhere, but really we were glad that we could get out of the cold. Some lines were not so nice, like the 6, I believe, because it was above ground and therefore outside. Then again, it had a great view of the city, which you couldn’t get on any of the other lines.

All of our pictures kind of look the same because we were wearing the same coats all the time and it was so cold that we didn’t want to take them off—not even for a moment for pictures.

We went on a free walking tour, which was a great way to look at the city a little more. I had a guide book with me, but it was for all of Europe, so it would have been hard for the authors to include all the little things about the city that our tour guide was able to tell us.

One day I stayed in bed due to a fever that had me waking up in cold sweats. Who knows how to ask for medications in French? Not me. Nor David. We walked into pharmacies and right back out. We even had trouble getting things like acetaminophen, which, of course, is called something completely different in French. So we slept until it was dark again one day, hoping I would get better, trying to keep the chill from settling in me permanently. And I felt better. Even now a gunky cough remains, but the fever passed and I felt a little better.

We saw the Eiffel tower, the Arc d’ Triomph (sp?), the Louvre (what a confusing place!), Musée de Orsay (waited in line for 4 hours for it!), Moulin Rouge, Notre Dame, and all the classic Paris sights that you just must see. We saw them, boys.

Getting out of Paris was a little more difficult than getting in. Ryanair asks that you get to the airport and check in at least 2 hours before your flight. Why so early? Because they generally only have one person checking people in and the lines are outrageously long and frustrating. So on the morning of December 29th we got through the line behind this adorable family (mom was from Scotland and dad was from Australia, I think), got checked in, went through security (important to mention that security is always so stressful because of the whole thing with stupidly long lines and the fact that the bags we were carrying were not only too big, but also too heavy to be permitted on the flights, had security checked closely), and found our gate. But as we sat at the gate and the departure time on the screen kept getting pushed out and no plane was showing up to shuttle us to Edinburgh, Scotland, we realized that we were probably dreaming. The fog was so thick we probably wouldn’t have been able to see the plane on the tarmac anyway. Then, quite a while after our original boarding time had definitely ended, the flight was cancelled. Our plane had landed in Belgium and therefore was not going to be there to take us to Edinburgh.

Luckily we had been somewhat pushy and stood as close to the front desk as possible (because we had those big bags and needed to get on the plane early in order to find a place to stash them), meaning that we were at the front of the line to head back into the airport to talk to the Ryanair desk for change of airplanes. We had the choice to fly to Glasgow the next day, or Edinburgh on the 31st. We chose Glasgow, to try and give us more time should we need to rearrange our flights again if we were cancelled again. And, surprisingly, Ryanair will supposedly pay for the hotel we stayed in that night, though we have yet to find out because we still need to submit the paperwork.

Beauvais was actually a surprisingly cute town to stay in, since we were stuck there. We had a great hotel, saw some friends we had made on the same cancelled flight, and saw a fantastic cathedral that seemed more impressive than Notre Dame, though certainly less famous. I tried mulled wine, which was awesome, and took a nice bath. I was companionless after 8pm because David had passed out, but I enjoyed myself in the bar nonetheless.

And that’s the first part of the vacation post. Be back in a day or so with the rest. Meanwhile, check out my pictures at the link above!

Sending light and love.