Goodbye City

City

We packed our stuff up and left Mama Shelter and headed to Karma & Dafydd’s hotel to drop off our luggage and go do some sight seeing.
Mama Shelter was an incredible Hotel, no doubt in my mind about staying there again, I would even love to move to Paris for three months, learn the language and work/stay at Mama Shelter. The culture was great, everyone spoke at least some English and were always incredibly helpful. There were two restaurants downstairs a pizzaria and an all you can eat breakfast/fancy dining area. The decoration was very chic and young with a warm welcoming feeling. There was a Scooby Doo light in our bedroom, the carpets even had little drawings all over them. The elevator had fun facts all over the walls, one in French and one in English, so it was fun seeing how well I could tanslate them. The first fact was - Dolphins and humans are the only two creatures who mate for pleasure.
Oh, the bed was like a marsh mellow! The pillows were memory foam and the bed just seemed to engulf you after a long day. It very quickly became a home to us, we didn’t want to leave. We could easily spend our last few days lying in bed, our last morning we found out that the Mac in our room (Oh yeh, every one gets a mac mounted to the wall in their room) had a great selection of free movies!
Sadly though, 12pm came and we left, we went downstairs to order a taxi and not even two minutes passed before it pulled up outside the hotel.

Gemma came with us today, Granny was taking Soph, Dan & the kids on a tour of a cemetery where some famous people were buried. Apparently it was quite fascinating, sounds a bit to eery for me, cemeteries make me sad.
We headed back into the city one last time, using the metro station, which even with three people who understood the system was still a pickle buying Karma & Dafydd’s tickets and finding the right train.
We were hoping to get into see the Catacombs. Which I've been looking forward to for so long, however the line was all the way around the block and almost back to the front door, at least a kilometer long. Only 200 people allowed on each tour and there was a 45 minute wait between each tour. We went to the front to ask if I was allowed to go in, before we got close to the guy he made eye contact with me and shook his finger, an immediate no. Devastated.
So we found a nice little cafe for brunch. We all ordered a kids steak with chips. Unfortunately for Gemma, they did not have the ingredients for the cocktail she ordered and there was no vegetarian option. Luckily, the French like to give little snacks to customers (Which is awesome!!) So Gemma’s lunch consisted of crisps and an alcoholic beverage of some sort (I forget). Whilst the rest of us were given some sort of blended up steak which was mushed into a patty. Very peculiar. However, there was this crispy little mix of something slightly oily and incredibly delicious perched on top of a tomato which made the whole meal amazing. I wasn’t feeling veggies, so Gemma had them for lunch.

Next stop was the Notre Dame, again. Karma & Dafydd put a lock on the bridge and Nathan and I managed to find the one we’d put on a few days ago.
The line was too big for us to wait to climb up, I think we were all quite impatient because thinking about it, everywhere you go there’s a massive line in Paris. Also, I don’t know if I would have been allowed. Doubtful there was an elevator in there.
So we moved onto some delicious chocolate crepes as a snack on our way to the boat tour on the river Seine, which went around the city showing off all it’s top attractions.
Unfortunately, we had missed one boat by 5 minutes and the next wasn’t for an hour and a half. Walking down the river we found a cruise that came every 10 minutes, perfect. It was the Bateau Bus, which Nathan cutely pointed out that’s the name of the suburb we live in.
Bateau is French for boat, I explain to him, which I've done several times before, but he hadn’t remembered. So that was quite exciting for Nathan.
The cruise was a bit rubbish, Nathan, Gemma and I were so tired we sat down inside. Whilst Karma & Dafydd did a shot gun on the side of the boat in front of the Notre Dame.
We jumped off after 20 minutes, went to the Louvre and decided to go home.

We went out with the family that night to a restaurant around the corner. The food was decent and it was nice being with Sophie & Granny who spoke French, so we knew what we were ordering! Nathan got along so well with the family which was nice, he put in a lot of effort getting to know them. Isaac kept himself entertained playing games on a phone and Eve was adorable as ever. She had the cutest, cheeky little grin.

After dinner we shared our belongings out into the two 90 Litre bags, one Soph & Dan had very kindly offered to take back to England for us as we would be staying with them for a few days. Making Nathan’s life a whole lot easier. Karma & Dafydd walked us to the train station and we said our goodbyes, for the third time, even though we’d be seeing them again in two weeks time.
Nathan & I hobbled down the stairs, completely exhausted and no idea where we were going. No phone to call a taxi or the hotel, no map with street names and no internet on our Australian phones, which were completely useless except for taking photos. We jumped on the metropolitan which took us to an outside train station. We planned to take the train all the way to Disney Land and try to get a taxi back from there. After jumping on the station we looked up at the map and realized that there were two possible trains we could have jumped on, one took us west to Disney Land, the other took us way down South of France. Of course, we had jumped on the wrong train and gone three stops before noticing. We jumped off, headed back to the start and tried again. At this point we were both incredibly tired and frustrated, close to calling a taxi but knowing it would cost at least 100 Euro’s & was not worth it.
Nathan pulled a map out of his pocket that Dan had given him before leaving, and we matched up one of the stations from the train route to our hotel. Thank god! After staring at countless maps trying to find something close to our hotel we finally had an idea and felt some relief that we were going the right way. The stop was two before Disney Land, although that’s not far, it would have still been a fair bit for a taxi and possibly a wait, if there were in-fact any taxi’s around that time of night.
We jumped off at boussey-saint-george, incredibly relieved we were at least in the right area. At this point we had both considered sleeping on the street and taking shifts to watch out. We got to the top of the stairs and put our tickets through the machine, *beep* we were out of zone. Brilliant. No ticket, a barrier between us and the outside, no machine to buy a ticket and a fractured pelvis. We tried to push the barrier but couldn’t go through them or under them. We HAD to go over them.
I chucked my bags over, gave Nathan my crutches and very slowly and carefully maneuvered myself through and over the gate, landing as carefully as I could on the other side. It was like one of those games you played as a kid where you have to get the metal circle from one side to the other over the wiggly lines without touching it and setting the buzzer off. Except the wiggly line was a train station barrier and the buzzer was my pelvis.
Mission complete.
Just as we walked out of the station I noticed a station attendant in the office, he must of seen us, either on camera or in real life. However, he got up, walked out his office door straight past us, into his little red car and drove off. Phew. His car had been parked right next to a taxi, I got so excited I hobbled over as quick as I could, but there was no one in the car. I looked around but there was no one else in sight except for a waiter in a small indian restaurant.
Just as we got out side and sat down at the bus stop to look for directions it started pouring it down. It hadn’t rained the entire week in Paris and it decided to now, right as we were completely lost and would possibly be walking for the next few hours. I was devastated and felt defeated.
Nathan was starting to get angry at this point, I think he was feeling a bit defeated to. I sat down and watched him pace trying to figure out what to do.
I told him to go ask the waiter in the Indian restaurant to call us a taxi if he wouldn’t mind.
Nathan ran across the road, now drenched, and went inside. All I could see from where I was sitting was him be pointed to the corner of the room, I was starting to feel quite nervous now, maybe there was a pay phone. He started flying his arms around, it looked like he was in an argument with someone.
He turned around and walked out the doors and back towards me... Followed by two tanned men. Now I was shitting myself, what had he done.
“What’s going on?” I yell
“I’ve done one better” He replied, “I’ve found a taxi man”
My heart filled with joy, it was the man who owned the empty taxi!
He explained that it was under a kilometer away, he was such a lovely man. He had finished work for the night but still took us home for a flat rate of 12 euros. We didn’t care how much it cost, although looking back it was probably a 60 second drive. We handed the man a 20 Euro note and told him to keep the change. We were so grateful and so was he.
We had made it and it was open, so thank full at this point that I booked us into a 24/7 hotel. Unfortunately, it was disgusting and the receptionist was having an argument with a German couple. This went on for about 20 minutes until he put us through and gave us our key. We got up to the first floor and our key didn’t work, we tried many times, Nathan had to run down stairs to get another key, which again didn’t work. The receptionist had to come up with his master key to let us in.
We were so mentally and physically drained, all we wanted was to go back to Mama Shelter, our previous hotel which had felt so homely for the 5 nights we stayed there. If I ever move to Paris for a short period of time, to work and to live, (Which I really hope I do) I would love to work at Mama Shelter. I will have to explain in another blog, it was incredible.

I ran myself a bath and almost passed out in the tub it was heavenly. Sadly, when I got out the towels smelt like vinegar and felt like sandpaper, the bed was hard as a rock, only one small flimsy pillow each and the bed sheets were so tightly tucked I felt like I was being faxed. Still, we were so tired, we passed out almost immediately.