Paris...Finally
Trip Start
Jun 19, 2008
1
5
29
Trip End
Oct 11, 2008
Paris,
Île-de-France,
France
Thursday, July 3, 2008
There's no way to sugarcoat it. Yesterday was a disaster. Deceptively, the morning started off fairly normally. We ate instant oatmeal for breakfast, checked out of our hostel (a very nice place, almost apartment-like, and full of fun foreigners and Americans who accompanied us on a pub crawl two nights earlier), and grabbed our rental car from the nearby lot in Galway. Our mission was to drive from Galway to Dublin in time to catch a 6:20pm plane from Dublin to Paris. Here's the timeline:
10:45 - We leave Galway and start toward Dublin. We make our way through the city center and enter the suburbs of Galway.
11:00 - GPS tells us to turn the wrong way and proceeds to keep telling us to turn around. When we turn around, it tells us to turn around again. We are going in circles on little Irish back roads.
11:15 - Ryan and I are chugging along in our little Nissan Primera on an exceptionally small road when we spot a car coming at us ahead. We slow down.
11:16 - The car seems to be waiting for us to make a move. A showdown. Ryan attempts to go around our opponent.
11:17 - Ryan decides that he will pass the car by going partially into the roadside forest.
11:18 - Ryan and I are catapulted into the ceiling of the little Primera. A huge CLUNK accompanies this jolt. We must have hit a humongous boulder. The other car drives away, his lane now clear.
11:19 - Uh oh. We get out and check for a flat tire. No body or tire damage. Car looks fine.
11:20 - We start to drive again. Car seems to be driving very strangely. Ryan denies that anything is wrong with the car.
11:22 - Ryan is vigorously jerking the steering wheel left and right just to keep the car going on the road. He gets out of the car to check again.
11:23 - Ryan denies that anything is wrong and keeps struggling to steer the car
11:24 - Start driving again. More wobbling. We almost veer off of the road. Ryan begrudgingly admits that something is wrong.
11:25. It starts pouring rain.
11:27 - We can't figure out how to make long distance calls from my cell phone. We try some more. Still raining. I call my mom (4:30am central time). We can't figure out my cell phone.
11: 31 to 11:45 - Ryan and I make a frightening journey to the nearest gas station to use their payphone. Terrifying. Screeching tires, burning rubber, jerking from left to right. 6km seemed like 60.
11:45 to noon - Ryan and I pour our precious euros into a complicated European pay phone in the middle of a crowded fast food restaurant. We are completely unsuccessful and lose 4 euro.
12:02 - Ryan figures out how to call long distance from my cell phone and calls our rental company.
12:03 - A woman from Cingular calls my cell and says, "I have the account holder's mother on the line. I hear you are having trouble with international calls." Quickly, we tell her not to worry but thanks anyway (We had been leaving out 2 zeros. Oops.)
12:20 - Manager of Europcar comes out with his son and has his son drive our car (with us in it) through downtown Galway (picture lots of roundabouts) muttering, "Fook me" every 15 meters.
12:25 We arrive at the garage. When we get out of the car (now parked in a very odd spot because it will not reverse), we notice....the front wheels are pointing in opposite directions! Not good. Manager makes us wait for the car to be assessed.
12:50 - Mechanic looks at the car and returns to us in the waiting room laughing. "What did we do?" asks Ryan. "I hope you have insurance," he chuckles. Apparently we did a good job breaking the entire steering rack (one of the most expensive damages you can make while going 5km/h)
12:51 - Ryan praises Patti for forcing him to take out the full insurance
1:00 - We beg Europcar manager to give us a new rental asap so we can make our flight. He is not happy with us, but agrees, after making us pay the deductable and telling us our new deductable is 12 times that amount because we broke the first car.
1:20 - We are presented with the most banged up Nissan Primera ever.
1:21 - We happily get in and speed toward Dublin
Long story short, we made it to Dublin, through lots of traffic, bad Irish radio, and major construction. When we checked in, we were greeted with the news that we had to pay 36 euro just to check our bags. We set off every alarm possible while rushing through security and practically got strip searched by a scowling Irish woman. We rush to a screen to find our departure gate and find that it has been delayed an hour.
We walk what seems like 10 miles to our gate and sit down to rest. A mother with a little girl and the biggest, ugliest, loudest baby we've ever seen sits down right behind us. It screams for the entire hour we are waiting for our flight.
We board the plane and hear screaming. Monster baby is across the aisle from us, and it continues to scream for the entire flight. The brat never even shed a tear. It just liked to annoy us, I think.
After we finally landed in Paris, it was about 11:30pm, and we had to navigate the rail and metro systems (in French), taking 1 train and 2 different metro lines to get to the stop we needed to reach. After that, it was 12:15am and we didn't know which way our hotel was. We walked the scary streets for about 1km in the wrong direction before the GPS kicked in. We struggled with our bags down the dark street and stumbled into the little "budget" hotel that is actually not in our budget at all - it was all we could find. We passed out, hungry, exhausted, and smelly, to the sound of motorcycles on the street below.
Today was much better. We saw some of the Louvre (as much as we could bear), and took a rest in the Jardin de Tuileries, ate the cheapest sandwiches (and weird cold soup) that we could find, and made it back to our hotel on a series of metro journeys. By dinner time, we had 8 euro left in our budget. Not wanting to go to bed hungry, we searched the streets for a café or brasserie within our price range. None were even close. Finally, we stumbled into a little supermarket and were pleasantly surprised by the low prices. We created the cheapest, best, stove-free meal of our trip. We feasted on tomatoes in balsamic vinegar and basil, goat cheese, crispy bread, salami, and bleu cheese. We even found wine for less than 2 euro a bottle (and it was fairly good!).We topped it all off with 2 fresh French pastries and white chocolate sorbet. Now you're jealous of our budget meals, aren't you?
Comments
what a funny (now!) read....
...and you are both still together and having a grand time. Yay. The meal sounded great. Love you both. MOM
the car
great story about the car.cotton-picking irish drivers. liked your inexpensive meal with the 'reasonable priced' wine. good luck-keep the reports coming--grandma and i really enjoy your exploits.
present your trip with pictures
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