Paris: A New Year's to Remember...(or forget)

So after my hellish experience getting home for the holidays, I was able to relax and enjoy Christmas at home, and was very lucky to see Alex over the break since his work schedule is so crazy, and came all the way down from Thunder Bay just to see me for a few days. Don't I feel special :) Got to spend a couple days down in Fort Erie with his family, which was really nice except for the fact that I was still quite jet-lagged and was falling asleep by 7pm. And although Christmas at home was quiet and uneventful, I was happy to be at home with my family and just veg out for a few days (and see my kitties...I missed them!) and see some friends as well. You don't realize how much you miss people until you see them again! It was a little surreal being back in Canada, amidst the meters of snow and everything familiar, yet noticing all the little changes...but overall it was a nice holiday. Went by waaay too quick though!

Oh Christmas Tree...

looks a little different from France!

a very merry Christmas Eve

spending quality time with the wife...

...and mistress

Which brings me to New Year's. It was an uneventful trip back (thankfully, after the hell I endured on the way home) although being crammed back into economy after my luxurious business-class flight on the way over wasn't exactly pleasant. However, made my connection in London (got off plane, to next terminal, through customs and security in 20 minutes and made it to my gate just as my plane was boarding. Phew!) When I got into the heart of Paris after taking the RER from the airport, I remembered how much I hated Paris. Correction: I remembered my love/hate relationship with the city. At that particular moment, as I was weaving in and out of the crowded metro stations with my luggage, dragging my suitcase up and down stairs and being crushed in the trains, I definitely hated it...busy, bustling, noisy, overcrowded, cold-hearted Paris. Keep in mind I was quite jetlagged and in no mood to deal with the stress of getting from point A to point B, so I was particularly bitter.

However I made it to my hostel, Caulaincourt Square, in Montmartre, without too many difficulties. The hostel was quite nice and I shared a room with 4 other girls (1 from Russia, 1 from El Salvador, and another 2 from Finland), and the room was small but clean and nicely decorated (and had a bathroom!) After grabbing a bite to eat from a bakery around the corner that had a lineup out the door (it was closing early for NYE), I snuck a 2 hour snooze before catching the metro to meet up with Rachel and Andrew for some New Year's celebrations! We tagged along with some friends of Andrew's (including one dude's fiancée who had the biggest rock on her finger that I had EVER seen...I was surprised she could walk upright). They happened to choose a particularly expensive restaurant, called "Les pieds du cochon" (or, The Pig's Feet), where we waited over an hour for a table (no change of reservations on NYE). The specialty? Pig's feet. I almost blew chunks (which would have been hard considering my stomach was empty at the time) when the guy sitting beside me, who had ordered said specialty, received his plate (which consisted of an entire pig's leg, hoof and all. Cooked whole.) stood the leg upright. Still makes me shudder...however apparently the leg was made up entirely of pure fat and bone, and the only people who actually enjoyed their meals was Rachel, Andrew and I, who opted for the cheapest thing on the menu, salmon and veggies with a fantastic beurre blanc sauce. (Yes, I know what you're thinking, I ate salmon. It was either that or go hungry, or steal the bread basket all to myself. There was literally nothing on the menu I could eat, and while back home I would've just asked for a plate of cooked veggies or a salad, the French are not that accommodating. And it was NYE, double strikeout. Salmon is the only thing I'll let into my fairly strict vegetarian diet once in awhile, normally in the form of smoked Atlantic salmon 1-2 times a year or if I sneak a piece of Alex's raw sushi. And, at least it was wild Scottish salmon. Meal justified! Although I did enjoy eating the veggies more than the fish, which I partially shared with the other 2).

Rachel, Andrew and I ate quickly and left in a hurry to get to the party we were heading to. It was already 11:40 and we didn't have much time to get there, and still had to walk. We got a bit turned-around with the map and directions and ended up celebrating New Year's on a backalley street, with people cheering high from their windows, but it didn't really matter. New Year's has never been a big deal for me, and I still got to talk to Alex and mum and dad to wish them a HNY from Paris. We made it to the party shortly after, which was in a crammed apartment and wasn't anything special, but I had a good time hanging out with Rach and Andrew and indulging in a couple cups of champagne (for some reason it felt so wrong drinking champagne from a plastic cup...)

Bonne Année!

 
However my 2011 did not start out well, as getting home proved to be an issue. Before I had left my hostel to catch the metro (which were running free for NYE and NYD) I asked the guy at the front desk what time the metro stopped running. He said "all night, all night!", which was good and meant I could get home easily at anytime. WRONG. By the time the 3 of us left the party and I said goodnight to Rachel and Andrew at the entrance of the closest metro stop we found, it was 2:15. I went into the station and found out that the last train had run in the direction I wanted to go, so I hopped on the one going the other way and got off at another major stop. Confused, I grabbed a brochure on the way out that gave information about public transit on NYE. Turns out, only SOME of the metros were running all night, and only to particular stops. The rest were stopping at...you guessed it...2:15. Had I been just 10 minutes earlier, I would've gotten home fairly easily. But there I was, stuck in the middle of Paris, with no trains running from where I was standing, thousands of people milling about in the street and outside bars, and about half of them trying to flag a taxi. Not a good situation. It was 2:30 in the morning in one of the busiest cities in the world on New Year's, I was all alone, slightly tipsy, jetlagged, and exhausted. Way to be in a pickle, Britt. I stood for awhile with the others who were trying to get a taxi, hoping I would be able to catch one as well. No luck. None were even stopping. I was going to be waiting all night for one. (At one point a guy on a motorcycle drove up, asked where I was going, and said he'd take me for 50 euros. Pfffft, I'm not that desperate!) After I was approached by a guy who asked if he could come home with me, I thought "fuck this, I'm finding alternate means home". And so, with map and brochure in hand, I started walking to Gare de l'Est, which luckily wasn't too far away and was one of the metro stops still running. I immediately headed in the wrong direction, because as everyone knows I am directionally challenged, which made me even more upset when I had walked a few hundred meters only to have someone tell me the Gare was the other way. At this point, what with a combination of exhaustion, frustration, and tipsiness, I started to get quite anxious and upset and was not quite my normal calm self in the case of bad situations. I called Alex just to get some reassurance as I was walking and immediately started blubbering as I asked (stupidly) if he could just tell me that I was going to make it home. Well of course that sent him into a panic, not knowing where the hell I was or what had happened. I mumbled something about the metros being shut and no taxis and being lost before hanging up so I could ask some people to point me in the right direction to the train station. I finally made it there (having a brief panic moment since the underground walk to the station was shut and there were a million people lined up at bus stops to catch the night buses home, and I briefly thought the pamphlet had lied and all the metros were shut. Mild panic attack...) but realized that the train station itself was still open, and as I made my way over I noticed I had a message on my phone. From my MOM. Great, Alex had panicked and called my home since he was worried about me, and now my parents were worried. This night just keeps getting better and better...I called home and as mum was trying to calmly talk to me in my distressed state, dad was speaking nonsense on the other receiver for me to go find my friends and stay with them (who, by now, were many arrondissements away and would have required me to take the metro, anyways. Good try, dad.) Luckily the metros were indeed running, and a few stops and a transfer later I came out at Place Clichy in Montmarte, a few steps from the Moulin Rouge and the closest stop I could get to. It took me awhile to get my directional bearings again (Place Clichy being a huge roundabout with many streets jutting off of it) and I walked hither thither until I found my hostel again about 20 mins later. I was so grateful to have gotten back, it was 4 in the morning and it had taken me almost 2 hours to get home. I called my parents and Alex to reassure them that I was still alive. As I went to bed and set my alarm for 2 hours later (I had a train to catch at 8, oh joy), I had come up with my New Year's Resolution: that I would never be spending New Year's in Paris AGAIN.

(Looking back on this post, I realize that things are never as bad as they seem at the time, and I was quite upset by the whole experience even days after, hence why I didn't write this sooner.)