I'm back, and I stink. Let me tell you why.
Friday I took a nap from 10 to 12 and got on the metro to the airport at 1. At 1:45, I'm kicked out of the metro while trying to transfer to the second train that would take me to the airport. So I have to hail a taxi. 25 euros later and just after 2am, I make it to the airport. Jacque and I sit on the ground for about an hour and a half, and guess who we saw walk right past us-- Raquel and her husband (we still don't know his name), the couple we lived with the first month!! WHAT THE HECK?! We're in madrid, a city with millions of people, we're at the airport at 3:30 in the morning, and we're together when we run into the people we lived with. Furthermore, they're going to Paris on the same flight. WEIRD.
After pretending not to see eachother for a bit, i don't know why- it was just weird- we finally say hi, how are you, etc.. but not much else.
We leave at 5:45, get to Paris (Beauvais) at 7:45, and have to take a 13 euro bus to the actual city. Then we start walking. and walking. and walking. We see the eiffel tower first, take a Seine cruise to Notre Dame, eat the "world's best ice cream" (find out later we went to the wrong store, oops.. so it was just pretty good), and find subway- the restaurant. YUM. Then we visit the Louvre, and so of course the Mona Lisa.. and that big pyramid from "The Da Vinci Code".
After that we decide to ride the Seine boat for a while (we got an all day pass), meet a lady from Massachusetts, and take a nap. Next we head down Champs de Elysees - a street full of top-brands such as Prada, Gucci, and Gap :) and try to figure out the plan for the night.
You see, we booked our flight home for 8:25 Sunday morning. Which means, we have to be at the airport at 6:25, so we have to take the bus from Paris to Beauvais at 5:25. If we finish seeing the city at .. let's say midnight.. we would be paying a full night's stay somewhere for only 5 hours, and that's not taking into account waking up early enough to walk to the station. So we decided that it wasn't worth it to get a hostel. When we finally did get really tired and gave into the idea of renting a room, there wasn't one to be found anyhow, nobody even knew what we were talking about when we said 'hostel'. Granted, we don't speak French, and had a hard time finding someone that spoke English very well.. but from what we could find in guidebooks and from asking people... paris doesn't.. have .. hostels? WEIRD. All we could find were 90euro hotels at the cheapest.
No way. So we walked, A LOT. and went to the eiffel tower at 11pm to check it out with all the lights- gorgeous by the way. Then, after sitting on a bench at the foot of the glowing tower and having all the tourist-toy-sellers try to sell us mini-towers and flying plastic birds, we decided to just walk to the bus station and see what was there.
Our original plan, when we decided not to rent a hostel, was to just sleep in the bus station. Ha, then when we got to the station, we saw that it's not a station at all. Just a parking lot with a little trailor to sell the tickets from. A trailor we can't enter. :( No benches, no chairs, no cover for us to huddle under at all. So when we walked to the bus station and reaffirmed that there was no place to rest there, and it was too cold to just sit out on the grass, Jacque re-proposes an idea she got from the movie "Pursuit of Happiness" - sleeping in a bathroom. "Er, no thanks", I said the first time she mentioned it. But when I'm tired and dirty and sore from walking around a big city all day, my thoughts and perceptions of "cleanliness" and "proper behavior" change a bit.
So we went into the closest hotel, walked in like we knew what we were doing, and eventually found the bathrooms. Which were locked. Oh they're smart. But, the bathrooms were up on a balcony in the main lobby, with some comfy chairs just out of sight of anyone down below. So there we slouched. I told Jacque that if anyone came up, I'd just say we were waiting on a friend to come, and then we'd book a room. Well.. about 10 minutes later, a suited man came up the stairs, walked towards us, sat down in the chair beside me and mimickingly feigned sleep. "uh, bonjour", I said. He smiled at me like I'd said that I had a monkey on my head, and he knew very well that I didn't and wasn't going to take that nonsense. Then he babbled a string of French and I shook my head and said "what? I don't understand". He smiled and tried to speak in English- "You are going to Beauvais in the morning?" ... At first I didn't understand what he said, what's bohvoo? "uh, no..?" I said. He smirked and said "you are waiting here for the bus to Beauvais?" OH, that. "No," I lied, "we're waiting for a friend that's coming by train, to rent a room" Well he asked when she was coming, I lied some more, he asked how long we were going to wait, I said until she came, he smirked and said we had 15 minutes. Bust.
BUT IT WAS SO WARM IN THERE! argh. now what. We decided we weren't quitters, and left to find another hotel.
We enter, we 'know' where we're going, and find the bathrooms. There were the regular bathrooms, and there were the handicap bathrooms. PERFECT. So, eventually, Jacque and I lock ourselves into the handicap bathroom.. yes, singular, there was just one toilet, so we had to be sneaky so that no one saw that two people had gone in, and nobody had gone out. BUT, of course, there was no toilet paper. A problem? Only if we want to stay hidden, because the janitor was trying to do his job. After he'd attempted 3 times to open the door, we figured we'd better go, as he would wonder what had happened to the poor handicap person taking forever in there. We decide to check out the regular bathrooms and are able to move there unnoticed.
SCORE!!! Two stalls, with full doors, so one can't see another's feet or any space into the stall at all. But we can't take up both stalls, right? So we lock ourselves into one, Jacque's legs to the left, mine to the right, and were pretty comfortable if we didn't try to move. Great. And except for the lady with the troublesome bowels, the night went problem-free from there on.
Now I'm back in Madrid, having arrived to my apartment at 11 stinky, tired, and with this horrible pain in my foot. But it was a great trip!
