Last Train to Paris

Paris started out bitter. Like REALLY BITTER! AirFrance is a bitch!...excuse my French lol. But no, they seriously are the worst. Here's the rundown. We all booked our flight to Paris on the same night at the same time, got our confirmation pages sent to our email you know everything's cool...so we were thinking. We get to the freakin airport and everybody gets their ticket except Sam. They claimed they had no records on her reservation or information on her in the system so they sent us to the information desk. Totally messing up the vibe at this point.

This is where they told Sam she could pay 317 euros to get on our flight. Ha! Big joke right? Supposedly the airline canceled her reservations. WHY????? Who knows! Like any person in their right mind Sam chose to not pay the 317 euros and opted to find a later flight at a cheaper price. This was just the beginning of a rough day.....


I guess I can laugh about the plane ride now but at the moment I thought it was for sure that I wasn't going to make it. As soon as I get on the plane to find my seat I'm instantly pissed off. First of all, the pilot was still reading his manual as we were boarding the plane o_0. Second of all, some Asian was sitting in my window seat! There was a family of about 12 Asians that crowded the whole back of the plane -__-. Luckily I was too upset that Sam couldn't be on our flight to even fight for my seat, and so, I sat next to the one of his family members on the other side with her ratchet offspring. About 30 minutes into the flight we ran into turbulence. The turbulence we hit in Fort Lauderdale on the way over to Spain was pretty bad, but I think this one was waaay worse. I can't remember who told me this but they said "If the flight attendants are calm you have nothing to worry about. When you see them freak out then you freak out." The flight attendants were in middle of serving drinks before we hit the turbulence and after 15 minutes of it they quickly packed the cart up and was trying to head to the back. This was it! The flight attendants were freaking out!!! Lol if y'all could have seen their faces and the way the carts were shaking y'all would have been scared too. At this point I'm feeling like it was a reason why Sam didn't make it on this flight. She escaped death lol. It felt like some real  Final Destination type ish. As I'm praying I'm trying to go over in my head what the videos on the plane ((that nobody ever pays attention to)) tell you to do in case of emergencies. I couldn't remember lol. Between trying to have a conversation with God and the loudmouth  Asian lady next to me I couldn't concentrate. Eventually it ended but the plane landing was wack as usual. We almost ran off the runway lol! I didn't want to believe that it was probably the pilot's first day of work, but after all what happened it probably was.

Friends Hostel....boy oh boy

I had no idea what I was getting myself into by staying in a hostel, and no I've never seen the movie Hostel. There was rumors that it was located in the ghetto. I don't know what ghetto these people have been to but I've seen some rough ghettos lol and this was not the ghetto. I've never been to a ghetto where they hustled Marlboro cigarettes on the street corner lol. Who does that ? Anyhow, the hostel was conveniently located by the metro station so as soon as we got off the train we simply crossed the street and there it was.

The inside tricked us. It had really nice mirrors with red,black, and white decor. Sounds posh right? 

....And then we stepped foot into our room. -_____________________-  The room Crockett booked for us was a mixed gendered room with a maximum of NINE people! If felt like jail and all of our cell-mates were guys lol. 

We slept with our purses wrapped in our jackets which we used as pillows. We created a lil barricade to protect our bags too lol. Shoooooooooot....

Idk if it was the best barricade but it made us feel better lol. 

Later that night Sam met us at the hostel! I didn't think she would actually make it, but there she was in the flesh! Because we waited for her to meet us we missed J.Cole's performance at the concert. But it was cool. We made it just in time to see Drake :) 

It was bananas! They new all the words!!! 

I didn't know that Drake was such an awesome performer. The concert literally gave me chills. Real crazy. I'm so glad that I can say I went to my very first concert in Paris! It was also Drake's first concert in Paris too..guess we have something in common. He's still ugly tho. 

Something weird that I noticed was they're still pretty big on urban wear lol. I saw BabyPhat, Mecca, Avirex, Reebok ((YES REEBOK'S lmao)) and some other lame crap that we've tossed out of our closets long time ago. A good number of the guys had on NY hats too...I'm sure Kadeem could appreciate that :) lol. The French guys were verrrry sexy! All of them! If only they spoke enough English...lol. We did meet one guy who spoke really good English and we asked him where did he learn to speak it. He said from movies and Michael Jackson lmao! 

Guess America gets 1 point for that! lol

Now on to the good stuff..the tourist-y stuff that everybody comes to Paris to see!

First up: Musee du Louvre

  And yes Monalisa was even nice enough to pose with me :) 

 If you squint really hard you can see her lol. 

Then we hit up Notre Dame

 I had no idea that it was a Cathedral. Learned something new. 

 After climbing 200 steps to the top of the towers this was our view. You can see the Eiffel Tower in a distance if you're not tired of squinting lol. 

1/20 bells that survived the French Revolutionary War. Can you believe it took 16 men to operate this 1 bell??

 I still think gargoyles come alive at night time. Blame cartoons.

 We even got to see a portion of mass. That thing that he's swinging around was producing this awful smell. I was happy when he passed me lol. I think it's kind of weird that they conduct ceremonies while tourist are still in the building taking pictures and video recording. It was an experience. 

After that we caught the train to Arc de Triomphe

 

And we ended the night with a ride to the top of the Eiffel Tower :) 

Good times. Good times. 

The next morning we caught the train to airport. We literally caught the train everrrywhere that weekend. But on this day we earned our stripes! We finally completed our rite of passage. We hopped ALL the gates to catch the train like all the other Parisians! The adrenaline rush had me feeling real bad ass! Ahh I loved it! A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Even though our trip started out horrible the ending was amazing. I really liked the fact that we didn't stay in a tourist hot spot. I got the opportunity to truly engage with the local people of France. I got to experience the really good side of Paris and I got to experience the "not so" good side of Paris. Lots of stereotypes broken down. I thought the French hated Americans. They loved us!!! Every time we spoke somebody was asking "Where are you from??" *French accent* followed by "Ahh..an American girl :)" I felt the love in Paris and I definitely plan to go back!