Day 1: Exhaustion and Brittany

Day 1:

My trip to Paris began with a bang on May 18th when I headed onto the Plymouth & Brockton bus for the first time to head to Logan Airport. It was very easy and simple and I think I will use those in the future. When I arrived at the airport we had to print out our tickets and then check in our baggage. That is where my first issue started. I got to the check-in and of course the guy behind the counter insisted that my carry-on luggage was too large and I needed to check it, the sucker. So after convincingly begging, he allowed it through. Then, when we had to go through security, the operator there also said it was too large, but I had a Cabine sticker on it. However, I did notice that there were other people with larger carry-ons so I'm not quite sure what the problem was with mine.

We ate a little food before heading onto the plane, which was very nice for me because I had some leg room. The plane ride was not too bad. I don't like take-offs or landings, but overall it went by pretty fast. I even talked with a boy next to me, John, from Belgium who goes to school at Duke in the United States. He was headed back for the summer. It was interesting because he was talking about Belgium's problems and for awhile they actually didn't have any government at all. I didn't even know a country could operate with no government, but everything seems to be working out now.

So we finally arrived all together and headed toward the IBIS hotel. We were all pretty tired and hungry, but that was ok because we were in France. We had to wait until the rooms were ready and then all went out for our first Parisian meal across the street. I had the most amazing steak, of course, I ended up saying that the entire trip every time I had it, but it was fantastic. However, the French have a thing about asking for steak to be cooked well-done. They don't like that very much. I don't mind mine medium, but there is a big difference between the US and France. If I want my meat cooked medium in France, I need to ask for it to be cooked well-done otherwise, I'll get what I consider rare steak. I adapted. I also had a little hot chocolate and a little chocolate cake. It was beyond tasty. In France though, everything comes in small sizes. Les petits-cafes really are very small.

After that we ended up heading back to the hotel. We really didn't do much that day in regards to touristy stuff. I looked really hard for a hot, tasty baguette with French cheese, but couldn't find a place open on Sunday. We did go as a group to window shop on the Champs-Elysee obviously because it is ridiculously expensive. In the mean time, our normal little group of 5 (Dan, Pat, Jill, Steve, and Myself) managed to lose sight of everyone else so moved around looking for them. & did I mention that it was pouring again? A daily occurrence in France, let me tell you. We finally found them and headed back to the hotel.

Dan, Pat, Jill, Steven, and myself ended up walking about Paris to see what was going on and found the Festival de Bretagne going on. That was a lot of fun to watch even though it was raining. Pat ended up dancing with the group and made some friends. Yolen, Alex, and another guy were all from Brittany and bought us drinks. One had visited Virginia in the US and had a Thomas the Train backpack, which he was very proud of. They did get a little testy when we asked them about gas prices and remarked on how much higher they were in France then the US. "Well we don't invade other countries and steal their oil like you do," said one of them. Ok, new subject haha. Yolen was very nice and recommending all different places to go to and see especially in Belgium such as Bruges. He also talked about how to get there and different prices you'd have to pay. They were students although Yolen was in a more difficult program, but all three were studying engineering and Yolen works for Exxon Mobil.

Finally, we headed back to the hotel for the night. I did notice that even though it was 9:30-10pm at night, it was still light out. Very interesting. I basically passed out in bed that night, only to have to wake up early in the morning.