Par-is not for us! Day 1

For all of you that have been waiting for our blog post on our wonderful honeymoon in Paris! It's been a little bit since we have been, but hopefully we remember all the good stuff. This is Ja'Nae's version of Paris.

Day 1: Wake up at 4:00 am to catch our flight that takes off at 6:40am. Our cab picks us up at 10 til 5 and Ja'Nae' gets a little nervous about the ride. 1) It does not have a 'private hire' sticker on the vehicle 2) this is the second time we have ridden in a vehicle over here. Now let me explain the Private Hire. As I have walked around London I have noticed a few signs about taking unlicensed cabs (I'm guessing those that don't have the private hire sticker= unlicensed). The sign shows a girl in a cab screaming, ' Please, no, no. Stop. Stop. Please no.' So that is the reason why I was so cautious and the fact that I have seen too many Lifetime movies. Back to the ride to Heathrow (name of the airport). The driver was going pretty fast! It had to be about 80 miles an hour which Ja'Nae' was not ready for. It woke us up quick. Our driver appears to be of an Indian descent, which is fine, and finally with only 10 minutes left until our destination he decides to turn on the radio. At this moment two odd things happen - 1) There are horses just hanging out in the plains. I'm not sure if this area is considered for farming or what, but I was surprised to see horses near the airport. 2) the music blaring from the radio is Elvis Costello. It's like a scene from 'Office Space' when Michael Bolton blares his rap music. Who would think that Michael Bolton enjoys hardcore rap! I didn't expect Elvis Costello to come out of the radio, but that was the moment when I realized I was being ignorant. Shame on me! I wasn't prejudice when I was at home, but I think it's cause I was the minority. Here, Beth is the minority. And being in London has really opened my eyes and I'm not taking this for granted.

Anyways...... We line up to get our boarding passes. There's a couple in front of us that is taking everything in their house with them. Not only that, but they have two kids that are less than 1 years old that they are each holding. So watching them trying to get the luggage to be checked is quite a sight. I chuckle to myself and make a mental note of how NOT to travel as a parent. as soon as we board the plane I fall asleep immediately. 20 minutes later, I see that we are still at the terminal and hear a gentleman say to the cabin 'Ladies and gentleman, I need your assistance. My bags are at the gate and I need to get them on the plane.' This is the same guy that I just mentioned with the two kids and tons of baggage. He obviously didn't think this plan through. Just as soon as I was about to unbuckle my belt and help, two guys rose up and volunteered. They quickly returned to their seats and I'm thinking we are finally about to take off. Then I hear this guy's kid screaming as if the dad was leaving him forever. The flight attendant notifies the dad that he needs to have the child sitting in his own seat with a special seat belt. They disagree about the necessity of having one for a few minutes. Next thing I see the flight attendant storming off and muttering something under her breath. It didn't bother me cause I went right back to sleep.

After a 2.5 hour flight we arrive in Paris. We are feeling pretty good and are excited about this trip. Having the man's type of mindset, I hope that this is the stereotypical honeymoon if you know what I mean. I get even more excited about this trip. Beth is a pretty confident woman when she thinks she knows what is going on. She had unused tickets from a co-worker that travelled Paris a couple months back. We arrive to the platform area to take the train to our hotel. Since Beth was so confident I follow right behind her and put my ticket in the machine. What?! It doesn't work. Neither of our tickets work. We stand there for a second looking at each other as if one of us has the magical power to make them work. We head back to buy our tickets for the train and this cost us 8 Euros each one way. Okay not a big deal. Luckily the machine had an English translation otherwise we would've been screwed. We arrived to our stop where we needed to transfer to another train to reach our final destination. As we made our through the station we notice there is another ticket machine. So, we take out our tickets that we purchased at the airport and stick them in. Doesn't work! We try it again. Doesn't work! We, again, look at each other for a few minutes. There is no one that works for the Paris Transport Department around. No where for us to purchase additional tickets. A guy jumped over the entire ticket machine to continue his journey. Five minutes later, a husband and wife jump over the ticket machine. I couldn't believe that they did that. Won't CCTV catch them in action? See, in London we have CCTV (Big Brother) watching us all the time. After 10 minutes of hanging out, I noticed at the end of the row, there was a door that was wide open. Beth and I look at each other and walk through the door. Nobody was chasing us to tell us what we did was wrong, so we continue our journey. Finally we arrive at our final stop and look around for our hotel. If we would've been smart we would've checked to see how to get to the hotel from the tube stop. But we didn't and we walked around in a circle. Upon finishing our circle, we realized that we were pretty close to the hotel to begin with.

We get to our hotel and they speak some English. We walk around since we couldn't check in just yet and check out the area. We were pretty hungry so we look at some of the menus. All of the menus are in French, darn it! In the back of my mind, I thought not everything can be in French, right. As we walked around we saw a couple bakeries with tarts, breads, and other patisseries. We decide that it is time to eat and really try to decipher the menus. All of the food was expensive. We finally decided on a restaurant that had some familiar words on the menu such as ribs and frites and steak. Our meal and dessert was awesome!!! Our waitress really tried to help us understand the menu but she wasn't sure of some translations from French to English. Again, my ignorance kicking in as I thought she should know at least some English. But she was VERY nice.

We checked into our hotel room and they show us the lift. Beth and I look at each other and the lift and back at one another. The lift was small. It stated the capacity is 4 people, but I don't think 4 people could fit in there comfortably. We barely fit in there with the two of us and our luggage. We arrived to our room and boy was it small! It was just as big as our hostel. The only difference was that we had our own bathroom and shower and the walls are not angled to make the room even smaller. You can check out photos of our view on our FB page. After getting comfortable, we took a nap. When we woke up, we were both pretty hungry. Again, we make the trek around the area to see what's open. It's only 10:30 and everything was closed. We walked past 3 restaurants and finally ended up at one that had some English on the menu. I had mussels with fries and Beth had a cheese pizza. Now what was amazing was our dessert. I had a strawberry parfait with the best whipped cream I've ever had. Beth had a banana split. What a great way to end of first day.