It’s....day 5? In Europe? I think. It’s Monday. We left Tuesday. Arrived in Paris on Wednesday. Left on Saturday. Arrived in Munich Saturday night. And now it’s Monday morning. 11:11am exactly.
So much as happened. It’s been unreal. We didn’t sleep much on the plane to Paris. 10 hour flight, Carrie couldn’t keep anything down, not even water, from motion sickness. Our flight was late and we almost missed our flight from Iceland to Paris because of it. Second flight was a bit better. As soon as we arrived in Paris, Carrie threw up when we went down the escalator. It was pretty funny actually. We laughed about it.
Our air bnb was pretty cute. We stayed in an area outside of Paris called Aulnay-sous-Bois. Slept as soon as we got there and then only got up to eat some oddly delicious microwave lasagna from the corner store around the block from where we were staying. We woke up super early the next morning by accident. We were just...up. So we got up and ate some croissants at a bakery and got some euros from the ATM.
Lots of very cute Frenchmen. We’re acting like school girls and using the code Lasagna when we spot them. It’s been working quite well so far.
We dropped our luggage off at our couch surfer host, Maily’s house. Tristan was there and let us in. Initially we thought Tristan was really cute. He still is but more like a kid now. Childlike in his mannerisms or something. Not bad. Just not something I’m interested in. We walked around Paris a bit. I messaged Hope Curran letting her know that we were in town and wanted to see her. She messaged us back with a flyer of her art expose and told us to stop by. So naturally we plug in the address and go. A bit of a mistake on my end, but we end up in Bouffemont, which is over an hours drive outside of Paris to the north! The address I put in took us to a random house in the countryside. Turns out there are two places with that address. Our phones are slowly dying. 16%. We get right back on the bus and trains that got us there. I feel sort of bad but it was actually pretty fun and the mistake only cost me $7 really. What is traveling without adventures from mistakes? Once we were back we stopped by a store and got a charger and then went into Starbucks so we could charge our phones long enough to find Hope. On the way, we heard the bells at Notre Dame. It was actually pretty cool.
We get back into Paris and stop by Centre Genesis for the expose. I haven’t seen Hope in FOREVER but the cutie recognized me!!! I had my first macaron, given to me by a gorgeous friend of Hopes. His name is Carter and he’s actually from Michigan! We couldn’t stay for long though, Mailys was waiting to meet us at a local bar, Les Ecuries, nearby.
We get there lol but we’re not sure which one she is so we just wait around for her to text us back while we get some drinks. We were probably there for about 45 minutes before we saw Tristan haha and saw her. After that was incredible. We stayed out with them until 2:30 at this bar. We met Mailys and her boyfriend Valmont, and her some of her roommates Tristan, Charlely (?), Alexis, and some of her friends Arthur, another Alexis and some others. We drank, talked about politics, and then drank some more. The bar was really cool. It was under ground a bit and then spread out like a kind of maze. The each room was lit up with a different color. The barman that gave us our drinks was also gorgeous. Everyone spoke really great English. Our phones were dead but I almost liked it that way.
Mailys, Tristan, and I took the night bus back home. There was a fun band playing on it and we may have looked like loud drunk Americans but we were with loud drunk french people so I think it was ok. We got home and just hung out in the living room with everyone until about 4. Alexis was already home as he had taken his moped back. Turns out he flew off his bike because of an unexpected bump lol. “If you can drink, you can drive!”. It was a really fantastic night honestly.
We may have slept in the next day. Like. REALLY slept in. Till 2:30. But we didn’t feel bad about it. We got dressed and decided to stop by the park right next door. We bought some bread and cheese and grapes and raspberries. Sitting on a park bench, eating and people watching has never been nicer. The weather was perfect. Old men outside the park were playing this game that was similar to botchi ball. They were really serious about it too with measuring sticks and everything. We ate for a bit and then headed to the Eiffel Tower. Because why not? Once we were there we got to just read on the lawn and play spot the Americans. And two loud posh 17 year olds that we moved away from. There were also lots of guys bothering everyone every 5 minutes selling over priced alcohol and cigarettes. There was a group of older black American females all in matching clothes taking cliche pictures. There was another guy, probably American, that was dressed up in a penis costume. But it didn’t matter. We were there. We figured out the train system. We were traveling around Paris by ourselves. We were having the time of our lives just being there. How terrible would our trip have been if we were traveling with a tourist group??? No local bars, no making local friends and staying with them, just identical memories that Jim Bob and Susan shared too along with identical pictures. We both agreed that even if we had more money, couch surfing definitely tops in the authentic category.
We headed back and once we were inside the flat we met their other roommate, Tim. He was really cute and grew up in London a bit so his English sounded more from London than with a heavy french accent. Carrie and I rested for a bit and afterwards got ready for another night out in Paris with our new friends. We went to a different smaller bar instead just a block from their apartment. We mainly just stood outside drinking for a couple of hours. Hahaha Tristan asked everyone what they wanted to drink and I jokingly said hot chocolate. He literally brought me back a hot chocolate. It was fantastic. We had absolutely such a fun time with them. Mailys wasn’t there with us that night but there was Alexis, Tristan, Tim, their friend Manu, another friend Gium, and some others that came and went. Around 2 we headed back up the block and hung out in the living room. Just Carrie, Tristan, Tim, Alexis, Manu and I. We threw grapes and goldfish into each other’s mouths, Tim was wearing some of my clothes so we got him to go all in and wear my lemon dress (he is REALLY hairy. But not bad.), manu made us really good pasta with bacon, we listened to some really nice music. It was just...really nice. We ended up in Alexis’ room where they unboxed his new mattress that was shipped. Tristan climbed into the box and was messing around in it when Tim poured water down the top and got him all wet lol. We dog piled on the new mattress to test it, this is when Tim and Alexis fell asleep. Tim was on his stomach his head near mine, carries head was on his back her body next to mine with Alexis’ head on her stomach. We didn’t want to move because they were just too cute. Carrie and I were just whispering about how fun this has all been and how we didn’t want to leave the next day for Germany when Alexis, whom we thought was asleep, moved his hand inside of carries shirt and started fondling her lol. I quickly left and Tim woke up soon after and followed me out hahah. I decided not to go sleep anyway, it was 5am and I figured I would be more sleepy if I went to sleep than if I just stayed up. So I went downstairs to watch Netflix, hoping Tim would keep me company but he didn’t. Which was fine. I ended up watching most of Julie and Julia, slowly hearing Paris start the wake up. The sky grew lighter bit by bit and I heard people start opening their windows for the day. I sat and watched for a while as a women opened up her balcony to shake out her white linen sheets and some rugs. Very Parisian. Carrie woke up and came down and we packed our things, said goodbye to our sweet hosts and left.
