The Adventure Begins!

Alright friends, here I am in PARIS! It was quite a journey getting here and it is way too late to write everything so I will just get through tuesday:

I woke up in St. Louis at 4 in the morning to get the airport. My plane left around 6:30 and I had a layover  in Chicago. I had a very bad cold and could not stop blowing my nose and it was disgusting.

My flight to England was extremely boring. I could not sleep and didn't feel very good because of the cold I just mentioned. The man next to me was this big black guy with all these tattoos and a remarkable talent for talking on the phone in a way that no one around him could understand. Seriously, I was impressed. He talked and talked until the plane took off and he was right next to me and the whole time I had NO IDEA what he said. No idea. And he was speaking in English. Anyway, he was quiet but nice and just slept the whole time with a blanket over his head. Later I found out that he is a musician and was going to London with his band- cool beans.

As most of you have already seen from my facebook post, my flight got a little more interesting when we landed in Heathrow. They made an announcement that we needed to stay in our seats upon landing so that the police could board. This struck me as very odd and my mind immediately jumped to Harry Potter 3 when the dementors board the Hogwarts Express on Harry's way to school. (Yes...I am a nerd). Anyway, about 5 police came on the plane and I was lucky enough to have the action right near me. Long story short, they kept us waiting for forever and wouldn't tell us anything except that it wasn't a terrorist attack and then they led a passenger away in Handcuffs.  The police took a few people's information so that they could contact witnesses in case of an investigation and then we got to go.

Thank you very much police! Because of your faithful service of justice (I learned from other passengers later that the pervert had been feeling up his neighbor lady's leg and stole her money) I missed the last shuttle to my hotel. No fear! I stood in line behind an American couple at the information booth, overheard that they were going to the same hotel as me and weaseled my way into sharing a private car with them. Which is great because I got to split the cost with someone and I felt more safe (it was about midnight). Thus my first lesson of international travel: find families and follow them.

 I signed in at the hotel (with way more difficulty understanding the receptionist's accent than I had anticipated (imagine a asian/british accent!) and found my room and suddenly felt kind of lonely because there were two little twin beds and just one of me (Marilyn, I miss you and Contiki!). Here is a picture of the room:

Magnificent. Anyway, I was totally in survival mode because I got 3 hours of sleep and then had to be out of the room by 6:30 the next morning to catch my shuttle to the airport for my flight to Paris. Getting to my airport terminal was not a problem and it was exciting to catch my first day-time view of England. Getting from Heathrow to Paris is a whole other story. Actually it was a nightmare. I flew AirFrance and I give you three guess about what went wrong...  (to be continued)