Friday from Hell
Trip Start
Jan 25, 2010
1
23
48
Trip End
Apr 24, 2010
Paris, Île-de-France, France
Friday, March 5, 2010
Nutella Camera
. We find some tissues and start cleaning it off but of course the train comes so I have to carry my Nutella covered camera with me on the train. We made it to the Orly Airport for out 11:15 am flight in perfect time. Thinking we were home free, we went to check in and do not see our 11:15 flight on the departure board… we went to the ticket desk to ask where our flight was on the departure screen but received a broken English response. We were beginning to think our flight did not exist so we went to the café in the airport and had to buy internet to see if our flight existed and check our confirmations. (I never got a confirmation so I was just hoping that I would be ok if everyone else was) We find out that the 11:15 flight only exists during the week and weekends there is the 2:25 flight. (mishap #3) I thought this was strange because I could have sworn that I had booked an 11:15 am flight. So we sat at our table in the café for the next 4 hours waiting for our 2:25 flight, taking in the Pisa airport.
I used this time to try to de-Nutella my camera. I had bobby pins from earlier and was going to use them to clean out the little cracks in my camera. I was trying to bite the end of a bobby pin off and I thought I had gotten it! – but then I realized it was my tooth that had chipped
Louvre!
. (mishap #4) I decided the better idea would probably be to ask our waiter for toothpicks. After my camera was clean, we used our 4 hours to be extremely productive and try to figure out our class schedules for fall and summer. Soon enough it was 12:25 and time for us to check in. Somehow we waited in the wrong line – COMPLETE SHOCKER and mishap #5. It was the line for people that had checked in online, which I had not been able to do seeing as I had never received a confirmation email. We switched into the right line and got up to the counter. Heather and I had shared a bag for the week in Florence and our weekend in Paris, thinking this would be a genius idea because we could share the cost, and have less bags to drag through the airports, train stations, metro, etc. The bag limit is 20kg and one extra kg costs 18 Euro. Heather put our bag on the scale and it weighed a whopping 30 kg. Time to repack! (mishap #5) Not only did we learn that you have to pay for the bag at a separate counter and then come back to this counter and get your ticket (mishap #5.5), I learn the biggest mishap of the day.
In my previous experience of buying a plane ticket through Easyjet, neither of my credit cards were accepted, nor could I even find the flight on my computer. (Krystle had to buy my ticket to Venice for me). I had come to the conclusion that not only did Easyjet hate me, but also I hate Easyjet. When I learned of our Paris trip and that we would be flying Easyjet, I was a little wary. Somehow, miraculously, my computer managed to find the flight and I was able to pay for it on my own! Heather had even double-checked my tickets when I bought them. I never received a confirmation email, and wasn't able to sign in on my Easyjet account, after requesting a confirmation and requesting my password for my account
Louvre at night
. Going to the Pisa airport, I was praying that I had a seat on the plane.
I went up to the counter, while Heather was dealing with checking our bag, and they are unable to find my name on the list of passengers. I immediately start freaking out, because I know I have bought my ticket. I had also been bragging about this trip to everyone. She eventually found it and I had booked my flights just like I remembered at 11:15 am but for Saturday (today is Friday). BIG mishap #6.
I asked the lady at the counter how much it would be to fly standby or switch my plane ticket – 220 Euro, equivalent to 300 dollars.
I called my mom, knowing that this trip was a not going to be a possibility for me, trying to figure out what I could do. We weight our options whish were 4 fold:
1. She had the idea to stay at the bed and breakfast where we had stayed a couple summers ago owned by Franco Ambrogi (a fellow Richmonder and friend of the family)
La Victoire de Samothrace
. The villa was right outside of Pisa and the other Franco (Franco's nephew) was on call to pick me up. I could stay the night and fly to Paris the next morning on my booked flight. 2. Stay the weekend with them or 3. Take the train. We looked at the train schedule to see if that was a possibility – 14-hour trip? Yea right. Or 4. Go back to Rome.These possibilities sounded good, but how was I going to do all of this by myself? I cannot imagine what people in the airport thought we looked like. We were all unshowered, had been running around with our luggage trying to repack things so our bags were not overweight and I was sitting in the middle of the airport crying on the phone with my mom. Was I in a dream???? (by they way this is the first time ANY of these girls had ever seen me cry)
I finally got the "ok" from my mom to change my ticket an hour before out flight was going to take off. On Easyjet, they close the gates 30 minutes before the plane takes off, so we really only had 30 minutes to check me in, make it through security and get to our gate. Somehow we managed all of this and had time to spare to get snacks in the airport because our flight was delayed 20 minutes. We managed to find an "American" meal in this Italian airport – a turkey and cheese sandwich and popcorn.
We were finally on the plane to Paris, praying that we would have better luck once we landed. We had been told to buy weekend metro passes, so as soon as we got off the plane with our luggage in hand, we went to the counter to buy our passes. Of course, the woman at the counter spoke no English, but somehow thought that if she spoke really slow French, we would be able to understand her
Vegetable man
. The only thing I remember from French class in lower and middle school other than the basics are French carols, so I was no help. We finally got our 2 day Paris transportation pass tickets and got on the bus from Orly Airport headed to our hostel. After changing a few metro trains, with our 20kg luggage (50 pounds) and carry on luggage, we were completely exhausted and were hoping to relax in our hostel. We arrived at OOPS Hostel, and noticed many young Americans, Brits, etc staying there so we were excited. We had booked a 6-person room for our group of 5 so that we would not have any random people staying in our room. With our luck that day, of course something was messed up. The electricity in the 6 person room wasn’t working, so they were going to move us to two 4 person rooms, promising that there would be no others in our rooms that night. We said ok and moved our things in.
We were off to the Louvre, which is free on Friday nights and to have dinner. The Louvre was amazing, way too much to go through in one night but we saw the major things like the Mona Lisa and La Victoire de Samothrace (winged goddess of victory). The Napoleon apartments were also open which were AWESOME!! They were all so beautiful and so extravagant it was crazy.
As we were on the metro earlier that day, we had noticed many sushi restaurants, which had made us crave sushi. I cannot believe we came to Paris and our first night we ate sushi, but we did! We are used to Italian eating time, which is around 9ish, but the Louvre had made us a little late. The restaurant I had found on my trusty restaurant finder i.e
Mona Lisa
. blackberry, closed at 10 and we walked in the door at 9:58. The people were really nice and took us anyway. The prices threw us off, because it was really expensive, but after the day we had we didn’t really care. We also could not read the menu at all because the whole thing was in French, so I played a guessing game and ordered a thon roll (tuna) and everyone else ordered a California roll (lame). We sat at the bar and watched the chef make our rolls. I saw him get tuna out and start putting wasabi all in the roll he was making. He made not one, but two tuna rolls, with a literal mountain of wasabi in them and handed them over to me. No wonder it was so expensive! We all got a ton of food, and my sinuses were cleared from the wasabi. We made it back to OOPS and were ready to crash for the night.Around 2:30 am, Heather and I, sharing a room, heard someone knocking on the door across from ours for about 45 minutes. Annoyed, we didn’t say anything but managed to fall back to sleep. The next morning we find out that Cydney, Lauren and Kelly had quite a night. Around 2:30 am, a girl, with a key to their room, walked in with her friend, speaking Spanish. There was only one bed left in their room, and we had also been told that we would be the only ones in our rooms. OOPS had made a big OOPS.
The girl turned on all the lights, was yelling in the room, took a pillow and left. She then proceeded to knock for 45 minutes on the door next to theirs and across from us. The hostel had double booked our beds! The girls went down to the front desk to complain and we were promised our money back for the night. The next morning over breakfast, courtesy of the hostel, we heard about their night. We went to the front desk to explain our night and get our money back
Napoleon Apartments
. Manuelle, the woman working, was one of the rudest people I have ever met. We explained the situation to her of the girl coming in during the night and that they and double booked our rooms, meaning we paid for a bed that we did not get. She was incompetent and refused to even listen to us. We asked to speak to the manager but of course, the manger was not available until Monday, when we were leaving Sunday. Manuelle told us she would call and talk to the manager herself. We were also changing rooms that day to our originally booked 6 person room, so we had to take our luggage down stairs and leave it in the storage closet, which also stored our breakfast food from that morning (think about it…dirty luggage, towels, and croissants? Ew). Kelly had her breakfast waiting for her after we had put our luggage up, and after seeing where our food was stored decided against eating it. She put her trash from her tea on the plate and gave her uneaten food back to the man serving the food. He proceeded to take the tea bag and other trash off of her plate, and put it back with the other uneaten food for someone else to take. EWWWWW. If you aren’t getting a clue by now, NEVER STAY AT OOPS HOSTEL (or anything related to/near it).
