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Day 34 – almost… home!

After waking up to muffins and fruit (thanks again to the Changs!) we rebooked a flight tonight at 8:00 PM rather than sunrise tomorrow.  It is 80+ degrees and we have hours to wait – let’s go swimming!

How I spent my first real day of summer!

I got a nice burn going after an hour or so, and then we grilled some burgers and sat outside for awhile.  Today was such a relaxing and wonderful detour from our initial plans to get home!  Then it was off to the airport (in the middle of another storm, luckily no cancellation today) and after another movie we landed safely at O’Hare to my parents and a 2 hour car ride home (finally).

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Day 33 – outta here!

Woke up at 8:00 to catch a 10:00ish train for our 1:30 flight.  Everything went swimmingly.  I gave away all of my coins to homeless guys on the train, and Christine and I spent the rest of ours in the airport – perfect planning!  I spent the majority of my day 6 miles in the air in -70 degree weather going 525 miles/hr.  I watched In Bruges and The Social Network to drain my computer battery completely.

All 9 bottles of wine/beer arrived safely in Boston in our luggage, but then we had to check it again for our final flight to Chicago.  After we walked across the airport to get to the correct terminal we were checking our flight to see our gate number.  When we initially booked our flight we were scheduled to be on the 5:55 to Chicago – but it ended up being cancelled – thank goodness we took the later one at 6:55, right?

That top flight is ours…

Grrrrrrrrr.  All flights out of Boston to Chicago and Dallas were cancelled tonight.  The airline announced this and just handed everybody a card with a phone number and said “that’s all we can do for you.”  No help with hotels, rescheduling, any sort of information, or any other compensation for this issue.  Great, thanks!

The earliest we were able to reschedule our flight was 6:10 AM Sunday morning.  That’ll work for now, now let’s find a home for the next 2 days.  Luckily, the Swierczeks (now Changs) also populate the Boston area, so I called my Aunt whom I haven’t seen in years and years (“Who’s Eric Swierczek?”) and they took us in with more than open arms for the night.  After an hour ride back from the airport we arrived to Chinese food, beer, air conditioning, and a bed!

We’ll figure out the last leg of our trip tomorrow, but tonight we’re beyond (happy + satisfied + thankful =) happisfiedful.

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Day 32 – EverythingelseinParisbeforeweleave!

After a good night of recovery sleep, it’s time to do everything before we leave.

  • Dome of Sacre Coeur, check.
  • The Louvre for hours, check. (luckily it stopped raining just in time for us to go back outside to keep going!)
  • Notre Dame, again, check.
  • Latin Quarter, check.
  • Wine with my professor at his apartment, check.
  • Last time sitting out in front of the Eiffel Tower, check.
  • Back up to Moulin Rouge to see it at night, check.

whew.  On the same block as Moulin Rouge, it turns out there are dozens of promiscuous shops – exciting!

That’ll do for this trip, time to pack away all 9 bottles in our luggage and hope everything goes smoothly tomorrow!

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Day 31 – food poisoning…

The title says it all 😦

Every hour from 2:00am – 8:00am I was up blowing groceries, tossing cookies, etc.  I’m not 100% sure what caused it, but it took me out for the day.  I stayed in bed in the hotel room with 7up and water.  We’re lucky that we didn’t get tickets to go up to Normandy today…

Side note: I told Christine she didn’t need to sit in the hotel room with me because I didn’t need taking care of – I was just exhausted; she needed to see Paris!  She refused though (partially because I unintentionally woke her up every hour), so we’ll finish up seeing Paris tomorrow!

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Day 30 – switching hotels, wine by the river, futbol match

We nabbed some cheap lunch from a grocery store near our current hotel and hung out by the Eiffel Tower until we could check into our next hotel – the last time we need to haul our luggage across Paris.  Our new hotel was up near Sacre Coeur and Moulin Rouge north of the river.  We got situated up there (with free WiFi, yay), and Christine actually had an interview via Skype at 6:00 our time.  Therefore, I got the boot for 45 minutes.  No problem, this area is easily wanderable.

When I got back, Nick (from my class) was still in town and was curious if we had any plans for the futbol match tonight – nope.  So the three of us met down by school, grabbed some bottles of wine, and sat down by the river to hang out until game time.

Well, time flew by and we didn’t make it to a bar for the game until halftime – no big deal, it was still 0-0.  Sweden ended up beating France 2-0 with 2 incredible goals – a scissor kick and a one-timer after a bounce off the post – really exciting even though France lost.

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Day 29 – touring around again, Eiffel Tower Hotel

After moving out of the dorm 😦 I took Christine and Fabi on a quick, one-day tour of most of Paris (similar to my second day here).  We went south to Notre Dame, then further to some gardens in the middle of the city (blanking on the name right now…).  It was around 2:00 now, so Christine and I got our luggage from our respective former homes and Metro’d out toward the Eiffel Tower and checked into our hotel.  Check out the view!

The three of us walked over to the Eiffel Tower and across the river behind it.  Then we proceeded over to the Arc de Triomphe, saw Avenue Champs Elysees, and took Fabi up north to catch his train to go home.

After dropping him off, Christine and I went back down to the lawn of the Tower to hopefully see it shimmer at 10:00!  Didn’t happen – apparently it’s still too bright outside, so we waited until 11:00 with some wine and chocolate.

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Day 28 – Christine arrives, flowers fo’ sho’

I woke up at 7:30 this morning after going to bed at 3ish?  And I was nowhere near tired then – I think I’m already back on US time… She made it in just after 10:00 AM and was greeted by me and these:

Am I great or what?  (Sidenote: this is also my tribute to Father’s day.  Dad, you raised me well enough that I know to do these kinds of things; props to you!)

We met her long-time German friend, Fabi, near their hotel for tonight (he’s visiting through tomorrow).  They got situated and checked in, and then we went over to Sacre Coeur because it was close.

Then we wandered around that area a bit, grabbed some food, and her and Fabi went back to their hotel for the evening.  I think their plan is to watch the Germany futbol game, and I’m headed home to finish my paper pack.  Eiffel Tower tomorrow?

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Day 26 – attempted the Pompidou, French futbol match

I told myself I would start and finish my final exam paper today.  Good news, I at least started it.  Then Noah and I wanted to go to the modern art museum, the Pompidou.

We made it there, but when trying to buy tickets the guy there said we don’t get a discount with our museum pass or for being young unless we could show our passports.  No problem, because we always have scans of that with us.  Wrong – he was super stubborn and we had to show our actual passport or the tickets would be at least 13 euro.  Maybe another day…

After we wandered around the Seine a bit we headed back to the dorms, then back to a pub to watch the French futbol match.  We got there a little late, but were still able to find some seats, but we didn’t realize the game was suspended because of the weather (here are some cool pictures if you are curious).  The hour wait was no big deal with another round and some fries.  After the match I went back to work on my exam some more…

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Day 25 – done?

We discussed Amelie (from the day before), the articles we had to read, and were given our take-home final exam.  That’s it for class!  Friday and Saturday I will be working on my exam and research paper, and Sunday Christine arrives.  We’re going to be hanging out around Paris for the week (with possibly a day-trip to Normandy), but if anything super exciting happens I’ll update the blog.