Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

It's UPDATED and COMPLETE!!

Planes, trains, and automobiles, with a bunch of walking on the side. This describes my transportation to Paris accurately, but it was more like bus, bus, metro, bus, airplane, walking, metro, and walking. Before we even made it to Paris, we had quite the experience with all of the transportation. Let me explain all the way from the beginning to when we arrived at the hostel in Paris. We got on the bus stop across from my apartment at approximately 7:15pm Friday. We took that bus to the bus station where we loaded a different bus on a 5 hour ride to Madrid. This bus was nice because it was a charter bus with a stewardess. We were served a small dinner (sandwich) with a drink and a piece of chocolate candy for dessert. They showed the movie Super 8 during the ride. I still stick with my critique that after the train crash the movie is worthless. So I napped after the train crash scene. We made it to Madrid around 1:15am. Our next step was to take the metro (underground train system) to the airport. We know that we have 8 hours till our plane leave so we are just strolling away casually. We get on the first train, but when we get off to make our connecting train we notice that some people are running with their luggage to the next train. We figure there has to be a point to this so we start walking briskly, unsure if we have to run. We get to the correct train and see that 3 workers are holding up the train for stragglers like us. The doors are closed and one worker makes the train doors open for us. Phew! We crowd into a packed train wondering what was going on. Turns out that the metro system stops running at 1:30am. If we hadn’t picked up the pace, we would have had to wait until 6am or find another form of transportation to the airport. Okay, so now we think we are all fine until we realize that we don’t know what terminal we need to go to, and the metro has 2 different stops for the airport- T1, T2, T3 as one and T4. We place our bets and get off on the T1,2,3 stop thinking we have good odds. Nope- we needed to go to T4. Great. We can’t get back on the metro because there are no more trains coming until 6am. We start looking for an information desk to find another form of transportation. We find one and ask the guy in Spanish how to get to T4. He proceeds to respond in English that a bus comes every 115 minutes right in front of where we were standing. People like that make me laugh. Even though we spoke Spanish to him, he responds, “Very good. Well there is a bus…”. I couldn’t help but smile because here we were in Madrid trying to think of how to say this question accurately in Spanish and the guy responds in English. Anyhow, we take that bus to the airport and find out that we have to wait in the terminal until 5am to get our boarding passes. Everyone inside is either sleeping on the benches or the ground. We got there ate 2:30am and had time to kill so I tried to do the same. This was short lived because a drunk guy woke up and started walking toward us. He was completely disoriented and wanted to know where his shoe was. Yes, his one shoe, the other was on his foot. We told him we had no idea where it was and he moved to the next bench and hovered over some guy who was sleeping while looking for his shoe. Eventually he went back to his bench and kept drinking out of a black water bottle. For his sake, I just hoped that it was actually water in there. He kept looking over in our direction and I’m pretty sure he thought we stole his shoe. Due to this, none of us slept. So 5am rolls around and we stand in line for a half hour waiting for it to open. We got our boarding passes and waited at our gate. We took Vueling airlines to Paris and they were really strict. Coincidentally us 3 sat at 3 out of the 4 emergency exits and no one sat in the 2 seats next to us (6 seats all together). It was extremely sketchy how this managed to happen to all 3 of us. Since we were in the emergency exits we weren’t allowed to have bags or coats (that we weren’t wearing) with us in our seats. Tesla had her backpack, a small bag, and her coat and she was told to put all three up in the luggage space. Roseanna had her shoulder bag and she too was told to put it up. She did, but later grabbed it back before takeoff. She tried to hide it, but was told by another stewardess to put it up. Tesla was also told not to buckle up before takeoff. I fortunately was not yelled at for anything, so I laughed at them. Then we landed in Paris, walked to the metro station, and took 3 different trains (2 connections) to our hostel. One thing that saved our asses was that I did the research of what Lines we needed to take to get where we needed to go for Madrid and Paris. Otherwise we would have been completely screwed. We got to the hostel early to check in so we had lunch and waited around.

The hostel was a unique experience. We wanted to book the cheapest with decent ratings and ended up with St. Christopher’s Inn. This place was very nice and clean. All we needed was a bed so we took the cheapest room option and got beds in rooms with 8 beds. There were structured like bunk beds but they were like little cubbies all next to each other. They also had curtains which was really nice. When we checked in we were told that 2 of us were going to be in one room and the third person was going to be in a separate room two doors down. We played Rock, Paper, Scissors to see who would get the odd room, but we all chose something different and we all lost. In my mind I knew that Tesla is the type of person who can’t be alone, and Roseanna is the type of person who refuses to get the short end of the stick. The game was pointless and I stepped up and took the bed in a different room. However, while I never saw my neighbors or heard them during the night, Roseanna and Tesla had obnoxious, vulgar guys who kept them up the first night, and typical, high-pitched valley girls the second and third nights. I was glad I got the quiet room so I could get 3 good nights of sleep.

Now to describe my experiences in Paris. Man, Paris is a big city! Thank God for the metro to get around otherwise we would not have seen half of the places we went. The first place we went was the National Academy of Music or the Opera House. I’m not sure the significance of this place but they had sculptures of Beethoven and Mozart. Those were the only two I recognized. I also heard that Phantom of the Opera was performed here, but I have no clue if that is a true statement.

We then headed up to Moulin Rouge. How can you not get that song stuck in your head after visiting this place? Sorry if I get this stuck in yours, but you know which song I’m talking about. The remake has Christina Aguilera, Lil Kim, and two other people. Anyways so I realize that Moulin Rouge is about prostitutes and what not, but the entire strip where this place is at is lined with sex shops. Not even exaggerating. There had to have been 20 sex shops in a row.

Next we went to Arc do Triumph which I believe was a symbol of Napoleon’s strength or skills in combat. Something or other, but it was really cool to see.

To finish off the night we went to the Eiffel Tower. We got there at a great time. We go to see it in its last hours of the day and watch it start to light up for the night. I personally believe that the Eiffel Tower is more beautiful at night when it is all lit up; absolutely beautiful. We saw it first on the metro right before our stop, and we just brightened up with the view. It’s so picturesque, too. I didn’t have to do anything when I took pictures. I just snapped the photo and they came out perfect. We also saw the Eiffel Tower light up at the hour. Every hour on the hour the Eiffel Tower will sparkle for about 5 minutes and you can’t help but to stare in amazement.

After 48 hours of on and off sleep, we were completely exhausted and went to bed for the night. The next day we woke up at 7am so that we could have breakfast and head for The Louvre. I was in love with the architecture of the building and of course the glass pyramid. We got into The Louvre for free because we are currently living in the European Union, and I was definitely okay with that! We got in and the first thing we went for was the Mona Lisa. We passed artwork on the way there, but was like cool, cool, but where’s the Mona Lisa?? We finally found it, or should I say we found a crowd circled around it. I’m not the tallest person in the world, but I can manage to work my way up to the front. It was enclosed in glass casing so none of my pictures turned out as clear as I would have liked, but it was still really cool to see. Also, it’s a lot smaller than you would expect. With such a grand painting and how much hype there is with it, I just imagined in my head that I was going to be blown away but I really wasn’t. Still really cool though! Then we decided to back track and really look at all of the art work that we quickly passed through. THERE IS SO MUCH ART!! I believe they said there are 35,000 pieces of artwork in that building and I can believe it, if not more. There are 3 wings that divide the kind of art, like French, Spanish, paintings, sculptures, etc. We spent 3 hours there and did not see half of it. While there, we ran into 5 people from our program in Granada and they convinced us to go to Versailles later on in the day.

After The Louvre we went to Notre Dame first before going to Versailles, because Notre Dame was very close to where we were at. Notre Dame is huge and a lot taller than expected. There was free entry to go inside so of course we were on top of that. We went in and there was a mass going on. It was so cool to be inside during an actual mass. I would have felt weird if I was one of the people at mass, though, because there are probably a hundred people walking around the church while you’re trying to pay attention. The inside is just as beautiful as the outside. The glass windows and the structure are amazingly designed. Did you know that in 2013 Notre Dame will celebrate its 850^th year? Me either- so wicked! On the way out I made the sign of the cross with the holy water. Not sure if I was supposed to do that or not, but I mean holy water from Notre Dame?! Of course I’m going to do that.

The tourist place we went for the day was Versailles. I don’t know much about French history, nor do I really care for it, but I’m glad that I’m learning it as I’m seeing it. This place is the French palace of Louis XIV and Louis XVI I believe. I know that Mary Antoinette lived here as well. Again, we scored with living in the European Union because we got in here for free as well. The palace itself was huge and definitely decorated like a typical royal palace. So much unnecessary spaced filled up by massive paintings and furniture. Then the “backyard” of the palace was probably as long as 3 football fields. Mary Antoinette had a vacation home in one area of her backyard and there was another section with another big house. It was ridiculous. Plus my feet had been hurting from already walking all day and then walking all over the backyard and the palace made my feet want to kill me.

Following Versailles, we went to the Hard Rock Café for dinner. The food was amazing, but it was ridiculously overpriced. We had to wait an hour but I was determined to eat there. It was the best food I had the entire trip. I had a BBQ pork sandwich with baked beans and coleslaw. You can’t get that in Spain so I took advantage of it.

Then comes Monday and the first thing we set out to do is climb the Eiffel Tower. When we went on Sunday the top was closed due to elevator problems. We have a theory that they don’t want people climbing to the top when the elevator is closed for access reasons if there is an emergency and firefighters or someone have to get to the top. So we tried our luck on Monday hoping the top would be open and it was not. However we could go up to the second floor. It is 704 steps to get to the second floor, but I was willing to climb all the way to the top. I wasn’t really satisfied with only the second floor, but I’ll take what I can get. It was a really good view of that section of Paris.

We notice from the second floor that we can see the Statue of Liberty just down the river, so we set off on our next task. This statue is incredibly small and should not be confused with the one in New York.

Since we had covered all of the touristy parts of Paris we didn’t know what to do with our time. So we got French bread and chocolate from a nearby supermarket and headed back to The Louvre to eat it outside of the glass pyramid. After “lunch” we went back into the Louvre and decided to take a more detailed route to cover more area. We spent another 3 hours there and we think we had to have covered 80% as a combined total, but we could be completely wrong. We saw the Mona Lisa again which was really cool a second time. I’m really glad that we went back though so that I could get my favorite picture from the entire trip. Have you seen The Da Vinci Code? You know that part where the guy is dead at the Louvre and they call Tom Hanks to solve the mystery? I had to mock that scene! So in the process of building up the guts to lay down on the floor at The Louvre I first sat down on the floor. Some guy was staring at me the whole time and literally did not walk away. So I waited for him to go away or not look but then I was like, oh what the hell. So I laid down and Telsa took the picture. The first picture is the original picture. The second picture is zoomed in on the guy’s face staring at me.

We stayed at The Louvre until it closed and called it a night. Tuesday we woke up at 6am, took the metro to the airport, plane to Madrid, metro to the bus station, bus to Granada bus station, bus home. We got home at 10pm that night so that came to 16 hours of traveling on Tuesday alone. My shampoo got taken in the airport in Paris which is fine, but I don’t understand how some places are stricter about things. I got to Paris with it without a problem. OH! We didn’t get our passports stamped for France! We were pretty bummed about that because it would have been cool to have that stamp. Oh well. I´m very excited to be back in Granada!

So even though this was a lot of writing, I feel like I only told you about Paris in a nutshell. A more detailed version would have taken forever though. Gosh, this makes me wonder how my Spring Break blog is going to work out.

Phew! Th-th-tha-that’s all folks!