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. 

Day Forty-seven: [Insert entertaining title here]

This morning, I woke up around 9 and spent the morning packing all of my things into my suitcase. I have been wondering how I'm getting all my cool stuff home, but I think the vacuum bags are gonna be the big lifesaver. I got the majority of my things consolidated and organized and had about half of everything in my suitcase before I got ready for the day and went downstairs for breakfast. 

With the exception of Theresa, the girls wanted to walk back down to the Dr. Who experience again today, since it was closed the day before. I considered going for a bit, but I still wasn't up for paying thirteen pounds to see something I knew nothing about in the midst of fans. So Theresa and I decided to spend the day tying up some loose ends in the Hays.  

We all walked downtown together where Lydia and I collected our bus tickets to Paris before we parted ways there in the Hays. We first went over to a bank in the Hays and asked the guy in front of the counter if we could swap a bunch of coins for paper money, but he said that we couldn't do that unless we had an account there. But he did surprise us by saying that we could do all that at a local post office! We thanked him, left, and found the Hayes post office. We asked the lady out front if we could swap them out, but she was confused by my term 'bills'. It wasn't until she realized that we wanted to swap the coins for 'notes' that she was able to help us. She went and got a bunch of little bags, told us to organize the different coins into each, count how many of each coin we had, and then take them to the lady running the lottery booth for the exchange. 

So we did, and it was way too fun. :) When we took them to the counter, the new lady was not happy with us. I thought we were going to get yelled at, but she stifled herself and gave us a few award-winning crusties as she re-counted all of our coins. Eventually, she handed me a wad of cash and we sped out of there. Boy, I wouldn't have bugged her if that first lady hadn't been so sweet and helpful about everything. 

Well, with the remainder of my Edinburgh street money in hand (I had spent a chunk of it there in Edinburgh, and I was happy to do so!) we went to a few more shops. Theresa wanted to pick up some lunch and vacuum bags, so we went to Poundland first for the bags, then to our favorite fruit stand where I got a flat of strawberries for about a pound, and to Burger King where Theresa got the whopper she had been craving. 

Also, I have to say that the guy who runs the fruit stand rocks. Seriously, he is always so genuinely happy, not creepy or 'too-friendly' like almost all the other shop-men have been. There was one arcade that Josie and I completely avoid now, because we get whistled and hit on so often. But this guy is just so great! And he's the only one that can get away with calling me 'love' or 'my darlin' and not send shivers down my spine. Seriously, he's the best! 

As we walked along the shops, we did our favorite window shopping outing. Boy, for not actually buying anything, window shopping is such a blast! Just to see what's out there, what has been created, and for getting awesome ideas about what I could put together myself. 

Actually, I did buy something on this outing. A suitcase shop was having a massive discount on shoulder bags, and I have been considering getting a leather one each time I walked into an old vintage shop, but have never found one worth buying. See, I have been nervous about getting pick-pocketed in France, due to the 'ROB ME' sign I can't really get off my enormous bright blue backpack I've taken everywhere. I'd really prefer a small shoulder bag with lots of zippers and pockets that I can keep an eye on in the front, but didn't find one until that day. So when I saw it, I looked it over, decided I could live with bright blazing green, and then snagged it for the discounted price. Huzzah! 

We then made our way slowly back down to the house. It's just lovely walking through the Hays...

When we got back, the Who-ians hadn't yet returned, so I got all my laundry and my bedding washed and hung up to dry outside. As I was taking down the first few dry things and hanging up the last wet sheets, the Dr. Who girls walked in, squealing with excitement. Apparently as they had walked out the doors of the Dr. Who museum, and down a few blocks towards the Hays, they walked right past Martin Freeman!! As in Dr. Watson and Bilbo Baggins we had been watching very recently!! So they turned around and ended up stalking him for a few blocks before the got up the courage to catch up with him and then get their photos taken with him!! All I can say is that I was ABSOLUTELY THERE in spirit! :) 

After we all made some dinner, I went upstairs and spent a few hours cleaning out my room and finishing my packing. I'm delighted to announce that I have got the few things I'll need for Paris and the days till I go home packed just in my backpack, and every other thing (with the exception of Leo, of course) packed neatly away in my rollie!! It's magic I swear! 

Once I had finished packing everything into my three pieces of luggage and everything but my bed was cleared out of my room, I went downstairs just as the girls put on Miss Congeniality against the wall. So we made some lemon honey tea and watched our final movie together with our broken Fellowship, missing Miya very much. 

After the movie, it was up to my all-too-echoey room, and sleep. 

Day Forty-six: The Day of Reckoning (aka the Great Final)

Up at 8, I studied and memorized my timelines in my bedroom. I should have looked over my castles more, because by this time, the first dozen castles were really blending together. A little after 9, I went downstairs and made some breakfast, a lovely egg McMuffin with some fun fancy cheese I had picked up at Tescos. It was an awesome way to get the morning going! 

Matt had come by, since Tom hadn't told the other house the test started at 10, so he just wanted to be ready. I studied with him and the girls for a while, mostly on the timeline again from 2000BC to about 1600AD. Tom was out returning the van, so when he got back on his bike, he ran over to the other house and told them to come to our place for the final. 

When he got back, he gave everyone a colored notebook and a pen. He began by saying that this final weighed heavily on our grade, but it was made so that no one could get a perfect score, so some things would be easy, while other questions were pretty much supposed to be missed. 

Here's my theory, but don't tell Tom because he really likes to seem strict; the final will make up most of the grade, but most of the questions don't really matter. The last question on our final from our class at BYU was 'what grade do you honestly think you deserve and why?' I had bombed every quiz because the questions were so random-fact oriented, but after I thought about it a while I answered an A-, because I hadn't done all the assigned work, but I had done most of it and worked hard at all my projects while never missing a day. My grade for that class came out as an A-. 

So, I ran through all my facts I had memorized that morning as well as the long list of terms, vocabulary, and facts we had drilled along our travels, but kept up the hope that some leniency will be shown again, since I know I didn't remember all the trivia.  

The test started by Tom showing us 20 pictures of us at castles. They were only of one room or one portion of a castle. I totally forgot two castles, and couldn't remember the name of the estate I had fallen asleep at thanks to the power of Benadryll, but I got everything else, and some were hard! He gave us a few freebie ones though, so that was great. 

We were given a blank map of the UK and a list of 10 locations. I know I got 6 for sure, but had to make educated guesses on a few of the smaller and specific spots, such as Lanyons quoit. I knew I should have kept asking Tom through the week to show me where Stonehenge was on the map. (I had actually drawn up a map and put a ton of places we had been on it the night before we left for York and Scotland and had studied it in the van on the way home a bit, but Stonhenge was not among them since it wasn't on the big map.)

We had to describe the 5 types of castles and give examples, draw two detailed floorplans of castles and a cathedral, describe a person, place, and/or event from each of the 11 time periods and explain why that was important to the time (we had only really discussed 7, so I got a little creative :)  ), compare and contrast Caerphilly to Beaumaris castle, and then pick three consecutive generations of kings and talk about who they were, what they did, and who they fought. I was stoked about this one and had a ball talking about Henry III, Edward I, and poor Eddie II. The last few questions required us to fill up three pages talking about what part of the trip we could argue to eliminate from future trips (Bradford-upon-Avon for me), what the best and worst parts of the trip were, and what advice we would give future SA students. My advice: do whatever it takes to bring your fiddle along if you play! 

It took us all around three hours to take the final. Some of the girls finished up really early, but they told me it was because they had left some of the essay questions blank. Funny huh? Just as most of us were finishing up, Anders came in with a giant box. Our personalized hoodies were finished! He threw us each the hoodie that we had picked out and selected a phrase to have embroided on. They're pretty fantastic! 

As I finished up my final, around 1:30, Tom announced that he and Katy and any who were ready would be going over to Chillies again for lunch at 2. With the extra incentive, I quickly finished my final and then ran upstairs and got ready. Yes, I took my final in my pajamas, and GLADLY!! :) 

About ten minutes later, I left for Chillies with Tom, Katy, Courtney, Anders, Matt, and Nathan. The girls all wanted to walk down to Cardiff Bay (a 45 minute walk) to see the Dr. Who exhibit for thirteen pounds. Since I know nothing of Dr. Who, I decided I wouldn't go with them, since it was so much, and go to lunch instead. 

As we walked to the indian restaurant, I asked Tom where one might exchange something like a sack full of coins for some paper money. He laughed when he realized what I was referring to and said that any of the banks in the Hays should be able to do that.

We then saw a box full of books sitting outside a house with a Free sign on them. We looked through, I found something someone already has but might like, and took it with me. We each had picked out a book, since we're just such a classy group I suppose, and continued on our way. 

Well, when we got to Chillies, it was closed. Apparently they only deal in supper. So Tom and Katy said they were going to an antiques shop and we all split up from there. I was actually feeling up for some lunch and a movie, but I wanted to walk around the northern part of Cardiff town first. This part of town really isn't nice, but I thought I'd give the old charity shop one more try. 

I walked in as soon as I got there and looked around. As I happened to glance at the CD rack, I found three fabulous Nat King Cole CD's for a pound each, and I couldn't leave without them, though I tried. I also found something I've been searching for for about a month, just right there in that cute little shop; a gift that I thought I'd never actually find, but there it was! I snagged it and walked happily home where I made some musseli for lunch. 

As I made lunch, I did my laundry and cleaned up the kitchen a bit. Then I took a quick shower while the place was pretty empty and then had some me-time while I watched a movie in my room. 

Theresa had gone down to the Hays alone instead of going to Dr. Who, and she had brought back the power of the internet! We all paid her a few pounds and when Lydia returned from Dr. Who (it had closed a half hour before they got there) we worked on planning our post-trip stuff with our fresh internet. 

We decided that it was just not possible to do Scotland, Dumphries (where my families castle is) and Paris. We both really wanted to do northern Wales and Scotland more, but we couldn't find easy passage, and there didn't seem to be a whole lot going on during this week, so we decided to just do Paris. 

We booked our bus to and from London and from London to Paris, a cheap hotel room right next to the bus station. While we were at it, we also booked our train and ferry tickets from Cardiff to Crews, then to Holyhead, and then finally to Dublin, as well as our hostel for two nights in Dublin. 

Feeling pretty good about our accomplishments, we made some dinner together, and then watched the last TWO episodes of Sherlock with everyone! We had to do it this way because some of us will be leaving as early as tomorrow, so it was our last hurrah all together. 

After the movies ended, we went upstairs and turned in for the night. Till tomorrow, Cardiff.