My Adventures in Germany and Beyond!: Bonjour de PARIS!

Bonjour de PARIS!!!!!!!!! Well, if you want to be technical about it, at the moment I am on a train about half way between Paris and Lyon on my way to visit Marc in Grenoble. And there is a whole story behind this, but I’ll get to that in just a minute. First let me entertain you with my adventures so far.

It all starts Wednesday morning, May 3. After having stayed up most of the night with Michael (finishing his thesis, I swear!) and a tearful good-bye at the OCtranspo bus stop I was off to the train station to catch my 11:10 bus to Montreal, or so I thought… I arrived at the train station with my life in 2 bags trailing behind me to find the place empty. Now I thought to myself, well this is a little weird, but I was an hour early. I made my way to the ticket counter to ask where the Swiss Air bus was. The conversation went a little like this:

Me: Where do I catch the Swiss Air bus?

Ticket Man: It waits out front, but only gets here at 12:30pm.

Me: What do you mean 12:30pm!?!?! My ticket says 11:10am.

Ticket Man: Well yesterday it got here at 12:30pm, and usually always does.

Me: But I’m sure my ticket says 11:10am.

Ticket Man: Can I see your ticket… See right here, departure Ottawa 13:10.

Insert me looking and feeling like a real idiot.

So I managed my first mess up before even leaving the city! The ticket man did take pity on me though, and offered to keep my stuff in an employee room and told me to go have breakfast across the street. This whole time delay thing did allow Michael to see me off at the train station, so I got one more kiss before I left.

The bus to Montreal was uneventful. I got to the airport on time, and even managed to check in on time and without getting lost! The plane took off at around 5pm in the rain, so there are no pictures of me leaving Canada behind. And so the long trip began. One thing I have to say is, if ever any of your go to Europe, fly with Swiss Air! The seats are comfortable, and there’s lots of room, very much unlike my trip to Cuba this winter. After dinner I tried to sleep, but not very much, because even though the seats were comfy, they were not comfy enough for a decent sleep. I did manage to get some sleep, and woke up in time to see Paris (I think) and the landing. From the few short minutes that I was in Zurich it was great! I got a distant view of the Alps as the plane was landing and WOW. Absolutely amazing, I have to go back there before I come home. I had just enough time to transfer planes for the short flight to Paris.

Landing in Zurich

Landing in Paris (I swear the Eiffel Tower is there)

Once in Paris things got interesting. By the time I went through customs (they didn’t stamp my passport L I’ll have to remember to ask next time) and got my bags it was about 9:30. But it took me about 1.5hrs to figure out how to get to the metro! But I did find it and to my horror discovered that, like Montreal, the Paris metro has lots of stairs and no escalators! So it was a repeat of Montreal, with me wrestling with my luggage up and down many, many, many stairs. But I made it, and even managed to find my hostel without getting lost. And after a very refreshing shower I was off to see Paris!

I decided that since it was a nice day I would walk around. It took me about 30mins to get to the Louvre. Since I only had a few hours I just walked around outside and through the tulip garden. I will definitely have to go back in August when I have enough time to dedicate a whole day to it. I also took a boat cruise down the River Siene and got to see most of the big attractions. I set out on foot again to go visit La Cathédrale de Notre Dame de Paris. Absolutely gorgeous! It does make me wonder a little how much money was spent building it that could have otherwise been spent to help its parishioners. Still, it was quite the sight. Back at my hostel and after a quick nap I met another Canadian to have dinner with. After chatting a bit with other travelers I decided to call it an early night.

Which brings us to today I had a quick breakfast at the hostel (with very good coffee) and then it was off for a quick view of the Eiffel Tower, l’Arch de Triomphe and l’Hotel des Invalide. And when I say quick, I mean quick, like walk by, take a picture and hop on the next bus! Even with my sprinting through Paris, I was still late for the train! I managed to get to the station on time (even 20min early) but I couldn’t retrive my ticket from the automatic teller! It so happens that in France, their credit cards have a “puce”, and this “puce” is what allows automatic tellers and such to read the card. So now there’s like 5mins till my train leaves, I have no ticket and I can’t find anyone to help me! So I hop on the train without my ticket and hope for the best. It turns out that it wasn’t that big a deal. I just had to buy another ticket on the train and I would get reimbursed in Grenoble. So I buy the ticket (pay more for it) and enjoy the train ride to Grenoble. So hopefully that will all work out!