Getting Lost (& Other Misadventures) in Paris

I have a habit of getting lost. While I was traveling, getting lost was one of the things that I knew would happen inevitably, but something I also feared. Sometimes though, I am slowly learning, getting lost is half the fun (when done intentionally), and other times...well...at least I manage now to have a few good stories.

Here are a few from my solo trip to Paris.

A Warm Welcome

I arrived in Paris at the Orly airport to get onto the Orlyval, and then the metro. At one point, unsure if it was my stop I needed to get off at, I asked the woman across from me in the packed train if this would be my stop coming up. With creased eyebrows, she nodded. "Oui."

Getting off the train I looked around. It was most certainly not my stop. It was more certainly, an hour walking from the stop I should have waited to stopped at.

Back into the metro I went, the one ticket man there taking pity on me enough to have me purchase another new ticket to get where I was going.

Where is...Right there? Of course I knew that.

While in the Tuileries Garden walking back from my visit to the Effile Tower, I looked around and finally stopped to ask a girl who had her feet sticking in the fountain along with many others.

"Where is the Louvre?" I asked the line in my practice and re-practiced French.

Still unimpressed, she pointed over my shoulder. The Louvre was right in front of me.

Off to See the Mona Lisa

After finding the Louvre I wandered in through one of the halls and promptly got lost within the Greek marble statues. By the time I figured out how to get out and find the correct entry towards the statue of Nike, and eventually see the crowded room of the Mona Lisa, I was very dehydrated from a day walking in the sun without water. Weaving through the crowd I nearly passed out. Ultimately the six euro bottle of water was purchased.

Let this be a lesson to always stay hydrated, even when attempting to complete a very full itinerary.

Thank You, Highlighter T-Shirt Man

I got on the RER C heading out to Versailles out of the Notre Dame station. After asking multiple people who couldn't understand my terrible French, I ended up hopping on the next train. I sat by the window on the second floor of the train where it was barely even filled. The only others on the train with me were a group of men, scattered through the seats and yelling and loud French to one another. It was the loudness that back in the states I would assume also meant slightly intoxicated, even if it was only about eight in the morning.

I held my bag close and continued looking forward, hoping that I would be able to hear the muffled voice overhead that would tell me that I had made it out of Paris and into the royal city of Versailles. The voice overhead did say something and the last of the people, the men got off the train. Once they got off, they yelled back at me to do the same.

"Last stop. Last stop," they told me in broken English. And here I was hoping that I didn't look like a complete tourist of sorts.

Heart pounding I descending from the train and onto the gray cement platform, looking around where to go next. I was certainly not in Versailles. Asking a young girl waiting for her train, she knew I was supposed to be getting on the two. Where was the two? She could only shrug.

Looking around obviously more confused than I usually would let on, a large man in a bright orange t-shirt looked at me. He had a large gym bag across his chest.

"Tu vas à Versailles?"

"Oui!" I said right away, understanding as he spoke slow. I asked back, "Tu vas à Versailles?"

"Oui," he said. Pointing to the train across from us that people were finishing boarding.

I ran through the little tunnel connecting the two platforms and hopped on the train just before the doors closed. The man did behind me. "Merci." I thanked him. Oh, I still thank him whenever I think about the kindness sometimes we forget in the world around us when there are also scary loud possibly drunk French men also around us.

I See London I See France

As I walked down the street, I stepped over a sort of vent in the ground. The skirt of my purple floral dress flew up in the air, exposing whatever comfortable travel underwear I had packed before I could stop it, a true Marilyn Monroe impression. I yanked it back down to my thighs and walked that way all the way down the block until I was pretty sure whoever saw it happen wouldn't notice my reddening face.

A Fitting Flight Home

I sat in the airport, my head pounding, the back of my neck sweating as if an oncoming migraine believed that the best time to come on was while I was waiting for my last minute flight back from Paris to Marseilles. I continued to wait and want to puke as my flight was delayed...and delayed again...and again. I must have looked pretty bad considering the airport was packed and no one sat next to me while waiting if they could help it.

But I did make it back to my temporary home in Provence.

And now after plenty of these misadventures, I have come to terms more or less of getting lost. If it happens, we are going to get home eventually. Somehow.