Bon jour! And that's essentially all the French I can speak. I was in Paris from April 5th - 8th with my friend Katie. She is a very dear friend of mine from my Uni back in the States, currently studying abroad in the city of Strasbourg. We decided to meet up at a middle-point, Paris!
I took the train out of Cardiff into Bristol. At the bus stop, I met some members of the Cardiff University Athletic Society. They were on their way to Madrid to run in a half-marathon. I hung out with them for a bit as we got our boarding passes. One of them was from around Leeds. I haven't been exposed to the northern accents, so it was a little tough to understand him (I think he had a lisp as well, poor boy). Another guy was from Anglesey. Everyone seemed a little jealous of my trip to Paris. They thought that I should run off with a French boy! I told them that I wished I'd known about their trip to Spain, none of them knew Spanish and I could have been their translator!
Fun Fact #22: I took Spanish for five years. I also have never had to opportunity to use it in my travels. On the other hand, I've been to France twice. Good life-choice there, girl.
Fun Fact #23: The athletic society had a self-imposed travel challenge. This was to convince a Spaniard that Wales has actual dragons. No word on whether this was successful or not.
The Bristol Airport is designed so that you have to meander through the duty-free shop (lots of luxury items!) in order to get to the terminals. They had samples of some high-end liquors set out. I got to try Patrón, and I ended up enjoying it.
Speaking of Spanish, there was a Spanish couple in front of me in the queue to get on the plane. I was tempted to ask them what time it was or something, but they didn't seem very approachable. The flight took around an hour and a half. Not bad! I arrived at Charles de Gaulle and promptly got lost. What is it with me and giant airports? Also, does anyone in airports understand how to give good directions?!
I tried using a machine to buy myself a train ticket, but it only took chip-and-pin credit cards. Why can't the USA embrace this? It would make my life here so much easier. And in a second missed-opportunity to use my Spanish, a lady asked me how the ticket machines worked. I could see that the language setting was in Spanish, why didn't I take this chance? The fact that she prompted this with "Do you speak English?" may mean that I'm doing a pretty awesome job of blending in.
I stood in the QUEUE OF DEATH waiting for a real person to sell me a ticket. I was behind a Russian girl who let me go first, how sweet! On the train, I saw a group of people boarding when the doors closed, leaving one of the group stranded! French trains mean business. A lady from the group sat next to me and asked me to message her stranded friend (she saw I had English luggage tags and inferred that I spoke the language). I did and we started having a lovely conversation. She'd just gotten out of a long-term relationship and was looking forward to celebrating the 5th anniversary of her 35th birthday. She informed me that the Paris Marathon would be going on. My curiosity was peaked.
I got off the train at the Saint Michel stop, right near Notre Dame. In a freak coincidence, I saw the Russian girl from the airport queue walking down the street at that time. We gave each-other shocked looks of recognition.
I met with Katie near the Hotel Notre Dame. We walked from there all the way to the Rue la Fayette, which ended up being around 2.5 miles. Luckily, I was so full of stories about Cardiff life, that we spent most of it catching up.
We arrived at our hostel and met our roommate. His name was Javier and he was from Argentina. He seemed a bit older than us, but really relaxed. Javier was basically travelling the world. He was in Mexico, the US and Canada and was now onto Europe. Is this a common thing, just packing your bags and making your way in the world? It all seems kind of like the remnant of a by-gone era.
Katie told me about the beauty of a kebab late at night, so we went in search of a place that was still open. We found it! We got chicken doner kebabs with mint yoghurt and a side of chips. They were so good. I don't know if it was the actual food, or the being really hungry or the magic of Paris...
Katie and I returned to our hostel and rested up for an exciting day...
