OK, see, this is where I'd normally talk about going home after our trip to Spain, but NO! We didn't go home! We went to Paris! The one in France, not Texas! Yay! We had the chance to add on a short jaunt to France with a few others from our group and we took it!
HOWEVER...getting there was not a lot of fun. In fact, up until a little while ago, this part of the trip was a huge cluster-fark. There were about 30 of us from the band going on the Paris trip, and for some reason we had to leave the hotel at 3:00 AM to make it to the airport in time for our flight. That would have been fine if the gate agents could find our reservations. They could not. Apparently there was a glitch that didn't show any of the people in our group having a reservation on the plane. We were told that nothing could be done until the office agent showed up for work. Greeeeeeeeat. So we sat in the floor of the Malaga airport for a long time until the unfortunate agent came in. I say that they were unfortunate, because a lot of the people we were traveling with were the kind of people who didn't have much of a sense of humor about being delayed. Simply put, they were pissed. Not only were they pissed, they were indignant! Luckily (for all of us) it turned out to be an issue with Delta, and after some finagling they found our reservations at the very last minute that it would matter. Oy, vey. We almost had to run to make it to our gate, and we got there about 20 minutes before we started to board. It was tense and we were so tired.
The flight out was fine, except that I fell into another one of those half-sludgy sleeps that are neither restful or useful, but by the time we got to Paris to deplane, I was fairly awake. The next problem we had was trying to find our tour bus. We couldn't. I don't know how long we waited, but one of the men with us got tired of waiting and went on a quest to find the one bus that looked like it might be ours, and as luck had it, it was. Thank goodness, because the older people in our group were being kind of hateful and had we not gotten our bus, I am pretty sure that there would have been a riot.
Oh, but it didn't stop there. The bus driver spoke zero English and had no idea where we were going, so he took us to the wrong hotel. Luckily, before we all got out and removed our luggage, someone at the hotel we stopped at could speak enough English to tell us) where we were supposed to go! HOWEVER...when we got to that hotel, it was too early to check in, so we had to leave our luggage and either get out of the place or sit in the lobby for several hours. SIGH.
Five of us, Steve, myself, Anthony, Kayla and Katie, decided that we didn't want to hang around and be grumpy, so we set out to explore a bit before our check in time. We are currently in Gare de Lyon, which is right next to an enormous train station and seemingly in the middle of Paris. We wanted to find a place to eat, and there were a lot of choices. We walked and waffled around for a bit before we finally just decided to pick a place not far from the hotel, which was a pizza cafe. It wasn't very "French" in the way you think of a Paris cafe, but the food was good and the waiter was quite charming. Everything was decorated for the World Cup, which I find very fun! As an aside, I have enjoyed watching the bits of soccer games that we have managed to see. I think I'd like soccer pretty well if I could watch it with people who could explain what is going on! I'm still cheering for Spain, though. They're hanging in there!
Afterwards, we walked around some more! We didn't find anything particularly interesting right away, so decided to go back to the hotel and wait until we could get into our rooms and then we'd regroup. There were still some of the older people from our group standing in the lobby, pacing back and forth and looking pissed that they couldn't get to their rooms right away. Come on, folks.
I am not too proud to say that I fell asleep for a few minutes in the lobby, which was no small feat because the place was infested with children. That sounds rude, so let me 'esplain you (as Pedro says.) Apparently our charming little hotel lets children stay for free, and apparently every parent in Europe who is visiting Paris this week are staying in our hotel. I've heard children complain in about 11 different languages today. Whee.
We finally got to our room! It's very nice, even if the glass walled shower is right next to the bed. Oh, la la!) Heh, the glass wall has this button that you push that makes it almost opaque, which is nifty and I played with it more than a grown woman probably should have. I didn't get a video of it (because I was in the shower when it was on and you guys don't need to see that) but I found a gif that shows what I'm talking about:
via GIPHY
Lieutneant Dan! Magic Glass!
Just imagine a naked person in that instead of a Pepsi can, and that was what it was like to take a shower! We (again) took a nap and regrouped with our friends after about an hour. We wanted to explore the city!
I'mma stop here for now, because I am tired. That seems to be a trend on this trip. But we had a great rest of the day! More soon.
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