Sacre Bleu! The Tour - A Hotel Rendezvous

There I was, armed with a phrase book in one hand and an ignorance of foreign cultures in the other, about to engage in my first proper exchage with a French person. My intentions of looking through the phrase book in advance to learn some useful sentences had rapidly fallen by the wayside, so instead I was going with Plan B.

'Parlez-vous anglais?'
'No.'

Well, shit. Already this wasn't going to plan. She was supposed to speak English, we'd have a chat and a laugh, she'd be so impressed by my wit, charm and good looks that she'd discount the price of the room and introduce me to her beautiful daughter. She had yet to scream at or slap me yet though, so it wasn't all bad.

Negotiating the rest of the conversation in a way that mostly involved me pointing at a name on a piece of paper and saying 'Reservation.' I managed to get checked in, paying in cash because using a credit card seemed like it could involve more talking, which I'd already proved to not be a strong suit. I was elated enough that our booking was there at all, so remaining in the playground of low expectations seemed the comfortable choice for me.

Earlier I had received a message from Brendan requesting that, when I arrived at the hotel, I ask at the counter for directions from the train station he and Rob were arriving at. Judging by how the previous communication endeavour had just went, I figured this kind of question would end up going around in a circle that involved me mumbling something in badly pronounced, broken French, and her staring at me like an idiot. Personally I thought that could wait until my second day in the country.

Instead, in an act that most wise men, and a good number of morons, would have warned against, I decided to provide him with directions myself. These directions consisted of, 'Get Metro line 2 and get off at Juares,' which were the exact same directions I was working off of, only, in addition, theirs included my hopes that Metro 2 was easier to find from their arrival station than it was mine. After all, they owed me money for the room.

While waiting for their arrival, aware that, due to their reliance on my directions, this could be a wait that extended long into the evening, I decided to go for a brief sojourn outside, despite the protests of most of my functioning body parts. After convincing them that I had no intention of bringing the pack with me this time, we uniformly set off to see what delights Paris had in store.

Which, as it turns out, was a man cooking corn over a barrel of fire housed in a shopping trolley. For a city that tends to pride itself on its culinary offerings, it was something of a surprise for this to be the first possible food option that I should stumble across. And as tempting as it was, I figured it would be foolish of me to put the first thing I see into my mouth. That mindset could be saved for a future career as a Parisian gigolo.

Moments later, as my mouth and most of the front of my shirt dined on some kind of delicious chocolate-filled pastry, I wandered the streets and strolled alongside the canal near the hotel, managing to narrowly avoid being run over by the cyclists that almost outnumber the cars and marvelling at the fact that no one seemed to tell a large portion of the city's population that the roller blading craze died out in the '90s. The outdoor chairs and tables of the cafes spent their time making the aquaintence with the backsides of any number of people, who smoked away and drank afternoon beers out of glasses far fancier than anything beer rightly deserves. It would seem they all felt that I needed a reminder that, even at their most casual, they were far classier than I would ever manage to be.

Just as I was starting to realise that I may have underestimated exactly how cool it would be outside, lured into the false promise of warmth by the late afternoon sun, the Oompa Loompas in my pocket brought word that Brendan and Rob were almost there. It was time to return to the hotel room to set up an appropriate welcoming party. Nothing offers the promise of an enjoyable trip ahead quite like me sprawled seductively across a bed, reading the Paris section of my Lonely Planet guide that I'd sworn I would have already studied thoughroly by this point.

As I heard them in the hall, I briefly wondered what people's thoughts would be if I described my current position of 'Waiting for two guys to meet me in a cheap hotel room'. The thought quickly made way for the realisation that it sounded like the hallway had become something of a navigation quandry for them, and it was best for me to yell at them down the hall to save us from certain disaster.

With that crisis averted and manly greetings exchanged, I introduced them to our accomodation for the next two nights. The fact that it had beds and wasn't a hostel seemed to impress them enough, so I suppose I just came as a fortunate bonus. I worried a little that their minds may have been blown when they discovered that we had a balcony. It may have only been as wide as my foot and looked out to a breathtaking view of the train station across the road, but still, in the most fundamental architectural sense, it was a balcony.

But all was not rainbows and sunshine in Room 31 at Hotel la Comete though. You see, we found ourselves with two slight issues in the room.

Firstly, we had a shower that consisted of a handheld showerhead that came with the misguided selling point of no place on the wall to actually attach it to. Nor was there any kind of shower curtain or door. This meant that if we wanted to shower without covering the bathroom with enough water to have Noah seriously considering another ark, we were forced to sit on the floor of the bathtub, feeling like an invalid as we bathed. If there was some sort of attractive French nurse inlcluded with the room to assist with this process, all would be forgiven, but no health care professional of any nationality was to be found over the next two nights.

Secondly, we had the beds. Three people to a room, divided up between a double and a rather large single bed. The maths was simple – two of us would be getting rather cosy on the double. Through a decision-making process that somehow occurred without me being aware of it, me and Rob were nominated as the lucky newlyweds. Would love blossom, or would one of us just be deflowered? Only time would tell, even if none of us ever would.

Ah, Paris, the city of romance, the city of lights, the city of possible accidental spooning in the middle of the night. We had arrived.

Sacre Bleu! The Tour - A Triumphant Arrival...Of Sorts

Can you think of a better way to start off your first official international holiday than almost missing you train?

I can. I can think of plenty of better ways. Of course, these ways and my paths were never to cross.

It can honestly be said that none of it was my fault though. Walking into San Pancras station in London I would have said that I had, as a rough estimate, all the time in the world. Or, conversely, at least an hour. 10:00am read the clock and 11:05 read the departure time on my ticket, plenty of time to check in and get the breakfast I'd deliberately skipped when leaving Laureen's house that morning.

'Excuse me, sir, do you mind just stepping over here for a quick, random security check?' The policeman and his dog were hardly going to be taxing on my time, but random? Really? Because numerous “random” explosives tests at Brisbane airport have left me suspicious about just how much chance there is in these checks. If the same amount of fortune followed me to a roulette table, I'd be a very rich man with a positively thriving gambling addiction.

So with time to spare and a keen sense for self preservation wanting to keep me out of prison, I let the man's English Springer Spaniel sniff away, only at my bag, never at my crotch. Not that I really wanted it too, it's just that it's nice to get the attention sometimes.

Then, over the loudspeaker, a cheery voice that seemed to believe what it was announcing was not a major inconvenience:

'Passengers for the 11:05am train, we would like you to note that your train has a new departure time of 10:23am. Check-in is about to close.'

Oh shit. It was 10:10am. I extricated myself from the security check, ensuring it was in a manner that indicated I was not a potential terrorist attempting escape, and dashed off, debating with myself the entire time as to whether I had overpacked my bag, as it and gravity joined forces in their attempts to introduce me to the floor in the most humiliating manner possible. After once again question the reason for the number of bags swinging uncomfortably from my body as I loaded them all onto the X-ray machine, I finally made it onto the train with minutes to spare, the fact of my carriage being located at the farthest end of the platform leaving me wondering if I had slighted the British rail sysytem in some way that I was yet to be aware of.

Now, my displeasure of being made to partake in physical exertion aside, for a train that was supposed to depart at 11:05am, with a ticket that said to arrive 30 minutes prior to departure, changing that departure to time that is before that 30 minute period, that's not a minor irritation, that's just plain rude. Exactly how many people would have arrived at the station what they thought was on time, only to find their train had already left? There would be chaos, anarchy, tea cosies and scones flying everywhere! Although, I shouldn't really complain, the now suspiciously empty carriages on the train allowed me to relocated myself from my booked seat to a far more ideally located window seat all to myself.

Two hours, several popped ear canals and endless amusement at passing signs in a foreign language later, I was once again loading myself up like an over-confident pack mule and exiting the train at Gare du Nord station, Paris. That's in France, in case you were curious. The cheery music that preceeded the train station announcements, and the French woman's voice that they were made in, reassured me – despite her incomprehensibility – left me with a feeling of entirely unwarranted confidence that I would have no trouble finding my hotel. A feeling that was only matched by the confidence that I was not so convincingly kidding myself.

Oh, and what a kidder I was.

Firstly, the ticket machines seemed to think it was a ludicrous suggestion that someone might want to pay with notes, and therefore did not afford me this option, leaving me no cnoice but to buy a bottle of Coke for 2.80 Euros (about AU$5.60) – something I would soon learn to be a common theme in Europe – just to get some change for a ticket to board a train that I still as yet had no idea how to locate.

The train obviously wasn't too keen on being found by me either, seeing as, while all the other Paris Metro stations that linked from where I was were perfectly content to be slutting themselves out on signs all over the place, Metro stop Number 2 was a shy little bastard with an aversion to publicity. Hand me a Where's Wally book and tell me he was standing on the platform and I would have more luck finding it.

Never mind, I could catch a bus! After staring intently at a public transport map for a number of minutes which I refused to count as a matter of self-respect, and doing my best impression of a person who was not at all lost or confused, I managed to figure out that I had the option of two different buses I could catch. With such choices, how could I go wrong? All I had to do was find the required bus stop. It sounds so simple, doesn't it?

In what I didn't see as too much of a stretch of logic, I follwed the sign and the arrow that said “Bus”. All the while my spine was beginning to get less and less happy with being forced to carry around a weight that it was not used to – that weight being any at all – and was expressing that displeasure with a steadily increasing level of pain. After walking out of that station and allowing my eyes a few minutes to take in what was around me and appreciate the fact that, holy shit, I was in Paris, I set back to work in my search, as my shoulders were beginning to sympathise with the plight of my spine. So I scoured the bus stops for my numbers in question, my own miniature game of Public Transport Bingo. A game I quickly realised I was losing. It seemed all of these bus stops contained the numbers for every single service apart from the ones I wanted. Merci beaucoup, you French bastards.

Back to the sign it was, despite how quickly I was losing faith in it, my eyes and the world in general. Around the corner from the train station seemed my next best bet - although all odds were swiftly making their way in the other direction of my favour – and I had to be quick, my legs were beginning to hear whispers of dissent coming from my spine and shoulders.

Aha! I discovered what appeared to multiple dedicated bus stops in one location. This could only be a good thing. Not according to the bus numbers that were presenting themselves to me. In fact, none of them were the ones that I wan...wait...there was suddenly a sign staring me. A direction arrow which I had to allow time to ensure wasn't a delusion induced from all my directionless wandering. But there it was, Metro stop Number 2! Out of a combination of idiocy and ineptitude I had managed to find the train station I had long since given up on finding. Who says a quitter's attitude gets you nowhere?

Two stations later – yes, that's right, I was only two measley stations away from where I had to be – and after undoubtedly irritating many public transport passengers for neither the first or last times with my cumbersome backpack, I was there. The hotel entrance was staring back at me, the fact that it was located next to a McDonalds leaving me no doubt as to it being real, as I'm certain my hallucinations would be far more interesting than that.

And in I went.