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Published: April 22nd 2008
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We left Philadelphia airport around 7:55pm on Wed, and arrived to Charles De Gaulle Airport at 8:15am on Thurs! We have now just been on the airplane for over 7 hours, and needed to catch up to being 6 hours ahead in Europe. (I won't even go into why we almost missed our flight out of Philadelphia, considering we got there with 2 hours to spare). Fastforward to the lovely country of France, with its lovely people, and lovely manners, and oh wait...scratch that. After being in France for only an hour, I was ready to unleash the "Bonjour Bitch" and not care. What are French people's problems anyways?
So we got off the plane, and everyone went to the bathroom to freshen up and brush their teeth while we were waiting for our luggage...at the wrong terminal...oops. About another 45 mins had passed when we happened to see some guy wheeling around our luggage on one of the carts, ready to stow them away. Luckily, we flagged him down and were able to retrieve our luggage safely. It would have sucked BIG time if we started our trip off without luggage!
Our next project was to get some
euros so we could actually get around the country...it was so sad to hand over $100 American dollars and only get 52 euros out of it...with this exchange, poverty was in sight. Our 52 euros didn't last us very long, b/c after some haggling, we were able to find a nice Asian man from Laos who agreed to take us to our hotel for a whopping 55 euros!
I sat shotgun and attempted to converse with him using my little French phrase book. Unfortunately, we did not make any headway and I was waay too tired to care so I just fell asleep for the remainder of the cab ride. After a little over an hour, we finally arrived at our first hostel of the trip, Communes de Marais. I have three words: CRAZY ASIAN MAN. We went in to see if there was any way that we could check in earlier than our allotted time of 3pm, seeing as how we were tired and smelly. The crazy Asian man reacted by going absolutely nutso and screaming and telling Claire not to look at him like that. Wow. Even my dad has never yelled at me like this! So
we stashed our luggage at the hostel and quickly peaced out without looking back...about 4 or 5 hours to kill until we could finally check in and get some rest.
Off to explore Paris! We walked around for a little bit and then hopped on the Metro and got off at the Louvre. Finally, the infamous Mona Lisa and the Da Vinci Code, and all those shots of the glass prism triangle. I was feeling a little Tom Hanks action here. We walked around the plaza and checked out some shops for a bit, then made our way over to the Musee d'Orsay. This was the first of many many museums during our trip that I just breezed right through. It's hard when you have a limited attention span...
After what felt like days, it was finally time to head back to our hostel and check in. Crazy Asian Man was now feeling a little better and tried to be nice to us. We didn't really have time for the niceties, quickly dismissed him, and ventured into our cozy little room to unpack and unwind. We took a nap while Gajal unpacked (hehe) and then woke up around 7pm to start our night.
Our first night in Paris didn't consist of too much action...dinner at Pomme de Pan (baguette count is now up to 2), walked down the shops of Champs D'Ellysses, and then some pictures in front of the Arc de Triumphe. We called it a night pretty early and decided to sleep so we could make it through the day tmw.
Bonsouir Luna!
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