Paris!

Whew, sorry again that it takes me so long to get posts up, I hope I'm not annoying anyone. Plus, I was without internet for two weeks this month due to school trips and this trip...

Last weekend we had a five-day break due to a holiday on Thursday and Monday was just a day off. As such, I decided to join some friends on a whirlwind tour of Paris and Amsterdam, two cities that I'd never visited and that I honestly would say weren't on my top cities to visit. However, I figured I should go now with friends because I was unlikely to visit on my own.

I left for the Madrid airport immediately after school as my flight left at 3. I felt like I was in a hurry, but I managed to get to the gate really early because the check-in and security didn't have lines. I got on the plane and arrived in Paris at around 7PM. That's when the fun started. In France, very few people speak English and even fewer speak Spanish. Also, though French is technically a romantic language, like Spanish and Italian, it sounds NOTHING like Spanish or Italian! It's pretty much impossible to communicate. Hmm, should be fun.

So I take a train from the De Gaulle Airport (wow, 2 major int'l airports I'd never been to in one day!) to the main metro/train interchange at Gare Nord. The train wasn't bad, definitely not as nice as the system in Madrid, but I managed to get to Nord. However, getting OUT of Nord was another story. I couldn't figure out how to get out! I thought I found the metro entrance, but I couldn't find a place to buy a metro ticket! So I proceeded to wander around the place, not worried, just confused. I realized that the train ticket to get there would work to get me in to the metro (at least I think that's how it works?), so I proceeded to stick my ticket in the slot. It spit out, but the guy in front of me jammed the machine and my ticket went through unread. In a whirlwind of people cramming by, the man in front tells me "Come on!" and a guy with a season pass swipes/shoves us through as the two of us in front share a turnstile. I'm glad I got through, though I never want to be that close to a French guy again!

Emily and I wanted to stay at a hotel with our friends, but it was booked. We managed to snag a great room at the Hotel Camelia International by the Place de Clichy. It was really inexpensive but very cool. I made it to the hotel earlier than Emily (she missed her flight and followed it with a harrowing, 50 euro taxi ride. By the time she made it to the hotel she was quite flustered. After a quick bit of decompressing in our nice hotel, I invited her to go with me to eat dinner with my friend Dani, a girl I knew from school who later transferred but has spent the whole year studying in Paris. We took the metro (again, another fun experience, try buying a ticket in french!), but we made it to her stop and she met us there.

Dani lives in a student residence, which is kind of like a dorm open to students of all different universities. She lives there with several students from her program and they cook with each other. It was Dani's night to cook and she made a great-tasting, traditional lebanese dish. Afterwards, she took us out to her favorite bar with her friend Sharif who is from Paris. We tried a typical Parisian student beverage which is half beer and half peach juice. Interesting flavor, probably won't have it again!

After that, we took the metro home, glad to be able to get some rest before our action packed day in Paris. I am still thankful for Dani's hospitality and friendship! I don't know what we would have done without her, being as confused and tired as we were! I'm glad we got to meet up after 2 years of going to different schools!