Day Fifty: The Smile of Mona Lisa

Bonjour, Paris! I'm sure you are not at all used to two Utah Valley girls waking in your midst...

...lets just cut to the chase, I hope you're ready to get rocked.

While Lydia and I were definitely excited for another jam-packed day of exploring Paris, we were honestly still pretty dead tired from our magical (though sleepless) ferry journey across the English Channel.

We had arranged to meet Kelsey at the glass pyramids of the Louvre at 10am, though when our alarms went off at 8am, Lydia and I were so unexcited about getting up that we actually Facebooked Kelsey, asking her if we could meet her there at noon instead. I wrote her that if we had not heard back from her about this potential change within a half hour that we would stick to the original plan.

So we slept for another divine half hour before we woke up again and I checked my Facebook: no response. Oh well, it was probably better that we get there earlier anyways. So after kissing our pillows goodbye, we groggily rose and got ready for the day pretty quickly.

Just before we left our delightfully private hotel room, Lydia asked me one of my favorite questions of the trip: "Hey Rach, would you mind braiding my hair real quick?" I smiled; I love doing the girl's hair, so I was all for it. But as I started sectioning out Lydia's thick gorgeous hair, a delightful though hit me: I was French-braiding in FRANCE!!! Gahahaha! How delicious!! :)

On the not-so-delicious side of life was when we learned last night that our free-wifi, free-breakfast, private-room hotel really did have a free breakfast...for €8!!! Ridiculous. So instead of paying an arm and a few toes for a French buffet breakfast, we divvied up the last of my apples and the last of Lydia's granola packets and walked over to the metro station. 

Once on the underground, we navigated through a few transition points until we got close to the Louvre. From there we walked into what looked like a massive and heavily ornamented building that spanned the length of a few blocks. As we walked through the gigantic entrance though, we saw that it was was indeed one of the wings of the Louvre we were walking under, but we were led right into a massive courtyard. Sure enough, just like I've seen in such a few movies and pictures, there were the glass pyramids, their ornament being a silver infinity sign on one side. They were a ton bigger than I thought they would be! It was amazing! 

We got there about 15 after 10, so we were worried that Kelsey had been waiting for us forever. There was already an incredibly long mass of people waiting in the ticket line at the base of the pyramid, with signs designating the half hour, hour, and hour and a half points within the line. We weren't really concerned about this at all because our magical 2-Day Museum passes started today, so we got to cut straight to the entrance doors. So far these passes are even better than Disney fast-passes! The other plus was that once we had used them at the Louvre and one other place, we would have paid them off already! Cool eh? 

So we walked to our designated meeting place: between the base of the biggest pyramid and the largest entrance gate from the street. This area of the courtyard was considerably more empty than the rest of the massive courtyard, because the line was on the opposite side of the pyramid, but it still took us about ten minutes before we found her. Fortunately, she had only been there about five minutes, so the whole 'being a little bit late' thing didn't affect either of us. She hadn't seen our Facebook message, so our story had continued on as planned the day before. So, once our posse was complete, we turned to the pyramids, walked to the the museum pass line, and walked into the pyramid and down the escalator. 

As the escalator brought us down, we saw that we were in a huge room with many doors and entrances to the different parts of the museum. Kelsey said that she had talked to a few of the guys at her hostel who had been to the Louvre before, and they had all agreed that the best possible thing to do was to grab a map as soon as you enter and then circle all of the things that you HAVE to see, because it is far too big to see everything, even in a few days. So we found a few maps, and circled a ton of the things we couldn't leave unseen. So we made the painful selection process, charted out a route, and then began in the Egyptian wing. 

Actually, before we made it to the Egyptian wing, we were led downstairs some more where we walked around a corner of the ORIGINAL battered walls of the original Louvre castle. See, the Louvre stands today on top of the corner of what used to be the castle of King Charles VI. Napoleon actually lived in the apartments of the great building, with a whole wing of the Louvre still containing many of the extremely lavish decorations that Napoleon enjoyed. But for some reason, the castle was torn down and the Louvre was constructed instead, so to see these original walls of the castle was a really neat experience!!

Now, we spent 4 hours in the Louvre that day. Four hours, and we didn't see quite half of the museum. Now, while we flew through some rooms, like the ancient wasteland dweller rooms and the Persian wall engravings, we spent a lot of time really soaking in the wings of Greek statues, Egyptian artifacts, and ceiling paintings. We saw SO MUCH! It was such a superb collection, truly the most of the world's finest art and records of the past that exists still today. I saw literally THOUSANDS of artifacts, sculptures, writings, and paintings I saw with my own two eyes, each of them unbelievably priceless. Some of these included the Venus di Milo, Psyche and Eros, the great Babylon gate, many paintings of David, Delecroix, and of course, THE Mona Lisa.

The fact that these artifacts are treated with such great reverence makes me so proud of our race. Sure we're self-serving, trigger-happy, judgmental creatures that solve personal bias conflicts with bombs and we typically only pause to recall the glory of our dead when we can use their stories to glorify ourselves, but museums...museums are different. It shows a love for something beyond ourselves. Seriously, think about it. The fact that enough of us go to such great lengths to collect, preserve, and then reverently display what we consider to be the treasures of ages forever past, we demonstrate that we are capable of acting beyond neanderthol-ish adamistic ideologies. In other words: we show that we really might be worthy of living in something more noble than the cave or hill-hole.

Though we had been in the Louvre for four hours, we were not thrilled about leaving. There was so much that we still could see there! Things that we would probably never have the opportunity to see again! But two things pulled us out of that museum with an ironic hesitant willingness: we were starving and we there was still so much of Paris to go see. 

We were actually starting to get a little bit grumpy from hunger, a state of being that we have scientifically classified as 'Hanger,' and went looking for an affordable place to grab some lunch. We found many corner restraunts, each with a well groomed waiter standing just within the front door. Upon looking at each of the menus just outside the doors, we were not willing to pay the 16 euros for a bowl of even the most delicious of soup. What was interesting, and honestly, slightly frightening, was that each time we walked away from one of these restaurant doors, the waiter standing there would look noticeably upset that we did not come in. Oops. It's okay, the courtesy usually severally diminished anyways as soon as they found out we were American, so the sour face was inevitable. 

Our other problem was that our legs and feet decided to hate us. A lot. I hadn't really realized it until then, but Paris is NOT in favor of public rest areas, or chairs, or even bolted-down benches. Nothing. See, normally we would have taken a few metros or something by this point, but I don't think we sat down once since we arrived near the Louvre, and so we really started to hurt. And grumpy feet do not mix well with Hanger. 

We walked about three or four blocks before we finally found a cute little bakery that sold things in our price range, and smelled ridiculously delicious. The place was tiny, only room enough for about six people to stand inside at once and talk to the three ladies behind the wide glass counters. There were a few people in front of us, and we patiently waited our turn in line. When we got up to the counter though, it seemed as though each of the three ladies were disappointed in us for being American. Oops again I suppose. They all pointed to one lady that they said spoke English, but she shied away and pretended not to hear them at all. So we did a lot of pointing fingers at things through the glass, nodding and shaking heads, and smiling of course, before we walked out incredibly triumphant. 

We went outside, and tried to sit down at a winery just next door, but we got shooed away by one of the tenders there (because no one likes their empty shop seats sat in, duh). We were so tired though that we found a pair of big cement flower beds the next block down, which we were happy to oblige our weary frames to kind of sit on. We were stoked though: a place to sit, and food that tasted even better than it smelled! 

Boy, that meal will be a tough act to beat. I tend to really like the quiches they have everywhere here. That is a solid, delicious, high-protein, and filling meal, for not very much! Oh, it was a sublime crust, with veggies and meat mixed inside. Ambrosia flavored, I swear it. I also indulged in a decadent chocolate dessert I saw in the window, called an Opera. Skip over this bit, Bishop, but I think it had mocha in it, but I made the silly decision to eat it anyway. Sorry about that. 

After we polished off our delicious food, we checked our awesome little map we always kept on hand with our museum passes and picked our route to the Musee d'Orangerie, another fabulous art museum we had heard only good things about. It was probably a couple of miles away through the city and in the direction of the Eiffel Tower. The most direct route took us right along the main river that runs through the heart of Paris. I don't know what it is called, but it is so wonderful to walk by. There are book and art vendors all up and down the sides of that river, and there are tons of bridges that one can cross over along the way. We passed by the lock bridge again and eventually crossed the river to the side the Musee d'Orangerie was on. 

It was very close to the river, so the location was even more beautiful. The building didn't look very big at all, and it wasn't, but it contains tremendous treasures indeed. When we walked in the small entry-way room, there were no paintings anywhere, but we quickly realized that this many-windowed area was just the passage way to either a flight of steps that led underground, or to a skinny little hallway that turned sharply behind a wide wall. 

We decided to journey down first, and we were not disappointed. The basement was very large and warmly decorated with rich wooden floors, charcoal textured walls, and lovely spot lighting for each of the ancient pictures. We were full of gasps and delight as we discovered works of Renoir, Rousseau, Gauguin, Cezenne, Picasso, Matisse, and Derain right in front of our noses! Like, six inches away from our real-world noses! It was an incredible experience. But the experience didn't end there. 

After we had admired the work there for about 45 minutes, we decided to finally go explore whatever that little skinny hallway led to and what that huge wall was concealing. Once we took a brief restroom break (we trusted this rare public restroom FAR more in the lovely museum than we did others) we headed back upstairs to the entry room with many windows for walls. The hallway was indeed very skinny, and we made the sharp turn behind the big wall and walked through a very narrow tunnel entryway, but what we found when we passed through the tunnel was a surprise we didn't expect. The tunnel led to a huge domed room with a vaulted ceiling. All the walls and ceiling were painted white and the wooden floor was not as dark or rich as the floor downstairs. The large room was quite empty, with the exception of a few plain benches and seven or eight other guests. What made the room incredible, though, were the paintings that stretched from floor to ceiling and then stretched nine to twelve feet in length along the walls. There were four or five of such paintings, and we finally understood what we were enveloped in within a few moments: we had found one of the largest collections of Monet's Water Lilly paintings. THE Water Lilies! Oh, I had seen pictures of these, now I realize probably only portions of pictures of these, in textbooks, but I had no idea how big each painting was! They were so beautiful, it felt like you were sitting in a little row boat on a pond of lilies! The cool thing was that each painting looked like it had been done in a different season, different lighting, or different time of day. One was so happy, it reminded me of new spring and fresh smells. Another was dark and looked like a summer evening, still warm with bright stars shining down. A few looked rather bleak actually, like an untouched place in a land that was sad. They were really wonderful to be with for a while. We had no qualms with staying there for about half an hour, just soaking such an opportunity in, before we left. 

We wanted to see a few more things before the sun went down and/or before we got too exhausted to keep exploring. Now that I think about it, we never even once considered NOT going to more exhibits or museums. The idea of sitting down somewhere (which we found during lunch adventures was quite impossible, there were no public benches or seats of any kind) never once really entered our heads once we were full and had water. 

So off we went to another museum of classical works, the Musee d'Orsee. I remember along our way, we decided to go to the other side of the river and go a bit farther away from it as we journeyed the other direction towards Notre Dame. Along this trail, we came upon a wide walkway that was lined on both sides with thick happy green trees! You couldn't easily see anything on either side of the walkway through their leaf-heavy boughs. The sun was beginning to get old, so the leaves were lit up with an amber sort of color. Everything turned a rich gold through the translucent thick leaves. I felt like I was walking in some sort of place that doesn't actually exist on Earth, somewhere where a such a rich warm golden light is common, but never taken for granted. In my hasty bullet-point comments I made of my events of the day in my little black book, I quickly called this place the Autumn Walk, and still I think the name was good.

We eventually reached the Musee d'Orsee, where we found many huge metal sculptures of great animals around it. They were in such wonderful detail I quickly felt to commend the artist in my mind for them! There was an elephant, a big cat, a ram, and a few other things. They were fun to take pictures with :) We then went to enter the Musee d'Orsee, but we found that it had closed already for the day. Bummer. So we decided to head back to Notre Dame and stop by anything along the way that was still open...which we found. 

Though it was very close to closing time, we found on our walk back that the Consierge was still open. This was the place where many people during the days of Marie Antoinette were kept until they were eventually executed by guillotine. You first walked down a flight of stone steps to enter the Consierge, as it was mostly underground. There were many fascinating relics behind glass from both the people that were maintained there and the guards that were stationed there. I remember there was a very big room made of carved stone, full of carved pillars to literally support the weight of the world above the room. This was the general guard room that the soldiers passed through as they changed the guard, entered, and exited. We would have loved to stay longer, but our time was very short. We walked among some of the tiny prison rooms and read as much as we could about the purposes of the rooms and the maintenance of the Consierge. We eventually found the room where Marie Antoinette had stayed, still containing her humble bed, clothing, and meager possessions, before she too was executed by guillotine. By the time we were here for a few minutes, a tour guide came to us and said we had to leave because the site was closed. So we left. 

Finding that the day was drifting into evening upon our re-emergence to the streets of Paris, we decided to walk the remainder of the way back to Notre Dame and get some food at that awesome little street we had discovered the night before. I love that street! It felt so much like the UK again, with it's bustling little shops all smashed tightly together, giving the whole street a mind-boggingly large amount of ethnicity, diversity, and cheap yummy food as you can only get well from hole-in-the-wall-shops. We decided that some pita kebabs took our fancy that night, so we sat in a little greek restaurant and ordered some fresh kebabs. They do this often throughout Europe, but I never cease to be amazed at watching the people carve off slices of juicy meat from the gigantic kebab and put it on the pita they hand me right there. I have no idea what kind of sauce was on it, kind of reminded me of ranch or mayo, but it was fabulous with the toppings on the pita kebab! I loved that meal! Plus, the restaurant allowed for guests only to sit at little tables with the super-Greek looking white-and-blue-tilework tabletops. It was a ton of fun! 

After dinner, we decided to show Kelsey the great crepe shop we had gone to the night before. This time, we each got our own crepe for a like three Euros apiece (not the most fabulous price in the world when you translate that into dollars, but hey, just how many more times will I get to enjoy a real Parisian crepe in Paris? Hmm?). I don't remember what Kelsey got, but I think Lydia got some sort of raspberry and cream while I got the most scrumptious simple piece of sugary heaven: they call it duet chocolate. Basically, while Mr. Sort-of-Grumpy Frenchman makes the crepe on the hot plate right in front of us, just as he flips it over he sprinkles a big handful of white chocolate chips and then another handful of what they call black chocolate chips (that's correct: dark chocolate everybody), lets ebony and ivory work together in scrumptious harmony until they are pretty much inseparable, folds it in half, folds it in half again on the hot plate, and hands it to me in a piece of wax paper. The thing was straight up marbled chocolate in a crepe!!!!!! Happiness in Paris!!!! :) 

Well, let's be real, I feel so lucky that I got to travel through Paris with two awesome girls who were just as easily excited (if not sometimes even more) than I. I realized that if you're going to travel and see truly incredible things, it would be such a tremendous loss if your companion wasn't also searching for a moment of non-faked, genuine serendipity at the turn of just about every corner. To watch such appreciation for such little constant things grow on my companions faces over and over again really made me hold my own moments of joy in such a more precious way. Really, travel with someone who gets excited, because then even crepes can make the whole world seem right. Wait, not tooting my own horn here at all. I just realized that this whole trip would have been so much more of a, of a task if these two girls were just 'whatever' about everything. 'Whatever' about another museum, 'whatever' about some trees, 'whatever' about new food or places or sights or walkways. 'Whatever' is the antithesis of serendipity, and such a life would, in my mind, be utterly bleak. 

So, crepes still warm in our fingertips, the three girls walked out of the fun little shop street and back towards the entryway of Notre Dame. We planned on just sitting back at the ampetheatre seating there, but when we came close to St. Michael's fountain, we noticed that there was a crowd gathering to watch some street dancers. So we crossed the street and went to watch. Sure enough, there were two break dancers who had set out a speaker system and a few hats. They never spoke anything but French to the crowd, so we couldn't understand anything they were saying, but they were really fun to see. As I munched and pretty much drank/inhaled my liquid chocolate (there was almost so much I almost couldn't handle it all!) I watched them do tricks around and with their hats, playing with some of the kids who came to watch, and just do all sorts of crazy maneuvers. 

We watched them for maybe a half hour before they packed up and we left with the crowd. The sun was just hanging on the tops of the nearby buildings, sinking more every second behind them. We knew we didn't want to hang around the center of Paris after dark, and we were truly exhausted after our long day, both physically and emotionally, so we decided to go back to the nearest metro station and go to our hotel for the night. 

On our walk back to the metro station, Kelsey began to ask me a few things about the Mormon church. To be honest, I had wanted to convert and have her baptized ever since I decided I liked her, but I also knew that I liked her enough to not bring up religion after we first met and she learned that Lyd and I were both Mormons. She was familiar with Mormons, as she knew a lot of them from her home in the states, and she said they were nice, but she hadn't really taken the time to learn more about them. As soon as she started asking a few things, I checked myself from the very beginning and promised myself that I wouldn't shove anything extra down her throat, but I made sure her question was fully answered. Her question was about modesty, in a way. In her words "Hey Rachel, can I ask you about Mormons?" "Absolutely," I said "you can ask me anything you want. I can't promise I know the right answer, but I'll do my best." "Why is it that Mormons can't wear sleeveless wedding dresses? I mean, I know you guys wear sleeves and everything to be modest, but there are a lot of Mormon girls at my High School that show up to prom in dresses that have sleeves, but they are really high short sleeves, like they often come up to the top of their arm on their shoulder. But they can't wear dresses like that at all. I don't get it. Why can't you do that?" To be totally honest, I had never once considered that discrepancy. I knew it was good to be as modest as possible, but I hadn't had many personal experiences with why Mormon temple dresses just never were high sleeved. I honestly can't take credit for the answer, which is silly because it was SUPER simple, but it really was put into my head. I think it would have taken me, as embarrassing as it is, quite a bit of time on my own to connect the dots, but Heavenly Father decided to make the moment count and put the answer quickly into my head. "Well, when girls are high school aged and are going to prom, it is important for them to be modest in the way they dress, just because we really respect our bodies. When we get older, usually as we are going on missions or just about to get married though, we do something really special. Have you heard about our temples?" I asked. "Oh yeah, they are gorgeous! I'd love to be married in one of those temples!" She replied. "Well, if someone passes a few interviews with their church leaders, then they are able to go into the temple and something very special happens." "Like a rite of passage or something?" she asked. "Well, I'm actually not sure what happens. See, I've never been through the temple myself yet." "Oh," she said. "But I know that whatever happens during that first time you go through the temple, we are taught very special things and it is a very beautiful sort of worship service." "Cool." She replied, but she still sounded interested, like she wasn't satisfied yet. I told her that when you go through the temple for the first time, you are given some incredibly special clothing to wear under your normal clothes and that these are very sacred. She seemed a bit in awe about this. "What is it for?" she asked. I was stuck here again. I hadn't gone through the temple at all, I had almost zero experience with garments, and I knew pretty much nothing about their symbolism. But once again, something I hadn't ever connected was put in my head and it came out of my mouth. "Well, I believe it's for a few things. First for us to remember that we have made special promises with God, and those promises are reminded to us at all times because we wear the temple garment at all times. Second, because it also reminds us that our bodies are really sacred too, and because we are supposed to always wear them, but to keep them sacred by not letting others see them, we dress modestly." "Oh!" she said, "so the girls who are at prom don't have those clothes yet, but when you get married, you need a dress that will hide them." "Right, that's probably a big part of it, but like I said, I don't have mine yet because I haven't been through the temple yet, but that's what I'm pretty sure of." I told her. Then I chuckled, "Have you heard about what some people call the Mormon's magic underwear?" I asked. "Oh, yeah" she replied. "Yeah, that's how a lot of people talk about our temple garments, but I'm pretty sure they just don't understand what they are." I said. "Right." she returned. 

So anyway, there was my first kind of missionary teaching moment. About temple garments. Which I didn't personally have. Crazy huh? Hope I didn't say anything too out of line. 

Boy, it takes a lot longer to write, let alone read a back and forth conversation like that, even with a bunch of your typical fluff words left out! This conversation really took all of a few minutes and we had finished a bit before we actually got to the metro entrance. But after we finished this talk, I thanked her for asking me and let her know that if she wanted to ask anything else then I was more than happy to try to find her an answer. We got to the metro, said goodbye for the night, and then agreed to meet the next morning at the last place we had heard incredible things about: the cemetary of Pere leCheise. We set a meeting time and then took our separate trains. 

We hopped a few trains (the stations in Paris are all different from each other too, but they are a lot more modern I guess) and finally made it back to our metro/bus station. There was still a little light left by the setting sun, so Lydia and I decided to walk up past our hotel a little ways and see if the kind of eerie business/apartment streets ahead contained a small grocery shop that we could stock up at. We walked a few blocks, but the place became more oddly quiet apartments, so we turned back and went to the apartment. 

Once home, we paid for a few hours of wifi at the front desk (the clock only runs when you are online which is really nice) and went to our room. Boy, did I mention how GREAT it is to have a room to yourself? It is so fabulous having just me and Lydia in one room, just for us, with our very own bathroom and shower too right in the room!!! Oh it's great, I really don't think I'll be taking that for granted again. 

When we got home, Lydia and I started getting ready for bed. We were both pretty darn tired, but you know those moods where you worked out a lot and you're tired after a long but fulfilling day, but you want to do a few more nice things before you end the day? Yeah, it was one of those. Lydia jumped in the shower first while I got on Facebook to see if anyone else from home was on. To my surprise, Nick was. So Nick and I chatted back and forth with each other for a little while. It was great! After a little bit, he got mom and she chatted with me for just a little bit too. She mostly wanted to know details about when we were coming home. I found some of the information I had with me in France and sent that to her, just a date and a general time of when we should land in SLC. Part of me really wasn't stoked at all for that to happen though, so I cut that conversation a little to the point and left it. We talked for a little while longer, telling her a few of my things and letting her know that she could read more about it on my blog (ha) before we all said goodbye and they left facebook. I then tried to Skype Ethan, just to see if he happened to hear the call. Once again to my surprise, he did! It was so good to see him. It was a weekend afternoon and he was in his apartment at Campus Plaza. That was the first time that had happened, because every other time we skyped, he was at his security guard job, and was very sleepy. This time though, he was wide awake, sitting in the sunshine in his apartment. He even took the ipad outside so I could see how sunny it was there in North Court of Campus Plaza. In that moment, I finally felt how far away I was from home. I felt like I had been truly living in another world for two months, and honestly, I really was. But the distance really struck me most as I looked at that dear funny North Court. It had been so long since I had seen it, or seen him in the sunshine, smiling and happy. Suddenly all the tiredness left me. So we talked, for almost my entire wifi time! I don't remember what we talked about at all or if we even talked a lot. I probably did almost all the talking, but that was easily the funnest and happiest conversation we had over skype for my whole trip. I just remember I was on my little green hotel bed in Paris and he was on his bunk bed in Campus Plaza, and remember him just smiling at me, a lot. A lot more than usual. It was a face and a feeling that really felt like a hug, from far away, but much better. I didn't really get it at all, and it would be about a week before I saw his face or heard him like that again, but I'll never forget that special moment in time. 

After Ethan and I were done with our Skype conversation, I went through the rest of my facebook things, responding to just a few little messages and emails that some people were kind enough to send me, I looked through some of my pictures and the comments others had left until my wifi ended shortly thereafter. I closed and plugged in my ipad, got cleaned up in a very warm shower, got ready for bed, and then Lydia and I slept away our final night in Paris.  

Day Forty-nine: The Bells of Notre Dame

After we got back on the bus from the ferry, it was another four or five hours before we got to the station in Paris. I dozed for probably two, which was helpful, but Lydia and I were really pretty dead by the time we arrived. 

As soon as we got off the bus and into the station though, I was hit so hard with culture shock. I've never experienced anything like it before. My American naiivety was a shot in the foot; there was zero english anywhere. I knew that our hotel was supposed to be very close to the station, but short of following the occasional picture, I didn't even know how to get out of the building for sure. 

Lydia's water bottle had opened while we were asleep and soaked her backpack pretty good. She was so tired though, so I offered to take it and get it dried in a bathroom for her, since they all have automatic driers. So as soon as we got off we made a search for a bathroom. We found one after a little bit, but it was a paid bathroom. Fortunately I had a good bit of euros left over from when we were in Ireland (holy smokes, that was eons ago!!) so I was able to quickly take care of the small fee, but it was so unusually nerve-racking to try to work with the teller there while they were speaking only French. 

P.S., I've seen a zillion public restrooms now, but I have NEVER seen anything more disgusting than that Paris bus stop bathroom. It was like a biologist's dream lab in there, I swear the stuff in the grouts can not only move on it's own but it should start developing a self-awareness by this time next Tuesday. You think I'm kidding. 

There indeed was a hand blow-drier along the greasy tiled wall (it's a bathroom. Why the heck are the tiled walls greasy???) so I plopped the soaking back of Lydia's backpack on top and moved my hand along the sensor for a few minutes. After I had not only caused the traffic to redirect to every other drier in the room (meaning, the other one) and had given mine the workout of its scary life, I found that Lydia's backpack was just dry enough to get to the nearby hotel. 

We made our way out of the bus station and out to a drop off area. I was doing everything I could to seem brave, though the worst part was that I really didn't think I should be so shell-shocked for not having seen anything yet. Frustrating. 

To my relief, the hotel was literally right around the corner. We had looked up how to get there on google maps the day before, and had charted at least a block and a half distance, but this was like half a block away! We went inside and were also fortunately told that we could go right up to our room then, even though it was like 7am. 

For some reason I was under the impression that we were going to another hostel all this time, so I reminded Lyd that we should probably be very quiet as we went in, so we didn't wake anyone up. She gave me a funny look and said that we had the place to ourselves. I must have looked incredulous as she opened the door with our key to a perfectly quiet 2-person bedroom with a bathroom in the corner. 

Holy moley, it was an absolutely gorgeous sight! I was so excited that I almost moved fast! 

We plopped our bags on each side of the beds and sat down. 

'Do you think we should maybe sleep for a little bit before we go to the big city?' Lydia asked me. 

'That's exactly what I was thinking' I responded. 

So with that, we set our alarms for one hour and fell right to sleep. 

Three hours later, we finally decided to get up. We woke up once each hour, looked over at each other, laughed, and then set the alarm for another hour later. But by 11am, we were both feeling a ton better and were ready to stop wasting time and go see Paris. 

The bus station we arrived at is also a metro station (awesome, right??) so we walked around the little corner and down into the metro. Tom had told us that most everything big was within walking distance, so we decided to each get the 10-pass deal. The French man working the ticket booth was not a happy camper though, to put it lightly. I don't know what his story was, but I think he needed more than a three hour nap before he felt better. He snapped at us a bit when he realized he had to speak English and wouldn't take anything except exact change or card. We had wondered about this, so we already had our cards in hand. For some reason, Lydia's card doesn't work at all in some spots, so after she tried it two or three times and Mr. Timebomb looked close to popping, I swiped my card and saved the lives of everyone in the station. Nbd. 

Lydia and I are pretty great about covering each other as we travel. Seriously, she is so awesome to travel with. She is super great to plan with, we have always had super similar interests and disinterests in activities and places to go, and she is so good about keeping cool when the chips are down. So when I say that it really was no big deal to use my card, I really mean it, because we have been able to help each other out so often this trip that it just kind of happens. No joke, I am so lucky to be traveling with Lyd. 

After we had our tickets, we stepped back towards the end of the line to watch how these new ticket stiles worked. Most of the people were using the chip-scanner cards that regular commuters have, so we weren't getting a lot of hints. While we waited for someone to use a ticket, we heard something wonderful: another young female American accent. I turned around and saw a girl our age talking with a French woman by the metro map. This kind woman was helping the girl figure out what metros to take to get to her hostel. The girl jotted down a bunch of notes in a notebook and the two parted. I could tell she was definitely alone and had just arrived on the last bus, so I walked over and said hello. 

She looked a little nervous at first (as is only normal when I approach some people, though I didn't know my precedence would follow me out of the country so fast. Boy, the paparazzi are a lot faster than I realized!) but after I introduced myself and we realized we were both in the same boat, she looked extremely relieved (also normal, just by the way ;) ). Her name was Kelsey and she was indeed here in Paris alone for four days, just seeing the sights. Lydia and I looked at each other for a quick second before I asked Kelsey if she wanted to join us as we toured around. She breathed a huge sigh of relief and said that she would love to, but she had to go drop her things off at her hostel first. So we decided to meet up in front of Notre Dame at 3 and then split up. 

We still hadn't seen anyone else use a ticket yet, so I just went for it. I put my ticket in the small slot, sort of similar to the tube stops in London, the ticket went all the way through, and there was no buzzing X, but the gates wouldn't open. I walked through the turn stile anyway, but the big gates were still shut. I tried backing out, but they don't really work like that. Feeling panicked, I hopped the turn stile and went back. I watched as a few more people went through and realized that I had come upon a set of gates that didn't open automatically anymore. Yeah, you push it. So, putting my first dead ticket in my pocket, I stuffed another ticket in, walked through the stile as I swiped my second dead ticket from the top, and pushed open the big gates. Lydia followed soon after and we made our way into the metro. 

We would have been dead if we didn't already have the subway system down. Seriously, there was no English to be found anywhere, so if we had been newbies at the whole public train system, we wouldn't have gotten anywhere but VERY lost. So after we compared our metro map to our sites and museum map, we picked our destination and hopped on the train. 

Well I won't pretend to remember what the station names were called. We just looked at the first or last few letters mostly, the rest was absolute gibberish to us. Naiive? Yes. Did that bug me? Not as much as it should have. Did I care then? Not a bit. We originally tried pointing stops out by their full names, but after our first horrifically failed attempts, we realized that if we didn't find some sort of alternative soon that we would probably be heard INTENTIONALLY butchering the pronunciations and then get strung up by the Eiffel Tower for our insolence or something. 

So we made our first stop the place that Tom told us we couldn't not go see: Saint Chapelle. I wasn't super gung-ho about seeing another little church, especially with so many other huge things around, but I know enough to listen if Tom talks about his favorites. We also knew that they would sell the magic museum pass there (a pass that gets you into many of the other big museums for free afterwards while also allowing you to skip the lines of people buying their own passes or just normal tickets) and with a smaller line than we would find at Notre Dame or the Louvre. 

As we walked to the little doorway entrance, we stopped for a bite of lunch at a little pizza place. The pizza was absolutely delicious, but when we both saw the desserts in the window, we splurged. (Alert: I didn't follow any sort of calorie budget in Paris. Don't be a hater, it was the chance of a lifetime). So while my tomato and chicken pizza was amazing, my gorgeous shaved chocolate tart was OUT OF THIS WORLD!! I thought my mouth was going to abandon me and live forever among the bakeries of Paris! Good grief, chocolate is amazing. 

Back to traveling; we walked down the street after lunch and walked to the uninteresting doorway that represented the entrance to Saint Chapelle. We went inside and found ourselves in a line that lead to a hidden cobble-stoned courtyard. It was really nice in there, all ancient stone walls enclosing us and the walls of the church ornamented in the beautiful Gothic style. I think it is so fun to look at all the different faces gargoyles can make. 

The line wound around to a farther courtyard and eventually to a beautiful stone archway. We paid for our museum passes in line (they are only good for two days, so we arranged for them to start tomorrow and paid the €5 for this site). It was just before we went inside that I noticed a bunch of big posters for a concert that was going on there in Saint Chapelle. As I got reading the signs, I realized that it was a professional chamber orchestra, one of the best in Europe, that was performing a series of Vivaldi's greatest works. There were only three concerts, and the very last was that evening! I pointed the sign out to Lydia and asked her if she would be interested at all in a chamber orchestra concert that night, and she said that she definitely was. I was absolutely thrilled! 

By this time, we had made it to the top of the line and went inside. The entire chapel was two floors, one room on each floor. We entered the ground floor and found that the room wasn't very big. It was long, but not incredibly wide, and the ceiling was rather low for a chapel, but it was beautiful. The building had been restored, so all of the old paint and gold leaf had been put up all throughout the room. It was so gorgeous. Every wall, every pillar, every ornament on the ceiling was elegantly painted with symbols and shapes and gold. And all along the walls, the large spaces between each pillar had been painted to look like a simple tapestry was draped across. Seriously, I thought it was cloth the first times I looked at it, so it took me a few minutes to realize that it was just a paining on the wall. 

Despite the beauty of the place, I was surprised. i had remembered Tom saying something about the windows of the place, but there was not a single window in the entire room. As we headed back towards the entry we had come from, we noticed a tiny little doorway to a very thin spiral staircase in each corner opposite the lone door. Many people were coming down from the left stairs, so we went up the right staircase. It was a very surprisingly long staircase, and then turned very sharply at the top so you had to walk around a long wall corner before you were through the staircase door. 

I know I keep saying that everything is beautiful here. That's because it is. And I don't know how often I've said something is my favorite. If I have, that's because I meant it and I'm relating things in an accurate timeline, not a general overview. But I'm running out of thesaurus power now that I'm on day 49, and so you'll have to forgive me if this doesn't really paint anything close to what actually happened. Because I'm pretty sure it can't. I don't know enough words to explain how vastly and uniquely beautiful the upper room of Saint Chapelle is from the other incredible things I have also seen. So if you, gentle reader, happen to be anyone other than me, I am tragically sorry for what this won't do for you. 

I turned the upper corner and walked into a vaulted room with amazingly tall walls...

...walls made entirely of the most complex and intricate stained glass I've ever seen. The whole giant room, with the exception of the ceiling, floor, and far skinny wall was glass. Reds, blues, golds, greens, a tiny bit of white...a kaleidoscope of vibrant colors, lit up by the sun in Paris. The floor was laced with black loops and swirls in the tile work. The ceiling went up and up almost out of sight. I have never been in a more beautiful room in my life, I promise you that. 

On our way out, we found the concert ticket office and got some of the last remaining tickets, but we got them for only 16 euro apiece because of the student discount, rather than the 25 euro they are usually sold for! 

We left. After a bit of a walk, we made our way to the cathedral of Notre Dame. I thought it was going to be just another cathedral, and that meeting Kelsey there would be simple, but it turns out that the square in front of Notre Dame is so big and constantly full of people that a huge section of ampetheatre seating. Yeah, huge. 

So we walked up to the ampetheatre seats and sat before the enormous cathedral face. Holy sculptures, batman. I have seen a ton of cathedrals now, but the face of Notre Dame must have at least a hundred different people carved upon it. It's amazing! 

Well, I remembered what color of shirt Kelsey was wearing (navy blue plaid flannel) so I looked around down below and actually spotted her like ten seconds later. So we went down, met her, and actually stood in a big long line that went into the cathedral for free. For free! Apparently Notre Dame does not require any sort of fee to get into, so we walked in and around the great home of the hunchback. 

I wished it wasn't so full of chairs along the middle, but it was gigantic nonetheless. We walked the full outside aisles and it wasn't the most beautiful cathedral I've seen (I think Glauchester still holds that title) but it was incredible. 

After we left the cathedral, we decided to walk up to the Eiffel Tower, since we could see the top in the distance. So the three of us took a lovely long walk down the river Siene I think its called. Along the way we came to a bridge, one of many, but this one literally glittered with gold, even though it was a chain link fence. We walked up the bridge to see what was up, and found thousands of gold padlocks that were locked to every available inch of bridge. Every lock had two names written on it. They are the famous Paris love locks, and they were a fantastic sight indeed. Apparently the tradition is that a couple in love will write one another's name on the lock, keep one of the three keys, lock it on the bridge, and then throw the final key into the river below. Cute huh? Up until the part where if the relationship ends horribly then one of them can come back with their key and take the lock off. But I really liked the idea up until that point anyway :) 

So we walked for about an hour down the river until we came to the great Eiffel Tower. I had heard from someone that it was pretty small. They lied. The tower was so much bigger than I imagined!! It was incredible! So we sat underneath one of the giant legs for a while and rested. We assumed that it was like 45 euro to go up to the top, so we didn't even bother check. We were there for probably a half hour, just admiring the view when we decided to part ways for dinner and for our concert. So we walked back to the metro and set up a meeting place and time for the next morning and then said goodbye to Kelsey for the day. 

Lydia and I went back to Notre Dame to see if we could find any cheap places for dinner before we went back to the hotel. We were so dead tired, but weren't tired enough to pay the standard 12 euro dinner fees that just about every place was asking for. So we walked down the streets a ways and finally found a street like we were used to: tiny, full of itty bitty shops, lots of people, and everything you could imagine being sold from one end of the block to the other. We felt right at home as we walked along the thin road, shop owners calling out their wares and prices to us. It was great! We stopped at a couple of shops within our price range, between 4 and 7 euro, but didn't stop until we got to a panini, baguette, and crepe shop. It was there that I got my very first taste of panini and real Parisian crepe. I was shocked when the guy handed me my toasted panini, it was so flat I thought that he forgot the top three-quarters of my sandwich. But it was just pressed and toasted to perfection, and the beef, tomatoe, and mozzarella insides tasted superb! Lydia and I also split a traditional crepe: butter, sugar, and cinnamon. I think the butter, sugar, and lemon crepe probably would have been even better, but it was still fantastic. 

We took our takeaway back over to the ampetheatre seating at Notre Dame to eat. What an absolutely sublime view for a dinner on such a sunny evening! Really, that was an awesome 5 euro dinner! 

After we finished dinner, we headed back to Saint Chapelle, but via a fountain we had seen around the bend. After we had crossed the few streets to the road island, we found some incredible statues of St. Michael slaying a dragon. It really was an amazing fountain! 

We then walked the few remaining blocks back to the beautiful Saint Chapelle. We were there a little early, just to be safe, so we stood in line for a while. Slowly, the line was moved farther and farther inside the courtyard and up into the chapel. I was absolutely delighted to find that the windows still glowed magnificently in the evening light like they did in the morning light. I was also thrilled to see that the whole hall-like room had been filled with wooden chairs, and that a harpsichord and some stands were set up under the decorative sacrament arch at the head of the room. Because we had gotten there early, we were very close to the top of the line, so we got the very best seats in our section. 

I think we waited there around half an hour before the six Baroque professionals came out and everything but the small makeshift stage was darkened, but because we were all still trying to soak in what we were seeing, it seemed like ten. But eventually, the six came out and began their playing. 

[Saint Chapelle]

As a crude sum up, it was the most magnificent concert I've ever been to and I learned a lot about myself. 

After the concert was over, I actually bought two CDs, I loved it that much! The soloist actually came out and signed one of my CDs, so that made it even better! 

After we walked out, we sat on the beautiful giant marble steps of the Justice building right next door and just looked at the city for a bit before we went home on the metro. When we got home, we got on the wifi for a bit to check emails and such. Nick was actually online then so I was able to chat with him briefly before I had to go take a shower and get ready for bed. Once done, I finished off the day, and then, exhausted, crashed for the rest of the night. 

Day Forty-eight: Fancy a bus to Paris?

For the last time, I woke this morning under my red comforter, in my bedroom, in Cardiff. I laid there for a little bit, not nearly long enough now that I think about it, and listened to the music I had set as my alarm. I turned it off in my habitual haste, and looked out my window; it was gray and rainy. Then I looked about my room. Everything was laid out as it was the night before; almost completely packed up, but not quite done. Seeing my progress so close to completion, I got out of bed before the snooze came on. 

I threw on a hoodie and went downstairs to wash my outfit I wanted to wear today, as I wanted to be sure it started this trip of three outfits as clean as possible. After I threw it in the wash, I checked on the hashbrowns. I was super surprised to see a whole bunch of fat, fluffy, grated potato bits in my pot! I was tempted to get them started right then, but I decided to clean up a bit more before the others woke up. I went upstairs, did a quick wakeup set of crunches (I'm up to 125), and threw on some makeup and my (clean) jeans and an old shirt. Donning my hoodie on my way out, I went back downstairs to the kitchen. I strained the water from the potatoes, got them frying happily in some butter and oil, and hung my wet clothes out to dry while they sizzled in the pan. 

Tom, Katy, Anders, and Courtney had left our house early that morning. Tom and Katy would be back late that night, but Anders and Courtney were gone for good. Miya had been gone since yesterday, so it was me, Lydia, Josie, Theresa, and Abbey left. Josie was leaving today at 11. Theresa and Abbey would be leaving the next afternoon. oh boy. 

Over the course of the next few hours, all the girls came down one by one and made some breakfast. Abbey poured me a lovely cup of redbush and vanilla tea with honey that I had with my lovely warm breakfast of hasbrowns and eggs. 

After I got my dishes cleaned off, I went upstairs, rolled up the last few things, and moved my two parcels and jacket downstairs to the unused office we have lovingly titled 'Spare Oom'. While Tom will be staying at this house until the 29th, some new students will be moving in on Monday. This means that we can still use our house as a home base to store our extra luggage while we are in Paris, but we'll be sleeping on the couch when we return on Wednesday and Thursday night. No problem, they are brand new, super soft couches. no joke, we took the plastic off ourselves :)

At about this time, the others had finished up their breakfast and were starting to get on the wifi, when we discovered that it wouldn't work any more. Apparently we blew through the 3GB Theresa and Josie picked up at the beginning of the week. So we all grabbed our things and headed over to the other house to raid the pub's wifi. The only thing I really had to do online was dump my pictures from my camera onto facebook, since my dropbox is full, so that I had a free camera for Paris. 

When I got over there, the girls had already taken chairs outside to the garbage-filled back area and were lined up against the wall neighboring the pub. Theresa never could get access, so she left first. Lydia and Abbey had stayed home. So it was just me, Josie, and Matt online, with me on the back of the couch and in the windowsill where I would usually skype. 

I had internet just long enough to upload two photos and for Connor to come onto the chat and ask when everyone was leaving. When I told him that many already had and that many others would be soon, he sounded worried that he would miss the chance to say goodbye and asked if he could come by. But before I could let him know that it would be fine, the internet completely died. Josie gave up and went home, but Matt was still good in the other room. I tried reloading and restarting the wifi for about ten minutes before I accepted defeat and went back home. 

As I walked the few gray and kind of sad blocks home, guess who was standing outside my door to greet me, baby in arms? You guessed it, Mr. Pakistani Creeper Head. 

I felt bad that I had accidentally left Connor hanging, so I told Lydia about what had happened when I got back. That's when she told me that Deborah, one of the third year Welsh students who had come super late for her own advanced program, had moved into Courtney and Anders's room while I was out. And she had purchase a mifi device too. Lydia reminded me that we had not looked up how to get from the Paris bus station to our hostel, so we would need to find that information out too. 

Sheepishly, we asked Deborah if we could use her mifi for five minutes, to which she smiled and said that we could use it all day if we wanted to. She said she was skyping her husband often with it, so she was fine picking up more and more data as she needed it throughout her last few weeks of school here. I suppose the whole being long-time married and having a little more money saved away makes trips like this a slightly different experience than ours. I'm not jealous, convenience almost always makes for too few adventures. 

So we got back online and Lydia told Connor he should come by soon if he wanted to see Josie off before she left. In the mean time, I did some work on travel stuff. After we had found the map of our train stop and hostel and had found the best walk route, we hung out on the mifi and did a little more checking. Lydia really wanted to call home, but since it was not quite 11am here, that meant it was not quite 4am back home, so that didn't quite work. I took the chance to briefly check to see if I had any emails. I was delighted to find that I did. Oh, it was so good to get updates from my dad, Gretch, and Ethan. I just couldn't stop smiling as I read through them each. 

I knew Deborah said she didn't care about us using her internet, and she in fact got on Skype with her husband while we were there with her, but I felt bad using up her data. I sent an all too quick and very overdue travel outline to my dad, so he knows where to send the flowers, before I signed off. In consolation, though, we have booked hostels that are supposed to have free wifi, so we should be able to send emails more easily in the next few days. 

With that, we went back downstairs and bid our dear Josie a fond farewell. She is going to Oxford for the next four days to stay with a friend of her brothers before she flies home. We thought about going with her, but Paris was calling our names instead. Theresa and Abbey decided to walk with her to the train station so she wouldn't be alone. We would have all gone, but we still weren't sure if Connor was planning on stopping by, and we would have felt bad if he had made the trip all the way to our place and not had anyone there, so Theresa and Abbey told us to make sure that if he stopped by, that he would stay there until they got back. 

So we did. My clothes had finally dried (inside) by this time, so I changed out of my old shirt and into the new. It had been raining and cold all day though, so I happily put my new hoodie back on. It's certainly getting a workout, but its so nice to have a warm hoodie that fits me so well!

After a while, Connor did stop by. We chatted for a bit until Abbey and Theresa got home, and then we let them entertain our guest while we made our final preparations. It was about 2pm by this point, so Lydia went back up to Deborah's room to call home. After her call was finished, we gathered our Paris gear, whipped up a few peanut butter sandwiches, and then gave the girls hugs goodbye. 

And just that fast, we were off. In the rain. To the bus station past the Hays. 

It was actually really nice to walk there. The rain was more of a steady misting (which was cool and obnoxious all at the same time). I had, for some reason, thought that I had taken my very last walk through the Hays the day before, so it was great to be walking through those fun familiar streets and arcades again, even in the chilly rain. The pubs were packed full of people watching a game. Connor had mentioned that there was supposed to be a 'truly brilliant' boxing match in Cardiff on that day, but from the screens I caught glimpses of, it looked more like a foot ball game to me.  

When we made it to the station at last, we were a bit wet and kinda cold. Basically, we were ready to be on a bus. So when we saw that our bus was ready and waiting right at the front of the lot, we were very excited. We double checked the numbers and the departure gate, then handed the driver our tickets, and when he didn't tell us we were total drips (another phrase we learned from Connor. On the hierarchy of insults, it's not as severe as 'idiot' but worse than 'blonde') and that we had the wrong bus, we got on and sat down. 

I don't know who engineered those seats, but they were the most perfect seats for dozing in. Really, I wasn't tired at all when I sat down, but I fell asleep for an hour by accident as we drove through the country lands towards London. 

It still kills me how gorgeous it is here. I smile I see a busy exit ramp or highway change area, because they are always just black winding roads in the middle of a grassy hilly field. Seriously, where there isn't an asphalt road, its a thick lawn. Nuff said. 

Lydia and I took some time swapping ipods, something I absolutely love doing. She got some new music the other day, and she played some of the orchestral Zelda theme music. It's so great! I was delighted to hear how fun and intricate those songs are! 

We left Cardiff at 4pm and arrived at the London coach station at half past seven. We made our way to the departure station across the street. I was surprised at how less easily directed the coach stations are from the other forms of transportation we have used in Ireland and England, but we got to our next area in about ten minutes.  I wasn't sure what else we needed to do there, but I felt like we probably should get our passports checked before we got on the bus. Sure enough, we found a back area where your tickets were converted after your passports had been approved, so we we got our tickets updated and then waited back in the hallway for our bus. It came probably 45 minutes later. 

The bus in the parking stall in front departed late, and a whole ton of busses pulled in for the customary 21:30 departure time, so it was kind of chaos in the lot. We checked with a few of the ticket officers there and finally found our transfer bus. We were still nervous that we had been directed to the wrong bus, as it didn't look like the other Euroline National Express busses, but once we checked with the driver, he said we had it right. So we went in, found one of the last set of empty seats together, and breathed a sigh of relief. 

We were now only one bus ride away from Paris. 

The trip went pretty smooth from there. A huge Indian family was sitting behind us, filling the back portion of a bus. They had a lot of elementary school aged children, and they were all extremely energetic and happy to shout as we drove to the port of Dover. A few of the ladies in front of us turned around and asked them to be quiet, but the only thing that changed was the language the family spoke in. 

This surprised me at first. Josie spoke arabic to us often on the trip, so I kind of recognized when they spoke arabic at the beginning of the drive, and they spoke only English before that. After they were asked to be quiet, I heard a few muttered retorts, some in English, and then after a bit of silence, a few statements in German! As the drive continued, my focus was pulled away from my writings when I heard something strangely familiar. It came to memory really fast: it sounded just like the language the cute little teddy bears in the Star Wars movies had spoken! I was kind of shocked that I remembered it so well, but that really was my absolute favorite part of those movies when I was little, and having the dad that I do, we were able to watch them all the time. What's also funny is that I remembered something Ethan had told me about the Tagalog language. He said that the writers of Star Wars had actually used tagalog as the language for the ewoks, so I deduced thusly, dear Watson, that these people were now speaking Tagalog to each other, their fourth language now! Cool huh?? Their kids are still particularly loud for it being midnight now, though...

At 12:30am, we pulled up to the Dover port. I was so stoked I was able to look out at the White Cliffs again!!! Hopefully we will be able to see them more in the light upon our return trip to Cardiff. We got out and had our passports checked and stamped again. I must have looked like a goober, bringing in my backpack while everyone else left theirs, but I really didn't want to leave my iPad behind. 

After we got back on, we drove to the loading gates and waited for a good hour before we were able to drive onto the ferry. Once we were parked tightly up against a dozen other busses on the ferry, we were told we had to get off again and go inside. So Lydia and I walked up the line into one of the upper decks. It was mostly empty, but the noisy family happened to follow us up to the same deck. We found an empty table, pulled up our hoods, and tried to sleep. 

Lydia put in her music to try to drown out the loud noise of people, but I was afraid that we would miss the landing intercom and miss our bus, so I put in my headphones but left my iPod in my bag. And then smiled. 

See, for the past few years, I have actually always tried to fall asleep to some darling old radio broadcasts I found. Part of this is because if I was taking a nap, this was the only time I usually had to listen to these recordings I love so much (yes, multitasking even as I sleep. I know, crazy right?), but the other reason was actually even stranger: I wanted to be able to fall asleep anywhere I needed to regardless of noise. So, an adventurous radio story makes for excellent practice. Fun huh! 

So when I put my headphones in to mute the sound a little bit, I knew they were unnecessary, because I would only need a few minutes before I fell right to sleep to the loud yells, laughs, and busy chatter that filled the large room we were in. Which I did. 

The problem was that the ferry ride was only about an hour long. So even though it was infinitely more comfortable to sleep hunched over on the table there, I awoke to the intercom announcing our arrival and knew we had to leave quickly before the busses pulled out (they don't count the people or check the seats before they leave). I woke Lydia up, and we sluggishly headed back downstairs through the crowd where we eventually found our bus. 

Gah, sleeping on busses, not the most pleasant of experiences. I was really missing my table at the ferry by the time we were back in our seats. The family just behind us was wide awake though, somehow, and let the whole rest of the bus know it. At this point, I swapped them out for my adorable old time radio broadcasts and dozed on and off of the four hour drive into Paris.