Welcome to Paris!

At first I was somewhat apprehensive about using Airtech, which is a company that helps you fly where theres extra tickets...at a considerably lower cost. I e-mailed them on Tuesday asking for a ticket from Logan to Paris. Surprisingly, they came through and within a few hours I had an e-ticket in hand for Thursday evening to Paris, via Reykjavik, Iceland.

So I quickly packed and excitedly headed off to the airport and boarded Iceland air towards Reykjavik. Wow it's actually happening. On the plane I sat next to two women heading to Iceland to look at alpacas. I guess thats what people do in Iceland? They spent the whole flight ogling over ads in a magazine called "Alpaca Times" or something like that. Who even knew that made a magazine like that? Before I realized the name I almost asked them if they were llamas (still thinking of meeting Jen's llama). Good thing I didn't because I think they would have been offended! From what I hear..llamas are of a lesser breed than alpacas.

Anyways I slept through most of both of my flights. I included pictures below at the Iceland airport...figured Dad would appreciate them. I have to say it was not quite what I was expecting. As we flew over it seemed that the whole land was covered with lava fields and it looked fairly desolate. Not the green, blue-water, glacier landscape I was picturing. I think Iceland Air is the only airline to service the airport. Haha.

Upon arriving to Paris's Charles de Gaulle Airport I was surprised at how smooth and quickly things went. I'm actually here!

Sometimes I would swear that my bag is always the last bag to come off baggage claim. This time I'm pretty sure it was! They were unloading stuff from two planes after me and then mine finally came. haha. Regardless it made it. I made my way to the RER train...the first one to come was an express train into the city and stopped right at Matt's stop. Wow, what luck. I was glad I brought the 10 Euros I've kept in my wallet ever since studying abroad so I was able to buy my train ticket. Everyone always made fun of my but I knew they'd come in handy sometime!

When I got to Matt's place (sort of an international dorm-like campus) I gave a sigh of relief. It seemed sort of surreal that half a day before I was packing and running at Stanley park and now I was sitting on the grass in the sun reading in Paris, waiting for Matt to come back from work.

After what seemed like the longest and slowest part of my journey, Matt finally got there. And all the traveling is worth it. His room is amazingly tiny, yet efficient. It seems the Europeans have a knack for this efficiency thing. His room is much smaller than chases room. It has a simple wooden counter for a desk, a wooden box with something that passes as a bed (if you think of a twin size bed..this must be what a single sized bed is…I never knew they existed! Haha). Part of his room is partition off into what looks like a wooden box. At first I just assumed it was the closet but no..its a bathroom. Inside the bathroom, there is this piece of glass that flips out and basically a shower appears out of nowhere. It’s small..but it works.

Eventually we ventured out to the grocery store. I was fairly hungry since the Icelanders didn’t cater too well to the vegetarians and I didn’t have Icelandic Kroners on hand at the airport to buy anything during my layover. On the plane I accidentally ate some salmon and lobster salad. Oops and yuck at the same time. I thought it was sorbet, for some reason I can’t quite recall. Probably because it had an orange on top an sort of looked orange-ish. I think the sleep-aids I took worked too well. Haha.

After sleeping soundly through most of the night (surprisingly), I’ve just been relaxing all morning. Matt is at work so I’m on my own. I’ve already finished one book so I may wander around looking for a bookstore or something.

More updates later when I’ve actually done more than sleep…

Paris - Summer 2008

Here is my attempt to start up the blog from when I studied abroad back in the spring of 2006. Although this trip is much shorter I figured it might be fun to keep one of these things. Enjoy. Or not. Either way =)