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Published: June 16th 2008
So yes, I'm obviously in the Greek Islands still, happy as a clam. I don't want to leave them. So instead of thinking about that just now, I will take this 15 minutes and quickly tell you about Paris the second time around.
I also forgot to mention a rather funny thing that happened. Jono and I were walking one day in downtown Berlin, and a girl passed us. My first reaction was "God, I hate that girl she's so tall and skinny! And she looks like Sarah Hoyles." We kept walking for a few seconds until someone tapped me on my shoulder, and asked if we were from Canada. It was in fact Sarah Hoyles! We went to school together for a short time at the U of A, I believe she graduated when i was in second year and I had some classes with a few of her friends. What a random run in that was. Weirder still was that she was on her way to buy tickets to the same play (Mother Courage) that we were going to see that night.. so of course we saw her later on at the theatre too.
Back to Paris. Realistically, I didn't want to go back. I loved loved loved it, but when you only have 2.5 months you want to see as much as you can, but as I mentioned before everything was really expensive, and as much as I was actually wanting a little more time on my own, Paris was just the most logical choice instead of staying in Berlin. My itch to move was too great, so Paris with Jono seemed like a good idea.
When we left Berlin I realized that I did sort of miss traveling on my own. I became used to it, and as much as I love my friends and had a great time with them, I sort of missed not having to be responsible or worried about anyone but myself. I think I did this trip about right though, I've had enough time on my own and enough time with friends so I never felt lonely.
Jono and I had quite the adventure getting to the Berlin airport to catch our flight to Paris. When I mentioned earlier that we were late, we were really late. We were the people who they called to jump the line at check in. Like I also mentioned this was not our fault. I should be really skinny by now from a) not eating/rarely eating b) walking all over the place c) running for trains, planes and buses with Jono. Jono and I ran a lot in Berlin, and running to the airport seemed like a perfect way to end our time there. Although GG (my bag) does weight about 13 kilos, so it's a little tricky to run. Lucky for me, I have my very own manslave (aka Jono) and I could send him to run ahead, and then I could catch up to him in lines. This system works really well. I highly suggest you get your very own Jono when you travel.
Once we were actually on the plane we both felt a whole lot better! Arriving in Paris for the second time was very strange. My first time there was really special, and I loved it so much that going back felt weird. I was really excited to show Jono around though, and hoped he would fall in love with the city like I did. Sadly, much of our time there was cold and rainy. A BIG contrast to the hot hot heat of Berlin. Because of that I'm not sure how much Jono really liked Paris. I went back to St. Christopher's hostel again because it is by far the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at, plus I'm friends with the staff. The best part was they were actually full when I tried to book online, so I just wrote a facebook message to my good friend James who works there and he booked us each a bed. Thanks James! Like I mentioned before, the best thing you can do is be nice to hostel staff.... you get rooms and free drinks. Or at least I do, but that might just be because I'm like the cutest little Canadian with a giant backpack ever!
Arriving there was really nice though. Because I feel so comfortable in Paris, it felt almost like a home coming. We got to our hostel, checked in, and then decided we were really hungry and had crepes. I love those crepes. I could wrap myself in one, and be really happy about it. After that we got a late metro and went to see the Eiffel Tower all lit up at night. Jono was a little shocked by it, I don't think he expected it to be as pretty as it was. Even I sort of got a little bit of the shivers, and I'd seen it twice like that already. it was really nice to be back all of a sudden, and as we sat on the grass and took everything in with our pain au chocolates (my addiction), it felt like Paris was absolutely the right choice.
The next day i sent Jono on the same walking tour I did, while I played house wife (aka nice friend) and did our laundry. Sadly, Jono didn't take my advice. He didn't go on the tour with dreamy George everyone's favorite tour guide (not just a curious monkey)... but I guess he had a pretty good time anyway. Even though I'm sure he would have enjoyed it more if he had had George's dreamy blue eyes to stare into, with Paris as the back round. You might think that my fanatism of George is a little much, but every single person---guys, girls--leaves George's tour wanting to be BFFs with George for life. I'm not sure what it is. It might be his eyes. Have I mentioned that George has really pretty eyes? After that I took my favorite manfriend to Monmattre my favorite area of the city. Sadly, it was cold and rainy so it wasn't as pretty as usual. I was more than happy to see all the Amelie landmarks again, and sit in the middle of my favorite artistic district.
The next day was a little.. challenging. Jono had forgotten to bring his camera on his tour, so he went out to take pictures of things and to see the Louvre. I, however, had a mission. A scary mission. I, Lana Hughes, had to go bathing suit shopping in Paris. The city, where women don't eat because they're too busy smoking. And if they do eat, they have exactly three bites before saying something in a sexy french accent and pushing their plate away. No one is shorter than 5'7. Bathing suit shopping in Paris wasn't going to be easy, or good for my self image. I knew this going in. I accidentally found a mall.. so at least I was off to a good start. At my first store I asked if they had what we call a "tankini", they had no idea what I was talking about. I hit up three more stores, and again they had no idea. You could either get a) a bikini or b) an ugly full piece. I went to one store and tried on about 6 bikini's, and stopped before crying seemed like the only possible answer. I tried a full piece and sort of looked like a potato with flowers. I walked around some more. Then I came upon H&M. They'll save me! Right? No, apparently they also only sell bikini's and ugly one pieces. So I braved the change room again, and hiked up my ladies into tiny pockets of fabric. I stared at my butt a lot. It still doesn't exist even in a bikini. My stomach glowed. I found a green one that I thought was okay, but had side straps about as wide as a piece of yarn. I thought of just swimming in an over sized t-shirt like when I was a fat kid at the age of 10... Then I put on a brown bikini. It wasn't too bad. Nothing was flopping over anything else to the degree that i thought I would lose it I jumped around too hard. I jumped around. Just to be sure. Other than blinding myself at the extreme whitness of my skin, it seemed okay.
I bought a bikini in Paris. I never left the changing room. I was happy to be shopping alone. And happier still to take it off and put my normal clothes back on again.
That night Jono and I decided to go on the pubcrawl that I had gone on the last time I was there, organized though the New City tour group. We had a french picnic (cheese, bread, tomato, wine) in our room and then headed out with a bunch of very young people on the pub crawl. At the first stop, we were already feeling too old and annoyed at most of the kids there, so instead of staying at the bar with them, we actually had a drink next door instead. We always came back when they were giving away the free vodka shots though. Later, Jono spots someone in the group he thinks he knows. It happens to be his ex-girlfriend from grade 7. Or rather, a girl he 'dated" for one day. Jono is from North Battleford, and so to meet someone like that in Paris was pretty exciting. We ended up spending the rest of the night with her and her friend--who saved us from the overly drunken 18 year olds who were in a bar for the first time.
We ditched out on the last stop (a really small club where I did silly things the first time), and went back to the hostel where we met some people who insisted we join them at a bar down the street from our hostel. We went for a few minutes until we realised a) we couldn't possibly drink anymore and b) there was some strange people there.
For instance (and this has become one of our favorite expressions of the trip, as non-PC has it is), we were standing with a large group of people talking when a girl said, "Ya that's kind of like me, like I have HIV but I don't have full blown AIDS.". Of course we thought she was joking, but then about every 2 minutes she would repeat "Ya, like how I have HIV but not full blown AIDS." I still think she was joking, but Jono doesn't. This made him feel awkward, so eventually we left.
While we were in Paris there was a small chance that we were going to hit up EuroDisney. A friend of Nicky's/Jono's used to work there, and said she could get two people in for free. Of course, Jono and I would never pay the 70 Euros admission normally, but to go for free seemed like a perfectly logical idea. The girl never got a hold of us though, so finally Jono emailed her. The next morning, and i wasn't feeling too hot, I turned my cellphone on just in case she had texted messaged us. She had and asked if we could be at the park and meet her by 10am. It was already 10am by that point, so after a couple of messages we agreed to meet her by 1. To get to Disney you have to take the train called the RER which is like the metro that runs to the suburbs (the one I would take to get to the Gaulier school should I go). It's known as being really unreliable, but I had never had any problems with it. Of course that was the day I had problems. Several to be exact. Firstly, we were running late and at one point the train was actually going about 2km/h, for about 10 minutes, no joke. By the time we met the girl at the gate at got the tickets, it was already about 1:45pm. We had to leave the park at 3 by the latest because we had to run back to the hostel, grab our bags and be at the train station for our train Frankfurt which left at 5:15pm.
We had a plan though, we hoped that we could at least do two rides in that time, both of us using our previous Disneyland experiences as reference. I chose to go on the Haunted Mansion, and he wanted to do Splash Mountain. Fair enough. Easy, they're even in the same area of the park.
There are jokes about EuroDisney that no one goes there. They're not really jokes, but fact. Of course, EuroDisney doesn't have Splashmountain, and the Haunted Mansion was under renovation. So we used our Fastpass (that we also got for free) and saved a spot for Indian Jones (a sort of run away train ride), and killed some time by walking through the Swiss Family Robinson Tree House. When we got to Indiana Jones I was a little nervous to see it had a 360 loop in it. I don't do rollercoasters with upside down parts. I especially don't want to do them when i'm hungover. However, I thought to myself "when is the next time I'll be in disneyland in paris?" So I went. After the first big drop Jono asked me if I was okay, I said no, and I meant it. I thought i was going to have an anxiety attack, but after a few minutes I was okay and survived my first upside down experience. When it was done, other than a small hangover headache, i was ready to go again. Next up we did Big Thunder Mountain, because of our fast pass we breezed through the line and had a great time on the ride.
Normally, at disney in the US there is no way you could do more than 2 rides in an hour. But we managed to do THREE in an hour and 15 minutes, plus the tree house. Our last ride was Pirates of the Carribean, which was also really fun. It was different from the one in Florida (that I remember), but it was still really cool. We probably looked about 12 with big huge nerdy smiles on our faces the entire time we were in the park. Then it was 3 and we began to walk quickly to the train station. We quickly bought out tickets, then ran down to catch the train. The train getting there ran once every 10 minutes. Apparently, going back is NOT the same story. We sat on the trainf or half an hour..... as the reality that we would likely miss our train to frankfurt (the last one of the day) started to set in. If we missed the train, we would miss our 7am flight to greece...... Not good. We began to come up with a plan. Mostly it involved sprinting. A lot of sprinting. Lucky for us the train went a little faster, but when we got to the station to connect to our metro to get to the hostel, there was a problem with our tickets, and we had to do some extra running around which cost us a lot of time. More sprinting. Lots of stairs.
Because Jono can run faster than me (especially because I need knee surgery and am not supposed to run... I sent him ahead when we got to the metro station to the hostel to run down to the storage room and grab our bags. He almost hot hit by a car, as I tried to run and weave in and out of women with strollers.
Dear Blog,
There are a lot of strollers in europe. And babies too!
Love,
lana
Jono, being superman, somehow managed to carry my bag, his bag and his daypack up TWO flights of stairs on his own and was coming up the front door as I arrived. We strapped on our bags and I did my best to sprint with 30 pounds strapped to my back and a bad knee. Magically we were on the train by 5pm. With about 12 minutes to spare, Jono even had time to go running to get us food.. because we hadnt eatten since 10am that morning. Needless to say the sandwhiches he bought, tasted like victory!
Team Jono and Lana out run time again! We eased into our train ride, and eventually pulled into Frankfurt....
Yes friends/family/co-workers of my mom/strangers.. I am home on June 20th, my flight arrives at 2pm I think.. and you know what's fun? Meeting me at the airport with gifts! or if you'd prefer financial contributions to my extremely drained bank account. I also have some sad news, but Ill save that for another entry. For now I need to catch a bus to catch a plane to take me back to London. More to come soon!
xoxox
Lana
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Aunty Dar
non-member comment
Would love to be at the airport, but...
Lana, I can't imagine your tales are coming to a close. They are so great. I also can't imagine that someone hasn't alerted you to the line-up and the clear need to get tickets to the Folk Fest. Hawksley is the mainstage headliner on Friday and since you missed his concert in March.... Hope you have the tickets in hand. Very much look forward to more travel tales when I see you next. D.