Day trip to Paris

Well, the day began wth some unexpected and unwelcome excitement. After getting very little sleep, I woke up around 4:30 AM to walk down the hill to the border, catch the 6:15 bus, take the 6:25 tram in Geneva to the train station, and then get on the 7:15 train to Paris! I was accompanying Leo to Paris for moral support while he went to the embassy to obtain a Swiss visa. While this is exciting in itself, this was not the unexpected excitement of which I spoke. That began when I went to leave the dorm. Let me expain that during the night, from 11:00 PM to about 6:00 AM, the door locks from both the inside and the outside. Bizarre, eh? I had asked for an extension so my card would work in the morning, but uppon my arrival to la porte (the door), my card failed to open the door. A bit flustered, but trying not to panic just yet, I bolted back upstairs and grabbed Leah, who had just returned from Christmas break, so I thought her card might work. "Quick, I need your card to get out of the dorm!" She kindly obliged, so I ran back downstairs, but alas, to no avail. Back upstairs I shimmied, gently woke my roommate, who turned out to be awake anyway, and asked for her card. She also was very kind and accompanied me back down the three flights of stairs with her card, which luckily worked this time, much to my relief, since the hour for the bus's arrival at the border was quickly approaching. After finally getting the door upon, I booked it down the hill, quickly stopping at the pattiserie/boulangerie (pastry/bakery shop) to grab 2 pain aux raisins et 2 croissants for our breakfasts before grabbing the bus.

My journey continued without too much more incident until we arrived at the train station. When I attempted to buy the tickets to Paris, they told me my they didn't accept the type of French debit card I had. Our train was about to leave. We couldn't buy tickets. Now was the time to panic. I quickly phoned my dear mother, who, luckily for me and Leo, was able to transfer the money that was going to go into my French account into my US account, so we were able to get our tickets. So Leo and I did some studying, enjoyed the scenery, and settled in for the three and a half hour ride. Little did we know, there was more excitement headed our way.

When we reached Paris, we quickly plotted the closest metro and headed underground. Luckily the train arrived ten minutes early, at 10:30 instead of 10:40, because the embassy closed at 11:00. We found the embassy and reached it around 11:10. Leo went to talk to the guy and he said, "I'm sorry sir, we've just closed". Blast, foiled again. Leo desperately tried to explain to the guy that we had come all this way from Geneva, took the first train out and had to get this done so the guy nicely let him upstairs to get it done. The next thing I know, as I'm sitting there waiting, Leo comes dashing (there was a lot of dashing, booking it, bolting, running, etc. that day) back downstairs; he had forgotten his visa pictures so they told him he could go down the street to get some. So he goes down the street and the guy there says "Ohhh... the machine doesn't work, go down to the other machine way down at the other end of the street." So, after a lot of sprinting, he gets his pictures, comes back to the embassy, only to jog backdownstairs once more to where I was waiting. He told me they wouldn't accept the cash for payment for the visa and he needed to use my card. So he gave me the cash, I gave them the visa, and the day finally started to get a bit more relaxing. He still has to wait two months to see if they accept it, but it was good to have the process over and out of his hands.

To celebrate, we went to lunch at the bottom of the hill near Montmartre and afterwards climbed the hill to Montmartre. It was nice to be in Paris without the sole purpose of the trip being tourism. We were able to blend in a bit, we knew our way around, could speak the language, weren't rushing around to see anything (except the embassy :) ) , and it was a gorgeous day out. So we sat on the steps of the Sacre Coeur (see picture) and talked, people-watched, chatted with some local artists, took pictures, and soaked up the sunshine. Afterwards, we wandered back down the hill, went back to the train station, bought our return tickets, saw an unusually large display of a whale outside the station (see picture) and began to get chilly. So we wandered into a very French cafe and got some hot drinks and relaxed and unwound from the exciting morning. We still had a couple of hours before our train left, so, after going over what we both had already done in Paris and what was left to do, we decided to go to Notre Dame and climb to the top, something neither of us had done. We managed to get to the right metro, but upon exiting, there were about a million different streets you could exit from. I picked one I thought was right, we got out onto the street and saw a very Notre Damish-looking building. "Voila, Notre Dame!", we both said. We started walking in that direction until I paused, looked at it a bit harder and said, "Leo, there's only one tower. I don't think that's Notre Dame." We both been to Paris multiple times and seen N.D. before, so this should have come as no surprise to us; we should have known better. But my excuse is that we were both very tired and very worn out from the day. We eventually got to N.D. only to discover the top was closed until next week, to our dissapointment. Quel Dommage. So we walked outside a bit more and stood on the bridge to have a moment appreciating the Seinne, the people, and the city, and then headed back to the train station and Geneva, finally arriving back to Collonges around 11:00 PM. Wonderful day.