La Vie de Deux Mademoiselles a France

Starting noshing on some local charcuterie, brie, baguette, et vin rose. Began to get ready to go out to le WAGG. Metro was free last night (in the sense of l’argent, but at the expense of our sanity).

We had to transfer metro lines and eventually got off at l’Odeon and had major problems finding the club, even though we had already checked it out earlier that day. Parisians don’t even seem to know their way around the city. We received misdirections from 3 different groups of Parisians. Extremely frustrating.

We eventually got to the club. Music was old, people were old, club was rad, drinks were rad. Tried to make the best of it. Practiced a lot of French with some locals in the bathroomJ. So that was a positive. At this point Megan and I were extremely inebriated – remember the French drinks seem to be stronger. We decided to leave in search of a younger crowd, which we sort of found at another bar nearby. I am leaving much out of this night as it might not be too appropriate for all audiences 😉

At this point it is around 2 am and we have decided to take the metro home…only to discover the gates are locked. So after wandering around, waiting at a bus stop, some locals help us to find a different metro station which is open. We get on the metro no problem but quickly realize that it is not stopping at every stop. Yikes. Luckily our transfer stop is a main hub, so we get off at the right one (Denfert-Rochereau). We then hop on the next line, and quickly discover our stop by the hotel (Corvisart) is not going to be one of the stops, so we get off at the next closest one (Place d’Italie). Here is where the night got very messed up.

For some reason the exits were blocked (chained, barred, locked). We began to get very freaked out. Even the locals were freaking out. Then the police came with dogs and we just ran in the direction everyone else was running…somehow finding our way out the only exit.

Now we are at Place d’Italie which is some sort of circle with about 10 roads diverging in all directions from it…one of which we need to find and locate (which is extremely difficult due to the location of the street signs). On our way back we met a group of guys, one of which lived in Vancouver for a while (very creepy guy), who were most definitely only interested in one thing. It is a good thing James was with us and that we knew how to be firm but not rude. Eventually we found our hotel, and made it back to our hotel (the most welcome sight in the world at this point) at 4 am.

We had some snacks and tried to sleep. Megan woke me up at 9 am to go get our free hotel breakfast (on weekends only from 7-10 am). I think I only had about 2 hours of sleep, I have never seen myself look this way!! I think I have only gotten 6 hours of sleep in the last 48 hours. But I did get up and we went and had breakfast, I was still tipsy. We had croissants, café crème, baguette, confiture, les fruits, etc etc. We took so much food back to the hotel room with us (yogurt, croissants, bread, jam, le beurre, honey, jambon, fromage).

This morning we showered and packed a bit (we leave on the train to Grenoble tomorrow Jan 2^nd). I decided I needed to sleep, so Megan and James went out to Champs des Elysees, while I napped from 1:30-5pm. Now they are back and Megan is napping (it’s 4:30).

I am nervous to take the TGV tomorrow, as we have so much luggage and James tells us they don’t stop long and you must get all your luggage off at your destination. We are going to take a taxi from the hotel to le Gare Lyon in Paris, and then a cab from the station in Grenoble to the hostel.

On Monday we will go to the IEPG (our universitaire) to get help finding housing.

That’s all for now.

Missing the Vancouver mtns and excited to get to Grenoble and get settled, plus meet locals.

PS: my French is getting much better! Parisians keep telling me I have a good accent (surprising?). And I am learning more vocabulary words, my biggest weakness.

Love you all!