Friday, April 15, 2011

Day 7: Flew (fell) out of the Nest & Landed in Paris






We woke up earlier today to pack, finish laundry and try to leave Ty's place spotless before we left. We packed smaller bags to take with us on this leg of our trip and the rest of our stuff will be at Jen's place. Her place is now our home base where we will return for a day in between each leg to shower, rest and switch out clothes. We get to the train station around 4:30pm and find the Aid Office. Here it takes us almost an hour to purchase our Eurorail Passes…10 minutes of that waiting in line and the rest of it trying to communicate to a German what we need in English. After 45 minutes of blanks stares later, we both end up with youth Global Passes!! Which is AmAzInG b/c the youth pass is about $250 cheaper than adult. Youth=25yrs and younger, adult=26yrs and older…my birthday is 10/5/84, muhahaha, pulled the wurst sausage over their eyes!!! Thanks to Laura's quick wit, when they asked how old we were she said "24 and 25", and the nice lady at the counter feeling sorry for 2 clueless americans we both walked away as youth:) We then headed back up to the train level where we said our good byes to Ty. We didn't even cry before we left America, but we sure did saying goodbye to him. First off, we hate goodbyes and second off, he took us under his wing for almost a week and eased us into Europe. "Daddy" kicked us out of the nest and hopefully we can fly! He heads back to pack for his next call of duty, and we head to a Cafe for free internet, b/c we realize we have an 8 hour layover in Paris. We don't get anytime though to look up anywhere to stay once there. It didn't really sink in that we were going to be stranded walking around Paris all night until, we got off the train, the station was cold, empty and closed….and we're stranded! Walking out of the train station was like walking onto the set of the real life Moulon Rouge movie. We headed to a McDonald's only a block away and pick up free internet. We don't find any hostels near us, and to be honest we're frugal girls and we thought we could just wait it out until our train in the morning. That was until Micky D's closed and we were stranded in the cold again. We head to Hotel de Francois, where we befriend the front desk guy(lol, only us) and he informs us that we need to be at a different train station about 30 miles away. Which we had no clue, we assumed where we arrived in Paris was where we would also take off. We weren't even dressed for the cold weather since Germany had been so warm. He takes us around to the waiting room where we're able to sleep, plug in our computer and phones, and get a few hours of rest. On top of all that, he brings us warm tea and snacks, loafs of amazing warm crunchy break/ nutella butter and cheese, and in the morning surprises us with breakfast and goodies to go on the train!! We were so SO thankful for Adnane and his generosity that we almost cried again! Welp, we told you it would get interesting from here on out, and now we're off to Barcelona to see what adventures await us there…hopefully a suntan, awesome pictures and a roof over our heads would be nice:):) Funny thing about this is in the past we have never been planners when we are together, we just "go with it". For as much as we didn't plan Europe we atlas mapped out locations. Barcelona was a last stop and only if we had time because Spain is so much further away from all the other countries. Come to find out, when all the places we want to travel say 50's and rainy and Barcelona says 80 and sunny..our plans have changed! After an over night 3 hour ride that dropped us off in Paris at midnight, to an 8 hour lay over where we took the train at 7am from Paris to Barcelona..It is now 2pm as we are arriving in this beautiful country! So long for now :)

"They do not fear bad mews; they confidently trust the Lord to care for them" Psalm 112:7
lexi

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