Who knew it was easy to figure out the Tube or even the Metro?!? (It was easier than this fricken keyboard!)
Every book has about a trillion beware of pickpocket warnings; nothing can prepare a person for the amount of scams on the metro. In London there were warnings, but everything seemed kosher. The police/bobby presence was pretty crazy. At most stations there were sniffer dogs and officers or transit police–not to mention closed circuit cameras everywhere.
Paris is a whole other ball game! First day some dudes tried to offer an “African tradition” by which they occupy both of your hands in some ridiculous friendship bracelet making crap with coloured thread. All the while one of the other ones pats you down and takes your shit. Obviously we did not fall for it. Then there are the pathetic looking gypsy girls who approach with a “do you speak eenglish?” and then they hand you a printed card with a sob story on it asking for money. These chicks are EVERYWHERE!
And you also have the metro beggars who put printed cards on the empty seats asking for money because they are out of work and raising a family etc etc. Then you have your run of the mill pick pockets. I busted one who was trying to get into a woman’s purse. He was none too impressed. True story.
The Paris metro is the dirtiest grossest transit system ever. Read on my friends…
I have a ton more to update for London, but this computer is not the usual qwerty keyboard. It is the azerty keyboard and it is making me angry trying to hunt and peck for the keys.
Anyway, we have made it to Paris! The Chunnell ride was uneventful and much less exciting than we thought, but cool none the less. Navigating the city has been pretty smooth. We have seen TONS of stuff and taken over 1500 photos. Jon is outpacing me 2 to 1 for photos.
Tomorrow morning we leave for Milan on the way to Venice. I’m really looking forward to the 13 hour train ride just so I can relax for a while. We are averaging about 400 stairs a day. Pretty sure 1/2 of the people who visit Paris need knee surgery when they get home!
We are on the lookout for new and bizarre foods. At M&S we did not eat the pork pies, but found some normal potato chips…the convenience store across the way, not so much.
The seat to my left had been empty, and then this ancient South African mofo moved to sit by his travel partner.
He complained about EVERYTHING! He yelled at the 2 stewards that his reading light wouldn’t work.
Here’s a recap: Old Mofo: YOU need to maintain these planes! I paid a fair price! Steward: I do? (like me personally?!?!) OLD: The lights aren’t working and I’m trying to read here. Steward: Oh, I’ll reset your seat for you sir. OLD: I can’t fly in the dark, I’m trying to read, and if it is dark I get nervous.
–And scene.
This is the same fucker that was wearing a sleep mask a few hours later.
Let’s just give you some background story here for a sec…Jon did not sleep on his entire flight to Thailand last year. He watched approx 8 movies. Prior to this UK flight, he checked that the flight would have onboard movies, and even went as far to check what movies were going to be playing. (Yes, he’s crazy, and who knew you could find that on-line?!?)
Miracle 1–We get to fly a day late, but a day early at the same time, and our seats are together!
Miracle 2: The movie screens for our 2 seats weren’t working. Everyone else had stuff on their screen–we had BLACK screen. I could tell Jon was super dissapointed. But, about 20 minutes later, they magically started working! Hallelujah!
The ticket agent at Air Canada (after the whole passport fiasco) happily charged us $300 to switch our flight to Monday, when we were originally supposed to fly on Saturday. SUCK MUCH?!?!
Anyway, she told us 2 things–the earlist flight we could get was Monday at 10:00am, and with a connecting flight in Montreal, and that there was no such thing as stand-by. She also said that we could come back at 2:30 on Sunday and see if there were any seats for the Sunday flight.
PS: She’s a liar! We flew Stand-by direct from Vancouver to Heathrow on Sunday. Thanks to Cherryl and Jane! Jane rocked! So did Cherryl, Gord and Narinder. They all helped us. Jane was the one to tell me my passport didn’t work, and she remembered us the next day (well how many idiots does she deal with, on such an extreme level?) They ended up getting us the earlier direct flight. Cherryl even phoned to tell me not to worry when she kenw our stand-by seats were finally confirmed. Thank-you for double booking 6 people Air Canada!
AND, Jane was at the boarding gate to see us off. She was so happy when we walked onto the jet way. She was awesome.
We were pretty much stranded in Vancouver for the night, so we ended up staying with our friends Adam and Kelly. Totally unexpected drop in on them, but it was a good visit, and nice to see their “new” house that they’ve been in for 3 years already. New to us, not so much to them. Obviously it would have been better to have not missed our flight at all, but we met their sweet pets, Cosmo, Newton and Gilligan and saw their latest vacation photos.
The virtual safari and safari guide Kelly were absolutely amazing. Thanks Adam and Kelly for making a horrendous situation better!
We had a couple of options as to when to go to Vancouver to be ready for the airport. I REALLY wanted to leave Friday night for Saturday night’s flight. Jon wanted to leave Saturday with Coquihalla prone to closures, poor conditions and accidents, I thought we could use some buffer time. And I was right–we missed our first flight even though we got to the airport with TONS of time to spare. We were the first people to “check-in” for flight AC854 on Saturday.I passed Jane (you’ll see why I know her name later) my passport–no go. I brought my OLD one that expired in 2006. New one was at home 3 hours away in my dresser.
Needless to say, breaking all land speed records wouldn’t have even helped to get my passport to me in time to check in.
My brother had already left us at the airport. I’m pretty sure you can’t even guess how panic stricken I was. After about 100 phone calls home to my parents and making my brother turn around and come back to the airport–we confirmed that my current passport exists (THANKS MA!) and had my fazh drive to meet us in Chilliwack to do the hand off. (THANKS FAZH!)
Passport crisis over, but day 1 in London gone. Sadder.
At this point I have about 12 hours before we leave for the airport, and about 8 of those will be spent sleeping. Blogging is about the last thing I need to be doing, but I just can’t finish packing.
And then I see Venice! Bet you though I was gonna say something about underpants! Tricked you.
As if anyone wants to hear about the economy right now, but it actually helped us out! Hotel prices in Venice went WAY down, so we switched our accommodation to something nicer for the same as we were already paying. (Note: We’re not going deluxe apartment in the sky, but it is still a cooler hotel and a SWEET location.) We’re staying at the Hotel Caneva which is about 2 minutes from the Rialto Bridge, and about 3 minutes from Piazza San Marco. Check out the photos of the hotel it looks pretty cute. It should be a fine place to stay for the few days we have in Venice.
Adventures of a couple seeing the world 2 weeks at a time.