Paris: Surfing and Skimping

Whenever I travel with my family, my mom always insists that we get to the airport at least 3 hours before our flight. This almost always results in us sitting at our gate for two and a half hours. “It’s better that we wait now than get here late and miss our flight,” she always said (and always will say). When I travel on my own, I thought, I will never take such superfluous precautions. I will cater to my impatience and make sure I’ll only have to do the least amount of waiting possible.

I was wrong (cue Mom’s smug look).

Julia and I had a flight out of Barcelona that left at 9:45 AM. We left the hostel at 5:45, and got through the empty security and to our gate before 7. We were one of a dozen people in the whole area. On the bright side, we were one of the first in line to get on the plane. Also, general advice: make sure that the airport you’re arriving in is actually located in your end destination. Case in point, while in line for the plane, we discovered that this Parisian airport we were going to wasn’t actually in Paris, but actually over an hour outside of the city. A bit loopy on the bus ride into Paris, Julia and I entertained ourselves by pretending to be French tour guides, pointing out popular sites like the Bridge de Croissant. And I wonder why the French don’t like Americans.

After getting dropped off in the giant city, we hit two monuments that are perpetually littered with tourists: the Arc de Triomphe and the Eiffel Tower. Since we are both extraordinarily cheap, we didn’t pay to go up close to the Arc or to go up the Eiffel Tower. Although both sites were incredible, the random lurking homeless guys were a bit off-putting, as were the countless old ladies that all seemed to have crafted the same sign exclaiming they had 17 children and 3 dogs and therefore obviously needed spare change.

Eventually, Julia and I made our way to where we would be staying that night. We were using Couchsurfing for the first time, and we were honestly a bit worried about the whole ordeal. For those who don’t know, Couchsurfing is a website that promotes cultural exchange by acting as a hub for travelers and willing hosts. You create a profile (trying to be as thorough and likeable as possible, since this is what possible hosts look at before responding to your request), then Surf for hosts depending on the city you’re traveling to as well as the time and duration of your stay. You want to find hosts that have similar interests as you and, more importantly, have positive reviews from people who have hosted or been hosted by that person. When you find someone you think you want to stay with, you send them a request, telling them about yourself, your plans for your visit, and why you would like them to be your host. I wholeheartedly recommend this website for anyone who wants to meet people who are a part of their destination’s culture as well as anyone on a tight budget (the stay is completely FREE).

Julia and I had two different hosts in Paris. Our first night was with a guy in his early twenties who lives in the south of Paris named Aurelien. We met up with him at the underground station a few minutes from his flat and then, after dropping our stuff off at his place, went to the grocery store to buy food for dinner. We cooked pasta and garlic bread together and had apples drizzled with chocolate for dessert. Aurelien was really kind and interesting; we had conversations about our travels, reggae music, and s’mores (he didn’t know what they were. We introduced him to pure magic that day). He had a futon that Julia and I shared, and he let us leave out stuff at his place the next day so we didn’t have to lug it around Paris all day.

Our second day in Paris was admittedly miserable at the start. We got up around 8 and headed off to Versailles, which is only half an hour from Paris by train. But it was rainy. And cold. And very windy. And I didn’t have an umbrella. See where the situation gets tricky, here? I was able to buy an umbrella from one of the street vendors, though it broke within 30 minutes of purchasing it. The Palace of Versailles was gorgeous, ornate, and full of history. However, we were only able to go outside to see the famous gardens for five minutes before feeling that we were in serious danger of losing some appendages due to the cold weather. As soon as

we left Versailles, the sun came out (typical). We ventured to a place called the Anticafe, a cafe that charged you based on how long you stayed, in order to meet our Couchsurfing hosts for the remaining two nights. They were two roommates who lived in a building owned by their engineering university, and all their friends were on their floor. After grabbing our bags from Aurelien’s, we went to the girls’ dorm room (Virginie and Maeva) and spent a fun night with them and their friends. They had a student-run bar on the ground floor, so we were able to score a couple free drinks as well (seriously, Julia and I are all about the free things).

Our final day in Paris was spent hitting some of the sights close to our hosts’ dorm, like the Pantheon, the Notre Dame, and the Lovelock Bridge. The Notre Dame was amazingly beautiful and did I mention completely free? Julia had a lock that we were going to use to secure our bags at the Barcelona hostel, but we hadn’t needed it. So we wrote our names on it and the date and added it to the bridge. It was a pretty cool moment, adding our friendship to a bridge thousands of others had utilized—next to a grim Scottish guy complaining about the irony of having his picture taken alone on a bridge symbolizing everlasting love.

We had both grown quite hungry at this point, which is a dangerous situation, since we also both suffer from high irritability when our blood sugar is running low. Thankfully, a small sandwich shop saved our friendship (and, more importantly, saved the integrity of our lock). We had big toasty subs with a large chocolate crepe for dessert. It’s the only crepe I’ve had that compared to the those at the Cambridge Crepe cart.

After regrouping at the dorm for an hour or so, we headed off to the Louvre, since you get in free after 6 on Fridays. It was the perfect mix of interesting and fun. We were surrounded by thousands of art pieces crafted by some of the world’s most brilliant minds. Julia and I got to experience first hand what the Mona Lisa and Venus looked like; we learned a lot about foreign and ancient cultures through their art. However, that did not stop us from making fun of a few of the paintings’ subjects or adding stupid captions to some portraits or fist bumping the occasional statue. In the end, I was with one of my favorite people in the world at the most famous art museum in the world. How could it not

have been a blast? Three and a half hours later, we dragged our tired butts back to the dorm, where we cooked pasta and spent the night without our hosts, oddly enough (they had gone back home for the night).

The next morning was very stressful because we had realized the night before that we had to print out our tickets for the bus ride home. The only problem was that no one had a printer, and our hosts weren’t there to help us. An incredibly nice friend of theirs offered to take us to his university that morning (a Saturday) to print out the tickets, but all the printers were jammed. Thankfully, the bus driver accepted the confirmation email on our phones as tickets and let us on.

It was a long bus ride back to London. At one point, our bus was put on a train that rode under the channel (and under the Chunnel). After a 6-7 hour bus ride, an Underground ride to King’s Cross, a train to Cambridge, and a 40 minute walk back home, we were more than ready to flop onto our beds and not move until Monday.

Until we remembered that 10 page art paper due Monday that we had neglected to start all break.

Dun. Dun. Dun.

These are the cliffhangers of my life, people. Exciting stuff.

 

Danielle