Getting home from Paris

Ok so I've been putting off this blog post for awhile now... both because of not wanting to think about it and schoolwork stress, but essay is done, so nows the time.  I'm going to make an extremely long story short for now becaues I still don't really feel like dealing with (read: remember) what happened.

What I'm talking about is how we got home from Paris.  You may or may not have noticed that my Paris post conveniently left off at Versailles and makes no mention of returning back to Glasgow.  And this is why.  (Forgive me if its not as short as I'm going to attempt to make it).

After Versailles, we were supposed to head back to the bus station to get the 1 hour and 10 minute bus to the Beauvais airport, for our flight back to Glasgow.  A couple of small issues added up to a big issue and we missed our flight.  And then after trying to figure out what we should do, we wound up booking another flight home for the next day from the airport in Paris, Charles de Gaulle (CDG).  110 Euros ($148!!!).  So my dad gets us a hotel in Paris because neither the Beauvais airport nor CDG are open 24/7, so we can't even stay in the airport like we did in Prestwick to go to Dublin.  We go back to Paris, but when we walk down the street that the hotel is supposed to be on, we can't find the hotel.  Its like 11 pm by now so we're getting a bit nervous.  I tried to call my mom (yes, at home) to maybe have her look up the phone number but I get voicemail.  I leave a voicemail so she'll call me back, and call my brother's cellphone and then my mom's cellphone but no answer on any.  And my cellphone dies.  So we walk back up the street hoping we maybe missed the hotel the first time.  Halfway up the street, we spot a hotel.  It doesn't have the same name as the one I booked but we knock on the door anyway - maybe its still the same place, or they'll know where it is.  The guy inside says its not the hotel we're looking for, doesn't know where our hotel is, and doesn't have any reservations for us (after I asked him to check cause I still thought it could be our hotel).  So after awhile of looking online, we leave that hotel, with directions to a police station in hand.  We walk along some streets for awhile.  I talk to some guys in a pizzeria (in french) who try to give us directions.  Still not sure if they were sending us to the hotel I was telling them about or if they were just sending us to ANY hotel.  But we followed those directions until they didn't make sense.  Then we saw a McDonald's that was open, and we go in to sit.  But it closes at 2 am (yes, 2 am) and its 1:45, so after a few minutes we have to leave.  As we're walking back to that hotel we saw before (we're going to break down and just pay for rooms there), we see a hotel sign on a side street.  We go to this hotel, theres someone there, and we get rooms for 35 Euros ($47) each.  Ouch.  But, its like 2:30, and we're off the Paris streets, so its fine.  Next morning, after some trouble with the metro, we make it to CDG airport and get our flight back to Glasgow.  And I eat a lot of tacos.

But then I learn what happened after I made that phone call to my mom.  I knew she would be freaking out, so immediately after I called her I kept trying to find ways to contact them again.  But payphones only take pin & chip credit cards (US cards are not pin & chip cards).  Nobody else's cellphones can make calls in France.  We can't find a place to get wifi because its really late (early?).

But my mom tells me that after I called them, and then they couldn't get ahold of me, my parents left the concert they were at (cue me feeling horrible), randomly found a french lady, who called the hotel that I was supposed to be at.  The reception person said that he had seen us!  But that we didn't have a reservation.  He calls back a few minutes later and says, oh hey, they did have a reservation, oops, tell them to come back.  He says that when we left we were heading towards the police station so he calls the police station looking for us - but we never went there.  I might be forgetting something else here but it doesn't really matter.

Point is, we wandered around Paris at 1 in the morning because this guy didn't realize that he worked at the same hotel that I was asking him about.  And because he couldn't find the reservation that I KNEW we had.  And because my phone died :(

Yeah.  I'm definitely missing a couple of things because I've been trying to forget about how awful that night was.

TRAVEL TIP:

I always give my mom an itinerary of my trip (flight numbers, departure/arrival times, airports, hotel name, etc), but this other part I never even thought of.
        - In your itinerary, give the phone numbers of the people you'll be travelling with.  If I had done that, my mom would have been able to call my friend's phones (because they could receive, just not send), and A) she would have known I was 'okay' and B) we would have found out what the problem was and that we could go back to the hotel.

And if you are travelling to Paris via Ryanair and Beauvais airport, don't listen to them when they say to be there 3 hours and 15 minutes before your flight, you should try to be there 4 hours before your flight.  Sucky, but what would you prefer?

A few other blog posts coming soon about 1) Schoolwork/finals and 2) Thoughts on being almost time to leave.

Oh! And if you haven't noticed, I have a new little poll up.  Just curious to know which of my trips people liked the most!  Its nothing serious, so just pick a place and let me know!  (And don't let my awful trip home ruin your opinion of Paris... that part doesn't count)

    See you soon! :)