Break #1: Part 1

Okay, first of all, yes I know that it’s been over a month and a half since I’ve written. I write daily to-do lists in my planner, and “blog” has been on there every day for the past few weeks. Not that that means anything, because nothing got written, but anyway… it’s funny, because in the DR when I didn’t have internet I wrote like two, three times a week… whereas here, where it’s easier to write, I am like incapable of doing so.

So where did I leave off? Right after Disney, I think. Well, a week after I went to Disney I went to Morocco and Spain for break. Fortunately, I kept a little book with me the whole time and wrote down what I did each way, so that it’d be easier to remember/blog. Not that that helped, considering I’m so behind… but anyway, this blog is going to be broken up just because I have so freaking much to catch up on.

2.28 Mon- Paris
3.1 Tues- Fez
3.2 Weds- Rabat
3.3 Thurs- Rabat
3.4 Fri- Rabat
3.5 Sat- Madrid
3.6 Sun- Paris

Monday morning me and two of my friends got on a train to Paris. We were planning on hanging out in Paris for the afternoon, then getting up to our hotel in Beauvais (about an hour north of Paris) which was right near the airport (our flight was at like 830, 9 the next day). However, it had never… really… been figured out how we were going to get from central Paris up to Beauvais. That caused some problems, some stress, and some wine to be drunk in the middle of Palais de Congres (shopping mall in Paris).

We eventually figured out how to get up there, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to check into our hotel. So… four Americans, students, not rich nor completely sensical… where do we sleep? Well the airport, of course!


And let me tell you, in case you didn’t know (and I hope you don’t know, because it’s not the greatest experience) that Paris Beauvais airport is SKETCH CITY. Paris Beauvais airport is not Paris’ main airport (that’d be Charles de Gaulle, folks) and it does not handle most major carriers. It handles, for example, Ryanair. In trying to explain the Paris Beauvais airport to a friend, I described it as the French equivalent of the Rochester Greyhound station. If you are also fortunate enough not to know the Rochester Greyhound station… just think of any bus station, anywhere (except maybe NYC) and subtract the English.

So we were all set to sleep in the airport. We had gotten dinner to go at the mall, I was curled up on one of the seats with my scarf as a babushka, it was all good. PS it was like 1030 by this time… it had been a long day, and I was more than looking forward to a little sleep time.

Then an announcement comes on over the loudspeaker telling us that the airport will be closing at 11.

Awesome.

So I mean… we’re kind of screwed. We don’t have many options, at all, so we decide to try and check into the hotel that we had originally planned on staying in. The friend who made the reservation wasn’t with us, so we were 99% sure it wasn’t going to work, but we really had no choice.

We get a cab, find the hotel, and… the front desk is closed. Apparently late-night check-in is more of an American thing as well. There are some other hotels around, so we start to look. We come upon one that has a weird ATMish thing outside its [locked] front door. While the French don’t have late-night check-in, they do have automatic room buying machines. Yes, that is the technical name for this thing.

(No it’s not)

So we buy a room. Overpriced, but it’s our only option. It has one king sized bed, which was actually more like a queen. And there are four of us. I ended up sleeping on the floor, simply because it was more comfortable than sleeping in a bed with three other people.



Okay, so then to make an even longer story short, we get to the airport the next morning (after some more “oh crap” moments), get our passports stamped, and get on our flight.

Next stop: Africaaaaaaa.

Link to photo albums on Facebook: one & two.