We both slept soundly through the night for the first time, but I woke up with a sore and swollen throat. Yuck. We then checked out of our hostel and went to a small fruit and veggie market and got some fruit for the road. The next stop was the pharmacy so I can be a drug-induced being. The lady that worked there helped me out in a french/english mix language and gave me some throat medicine. Hallelujah. At this point we had directions to our airport, had food, had drugs...but it was only 11:40am. To put this in perspective, our flight wasn't until 7:20pm. However, we were flying Ryanair and had heard it was kinda sketchy, so we decided we wanted to get there in plenty of time. We had nothing else to do, so we decided to get goin and find our way to the airport. This is where the journey began.
Took metro 4 to metro 1. Lo and I get goin on Metro 1 and about two or three stops in the announcer comes on and says some long drawn out thing that we clearly did not understand. Some people started to get off, but a lot stayed too. So we were at a loss. We asked around to see if anyone spoke English and some man said that it may be better for us to get off and take the bus to where we were trying to go because there was a delay on Metro 1. We got off the metro, but were still unsure, so we ended up hopping back on. The metro gets goin and all of a sudden the driver SLAMS on the breaks and we are holding on for dear life, the lights a flickering, people are disturbed, and we finally came to a halting stop in the middle of some tunnel. Seriously, it was from a movie. I fully expected some mask murderer to come in and kill us all, or maybe Lord Voldemort (yes, another Harry Potter reference. again, you like it). Lo is freaking out, I'm kinda laughing (good balance) and then the metro gets goin again and stops at the next station called Concorde. Finally some lady told us that Concorde was the last stop and that everyone had to get off the metro because it was out of order. Lo and I go up and out and ask information what we should do. Low and behold....they don't speak English! Come on France, get with it. Don't you understand that English dominates all? (oh wait, thats just cuz I speak it. dang.) We then go out to the street and find a taxi station, hoping to find a bus station that can get us to where we need to go. Lindsey is almost in tears and I'm still laughing. haha. Maybe I should worry more...but when things like this happen I find it entertaining, a good challenge to figure it out, and I almost always have confidence that it's all gonna be fine. Plus, we had a gajillion hours before our flight still. Back to the story...by the taxi station there was a money exchange place that we went to to try and get some help and hoorayyy she spoke English. The exchange lady was awesome and told us exactly what to do...plus we exchanged money. :-) Oh, and she gave us a free keychain of the Eiffel Tower that I am thinking about burning when I get home. haha. So here is what did...it turns out that no other Metro goes to the station that we needed to get to. Therefore, we got on Metro 8 and took it to another station where we had to buy legit train tickets and figure out the real trains. After much discussion and toil we figured it all out and had to wait 20 minutes for our train. The trains name was Nora. Seriously though, I'm not just making that up. Her name was Nora. Anyways, the train took about a stop away from where we needed to be. When we got off and to the street we got lost for another 10 minutes until someone directed us and after a short walk we found the smallest bus station. It was closed. Of course it was closed. But...10 minutes later it opened again! It just wanted to scare us. We got our bus ticket and waited in a parking lot with other foreign people unorganized and confused wondering what the hell we were doing. You are probably wondering why we needed to get a bus ticket too. To get to this airport we were going to (the "special airport") you could only take a bus and a taxi would have cost a fortune. After about 30-40 minutes of waiting we got on the bus that we were hoping was right and an hour and a half later we arrived at the airport. That's right kids....hour and a half. Seriously?! I don't want to talk about it. That ended up being a little over 4 hours of travel just to get to the airport. RIDONKULOUS. Now, we got there, but we couldn't check in or check baggage until 2 hours before our flight, so we had 1 hour to kill. Lo got a grilled cheese and I got a disgusting sandwich that I couldn't eat. Europe has really been a struggle considering I can't really eat cheese and dairy. Stupid digestive system. An hour later we checked our baggage. Mine was 1 kg over the weight limit so I had to pay a fee. Great. 1 kg...are you kidding me? Moving on..we made it through security with no problems and sat another hour and 45 minutes until we boarded our plane, which was mass chaos. It was like 200 kids running to the ice cream truck at the same time. There aren't seat assignments on Ryanair, so it's first come first serve and people are selfish, selfish, selfish. Of course, Lo and I got separated by about 3 people and she was able to board and they made me wait another 5 minutes. Then finally I boarded and like a good friend should, she saved my seat. No one ended up sitting in between us, which I think was the first good thing that had happened to us all day. The seats don't recline, are very uncomfortable, no magazine holder, and they tried to sell things to us every 10 minutes. First of all they sell warm food like cheeseburgers, hot dogs, pizza, etc. Weird if you ask me. Then they tried to sell scratch off lottery cards. Then it was smokeless cigarettes. I can't figure out how that works. But this was the best....perfume and aftershave. They tried to sell perfume on an airplane. This is a terrible idea for so many reasons. 1. Who buys perfume on an airplane? 2. Who shaves on an airplane? 3. Why would you buy perfume without testing it first? In which case, you would have to test them on the airplane and those scents would be looming about and mixing with other scents like the cheeseburgers and intertwining with everyone various body odors. Just not a good idea. Anyways, an hour and 15 minutes later we landed a terrible landing and we were Italy!
We got our baggage and went to go buy our bus tickets (yes, another bus). Turns our the bus to Venice was leaving in 5 minutes, so we hurried out, found the right one, and parked our booties down. About 45 minutes later we were in Venice and in the right place for once! The next 20 minutes consisted of us getting lost, but we did find our hostel in the end. The hostel is actually very cool. It's down this little corridor and has a sweet wooden door. I don't know what that matter, but it does. We are in a room with 2 other girls who actually go to school in Canada. And everyone we have met so far speaks English! Ugh, so good. We put our stuff down and went and walked around this absolutely beautiful city. It was stunning and it was dark outside. I can't imagine what tomorrow will be like! We also saw a group of about 8 monks taking pictures on a bridge. I asked to take a picture with them, but they wouldn't let me. Dang it.
Out of Paris and in Venice. It is just so good. I'm hoping that I start to feel better tomorrow and this darn sore throat goes away, but we both already feel better just being here. I feel like a big weight has been lifted off our shoulders. Exploration Venice about to begin!
More to come tomorrow night. I'm looking forward to sharing!
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