So, our flight left at 5:30. We had checked in online, which apparently threw everyone else in our group off. (we had been registered through a travel agency, and apparently if us three hadn’t checked in online the night before, they would have been able to check in the whole group at once there at the airport or something. I don’t know, and I don’t care, we got through the line really fast and were able to move our seats to exit rows.) Got to Detroit and was going to get some dinner… but our flight was ALREADY boarding! ACk! It wasn’t leaving for an hour! So we hustled on to the plane with nothing to eat except a few snacks, and nothing to drink.
Then we sat there for an extra hour and a half because of a technical problem. Crap! : We were starving by the time they served us dinner. It’s been a long time since I had a dinner on a flight. It was blegh but edible. I read all my manga that I took with me within the first two hours. Then I started on Jane Eyre, which annoyed Ash to no end.
The girl next to Ash flirted with the French guy next to her the entire flight. It was really annoying. And she was the only person in the whole cabin who kept her light on while everyone else was trying to sleep. She wasn’t even reading, she was just sitting there! So yeah, we slept some. They showed Intolerable Cruelty and Radio, but I didn’t watch either.
They served breakfast and didn’t give me enough orange juice… that stupid little cup they give you was only good for one drink for me! (I chug orange juice) So Kristie got up and got me some more out of the attendant’s station, hee.
So then we landed. No offense to Parisians, but damn that airport was ugly. Though the people movers that went up and down were hella cool. Got my passport stamped (WHEE one stamp!), found our luggage, and then had to sit around for FOREVER waiting on everybody else to get their luggage. It was at this point I decided I’d never travel with a large group like this again, I’m far too used to being the one in charge and not having to rely or wait on anyone else.
We got on the bus and it was a really long ride to our hotel. Saw a Paris Toys R Us, but didn’t get to go there.
Our hotel was in the Latin Quarter. On one side was St Michel and the Pantheon, on the other was Luxemburg Gardens (which I know I’m misspelling). I had spotted a McDonald’s on the way in, and despite the fact I went cold turkey off McDonald’s back in January and have had NO desire for it since, I couldn’t get that McDonald’s out of my mind. I was bound and determined we WOULD go back to it and get some French french fries.
Our hotel was decent. The lobby was TINY. All of us crowded in (there were about 50 of us), with our luggage, taking up every bit of available room. The teacher in charge (Bob) said he would call each of us out and give us our keys. I was like, crap. Yarwood? I’ll be at the very end of the list. Surprise, he called me and Ash first! We were on the second floor. We got on the elevator (TINIEST elevator I have EVER seen) and went upstairs.
HOLY CRAP. I found myself in a hallway I had a dream about several years ago. Not the first time that’s happened, but the dream was really creepy so I found the hallway to be really freaky.
Our room was kinda scary too, but just because of the colours and the weird, completely out of place painting on one wall. We got a couple of french channels on the TV, BBC and CNN in english, an italian channel, and two german channels – one of which was MTV. All of the shows on MTV were in english subbed in german, so we did have something to watch that wasn’t the news.
We were told not to take a nap when we got to the hotel, no matter how tired we were. So, since Notre Dame was a very short hike away, we decided to go there.
But first, of course, we had to go to McDonald’s. Turned out to be really, really close. We went and got food pretty easily (luckily the cashier understood english!) and their fries were really, really good. While I’m talking about McDonald’s, I’ll add this. There was a sandwich over there we all liked – a CroquetMonsieur, I think it was called? Don’t make me spell things in french it turns out bad. But anyway, it was good. McDonald’s had their own version called a CroquetMcDo. I keep trying to get Ash or Kristie to go to McDonald’s here and order a CroquetMcDo. They won’t do it! Chickens.
We found it pretty easy. After taking a few pictures outside, we went in. There was a service going on, but tourists were EVERYWHERE snapping pics. It seemed really weird. We walked around and I experimented with the camera a lot. Unfortunately they were renovating stuff, but it wasn’t too bad. We caught the priests and other religious type folks proceeding out, and I took a pic, but didn’t take anymore after that cause I felt it was kinda disrespectful (even though everybody else was doing it! and even though it was really, really neat!)
I was quite taken with Notre Dame. As you can expect, we don’t have anything that comes CLOSE to this here at home. Our church is so ugly compared to it! Why can’t they still make churches like this? I might go more often if they did. A couple more that I like:
We hung around a little more after that, and I took a gazillion pics (I took even more of it later, when we went back at night), and then we went wandering some more. We ate dinner at a cafe just outside the Pantheon. I ordered a club and they brought me the wrong thing, and the waiter didn’t speak any english so I just picked at it and eventually ordered something else. x_x Then we found a little shop that sold crepes and Ash and Kristie got one. I just had a coke.
Speaking of which, coke bottles are smaller over there. And they DO taste different. And everything closes so early!! wtf?? And our hotel didn’t have any kind of vending machines or anything, so if you didn’t have a coke by 8, you were out of luck for the rest of the night!
Oh, and our hotel had these keys… they were real keys for the doors, not cards! But they had these keys with these keychains that were HUGE. I mean, they were big and heavy and you could KILL somebody with them. And they didn’t want you taking them with you. When you left the hotel, they wanted you to turn it in at the front desk, and then ask for it when you came back. That seemed really weird to me. I mean, like anybody could walk in and ask for my room key. blegh!
Anyway, we went back and decided to get up at 7 the next morning to start making our way to the Louvre. It was then that we realised our rooms had no alarm clock… or any kind of clock. We had no way to wake ourselves up. Finally we discovered that our Ipods had alarms on them (but they were just tiny little beeps!) but it was better than nothing so we set them for 7 AM. We turned the lights off at about 9:30 that night.
Oh. my. god. That was the LONGEST night EVER. I went to sleep, and woke up eventually, feeling completely rested. It was still dark out, so I figured it must be around 5 or so. I looked at my Ipod and nooo it was only 12:30! I managed to get back to sleep, only to be awoken by the phone ringing. Ash picked it up, and I could hear Kristie on the end going, “It’s 7o’clock! Time to get up!” Ash mumbled something, hung up the phone, and went on into the bathroom. I looked at my Ipod and was like, wtf. I picked up the phone and called Kristie back. I go, “Dude… uh, we’ve got that it’s 2 o’clock.” And yes, it was indeed 2 in the morning. She had looked at her watch upside down.
We all felt like we’d been asleep for a day by that point but we tried to go back to sleep. We tossed and turned the rest of the night until at last 7 rolled around. We wondered if perhaps there’d been a solar eclipse and we’d slept straight through Saturday and it was now Sunday, because that’s what it felt like.
So ended our first day in paris. Next up, day2: Louvre and Eiffel Tower.