Today we arrived in Paris! Courtney, Emily, Meghan and I spent all day travelling, taking virtually every form of transportation available to us, and now we are exhausted. We started our trip at Harlaxton Manor. The bus driver took us into town, where we exchanged our dollars and pounds for Euros, which is the currency used in France.
Since we arrived very early in town, we had some time for breakfast. Stopping in a cute little coffee shop, called Costa, we ordered caramel lattes and muffins. This breakfast was delicious, a perfect beginning to any day. Costa is my new favorite coffee shop (watch out Starbucks!).
After we finished eating, we began walking to the Grantham's train station. Once we made our way to the train station, we went to the man working at the terminal, and he gave us an itinerary to get to the Heathrow airport. After taking two trains and the underground, we were on a train to Heathrow airport. The man checking tickets recommended that we go to terminal 5 to see the new, futuristic look to that terminal. We had plenty of time to kill, and we were leaving from terminal 4, so we decided to take his advice and check it out. The terminal was brand new and had cool architecture. We ate a lunch at a pub in that terminal that consisted of fish &chips and minty mashed peas. The waitress took forever to bring us our check, but once she did, we hurried our way back to the train to get to terminal 4. We took the lift down to the train departures, but we were immediately turned away. The man working the train entrance said we would be better off taking the bus because it was much quicker. At this point, the clock was ticking and we began to get anxious. We finally found the bus stop and had to wait 15 minutes for it to come. Once the bus arrived, we hopped on and waited until the terminal 4 stop. We were relieved when we saw the terminal we thought we needed to be at for departure. We rushed up to the Air France section of departures, only to find that the flight was travelling to the States! Frantically, we approached one of the flight attendants. The woman said we needed to be at terminal 3! She also said that we were going to miss our flight! Sheer terror washed over all of our faces..the marathon began. We ran to the elevators and down to the bus stop, but the bus took off without us. Panicking, we begged one of the parking shuttles to drive us to our terminal. The directed us to the underground train, which was supposed to get us there as soon as possible. Running through the airport like a maniac, I felt like I was in the movie Home Alone, or at least a new episode of Punk’d. Luckily, we made the train. Panting and catching our breaths, we explained to the train conductor what had happened and why we were in such a rush. A woman overheard us talking and joined in on our conversation. Much to our surprise, she was a flight attendant for Air France! She reassured us that we would make our flight and offered to take us to our departure gate. The flight attendant, who was from Brazil, led us the entire way, and with her help, we made our flight!
Thankfully, we had a safe and short flight. Once we landed, we found our hotel and freshened up. Since it was late, we decided to go see the Eiffel Tower at night. We were rewarded for our hard day of travelling when we saw the wonderful architecture light up brilliantly. While we watched the light show of the Tower, we met other Floridians (it’s a small world after all). They were also studying abroad, but they were from USF. After the spectacular sighting, we made our way back to the hotel and stopped at a café for some food, however, it was late and the café was only serving wine and other drinks. So we began our weekend in France with a few glasses of wine and made some friends at the café. Still hungry after the wine tasting, we made our way to another restaurant, and luckily we were able to be served food. After we ate, we walked back to the hotel to get a good night rest for tomorrow (Saturday). Our first night in Paris was truly amazing!
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