First I would like to congratulate myself on 100 posts. Woot. Now onto the show.
Day 3 - March 11
The wakeup call came early. 3:15 so we could be ready when our taxi got there at 4:00 so we could make it to the airport for our 6:30ish flight. Wow, what a whorl-wind adventure it has been and we haven't even made it to France yet. We get up and get everything in order. Make it down stairs and the taxi is their waiting for us. We load up and tell him we have to stop off at a bank/ATM to get the money we need to pay him. He drove us away from the airport and toward the ATM. When we got there they were not going to let The Princess use her card. I then tried mine and also got shot down. Well, all we have is Euros so now we are in a delima. Luckily our taxi guy was real great and called the hotel to ask what the exchange rate was and how much in Euros it would be for the ride. The guy calls back and tells him and we are on our way to the Heathrow airport to fly to Paris. I did a little math in my head to make sure it at least sounded about right and we were set. We entered the airport, check-ed on the kiosk and waited for a person to show up to take our bags. Not so stresfull this time, because there was no one there to take anyones bags so we all just waited in queue until people showed up and then we headed deeper into the airport where we found a bastion of American Style Sanity: Starbucks. Again, all the numbers look the same as in America, you just have to multiply it by 2.5 to see if it is really worth it. We ended up with regular coffe and begals. The flight loaded up and we were off. No extra events to hold us down. Oh yeah, to add this real quick, I saw about 20 guys in our 24 hrs here that reminded me of Mr. Bean, they are everywhere over here. hehehe. When we landed in Paris they made an announcment reminding everyone that there was DEFINITLY NO SMOKING in the airport. The rules had recently changed and the made sure everyone knew that there was no smoking. Our arrival in Paris was relativly un-eventful-We landed, we got our luggage, we walked down to the RER B(the train into Paris) and got our tickets to head on out. Well, the tickets don't like Americans and when you say you want 2 tickets the machines all think you want a 2-way ticket. So, after The Princess entered the train terminal I couldn't run the ticket through to get in. I had to go back to the desk and get them to exchange my left over 1-way ticket for another one that would work for me. Hurray. Now we are on our way. As we were nearing Paris, two men entered our train car. The first was a nice looking man who carried an accordian and started to play. Shortly after, another man comes running in with a full bass and starts strumming along. It was actually very good and I wanted to film it for YouTube or something, but I also had just spent a ridicullous amount of money to get here and was being stingy with what we had left. So, we did not tip them or video tape them. I felt a little guilty for this, but not for to long. In Gard d'Nor(the North Train Station) we figured out the direction we needed to take to make it to Gard l'Est(East Train Station) and headed out. The first sight we got to see inside the city limits of Paris was a Sex Booth place with Private booths for 1euro=1video. Well, there you go I guess. From there(the train station not the sex shop) we headed south and east and made our way just fine. Our trip was a little slow, but we were carring several bags and had not really had a nights sleep for several days. Once we arrived there the office for buying tickets was closed. Closed on Sundays read a sign. Well, what now. We sat for minute to gain our composure and then went to the local ticket box. He told us we had to go around and outside to find the other ticket spot and we were able to find it eventually. Now that we had tickets we wanted to take a quick look at the area we were in and just walk around a little bit. So, we asked about lockers for our luggage. Oh yes, the lady says, they are at Gare d'Nor. So, back up the hill to the train station we started at to drop of our luggage so we can enjoy the 3 hours we have before our train leaves. Back at the North Train Station, a girl is standing there looking dishevled and she just keeps saying Speak English. So, I say yeah sure to wich she holds up a sign that basicly says, I am from hungaria my mother is here for two months, blah blah blah, give me money. I told her no(again, we did not have a lot to spare) and start to walk she follows, please please. I answer no sorry. At this she says I'm pregnant. Well, that is probly not good for your child, but I'm sorry no. She turns away. During our trip I see this girl atleast 5 more times and she is doing the same thing the whole time. You might think the is cruel of me, but you will soon learn why I didn't give money to any of the beggers there. Then we headed down to this little river in that district and it was really really nice. All the Frenchies out walking around for a Sunday stroll. Kids everywhere very relaxing and nice. I have some pictures that I will post of this, there was a little tent city down by the river. So, back to the North Train station to pickup our stuff and then on to the East Train station to catch our ride. We get on and there is plenty of room and it is a very nice train for riding 4 hours in. Very nice. After a while the ticket guys come by. Everyone else seems to have a single ticket for everyone in their group, not us, we only have one ticket for the both of us. It does have both of our names on it so I am only a little worried. When the guy gets to us he asks us if we live in France. No. So he explains that we were suppose to Validate the ticket in Paris and that usually it is a 10euro fine for each person. Just like the taxi, this guy is really nice and he doesn't charge us. Now we are finally in Strausbourg. Except we don't have anyway to contact our friends there because the phones don't take money. Thats right, the phones in France don't take money you have to have a special calling card to use for it. Well, we didn't know that at the time so we wandered around like crazies trying to figure things out. Finally got a card, made the call and our friend came to pick us up. While we waited we headed over to a McDonalds. I only mention this because they have these nifty little ham&cheese stars for the kiddies. The word for ham is jambon and the word for cheese is fromage, so natuarlly the stars are called Jambon et Cheese. Of course? A short car ride and we are home, where we eat a fantastic dinner and spend quite a good amount of time catching up on things. One of the things I learned in this conversation is that France is Socialist. Part of what this means is that the homeless people get paid more then minimum wage for being homless. This is why we no longer felt that twinge of guilt for not giving them our money. This is also why all the homeless people have tents. Tents everywhere, on the sidewalk in the park, all over the place. Crazy tents.
Well, we have successfully made it to France and are in Strausbourg about to go to sleep so I am going to divert from the rest of the story and work on taxes. I'll be back shortly to continue this ramble of our adventures.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
#99
Day 2 - March 10
Now that we are at Gatwick we have a little bit of a delima. So far we have been flying on NWA and everything has been good, but from here on out we are actually going to fly Air France. This is because from Gatwick they are the only people who fly to Strausbourg, which is on the French/German boarder and our hopefull destination for our stay in France. Anyway, the delima is the fact that we have landed at the North Terminal and need to go through customs to get our bags and then proceed to the South Terminal and check them back in for the Air France flight. No big deal. I have flown into/out of several foreign countries before for work(bahamas and panama) and there is no way they have better customs then England does. So, we start walking down the hallway toward customs so we can get a move on and maybe find some lunch. We round the corner and there are about 2,000 people in this gigantic line for customs. It actually filled the entire roped line in the main room, up a large ramp down a hall the length of the first room, down another hall and around a corner where we finally found the end of it. 2.5 hours not looking so long anymore. So, we waited. The people in front of us were really nice. At one point, The Princess had to get out of line to go to the bathroom and I was holding our place, but then it hit me that I had to go as well, and this was not going to wait. Luckily they were very understanding as I shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom, Julie came back and everything worked out well. Finally after about 2hours we get up to the desk and get our passports stamped. Hurridly we rush into a larger room with about 10 different luggage dispensers and peoples luggage everywhere. I scour the room, but any signs that our flight had been here were gone about 90 minutes ago. So, we start to hunting for our baggage. The Princess was actually able to find them pretty quickly while I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Now, on a mission we are trying despratly to make it over to the Southern terminal in the 4 minutes before the plane takes off to try and stop it somehow so we can make it on. Unfortuantlly, when we arrived at the Southern Terminal no one there had ever heard of Air France and had no clue where it was. So we wandered around for a minute and finally came across some one who said, follow that sign around the corner. Around the corner we go and we find a single check in location with no personell and it is odviously shut down for the day. I look around for a second and ask someone from another airline who I should talk to. They point me to customer service desk. This is the point where we find out that our tickets are now null&void and that we can not exchange/refund/modify/anything them and will have to purchase new tickets. Huzzah. It only takes us about an hour to finally find the next flight to Strausbourgh. Sunday night at 7:30. Hmmm. We work with the rep for a couple more mintues and finally come up with a plan that will have us on a flight to Paris at 6:00 in the morning. From Paris we can get train tickets or something to get us to Strausbourg.
One more catch. The flight to Paris is not leaving from this airport, but is actually leaving from Heathrow which is about 45 minutes away by bus. Fantastic. So, we kick over to bus over to Heathrow and then have to find a hotel, dinner, and a taxi for the next morning. The thing to remember through all this is that we only have Euros because the plan was to end up in France where everything is in Euros. So, here we are in England looking at 2 plane tickets,2 bus tickets, 2 dinners, a hotel room and a taxi, all in pounds. Luckily, The Princess had one of her cards with her and they were nice enough not to shut it off. I on the other hand had been quickly cut off by the Credit Overlords before even making it onto the flight to Gatwick. Another thing to remember when you are travelling overseas. When in England everything appears to be the same price, example: A hotel room 90, a plane ticket 105, a bus ticket 19, a decent dinner for 2 30. The kicker comes when you realize you have to convert each pound into 2.5 dollars. So, your hotel becomes 200, plane becomes 250 and so on. Yep, that was one expensive night in England. When we finally made it to our hotel we just crashed and slept for 3 hours at which point we went to walk around trying to find something to eat. The only thing was a british pub that was not serving the full menu so we ended back at the hotel for an very expensive, not very good dinner.
Now that we are at Gatwick we have a little bit of a delima. So far we have been flying on NWA and everything has been good, but from here on out we are actually going to fly Air France. This is because from Gatwick they are the only people who fly to Strausbourg, which is on the French/German boarder and our hopefull destination for our stay in France. Anyway, the delima is the fact that we have landed at the North Terminal and need to go through customs to get our bags and then proceed to the South Terminal and check them back in for the Air France flight. No big deal. I have flown into/out of several foreign countries before for work(bahamas and panama) and there is no way they have better customs then England does. So, we start walking down the hallway toward customs so we can get a move on and maybe find some lunch. We round the corner and there are about 2,000 people in this gigantic line for customs. It actually filled the entire roped line in the main room, up a large ramp down a hall the length of the first room, down another hall and around a corner where we finally found the end of it. 2.5 hours not looking so long anymore. So, we waited. The people in front of us were really nice. At one point, The Princess had to get out of line to go to the bathroom and I was holding our place, but then it hit me that I had to go as well, and this was not going to wait. Luckily they were very understanding as I shuffled down the hallway to the bathroom, Julie came back and everything worked out well. Finally after about 2hours we get up to the desk and get our passports stamped. Hurridly we rush into a larger room with about 10 different luggage dispensers and peoples luggage everywhere. I scour the room, but any signs that our flight had been here were gone about 90 minutes ago. So, we start to hunting for our baggage. The Princess was actually able to find them pretty quickly while I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Now, on a mission we are trying despratly to make it over to the Southern terminal in the 4 minutes before the plane takes off to try and stop it somehow so we can make it on. Unfortuantlly, when we arrived at the Southern Terminal no one there had ever heard of Air France and had no clue where it was. So we wandered around for a minute and finally came across some one who said, follow that sign around the corner. Around the corner we go and we find a single check in location with no personell and it is odviously shut down for the day. I look around for a second and ask someone from another airline who I should talk to. They point me to customer service desk. This is the point where we find out that our tickets are now null&void and that we can not exchange/refund/modify/anything them and will have to purchase new tickets. Huzzah. It only takes us about an hour to finally find the next flight to Strausbourgh. Sunday night at 7:30. Hmmm. We work with the rep for a couple more mintues and finally come up with a plan that will have us on a flight to Paris at 6:00 in the morning. From Paris we can get train tickets or something to get us to Strausbourg.
One more catch. The flight to Paris is not leaving from this airport, but is actually leaving from Heathrow which is about 45 minutes away by bus. Fantastic. So, we kick over to bus over to Heathrow and then have to find a hotel, dinner, and a taxi for the next morning. The thing to remember through all this is that we only have Euros because the plan was to end up in France where everything is in Euros. So, here we are in England looking at 2 plane tickets,2 bus tickets, 2 dinners, a hotel room and a taxi, all in pounds. Luckily, The Princess had one of her cards with her and they were nice enough not to shut it off. I on the other hand had been quickly cut off by the Credit Overlords before even making it onto the flight to Gatwick. Another thing to remember when you are travelling overseas. When in England everything appears to be the same price, example: A hotel room 90, a plane ticket 105, a bus ticket 19, a decent dinner for 2 30. The kicker comes when you realize you have to convert each pound into 2.5 dollars. So, your hotel becomes 200, plane becomes 250 and so on. Yep, that was one expensive night in England. When we finally made it to our hotel we just crashed and slept for 3 hours at which point we went to walk around trying to find something to eat. The only thing was a british pub that was not serving the full menu so we ended back at the hotel for an very expensive, not very good dinner.
#98
So, it has been a while. About a month I guess since my last real update. Well, work is still about the same. Life here in the booming metropolis of Searcy is pretty good. I guess the big news is we spent last week in France. Yeah, France, the one on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. For reals, that one. So, I have decided to work on recording our little intercontinental adventure here for those who read this. I am thinking that I will split up the posts so 1post = 1day. This may cause some problems to start with, but should line itself up after the two days/posts or so. Anyway, here goes nothing and if you do not want to read about France, then stop reading here for a couple of posts and come back when I start talking about a new buisness oportunity that might just get you out of debt and home from you job in 2-5 years.
France Day 1 - March 9
We have a tendency to wait till the last moment on things. Because of this we waited until this morning to finish packing and cleaning the house. I still had to go by the office and print off some tickets/itteneraries and pick up some batteries, but beside that we were set. While I was printing everything off at work, I realized I had the departure time wrong in my head and we actually needed to leave our house about 30 minutes earlier then I thought. Not a problem, just had to hurry things up. On the way to the airport The Princess played with the Learn French program on my computer and reviewed some words and whatnot. It was an enjoyable ride over to Memphis and we actually arrived at the correct time we needed to be there. We entered the airport, walked up to the check-in screen, got everything done and then waited for someone to take our bags. We waited, and waited. Then we waited some more. I ended up taking about 45 minutes for them to finally take our bags. You might think a couple things at this point 1.I am exaggerating, which I can guarantee you I am not because I looked at my watch several times because I couldn't beleive how long it was taking. 2. What a big line it must have been, and again you would be wrong. There was actually very little of a line. Because it was an international flight we had arrived 2 hours early, with what I thought was plenty of time to spare. We would soon find out, 2 hours is never enough time when going over seas. Both of the lines on either side of use kept getting called up and their baggage taken. Several times people would walk up, do the computer check-in and have their bags taken before they even finished. The whole time I am standing there, very menicing, in awe that I have been waiting for 20 minutes with no help. The the real kicker came down. When someone finally decided that our line was good enough to be assisted, they decided to start at the back of the line, so everyone behind us(who arrived well after we had already checked-in) went in front of us, said they were sorry to us and went on their merry way. Again, this would be come a regular event in our grand adventure. After we got through security(only a couple of minutes) we had less then an hour till our flight left, so that meant they were going to board in about 20 minutes. We hurry down to the food court for lunch(haven't eaten for 6 hours) and grab a burger and fries. Because we ordered the Large fries so we could split them everyone around us ordered and left well before we got ours. Then we went to the gate, ate, and boarded our plane. No more drama. We landed in Minn./St.Paul and walked around for 4 hours while we waited for our next flight. Ate at a restaurant that didn't have nachos and then got on our plan to Gatwick, England. The flight was alright, we had the two seats togther on one side so we could fall asleep and not get all weird on people. Also, each seat had its own video screen so you could select from a plutera of movies/games/music/maps to watch. I ended up watching Stranger then Fiction, Deja Vu, Rocky Balboa. These were actually three pretty good movies. We then arrive in Gatwick and deboard the plane with 2.5 hours to reach our next flight.
France Day 1 - March 9
We have a tendency to wait till the last moment on things. Because of this we waited until this morning to finish packing and cleaning the house. I still had to go by the office and print off some tickets/itteneraries and pick up some batteries, but beside that we were set. While I was printing everything off at work, I realized I had the departure time wrong in my head and we actually needed to leave our house about 30 minutes earlier then I thought. Not a problem, just had to hurry things up. On the way to the airport The Princess played with the Learn French program on my computer and reviewed some words and whatnot. It was an enjoyable ride over to Memphis and we actually arrived at the correct time we needed to be there. We entered the airport, walked up to the check-in screen, got everything done and then waited for someone to take our bags. We waited, and waited. Then we waited some more. I ended up taking about 45 minutes for them to finally take our bags. You might think a couple things at this point 1.I am exaggerating, which I can guarantee you I am not because I looked at my watch several times because I couldn't beleive how long it was taking. 2. What a big line it must have been, and again you would be wrong. There was actually very little of a line. Because it was an international flight we had arrived 2 hours early, with what I thought was plenty of time to spare. We would soon find out, 2 hours is never enough time when going over seas. Both of the lines on either side of use kept getting called up and their baggage taken. Several times people would walk up, do the computer check-in and have their bags taken before they even finished. The whole time I am standing there, very menicing, in awe that I have been waiting for 20 minutes with no help. The the real kicker came down. When someone finally decided that our line was good enough to be assisted, they decided to start at the back of the line, so everyone behind us(who arrived well after we had already checked-in) went in front of us, said they were sorry to us and went on their merry way. Again, this would be come a regular event in our grand adventure. After we got through security(only a couple of minutes) we had less then an hour till our flight left, so that meant they were going to board in about 20 minutes. We hurry down to the food court for lunch(haven't eaten for 6 hours) and grab a burger and fries. Because we ordered the Large fries so we could split them everyone around us ordered and left well before we got ours. Then we went to the gate, ate, and boarded our plane. No more drama. We landed in Minn./St.Paul and walked around for 4 hours while we waited for our next flight. Ate at a restaurant that didn't have nachos and then got on our plan to Gatwick, England. The flight was alright, we had the two seats togther on one side so we could fall asleep and not get all weird on people. Also, each seat had its own video screen so you could select from a plutera of movies/games/music/maps to watch. I ended up watching Stranger then Fiction, Deja Vu, Rocky Balboa. These were actually three pretty good movies. We then arrive in Gatwick and deboard the plane with 2.5 hours to reach our next flight.
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