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Aug. 10th, 2004 04:44 pmI've been wanting to post about my trip since we arrived in Heathrow, but have not had a chance other than the stupid pay computer that ran out on me suddenly in London in the middle of my post. Suddenly, poof! All that work gone.
Anyway, here's a bit first bit. We rode out on an evening flight July 31 on Virgin Atlantic. While the gadgets they have for you to play with on the plane for six hours are really cool, the seats are incredibly cramped. I was practically on top of my fellow passenger, an Indian matron who was obsessed with buying the duty free stuff and kept stopping the stewardesses to ask them when she would be able to do so. Virgin also gives you this cute little reusable plastic bag with goodies, including a sleep mask that came in handy later when we arrived in London at 6 am. Luckily, a friend of Mike's family is living in London right now and she let us crash at her place and sleep for a few hours until we had to catch our 7 pm flight from Heathrow to Paris. She even took us out to lunch and told us about how she wound up coming all the way from Andover to London. She had moved out here, changed jobs and everything, for a boyfriend, who turned out to be an ass. But to her credit, she didn't want to just go home with her tail between her legs. So she's going to finish out her job assignement for another year and take advantage of being positioned to learn a lot of Europe. I kind of envied her, I must say. She's living in a tiny but rather glamorous flat in Kensington.
Anyway, that evening, we took a cab back to Heathrow and flew out to Paris around 7 pm. Our mission: To navigate our way from the airport to my friend Alexandre's house in the Montmartre district. I had done a lot of Internet research and I had figured out that we needed to catch the commuter rail into the city and then catch the metro and change lines. I figured it would all be labelled and even though I've only taken 1 semester of French, I figured it all had to be names, so how hard could it be?
When I got there, and we got through customs and while we were waiting for our luggage to come out, I began to look for signs and experienced a good solid five minutes of overwhelming fear. Nothing was in English (of course). And I knew that would be the case, but the enormity of there being no real communication safety net didn't really hit me until I was there confronting it. I couldn't tell what a lot of words meant. There was specialized terms you find in an airport and train stations that don't come up all the time and I had never encountered. Yikes! I realized that I couldn't be really sure how to get to the commuter rail platforms. I dreaded going back to GF, who was tired, a bit grumpy and I felt, counting on me to have it all sorted out, since I'd done all this research.
But you know, it's amazing how your brain comes through for you when you absolutely have to. After staring at it for a good 10 minutes, going over it again and again, the diagrams and the words starting to gell suddenly. I figured out a plan of action. I went back to GF.
You know, I was right. And I did get us successfully to my friend's apartment in Montmartre. More on that next time. Now, my time on the pay computer is running out. Next post will be more interesting.
Anyway, here's a bit first bit. We rode out on an evening flight July 31 on Virgin Atlantic. While the gadgets they have for you to play with on the plane for six hours are really cool, the seats are incredibly cramped. I was practically on top of my fellow passenger, an Indian matron who was obsessed with buying the duty free stuff and kept stopping the stewardesses to ask them when she would be able to do so. Virgin also gives you this cute little reusable plastic bag with goodies, including a sleep mask that came in handy later when we arrived in London at 6 am. Luckily, a friend of Mike's family is living in London right now and she let us crash at her place and sleep for a few hours until we had to catch our 7 pm flight from Heathrow to Paris. She even took us out to lunch and told us about how she wound up coming all the way from Andover to London. She had moved out here, changed jobs and everything, for a boyfriend, who turned out to be an ass. But to her credit, she didn't want to just go home with her tail between her legs. So she's going to finish out her job assignement for another year and take advantage of being positioned to learn a lot of Europe. I kind of envied her, I must say. She's living in a tiny but rather glamorous flat in Kensington.
Anyway, that evening, we took a cab back to Heathrow and flew out to Paris around 7 pm. Our mission: To navigate our way from the airport to my friend Alexandre's house in the Montmartre district. I had done a lot of Internet research and I had figured out that we needed to catch the commuter rail into the city and then catch the metro and change lines. I figured it would all be labelled and even though I've only taken 1 semester of French, I figured it all had to be names, so how hard could it be?
When I got there, and we got through customs and while we were waiting for our luggage to come out, I began to look for signs and experienced a good solid five minutes of overwhelming fear. Nothing was in English (of course). And I knew that would be the case, but the enormity of there being no real communication safety net didn't really hit me until I was there confronting it. I couldn't tell what a lot of words meant. There was specialized terms you find in an airport and train stations that don't come up all the time and I had never encountered. Yikes! I realized that I couldn't be really sure how to get to the commuter rail platforms. I dreaded going back to GF, who was tired, a bit grumpy and I felt, counting on me to have it all sorted out, since I'd done all this research.
But you know, it's amazing how your brain comes through for you when you absolutely have to. After staring at it for a good 10 minutes, going over it again and again, the diagrams and the words starting to gell suddenly. I figured out a plan of action. I went back to GF.
You know, I was right. And I did get us successfully to my friend's apartment in Montmartre. More on that next time. Now, my time on the pay computer is running out. Next post will be more interesting.
