Day 1 - A bon vin, point d'enseigne

I MADE IT! (In one piece, that is.)

I didn't die on the flight, I mean. I very well could have, or worst yet, missed my connection. That was more realistic. My parents dropped me off at the airport bright and early for my 11 a.m. flight which went alright. I had woken up with an awful stomach ache, probably due to nerves. In any case, I threw up a bunch on the way, but managed to choke down some tea and a banana in the airport starbucks which helped. Of course, I sat in the middle seat between a fat guy and guy that looked like I did - about to be sick. I ended up being able to take a short nap.. choke down the airplane's excuse of lunch and read - a lot. Finally in the last 10 minutes before landing in New Jersey, Mr. Grump on my right notices I'm reading about France and tells me about all of his travels. He's older. He had very pretty blue and green eyes with weird brown speckles in them. He also had a very short layover of about 45 minutes before his connecting flight to upstate new york, his home. That didn't matter much because a plane much larger than ours was in our place at the terminal so we got to sit on the Tarmac for 40 minutes. This meant the grump and I had to sprint to our connection flights to just barely make it. Thankfully he'd been in this hell hole airport before so I followed him. I made it barely. My seat on this flight was in the very last row of the plane in the corner. Great. It was extra loud and I'm pretty sure more bumpy. The guy on the aisle seat was a total loner and only talked to me to ask how The Other Boyeln Girl was since he spied on my tv screen. I lied and told him it was great and he should watch it. He did. On that flight I got dinner and breakfast. That's sad. I landed in Paris at 9:45 am. Late. I found Heather (my travel companion) and we embarked to the streets to find our shuttle.

The drivers in France are fearless. And crazy. I have never feared for my life more with this driver than any driver I've ever been with! I'm lucky to be alive. If the plane ride didn't kill me, our shuttle driver surely would. We made it to the hostel, however.

We met our tour guide and stowed away our bags until the room was available. Instead of a nap, our tour guide informed us that we were going to tour the city. No. I had in theory been up for over 24 hours (and with the flight and drive from hell, it felt like it). I braved my first Metro. Piece of cake. Especially with a guide. We walked to the Eiffel Tower, and luckily it was pouring which made the walk up a thousand flights of stairs a dream. When we got to the top, calves burning, I took a few feeble pictures and tried to find a bench to nap on while our gracious guide chattered on about the sights.

Next was a boat tour on the Siene River. Couldn't get any more tourist. Especially in my uggs and WWU sweatshirt and capri jeans. Five minutes after the boat took off both Heather and I fell asleep. We missed the whole tour. I felt bad because we were basically the only ones on the damn thing and it was the tour guides first tour. She probably hated us. Finally, afterwards we trudged back to the FIAP.

It didn't help that we couldn't get into the baggage storage room, or our keys didn't work to get into our room so it took an extra hour before we could nap. I was about ready to just sleep in the hallway. It also didn't help that France is apparently very humid on top of all of this. It wasn't nice and sunny, either. It looked like Seattle but felt like Florida (where Heather is from, so she had no problem with it). I think I just got extra sweaty.We finally got relief and both slept for over 12 hours.