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Published: March 29th 2006
Waterless
Here's the construction crew outside my window who are responsible for me being unable to use the washroom, have a shower, and wash my dishes. I am not impressed.Luxembourg-ing
It seems like a good idea to update this blog before I go on my next trip - or else I'll be overwhelmed by the amount of blogging I have to do! But firstly... may I present "The Day Without Water!"
I woke up at 2pm today (due to my wonderful earplugs that shelter me from the boisterous fellow international students coming home between 3:30 and 5am most nights) and made my breakfast. Outside my window were some men drilling in the parking lot. I didn't think much of it and ate. I went to wash my hands in my sink after finishing and realized there was only a dribble of water coming out. Perplexed, but not surprised, I surfed around the net for a bit. Erin messaged me asking if my water was working - so it was a whole building thing. Allison and I went to the administration building and told them about the lack of water. They told us that it had to be shut off to do some work - the guys working outside! So alas, I have no water. I cannot have a shower or go to the washroom 😞
On to
Chi-Chi's!
Good mexican food. Luxembourg...
Friday March 24 Andrea and I had plans to meet at 7:45am in the Ango lobby to catch an 8:48 train to Paris. I was running a bit late because I only gave myself 45 mins to get ready, not one hour as usual! I went downstairs and as I was halfway down I remembered that I may need my passport. I went back up and got it, and then went back down. We got to the bus stop on time (for 8:05am) and ran into Ryan and Jared who were on their way to Cologne, Germany that weekend. They got on the #8 bus but Andrea and I saw the #4 (which is faster) coming behind and got on that one instead.
We were just in front of the train station on the bus when I remembered that I didn't have my 12-25 card (for discounts). Knowing I would save myself 50%!,(MISSING) it was worthwhile to go back and get it. So I left Andrea at the station and got to another bus stop to go back up to Mont. St. Aignan to get the card - hoping it was where I thought it was!!
Andrea
In Chi-Chi's! Margarita! I was able to use the same bus card since it was within an hour, and was planning on using the same one for my ride back downtown. Thus, I was walking quite fast (as I do not run) back to the residence after I got off the bus. The card was in the package of train tickets from the Strasbourg trip, just like I thought. I plucked the card from the package, filled my water bottle again, and trooped back to the bus stop. 9:05am, I was BACK on the bus, on the same bus ticket as I had used an hour earlier! (French transportation systems are the one thing I will never complain about - it actually makes sense! Three bus trips in an hour - good job!)
I met Andrea the station again and we went to the International destinations booth (MY FIRST INTERNATIONAL TRAIN RIDE!!), and asked for tickets to Luxembourg. I was quite proud of my French language skills here 😊 ... except that I misunderstood when he asked me if we were going to Luxembourg for the weekend, and said we were from Mt. St. Aignan and were
etudiants ... oops!! He laughed
Me
Chi-Chi's! Margarita! it off and asked me in English. Here's a sidebar: even though my French is not good, I always feel incredibly guilty when I mess up and am spoken to in broken English instead. I do feel like I shouldn't make them accomodate to the fact that I'm an ignorant North American and came to their country without fluently knowing their native language 😞 *sigh*
Anyway.... we got tickets to the 9:57am train to Paris, which would connect to the Paris Est train to Metz (still in France!) at 12:44pm. From here, we'd transfer to another train 16.08 (4:08pm) from Metz to Luxembourg. So I got myself a panini to put in my bag for the long train from Paris to Metz, and we waited around until we knew the correct
voie to go to. We
composter'd our tickets (as it is a carnal sin to not do this before boarding an SNCF train), and boarded the train. We got to Paris St. Lazare an hour or so later and were able to make our way through the RER and metro systems to the Paris Est station. (We were incredibly proud of our work by the way!) We had
a little bit to wait and decided to go to one of the newstands to see if there was any English papers for Andrea to read. I browsed and ended up getting a
Mots Meles (Word Search) ... I'm sorry to those fluent in French that may be reading, but I lack the ^ over the e's that I need for correct spelling of
meles. Anyway, so it's a book of word searches with French words! I figured it could work on my French vocab in this way. I was check-marking all the words that I know in order to look the others up later to know what they mean. (I have yet to do this by the way!)
We boarded the train to go to Metz and sat down in our own private cabin. (These are wonderful things by the way) ... However, a few minutes later, I asked Andrea if we
composter'd our tickets. Andrea jumped up, saying no, and she said she'd run and do ours. So she ran off with our tickets and left her stuff here. I had visions of the train starting up and Andrea running to catch up with it! But of
Some Bank??
Apparantly this is just a bank ... two people who clearly love Luxembourg enough to leave my comments about it told me it wasn't the Palace I thought it was. Whatever .... I deleted the comments. Like wtf? This is my blog and no one calls me stupid. course, no problems, and she was back pretty soon. YaY!
So our train to Metz was pretty normal, I had my panini and Andrea had her home-made sandwich and whole tomato (as she didn't have time to cut it up in the morning!) We managed to keep anyone else from coming in to our cabin by loudly singing English songs! (It's a good way to keep the French away by the way - unless you want to be their friends, then you may have a problem!) Our train from Metz to Luxembourg was late - so we had to wait around a bit. We blamed everything on the current state of protest in France - as it is a valid reason for anything that goes wrong lately, regardless of if it is true or not!
We got to Luxembourg, thoroughly exhausted already from travelling, and it was raining (as it had been in Paris as well.) I luckily had my umbrella (Andrea did not and seemed to refuse mine!) We found the tourist office and got a few pamphlets as well as a better map than was in my Europe Lonely Planet book. We also got the location
Memorial
There's a whole written memorial as well that I took a picture of but I have yet to translate it. of the only hostel in the city and the cheap hotels. It turned out that the hostel was only 3 Euros less than the hotel - so we decided to stay in the cheapest hotel in the city. It was quite close to the train station, which was beneficial due to the rain, and was called "Bella Napoli" I took this as a good omen considering my niece's name is Bella. It was, of course, a little Italian restaurant attached to the hotel. We opened the door, went to reception and a cute little Italian woman was waiting. She spoke some English, and it's best that I paint the whole picture for you ...
Us: Hello.
Her: Hello. Welcome.
Us: We would like a room for tonight.
Her: Yes. (Slow walk across the room to a table with 2 keys. Grabs one key. I go to her. She slowly walks back to Andrea. I follow back.) 25 Euros.
Me (inwardly): SWEET. only 25 Euros??!!
Her: You need to give information (walks back to table, sits down, rustles paper, waits)
Us: Okay. (Go to table)
We continued to fill out the information (which involved our addresses in Canada and
Flags
You can see Luxembourg's flag (looking suspiciously much like the French flag - only moved around), and also the European Union flag (with the stars) the USA, and our Passport numbers).
Her: You pay now?
Andrea: Yes. I have a Visa (as she would be paying for it and I'd reimpurse)
Her: Ok (walks slowly out of reception towards the restaurant area)
Andrea paid the money and the lady gave us the key (room #20) and we made our way to the stairs. This room looked like a little bedroom! 2 single beds, and a VERY clean bathroom. No TV sadly, but we weren't really expecting that for the price we paid (25 Euros each, not total.) We dumped our stuff, had bathroom breaks, and decided to find the restaurant that my Lonely Planet book advised. It was to have French/African food and sounded quite interesting (and apparantly cheap too!)
So we headed out, following my map to the other side of the town in the centre. Seemed to take a long while ... We were starting to go in circles and couldn't find the square we needed to find. We eventually found the square but were unable to find the actual restaurant!! Along the way, we met some protesters against CPE. IN LUXEMBOURG! Apparantly, the Luxembourg kids have nothing worth protesting,
The Grund Below
The Grund district is at the bottom of the valley there. We didn't get down there since we couldn't find the lift and the stairs were steep. and decide to protest things that happen in other countries. Please note that there were a total of 5 kids around 17-18 years old walking down the street with a banner, shouting things in French. We avoided them as we do with all protests. Starved and tired of roaming around in the rain, we went back to the first square we had found and came Andrea suggested eating at Chi-Chi's, a mexican restaurant. Thinking of eating a quesadilla made me happy, so I agreed and we went in.
We were asked if we wanted to be in the bar or the restaurant, and we said the restaurant and went up the stairs. At this point, we were asked if we wanted
fumeur ou non-fumeur to which we replied
non-fumeur. The non-smoking was actually before the smoking section!! This is a rarity in any French restaurants I've been in - you have to go through the smoking section before getting to the non-smoking, almost defeating the purpose of non-smoking. Super excited to be sitting down and relaxing, we decided to order Margaritas. We were told that the jumbo size was the same price as the regular, and so of course
Me + Castle
Can you see how wet everything is? Yum! we got the jumbo! Chi-Chi's was impressing us. I decided on the chicken quesadillas, and Andrea decided on a taco salad ... I forget the real name of what she ordered, but this is what it looked like. So yummy!! We decided to prolong our night and got dessert. I got a cheesecake with some red fruit sauce, and Andrea got mexican-fried-ice cream. Mmmm! Even more tired (due to food) we decided to go back to our hotel and relax. Please note it was around 9pm. Our relax soon turned into reading which turned into sleeping.
Saturday March 25 Andrea had set her alarm for 7:30am, so we could make sure to be awake to be able to see the city before going back home. I had a shower, and realized I lacked shampoo 😞 Andrea didn't have any either. I at least had soap! We left around 8:30am, and ended up in McDonalds getting Egg-McMuffins *hangs head in shame* In our defence, it was the only thing opened! And Andrea wanted ice although this place happened to lack ice for her coke. We finished eating and made our way to the centre to take pictures and see
Bridge
I'm proud to say that we went across this! if we could get to the
Bock Casemates, which are underground passages throughout the city. Unfortunately, the Casemates were closed - either for the season or the day. We didn't know why. Oh well. We saw the
Cathedrale Notre Dame (as all cathedrals in and around France are called Notre Dame), a memorial to those who fought in the World Wars, got some pics of the bridge, went to a park ... All in the rain! Note that we got some ice cream. And ate it in the rain. Under my umbrella.
Feeling as we saw basically all we wanted to see (by 11am), we made our way to the train station to get tickets back to Paris. We weren't sure if we could use our SNCF discounts on the way back. If not, we were going to get tickets to Metz, and then get tickets to Paris once back in France. Lucky for us, there was a direct ticket to Paris and we could use our discounts on it 😊 We had a bit of a wait until the 12:30pm train and walked around near the station, going in bookshops (with English books!) and a few clothing stores.
Park Fountain
It was pouring out at this moment. We went back to the station to see what the food options were - while I was content with a sandwich (i.e. baguette with ham and cheese), Andrea wanted more. She went off to get McDonalds and I chilled on my own, and bought that sandwich for later. She returned a bit after the display told us which platform to go to for the Paris train. We got another cabin to our own and this lasted until Metz where we got a fellow passenger. Never fun. We like our own cabin. Andrea slept, I slept a bit I think, and the woman's phone went off a lot.
We got to Paris, changed stations through the metro again, and got tickets to Rouen again. Long story short, we got back to Rouen around 6:30pm, took the bus, and we were back in Ango by 7pm. And thus concludes the trip to Luxembourg.
Currently I am listening to 102.1 The Edge online (Eminem's
My Name Is is playing) and missing home once again 😞 The traffic reports are cool because they talk of the 401 and I miss the 401 even though it is insane and I hated it all
Park Sign
Because I love the signs! summer!! *sigh* One day I'll be back.... i.e. June 30th! I have momentary bouts of homesickness where I wish I could see everyone, but other than that, I'm amazed at how I've been handling being so far from home!
For now though... I will wait for the water to be back on because I have to have a shower, and also want to use the washroom!! *sigh* Oh the joys of being in a dorm room. By the way, the big hole in the parking lot is getting bigger and bigger...
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Allison
non-member comment
Hooray! The water is back! Oh Ango, why are you sketchy? It is pretty amazing (/frightening) the things we get used to. The fact that the water was out for a few hours in no way surprised any of us... At least the construction guys weren't on strike!