Wednesday night my friend Dani and I took a train to the East Midlands Airport, which is near Nottingham which is about 45 minutes west of Grantham. We got to the airport around 10pm and as our flight was not until 9:30am the next morning we found a place to sleep and crashed for the night. Fortunately we were able to sleep on these benches in a little 24 hour cafe in the restaurant, otherwise it would have been the floor. This is the second time I have slept in an airport for a trip and I can tell you it won't be the last. For both of my next two trips I will be sleeping in the airport at some point. If you ever need any advice on how to catch some Zs while traveling give me a shout and I'll tell you all about it. Dani and I were honestly the only two people in the airport until about 2am when other people started showing up. I didn't get much sleep, but atleast I was able to shut my eyes. The other two girls joining us had opted to just get a taxi ride in the morning before the flight. I would have done that, but I am a frugal traveler and was not willing to pay the 35 pound taxi ride. Yikes! Anyway, the other two girls showed up around 7 and we got checked in and hung out in the airport until it was time to board the plane. Surprisingly everything went smoothly and about 55 minutes later we touched down at the Paris Beauvais airport which is about an hour and ten minutes outside of central Paris.
We got on a shuttle to take us into Paris and once we arrived there we tried to get metro (their version of the subway/ underground/ L) passes. Right here I want to tell you that anyone who tells you that going to Paris is no problem because everyone speaks English, is a liar. Everyone does not speak English. Hardly anyone speaks English and even if they know English they refuse to speak it to you. So don't be fooled. We had a hard time getting our passes but once we got them we scooted off to our hotel which was located North of central Paris near-ish Montemarte, if you know where that is. Another thing to mention here before I get too far in... somehow, I have no idea how, but somehow the people here can tell you are English/ American without you even opening your mouth. I don't know how they do it, but people could tell we were and it wasn't like we were doing the dorky touristy thing where we are constantly pulling out our maps. No, they just knew somehow. Also, the French have no concept of personal space. The personal bubble that most Americans have is completely ignored here. I might as well have been sitting on someone's lap on the metro and they probably would have been okay with it.
Anyway, we got to our hotel alright, but even the people at our hotel did not speak great English. I'm not at all complaining, but I was a little surprised at how infrequently it is spoken. It is not like Paris is a little village that is untouched by English speakers; no, Paris is a huge metropolis that has a large tourist draw and most of those tourists speak English. It was just strange. I'll have a whole post, if I have time, devoted to how my entire perspective on language and foreign language and native language has changed. For now I will just say that this was the first trip where my outlook on life and human interaction was really challenged... in a good way.
So we settled into our hotel and went out and got some food at a restaurant where they spoke pretty much no English. Two out of the three girls I was with had some background in the French language, but that was really no help. So ordering food at this restaurant was really pretty scary. The people there were really nice, but trying to find common words and phrases to communicate with was really difficult. I kept wanting to revert back to Spanish but that would have been no help. So we got our food and then we went to the grocery store to buy groceries for the weekend. Food is incredibly expensive in Paris and so we decided that unless we all wanted to break the bank we would be eating jelly sandwiches the rest of the weekend. After we got our groceries and such we planned out the rest of our day and around 4:30 decided to go down to the Eiffel tower.
When we got down to the Eiffel tower it was around sunset and when we came up from the metro stop and turned around there it was. From far away it was smaller than I expected, but as we walked towards it I slowly realized the grandeur and scope of it. The underside of the architecture is nothing spectacular and in some ways I really wonder why this is such an iconic building/ monument, but I was still awestruck by it. The sun shinning on it was pretty spectacular and when we walked around to the other side of it we saw the sun sinking below the horizon framing the Eiffel tower and it was truly breathtaking. We wanted to see it all lit up so we decided to walk around the neighborhood there until it was dark enough. It was a really nice quaint little neighborhood with no-one really speaking English, but hey we didn't really need to talk to anyone. There were Patisseries EVERYWHERE and that alone made me very happy. There were also Chocolatiers everywhere which made me think of Chocolat the film. Anyway we walked around that neighborhood with it's charming cafes and little fruit stands and finally found ourselves back at the Eiffel tower all lit up. It was indescribably beautiful. We walked around underneath it for awhile until we got too cold and then we started the long trek back to our metro stop. We hopped back on the metro and were back at our hotel in no time. We had a lovely dinner of peanut butter sandwiches and went to bed early that night.
Please check out my shutterfly for pictures.
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