City of Love with the Loves of my Life

I followed the pattern not to book my tickets early, so that all direct flights are insanely expensive and I have to take a detour. It seemed that the cheapest option is going via Paris this time, spending a day and a half there! However, all my usual and highly missed travel companions were either in Provence or New Zeland and I didn't find Paris to be a place to visit alone. As I was complaining about this to my parents over skype, my always busy dad surprised me:

    - Which dates you said they were?

    - Umm, 8-10th January.

    - Oh, actually I have those days free ish, we could continue the tradition of starting the year with a trip together.   (the year before we all drove to Birmingham in a car visiting Bremen and London on the way)

Can you imagine the look on our faces? Dad was the only one who has been to Paris before, and still only for a couple of hours. My mom had always wanted to visit it (not as much as Iceland but still), my brother was happy for a chance to skip school (joke, he's a genius, he doesn't mind going to school), and I was excited to visit the City of Love with the ones I love the most. 

Embracing the new Ryanair's luggage policy all four of us took a bigger and a smaller luggage. Not that we needed that much, just because we can. Joking, it was my stuff in all eight of them. I'm not a fan of travelling light you know. Not stressing out that the plane missed it's slot leaving us inside of a not moving plane for additional half an hour and taking the longer route afterwards, we arrived to France. France, not Paris, because Paris was more than one hour away on the shuttle bus. Not the cheapest thing I must say! So in the late afternoon of a beautiful Wednesday here we were, standing in Paris and ready to inhale the beauty of the City of Light. (by the way, did you know that it's called City of Light because of the intelligentsia that made the city famous for its education and culture and attracted artists, writers? Yeah, I did my homework)

We began by not following our plan and postponing the visit to La Défense in order to check-in to hotel first. Easier said than done! Let's just say that hotel wasn't the best part of the journey. The best part about the hotel was it's location though, just by the Place de la République, five steps from metro station. We decided to make use of this advantage and made our way to Montmartre. First stop - Moulin Rouge. I never expected I will need to explain what Moulin Rouge is to a guy but here you go - meet my brother. I was quite surprised how small it was, I don't know why but I expected something bigger. 

We then hurried up the hill to Sacré-Coeur while it was still open. The interior of this basilica is as beautiful as the exterior and as the panoramic view from the top of the hill. Though the weather wasn't perfect - it was showering but really warm; walking around the narrow streets lit with old beautiful lanterns and small cafés on the sides gave a really French feel to it.

I guess my dad has a sixth sense for amazing places because as we were walking through a square he just randomly pointed at a café-restaurant and said we should go in. And really - live music, people singing along, excellent service and charismatic staff, gorgeous food and brilliant wine. I couldn't stop smiling even for a moment. Except when I was trying to figure out how to use that thing called oyster because I was laughing my heart out then. I could say that our time at Chez Eugéne was the most French moment of the stay.
P.S. there are never too many photos with food, don't judge me.

As we didn't feel like going home yet, we decided not to delay our visit to La Defénse any more. And it was a brilliant choice to go there after sunset - vividly illuminated glass skyscrapers combined with colourful reflections on the wet pavement and crazy modern sculptures created the sense of another world. As if we were in a comic.

On the way home as we were having fun in metro I noticed how chatty my dad is. He simply had to start talking to everyone who seemed interesting, e.g. a musician carrying a heavy contrabass or a tall guy presumedly a basketball player. I wish I was that brave and such an extrovert!

Day 2 - too much and never enough

I can say three things about the second day:

1. trying to the the whole Paris in one day is insane;

2. Paris is beautiful - I didn't get enough of it;

3. I need to come back.

Centre Pompidou

Beautiful carousel by Hôtel de Ville

Notre Dame was gorgeous. One of the advantages of visiting Paris in winter was that there weren't many tourists, so we could walk around pretty relaxedly. I've read stories how you have to wait in the queue to get in and then just move with the stream of people before you are spit out. So we were really lucky there. Not too lucky with weather though as it was showering most of the day and raining heavily for a bit.

The architecture in Paris is gorgeous. I would have taken pictures of almost every single building if I had time and there was a point in that.

As some might have noticed I have a thing for bridges. However, Paris didn't charm me with that. And the yellowish color of Seine made it even worse. But hey, one place can't have it all! Unless it's Vilnius, of course.

As we had less time for the whole of Paris than is needed to visit Luvre alone, we've been to it like the pictures below show.

In Luvre. Went there for like 5mins.

Though it's the middle arc of the axis, the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile was the last one for us to see. I sincerely was surprised by the size of this beautiful structure! Napoleon might have seriously wanted to compensate for something; you know, hummers weren't present at the time.

To be fair, we came across the bridge accidentally. It's strange I didn't have it on my route because it's a thing worth seeing not only in movies. It's crazy how many locks there are! There's not a gap even for a lice to get through (except the bit where the load of the display of people's eternal love was too much for the railings of the bridge), there are locks on locks on bicycle D-locks, and the lanterns are covered in them like a watermelon with bees. And in case you get caught in the moment and haven't prepared for it don't fret - the One Euro! One Euro! guy is at your service with a choice of highest quality locks. All in all, it looks absolutely breathtaking in real life and no pictures can convey it. I tried though.

To our great disappointment the pantheon was under reconstruction, so we took pictures without the dome. Such a loss! The church nearby was really pretty too. There are a lot of lovely churches Paris (and we've been inside most of them - the same thing that I have for bridges my mom has for churches) but I still get why Napoleon would have wanted to bring St Anne's Church from Vilnius.

Finally we reached the symbol of the city. Which was intended to be a temporary structure by the way. There are many pictures of better quality on the internet but I just love these. 

The Eiffel Tower was still Christmassy!

Having guided for the whole day approximately there - after everything on the plan was seen - was the point when I could just relax and use only two maps out of four we had. 

A guide at its natural habitat.

Having visited everything on our humble itinerary and still in possession of the daily metro ticket we visited a couple more places including the Army Museum, the Statue of Liberty, Opera house. And by visited I mean the usual - saw the exterior.

Our last stop  - two men and Juliet.

The next morning my darlings left at 5am to catch their early flight, and I stayed in the hotel for a bit longer before taking my megabus back to the UK. We drove through Boulogne, which has stunning scenery! Maybe not as stunning as to stay in the bus for 7 hours just for it but I will try to make a slight detour next time I'm visiting Paris. Moreover, this time megabus didn't take the ferry but went through Euro tunnel instead. To be honest I was disappointed - the tunnel wasn't made from glass and you couldn't see fish and mermaids swimming around. What a poor engineering! And with that idea I gathered my motivation to step out of the swamp of laziness and enthusiastically continue my studies. Well, almost.

Times when your plans are just laughed at by life

How I spent the night with a random guy from Hong Kong by London Underground, stole a charming mug from German Christmas market, and other tales.

My journey home for Christmas was supposed to be the usual - leaving Birmingham on Thursday night, one night at London Stansted, visiting Düsseldorf for a day, next night at Düsseldorf Weeze and reaching my beloved Vilnius on Saturday morning. Nothing special, nothing new, I'm a pro at this. Still, oh my how suprised was I!

I ordered my train tickets online and got them delivered by post like a month in advance. I kept them in a safe place, and (good Lord gracious!) I even remembered which place it was! The thing was that when I checked while packing, the tickets weren't there. I even tidied up my room for like the first time ever, but still no sign of them. Six hours until my train leaves, re-purchasing the ticket costs £60 - more than my whole journey, alternatives - coaches - are for £26 but mean walking for an hour on foot in London after sunset and missing my Christmas dinner with flatmates. Don't even know which is more dangerous. Not the best position to be in, eh?

After googling that lost or misplaced tickets are not the ticket seller's responsibility, I cycled to the train station and told them my story. You know, that I haven't received my tickets, maybe they got lost in the post?, and though it's my problem that I have forgotten about it until the last day maybe there is anything I can do about it instead of buying a new one. The staff told me to call the office and ask for a collection reference - with it I can print out my ticket at the station. Whoop whoop - there's still hope! It's not that easy to make a call though: I got a new phone as a birthday present but it needs a small SIM card, and my old phone has broken down, so I have 3 SIM cards and 2 phones but no combination that would allow me to make a call. As I heard them say - better to have 50 friends than £50k; so after calling from a friends phone and telling my almost true story again I received a massive apology for causing me so much stress and the collection reference I needed. Success!

So with the worst behind me I have left home for an adventure. Didn't go far - my train was delayed at Birmingham New Street. By ten minutes... fifteen... twenty... So, after forty minutes I board my train to London Euston, change there to the metro and arrive at the Tottenham Hale station where I have to board another train to London Stansted. It's close to midnight now and I run onto the platform. There's a train on the opposite side and I'm not too sure if I am on the right side of the track, so I rushingly ask the construction worker and he calmly replies "No no, you're on the right plantform, you just have to take the train at...", he looks at the screen and gasps, "oh, there are no more trains to Stansted today." I just stare at him highly confused. "So what should I do?" I murmur. "You can board the last train that arrives in ten minutes, go to the last stop and the taxi to Stansted from there will be only £15". Ha!, I think. Only! Plus, I have no cash, only Euros - well prepared as always. "And would you know when the first train is?". "At 4:50am" he replies, and coldly adds "with no possibility to stay overnight". No way there isn't! So the waiting lounge is closed but nobody can kick me out from the bench on platform, it's a public place! I sit down on the bench. Metal bench. Freaking cold! Deep in though I barely noticed the construction worker waving at me to come closer. He introduced me to a guy, who apparently is in the same situation, so the taxi would be cheaper. So we're sitting there. Now the two of us. Introductions and stuff. Together we decided that this whole train taxi plan is too expensive and unfair, and that we're occupying this bench until the first train. I even took out and laid down my two woolen skirts so the bench would be cosier and not that cold - a sign this place is ours.

However, despite our determination to hold the place till dawn we were kicked out (we would be horrible at direct action blockading and occupying) because the whole station closes. It's not the central London, so we didn't expect to find an open place anywhere near but we still checked out Burger King and KFC just to find them closed or closing. Good thing we did - outside the station there was only one bench, and the one horribly horribly disgusting, so we stuck to a couple of benches by KFC. Also metal, and in open wind, but clean. Skirts were used as chair pillows again and we spent 5 hours playing ship battle, tic tac toe and similar games, just chatting or snoozing, or jumping around in improvised salsa to keep myself warm. Yeah, myself, he's not that crazy.

5am. We're finally in the train. The conductor looks at our tickets dissatisfied and says "It's not the right date." I felt something clicking, like a switch turning in my head and almost started shouting with fury that I didn't spend the night outside the station because I like doing so and I'm not paying £20 for a new ticket. But somehow I managed to calmly tell the story and just judged him silently when he told he's not sure if it's fine and he has to check. He didn't come back.

Airport was cramped with people, I had to sit on the floor to eat my breakfast but it felt good finally having something more than the sweets I was bringing my brother. You see, I planned to spend the night at a place with a roof, soft benches and a store that's open 24/7, I didn't pack much. I managed to get some great sleep on the plane and feeling refreshed I stepped on Germany's land. My plan was to go to Düsseldorf and stay there until 3am but the bus driver told me the due to winter's timetable the last bus is leaving at 5pm. To pay €18 for only 5 hours in the city or not to go, that's the question. I did go and so not regretted!

The city was beautiful! It was dressed for Christmas - all sparkly, cosy and red - buildings, streets, the Weinachtsmarkt; everything created perfect Chrismas mood. And oh the smell of Glühwein, and served in such an adorable mug! I left the deposit of €2 for the mug plus €3 for the wine inside, and spent my lunch thinking whether it is stealing or not - taking a thing you have left deposit for. After finishing my crêpe I just walked away with the wine. Don't judge me, the cuteness of the mug was irresistible!

The city was quite mazy though - even with two maps I barely managed to find the river (or worse, the station I arrived to). Gladly people were friendly to offer me directions, because there, my friend, on Rhine, are the cable-stayed bridges. You can laugh at my passion for them but bridges truly are remarkable structures, you gotta give them that!

The last surprise awaited me when I got up from my 3-hour-long nap back at the airport. Once I regained my unblurred sight I saw a guy staring at me. As he hesitatingly approached me I realised he's my long-time-not-seen classmate from school! He was also taking connecting flights back to Lithuania, so with him to chat with I didn't feel the time fly as I found myself hugging my family at Vilnius airport and driving home for Christmas. To my sweetest dearest bed.