So April and I have been wondering how long it would be before we saw a car accident here, since they all drive like CRAZY!!! Anyways, it finally happened, and it happened loudly and clearly outside of our building at 9am today. April describes the noise: "It sounded like a giant piece of metal falling from the sky and smashing into a million pieces on the ground." Case in point - LOUD.
Turns out there was a baby in the backseat of one of the vehicles that started crying (obviously), but the mom jumped out the car and grabbed the babe. Thankfully no one was hurt badly. The ambulance DID indeed come and take one of the drivers away, but I am sure they were okay - probably just shocked from it all.
Also, I didn't realize how rude drivers are here - trying to drive around the accident in every single way possible. Swerving around every which way, even cutting off the ambulance, just so that they can get where they need to go. For how relaxed they are about everything in this city, they are always stressed and rushed when driving. No wonder France's drivers are the worst in Europe!
Vive la France!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Hey we've got some time to waste, let's go to Monaco!
Today, April had a job interview for an au pair position in Monaco. Not wanting her to go to Monaco by herself, Katie and I went with her. While April was at her interview, I had no choice but to waste my time by wandering outside of the famous Monte Carlo casino. This was the perfect opportunity for my first video:
I know it wasn't too too exciting, but it proves that I was actually there. There was also a carnival/midway that was going on down by the port. Katie's boyfriend, Seabass, met up with us after April's interview and we all stopped and got baguette sandwiches for lunch and some churros for dessert from the carnival. It was exciting times.
The weather has been rainy the last couple of days - and it looks like it's going to stay that way for quite some time. But alas, it's better than what they're getting in London! Boo snow!
The weather has been rainy the last couple of days - and it looks like it's going to stay that way for quite some time. But alas, it's better than what they're getting in London! Boo snow!
Monday, October 27, 2008
Productivity in France, does it exist?
I seriously don't know how anything gets done in this city. If you wish to do anything, you must make sure that there are no more than TWO ITEMS on your list per day, and that you have thoroughly researched EVERYTHING that is required before attempting the task. Then, when French office number one says "No, we can't do that without a water bill in your name", you must ignore them and head to office location number two. This process takes up most of the morning and/or afternoon (depending on when you choose to complete said task), which is why your 'to do' list must not have more than two items per day. If you even attempt to get more done, you will drive yourself MENTAL.
This, is our day in a nutshell. Our task? Getting a BUS PASS. That's right, just a card that allows us to ride the bus and tram without having to purchase a ticket each time. And we thought opening a bank account was going to be hard.
Our Pretty Little Bus Pass
Sometimes easy going & relaxed = difficult and HUGE pain in the butt.
This, is our day in a nutshell. Our task? Getting a BUS PASS. That's right, just a card that allows us to ride the bus and tram without having to purchase a ticket each time. And we thought opening a bank account was going to be hard.
Our Pretty Little Bus PassSometimes easy going & relaxed = difficult and HUGE pain in the butt.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Photos!!
So for those of you who don't have facebook, or prefer to see all the photos that we've taken thus far, we have added a slideshow to the right hand navigation of our blog. Just click on the photo and it will take you to our Photostream where you can browse our photos to see what we've been up to :)
Cheers!
Cheers!
The Great Apartment Hunt
Sunday we woke up bright and early to actually make breakfast and our appointment at noon. Due to the festivities the night before, our Aussie friend Bethany didn't quite make the 10:00am train to Aix-en-Provence that she was dead set on catching; so it was nice to have one last breakfast and refuse to eat Veggie Mite with her. After some tearful goodbyes (not really, in the backpacking world, it's more like see you in another country), we catch the tram to take a look at the apartment. With only one wrong turn we manage to find it, but being that this apartment wasn't in an area that we originally desired, we were both a little skeptical and set on being critical. We came, we saw, and we told the landlord that we'd call her the next day after we viewed the other apartment. The rest of Sunday was very uneventful, as most things are closed in the city....are we seeing a pattern here yet?
Monday rolls around and surprise, the markets aren't the only things that are closed. Again, for some reason, people don't like to work on Monday either. I think we have it completely wrong in North America. Here, we take 2+ hour lunch breaks and don't work Saturday, Sunday or Monday. How anything gets done is beyond me. So, we head into town to register with the Canadian Consulate (which is only open from 9-12, apparently they too have adopted the French way). Little did we know that this lady would be absolutely no help. Like the Government offices at home, she directs us to a website and tries to get us out of the office as quickly as possible. We do however manage to ask her about the area of town where our possible apartment is located, and are thrilled to find out that it is a safe, up and coming neighbourhood. From here we're off to the beach for a lunch of baguette, green pepper and grapes (healthy I know). Seeing as though we arrived at the beach a little before lunch, we were shocked to hear a massive gun shot go off and the birds take off just minutes after our arrival. It took us about two seconds to realize that this is what they do to alert the town that it's lunch, and that it wasn't actually a gun, but rather a cannon...go figure! Being that it was such a nice day, we spend our lunch hours sleeping under the warm sun on the rocky beach. Upon waking up, we both decided that the apartment we viewed was in fact bigger, cheaper and nicer than anything else we've read or heard about, so we decided to call the lady and tell her we'll take it. And this Ladies and Gentlemen is the part of the story where things head south. Upon telling her this she proceeds to tell us the GIGANTIC list of things she would like from us before our 6:30 pm meeting. Where to start we don't know, but we head to an insurance company to find out about renters insurance and then back to the hostel to figure everything else out. As we do this however, we get another call from the lady telling us that she herself tried to arrange insurance in case we didn't pay and was told that she was taking a massive risk by renting to us, and therefore, she needed a few days to think about it and that she'd understand if we found something else. Translation: You're young, foreign and don't yet have jobs, I don't want you. Well this sends us into a furry of anger where we proceed to email every person that has contacted us about an apartment whether we liked the deal or not, book an extra night in the hostel and cross our fingers that apartment lady ends up with an empty pad for what she's done to us.
Tuesday morning arrives and with a clearer head I wake up and decided that we've been misjudged and that I'm going to let this lady know so. So I type and type and type, being as friendly as I can, while at the same time letting this woman know that she's got us all wrong. When Julie wakes up, I show her my letter and off the email goes. 10 minutes later we get a text message that say "OK, you can have apartment, check e-mail for details". We receive the email and find a list of things that need to be gathered, but they are reasonable and we accept. Now the task of finding money. First and Last months rent are one thing, a two month damage deposit and rent for the rest of the month are another. First we try Julie's debit card, max it out. Then we set on the task of finding a bank that will cash advance our credit cards with no pin code. NONE, we checked them all! So, I text home and make the Fam find the code for my one credit card, max it out. The other card, well I'm out of luck with that one. The code won't be sent to my house for 7-10 days. Still a few hundred short and no money to eat, we try the toll free number on the back of our credit cards to see if they cave and give us our pins. Collect calls are blocked on the French phones. No Luck. So we use the cell phone. Finally Julie gets her debit card limit increased, but the brand new minutes on our cell phone are gone. Regardless, the increased limit allows us to go back to the bank and get the rest of the money we require. Next is a trip to an Internet cafe to get some paper work off the Internet and photocopy some stuff, and we're done...and tired. We meet our landlady, sign the papers...and we finally have an apartment! YEAH!!! At this point we head back to the hostel for one last night and some really good lasagna.
The next morning we move in, clean the apartment from top to bottom and meet our landlady to do our walk thru, take count of the things in the apartment and check for damage. It's then that we find out that the previous tenant was wanted by the police, refused to pay rent, broke down the door when he forgot his key..all in a weeks time. Now the anal-retentiveness of our landlady makes sense, we assure her this won't be us.
Thursday we head to Ma Nolan's for Trivia night again, only this time with the help of our Kiwi friend's old Yachting crew we are able to tie for 1st! YEAH! The tie breaker however is not so yeah! Julie has to guess Chuck Norris' birthday and is shocked to discover that he's 68 years old. Still with a four-way tie, we managed to pull off 3rd and win a 30 euro gift certificate.
Friday we head to a HUGE market in Italia and wander around looking like lost tourists. They have TONNES of stuff at this market, from scarves to clothes to pots and pans. Overwhelmed by everything, we walk away empty handed after looking around for a few hours. We then head to the Gelato place outside of the train station and get real Italian Gelato. SO GOOD! With twenty minutes until the train back home, we venture back into the food market and come out with Parmesan Cheese, Spicy Olives, and Stinky Sausage for Julie....all for 10 euros. Later that evening, we head to Wayne's...the backpackers' bar with our Yachting friends from the night before. This is the part of our trip where Julie and I discover just how old we are, as we determine that we'd rather be in a pub sipping drinks and talking to friends while sitting down, rather than in a bar listening to really loud live music and watching drunk girls dance on the tables that once served as a resting place for our beverages. We eventually head home, and with the Tram 22 minutes away, we decided to walk and get to our apartment just as the Tram is arriving.
Saturday we sleep in and wake up at 11:30 to the couple upstairs having the most heated argument of life. Screaming, yelling and baby crying, we were up for good at this point. So, we head to the Patisserie for Chocolate Croissants and meet up with Katie and Sebass to head the the Wal-Mart of France....Carrefour. We get hangers, a hair straightener, and a vase. Then, we decided to go to Italy for an authentic Pizza dinner. First however, we hit up McDonald's to get an app (cause the French don't eat dinner until 9pm) which consisted of a Chicken McNugget meal and Lemon Crunch Sundaes (which by the way are the BEST! If they are in Canada, go get one now..it's like Lemon meringue pie and ice cream all in one!)
Dinner was amazing - we went to a pizzeria in Dolce Accqua - a small town on the border of Italy and France. Thank you kindly to Sebass for driving! :) Crustino for an appetizer, followed by delightful pizza, and marvelous dessert. Let me not forget to mention the two young men sitting diagonal from us - one of which was wearing a woman's pink t-shirt (we believe an XXS) and the other wearing a pink trucker hat, with a shiny gold jacket. Photo to follow. Full and exhausted, we head home to sleep, not before setting the clocks back an hour for daily savings time!
This finally brings us to today - a very relaxed day indeed. So so nice! We hang around the apartment a little, walk outside and go to the giant market just outside our doorstep and buy 2kg of potatoes, grapes, and bananas - everything for under 5 euros! A couple chocolate croissants, and some more groceries later, we come home to relax for the rest of the day, do some cleaning and catch up on our blog. Amazing!
So from now on, the blogs will be much much shorter and more enjoyable to read than a huge long passage that people say they will "read later". Later just never comes. But to those of you who are like me, and don't like reading long articles, you're in for a treat! Until next time! - April
Monday rolls around and surprise, the markets aren't the only things that are closed. Again, for some reason, people don't like to work on Monday either. I think we have it completely wrong in North America. Here, we take 2+ hour lunch breaks and don't work Saturday, Sunday or Monday. How anything gets done is beyond me. So, we head into town to register with the Canadian Consulate (which is only open from 9-12, apparently they too have adopted the French way). Little did we know that this lady would be absolutely no help. Like the Government offices at home, she directs us to a website and tries to get us out of the office as quickly as possible. We do however manage to ask her about the area of town where our possible apartment is located, and are thrilled to find out that it is a safe, up and coming neighbourhood. From here we're off to the beach for a lunch of baguette, green pepper and grapes (healthy I know). Seeing as though we arrived at the beach a little before lunch, we were shocked to hear a massive gun shot go off and the birds take off just minutes after our arrival. It took us about two seconds to realize that this is what they do to alert the town that it's lunch, and that it wasn't actually a gun, but rather a cannon...go figure! Being that it was such a nice day, we spend our lunch hours sleeping under the warm sun on the rocky beach. Upon waking up, we both decided that the apartment we viewed was in fact bigger, cheaper and nicer than anything else we've read or heard about, so we decided to call the lady and tell her we'll take it. And this Ladies and Gentlemen is the part of the story where things head south. Upon telling her this she proceeds to tell us the GIGANTIC list of things she would like from us before our 6:30 pm meeting. Where to start we don't know, but we head to an insurance company to find out about renters insurance and then back to the hostel to figure everything else out. As we do this however, we get another call from the lady telling us that she herself tried to arrange insurance in case we didn't pay and was told that she was taking a massive risk by renting to us, and therefore, she needed a few days to think about it and that she'd understand if we found something else. Translation: You're young, foreign and don't yet have jobs, I don't want you. Well this sends us into a furry of anger where we proceed to email every person that has contacted us about an apartment whether we liked the deal or not, book an extra night in the hostel and cross our fingers that apartment lady ends up with an empty pad for what she's done to us.
Tuesday morning arrives and with a clearer head I wake up and decided that we've been misjudged and that I'm going to let this lady know so. So I type and type and type, being as friendly as I can, while at the same time letting this woman know that she's got us all wrong. When Julie wakes up, I show her my letter and off the email goes. 10 minutes later we get a text message that say "OK, you can have apartment, check e-mail for details". We receive the email and find a list of things that need to be gathered, but they are reasonable and we accept. Now the task of finding money. First and Last months rent are one thing, a two month damage deposit and rent for the rest of the month are another. First we try Julie's debit card, max it out. Then we set on the task of finding a bank that will cash advance our credit cards with no pin code. NONE, we checked them all! So, I text home and make the Fam find the code for my one credit card, max it out. The other card, well I'm out of luck with that one. The code won't be sent to my house for 7-10 days. Still a few hundred short and no money to eat, we try the toll free number on the back of our credit cards to see if they cave and give us our pins. Collect calls are blocked on the French phones. No Luck. So we use the cell phone. Finally Julie gets her debit card limit increased, but the brand new minutes on our cell phone are gone. Regardless, the increased limit allows us to go back to the bank and get the rest of the money we require. Next is a trip to an Internet cafe to get some paper work off the Internet and photocopy some stuff, and we're done...and tired. We meet our landlady, sign the papers...and we finally have an apartment! YEAH!!! At this point we head back to the hostel for one last night and some really good lasagna.
The next morning we move in, clean the apartment from top to bottom and meet our landlady to do our walk thru, take count of the things in the apartment and check for damage. It's then that we find out that the previous tenant was wanted by the police, refused to pay rent, broke down the door when he forgot his key..all in a weeks time. Now the anal-retentiveness of our landlady makes sense, we assure her this won't be us.
Thursday we head to Ma Nolan's for Trivia night again, only this time with the help of our Kiwi friend's old Yachting crew we are able to tie for 1st! YEAH! The tie breaker however is not so yeah! Julie has to guess Chuck Norris' birthday and is shocked to discover that he's 68 years old. Still with a four-way tie, we managed to pull off 3rd and win a 30 euro gift certificate.
Friday we head to a HUGE market in Italia and wander around looking like lost tourists. They have TONNES of stuff at this market, from scarves to clothes to pots and pans. Overwhelmed by everything, we walk away empty handed after looking around for a few hours. We then head to the Gelato place outside of the train station and get real Italian Gelato. SO GOOD! With twenty minutes until the train back home, we venture back into the food market and come out with Parmesan Cheese, Spicy Olives, and Stinky Sausage for Julie....all for 10 euros. Later that evening, we head to Wayne's...the backpackers' bar with our Yachting friends from the night before. This is the part of our trip where Julie and I discover just how old we are, as we determine that we'd rather be in a pub sipping drinks and talking to friends while sitting down, rather than in a bar listening to really loud live music and watching drunk girls dance on the tables that once served as a resting place for our beverages. We eventually head home, and with the Tram 22 minutes away, we decided to walk and get to our apartment just as the Tram is arriving.
Saturday we sleep in and wake up at 11:30 to the couple upstairs having the most heated argument of life. Screaming, yelling and baby crying, we were up for good at this point. So, we head to the Patisserie for Chocolate Croissants and meet up with Katie and Sebass to head the the Wal-Mart of France....Carrefour. We get hangers, a hair straightener, and a vase. Then, we decided to go to Italy for an authentic Pizza dinner. First however, we hit up McDonald's to get an app (cause the French don't eat dinner until 9pm) which consisted of a Chicken McNugget meal and Lemon Crunch Sundaes (which by the way are the BEST! If they are in Canada, go get one now..it's like Lemon meringue pie and ice cream all in one!)
Dinner was amazing - we went to a pizzeria in Dolce Accqua - a small town on the border of Italy and France. Thank you kindly to Sebass for driving! :) Crustino for an appetizer, followed by delightful pizza, and marvelous dessert. Let me not forget to mention the two young men sitting diagonal from us - one of which was wearing a woman's pink t-shirt (we believe an XXS) and the other wearing a pink trucker hat, with a shiny gold jacket. Photo to follow. Full and exhausted, we head home to sleep, not before setting the clocks back an hour for daily savings time!
This finally brings us to today - a very relaxed day indeed. So so nice! We hang around the apartment a little, walk outside and go to the giant market just outside our doorstep and buy 2kg of potatoes, grapes, and bananas - everything for under 5 euros! A couple chocolate croissants, and some more groceries later, we come home to relax for the rest of the day, do some cleaning and catch up on our blog. Amazing!
So from now on, the blogs will be much much shorter and more enjoyable to read than a huge long passage that people say they will "read later". Later just never comes. But to those of you who are like me, and don't like reading long articles, you're in for a treat! Until next time! - April
Thursday, October 23, 2008
The Grand Entrance
So, our arrival to Nice was anything but elegant. Upon entering the Nice Train Station, we discovered that Katie had to work and we were on our own in this foreign city, with over 120 lbs of luggage each. Making best of the situation, we started to walk....and we walked, and we walked, and we walked in an attempt to find somewhere to stay. When walking didn't work, we stopped in front of a flashy casino and stole Internet from the cafe across the street (yeah iPhone!). The casino didn't like this too much, and I believe they thought we were trying to beg in front of their luxurious establishment, but all they really did was stand outside and stare us down. Anyways I digress, we found a hostel a few blocks away and started to walk again. Finally finding the hostel we discovered that it was 3 stories up in a country that doesn't believe in elevators. 120 lbs of luggage up 3 flights of stairs? No way, we opted to walk some more. Down to Old Nice to City hall, back up again...and I believe this is the part in the story where both our bags break. Now seeing as all that broke was the clip that attaches both our giant bags together, combined with the fact that they are insured for 10 years, this really shouldn't have been that big of a deal; but we were tired (no good sleep for over 48 hours) and hot (wearing jeans and sweatshirts in 23*c weather) and I think we both almost ended up in tears. More determined than ever we found an Internet cafe, drinks and booked a hostel in the mountains. To get there it only took a Tram ride, followed by a shuttle (that we only caught by like 2 minutes, otherwise we would have had to wait 6 hours for the next one, stupid shuttle hours care of the hostel). Once there, we showered and slept. Next stop in our journey was a visit to Katie's and dinner at an Irish Pub called Ma Nolans where we ate cheese burgers (very French I know) and played Thursday night trivia. In case you wanted to know, our team didn't win; there are definitely some hardcore players present at this game.
Friday we managed to miss breakfast cause we slept in til almost noon, which kinda messes up any plans you may have for the next 2 hours cause everything in this city, make that CONTINENT, closes from noon until whenever they feel like opening again. We did manage to find a grocery store, however, that was open! Amazing.... So, armed with a baguette, grapes and some nasty green tea drink that tasted more like floor cleaner, we were off to the beach. Stones or not, the beach is wonderful. The view of all the topless women and speedo-wearing men was not much to look at, but it was wonderful just to be able to relax for a bit. All good things, unfortunately, must come to an end, and before you know it we were off to get our phone number and a place to live. The phone part was easy, the apartment part - not so much. With probably 100 Immobiliers (real estate offices) in this city, only a handful rent furnished apartments; so one after another were told to keep walking. Finally we managed to book an appointment to see a little studio in Old Nice, but neither one of us were hopeful.
With doubt in our minds, we headed back to the hostel and proceeded to post an ad on angloinfo.com (an Anglophone website for those traveling to countries where English may not be the first language). Before you know it, we received an e-mail from a woman letting us know she had an apartment for rent in downtown Nice that included wireless Internet, and free international phone calls - oh wow - this sounds too good to be true. After having exchanged e-mails with this woman, it was agreed that we would meet to see the apartment at noon on Sunday.
Saturday after an uneventful day, we celebrated the 23rd birthday of our new Aussie friend, Bethany. Accompanied by cake, candles, and all, the entire hostel joined in singing happy birthday while Bethany was so embarrassed, she blew out the candles before the song was over. BOO! We met some more friends that evening, including many more Australians (one which was 19, newly married and traveling without husband), a Kiwi, a handful of Americans, and a couple of Canucks. It was a gloriously fun time indeed!
Next - SUNDAY.... we're getting closer at catching up. Only 6 more days to write about!
Friday we managed to miss breakfast cause we slept in til almost noon, which kinda messes up any plans you may have for the next 2 hours cause everything in this city, make that CONTINENT, closes from noon until whenever they feel like opening again. We did manage to find a grocery store, however, that was open! Amazing.... So, armed with a baguette, grapes and some nasty green tea drink that tasted more like floor cleaner, we were off to the beach. Stones or not, the beach is wonderful. The view of all the topless women and speedo-wearing men was not much to look at, but it was wonderful just to be able to relax for a bit. All good things, unfortunately, must come to an end, and before you know it we were off to get our phone number and a place to live. The phone part was easy, the apartment part - not so much. With probably 100 Immobiliers (real estate offices) in this city, only a handful rent furnished apartments; so one after another were told to keep walking. Finally we managed to book an appointment to see a little studio in Old Nice, but neither one of us were hopeful.
With doubt in our minds, we headed back to the hostel and proceeded to post an ad on angloinfo.com (an Anglophone website for those traveling to countries where English may not be the first language). Before you know it, we received an e-mail from a woman letting us know she had an apartment for rent in downtown Nice that included wireless Internet, and free international phone calls - oh wow - this sounds too good to be true. After having exchanged e-mails with this woman, it was agreed that we would meet to see the apartment at noon on Sunday.
Saturday after an uneventful day, we celebrated the 23rd birthday of our new Aussie friend, Bethany. Accompanied by cake, candles, and all, the entire hostel joined in singing happy birthday while Bethany was so embarrassed, she blew out the candles before the song was over. BOO! We met some more friends that evening, including many more Australians (one which was 19, newly married and traveling without husband), a Kiwi, a handful of Americans, and a couple of Canucks. It was a gloriously fun time indeed!
Next - SUNDAY.... we're getting closer at catching up. Only 6 more days to write about!
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
We have an apartment!
I just want to let everyone know that as of Wednesday morning we will have moved into our new apartment in Nice. It is time for bed now, but once we settle in and get everything together, we will write a longer post detailing our time in Nice so far. Sorry we haven't been on the ball about this whole thing - but not having a place to live and looking around a foreign city with crazy Frogs can really make you stress out a bit.
More tomorrow, I promise. ♥
More tomorrow, I promise. ♥
Sunday, October 19, 2008
The adventure begins... Paris
So it has been five days already since we have landed on the continent known to all as Europe. We flew out of Toronto on Tuesday night (7PM ET) and arrived in Paris Wednesday morning at 10AM (Paris time), where our journey, and thus our blog, begins.
The weather was rainy in the City of Lights, but the temperature was warm, so weren't going to complain. After all, we just enjoyed a first class trip overseas where we were fed copious amounts of food and alcohol. Speaking of which, let me tell you a little bit about our flight:
So there was my aside about the flight to Paris. On to the actual day we spent in Paris:
Having not slept one wink on the plane, I was a little disheveled, but still able to understand and speak French, which meant I was able to get myself, April, and Ryan all day passes for the Paris transit system - only 18 euros each.... worth it though. We found the right train to get on to take us into the city and right to the train station where our train would be leaving from (9 hours later). Did you know that it is difficult to carry around two giant suitcases full of clothing? Well, it is, especially when all of the buildings in France are old and do not believe in elevators, and the majority of escalators were out of service. Ryan got to help out April a lot in lifting her luggage - thank you by the way!
We finally found the luggage storage section of the train station, and scoured around to find exact change to pay for two lockers (9,50 euros per locker - that's a lot of change). Anyway, after buying a couple of bottles of water, we were good to go. Suitcases and backpacks shoved in and stored away, we went off to explore Paris (i.e. waste time until our train left that night at 9:17). First things first, we needed to buy our tickets for the train. Using my superb French skills, I got all three of us youth discount cards for the French rail system, as well as the cheap tickets on the overnight train to Nice. Kudos me! We then had another 7 hours to kill, so we went out on the transit system - a little confusing might I add.
We found our way around after wandering the streets for an hour and visited the Eiffel Tower, literally visited it - said hi, walked underneath it and left. Our legs were pretty tired to say the least. A walk along the Seine led us to have more tired legs, so we hopped back on the subway to Notre Dame. Goodness gracious - it was free to go in! That's my kind of sight-seeing, easy on the wallet. Anyway, we manoeuvred our way through the crowds and saw the pretty basilica and all its glory. We looked for Quasimodo, but had no luck finding him. We decided we'd had enough gay Paris (pa-ree) for the day, and so we went back on the subway to the train station to hang out there for a few hours. You may think that we're crazy to have done that, but if you didn't have any sleep in 30 hours, you would have agreed and done the same thing.
Back at the station, we got our photos taken in a photo booth for our youth cards (4 euros for 4 photos - a little much) - but it needed to be done. Cold and tired, we hit up a restaurant in the train station and ate some delightful sandwiches with orangina and a fruity tart for dessert. It was good considering we hadn't eaten all day. Alright, so we're finished our food and we're warm finally that we're inside - what do we do now? We have a lot of time to waste still. Well, we got coffee from a different restaurant so we didn't fall asleep. You talk in French, you do your best, but then the waiter still talks to you in English - whatever, you tried.
The coffee was over - now it was time to pay and go to the bathroom. 50 cents later, we're peeing in a beautiful bathroom with attendants and fancy sinks, etc. That's what it is everywhere - you have to pay to pee. Understandable considering it's tourist central and their water resources may be just a tad more scarce than ours and all. But it can be such a hassle! :(
We then got our luggage out of the locker and waited around on some benches with our tickets for the next hour and a half trying desperately to keep our eyes open. Sooooooooo tired.
But as you may have guessed, the train came and on we got - luggage and all - FINALLY!!
Next post - Nice, the first few days.
The weather was rainy in the City of Lights, but the temperature was warm, so weren't going to complain. After all, we just enjoyed a first class trip overseas where we were fed copious amounts of food and alcohol. Speaking of which, let me tell you a little bit about our flight:
When you fly first class (or Club Class as it was with Air Transat), they treat you pretty darn well. We were welcomed on board with a glass of champagne, followed by a snack-sized mixture of nuts and cracker-ish type foods. Needless to say, they were good. We then had a pre-dinner Heineken, only to be followed by our gourmet dinner - side salad, brie and crackers, a dinner roll, the main pasta dish, a glass of wine, and a delightful cream dessert - made by President's Choice. Wine, coffee, and tea were the after meal beverages to choose from. A couple hours later, they brought us breakfast - a mixture of fruits from strawberry, melon, and pineapple, with a muffin and glass of orange juice. Did I mention that they also had dessert wine between dinner and breakfast? Guess I didn't - but they did. First time I had tried ice wine... interesting to say the least. They finished up the flight by giving us a hot towel (I thought that only happened in the movies, so I did what Adam Sandler did in The Wedding Singer and just wore it like a bib as a joke). It was delightful though.
Cheers!
Cheers!So there was my aside about the flight to Paris. On to the actual day we spent in Paris:
Having not slept one wink on the plane, I was a little disheveled, but still able to understand and speak French, which meant I was able to get myself, April, and Ryan all day passes for the Paris transit system - only 18 euros each.... worth it though. We found the right train to get on to take us into the city and right to the train station where our train would be leaving from (9 hours later). Did you know that it is difficult to carry around two giant suitcases full of clothing? Well, it is, especially when all of the buildings in France are old and do not believe in elevators, and the majority of escalators were out of service. Ryan got to help out April a lot in lifting her luggage - thank you by the way!
We finally found the luggage storage section of the train station, and scoured around to find exact change to pay for two lockers (9,50 euros per locker - that's a lot of change). Anyway, after buying a couple of bottles of water, we were good to go. Suitcases and backpacks shoved in and stored away, we went off to explore Paris (i.e. waste time until our train left that night at 9:17). First things first, we needed to buy our tickets for the train. Using my superb French skills, I got all three of us youth discount cards for the French rail system, as well as the cheap tickets on the overnight train to Nice. Kudos me! We then had another 7 hours to kill, so we went out on the transit system - a little confusing might I add.
We found our way around after wandering the streets for an hour and visited the Eiffel Tower, literally visited it - said hi, walked underneath it and left. Our legs were pretty tired to say the least. A walk along the Seine led us to have more tired legs, so we hopped back on the subway to Notre Dame. Goodness gracious - it was free to go in! That's my kind of sight-seeing, easy on the wallet. Anyway, we manoeuvred our way through the crowds and saw the pretty basilica and all its glory. We looked for Quasimodo, but had no luck finding him. We decided we'd had enough gay Paris (pa-ree) for the day, and so we went back on the subway to the train station to hang out there for a few hours. You may think that we're crazy to have done that, but if you didn't have any sleep in 30 hours, you would have agreed and done the same thing.
Back at the station, we got our photos taken in a photo booth for our youth cards (4 euros for 4 photos - a little much) - but it needed to be done. Cold and tired, we hit up a restaurant in the train station and ate some delightful sandwiches with orangina and a fruity tart for dessert. It was good considering we hadn't eaten all day. Alright, so we're finished our food and we're warm finally that we're inside - what do we do now? We have a lot of time to waste still. Well, we got coffee from a different restaurant so we didn't fall asleep. You talk in French, you do your best, but then the waiter still talks to you in English - whatever, you tried.
The coffee was over - now it was time to pay and go to the bathroom. 50 cents later, we're peeing in a beautiful bathroom with attendants and fancy sinks, etc. That's what it is everywhere - you have to pay to pee. Understandable considering it's tourist central and their water resources may be just a tad more scarce than ours and all. But it can be such a hassle! :(
We then got our luggage out of the locker and waited around on some benches with our tickets for the next hour and a half trying desperately to keep our eyes open. Sooooooooo tired.
But as you may have guessed, the train came and on we got - luggage and all - FINALLY!!
Next post - Nice, the first few days.
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