Made it to Paris via London… boy that was a long ride. Mental note, do not drink wine on the plane… makes me miserable and gives me a pounding headache that won’t go away after a nap because I can’t fall asleep on the plane 🙁 Even worse was that I still had bits of a cold, so overall, the flight felt pretty miserable.
Stopping in London was interesting… The airport is old and pretty run down, as expected. London pretty much has the same security restrictions that the US has, shoes off, no fluids, etc. One thing that struck me is the English accent from most people in the airport. When speaking with someone with an English accent, I feel as though I’m going to regress into using that accent. It’ll be interesting to see if that sticks after my week there in July.
The Paris CHG airport is even more run down compared to Heathrow. We had to walk down a stairway and take a bus to the terminal! Immigration was weird… There was this super-long lone that formed in the middle of the duty free section, just in the middle of the main corridor for people to enter France. There were only two immigration officers handling what must have been 500+ people. Interestingly enough, the line went very quickly, and I soon found out why. When I went through, they looked at my passport, then just waved me through, no questioning, not even a stamp(!). Customs was even easier… when going through customs, there’s a door that says "Customs" and a sign that says "do not enter" and arrows pointing you to the exit, nobody waiting to question you on what you’re bringing into the country.
From there, boy… I’m glad that at least the letters make sense and are recognizable, even though the pronunciation of the words is totally different. After I went in the wrong direction to catch the bus to central Paris, I finally found the bus, only to find that the first bus wouldn’t take more passengers, even though it was 80% empty, because the driver had run out of tickets(!?)
The drive into Paris was fairly ordinary… freeways, lots of buildings, greenery. Vehicles are different, but it felt like any other major airport & city. Once we entered Paris, the architecture started to look quite interesting, and the roads simply stopped making sense. I tried to keep track of where we were, but quickly lost it… The sad part is that all the directions that I had to the hotel were *wrong*. None of them started from the right place. Good thing this area is full of tourists (British, American mostly, you can tell by their accents) so it didn’t take too long to get help to find the way there… The city reminds me a lot of both downtown San Francisco, and Japan… narrow streets, tiny cars, lots of people walking around, run down buildings/stores next to historical buildings…
Tomorrow might be the Louvre, depending on whether I wake up or not 🙂