Paris - part 1

We left our hotel at about 5am on Saturday to catch our train to Paris for the day. I took a Dramamine just to be safe and that mixed with the fact that I was already exhausted I pretty much slept the whole ride. Right as we were leaving, I decided that I wanted to listen to my ipod until I fell asleep. For some reason, I had it in a small bag with my sunglasses, some chapstick, my tube pass and my passport. I put the smaller bag back into my big bag and fell asleep.

Before I knew it, we were in Paris and ready to go since we only had about 10 hours before we headed back. We made our way out to the Palace of Versailles first since it was the furthest out of town. The sun finally was starting to shine, so I decided to put on my sunglasses. I reached into my bag and realized that I wasn't finding the smaller bag that they were in. Trying not to freak out, I stopped and set my bag on the ground and started digging through it looking for the smaller bag. It wasn't there. "Umm, this isn't good..." I said to Mom. "What's not good?" She said. "I don't have the bag that has my passport in it" I told her. "What do you mean you don't have your passport?!" she asked me. "Exactly what I said, I don't have it. I lost the bag somewhere." After that we just kind of stood there for a minute, dug through the bag again just to be sure, then tried to figure out what exactly to do next.

We made our way into Versailles and asked one of the worker girls if she knew where the US Embassy was in Paris. She didn't really know where it was, but she took us to another room and got us a phone number to call and let me use their phone. Thinking that everything was going to be fine, I called the number only to get a message that the Embassy was closed until Monday, but at the end of the recording it said if it was an emergency to press 9 to be connected to a live person. Thinking my situation qualified as an emergency, I pressed 9 and was still sure that there must have been something that could get done that day so we'd still get to leave. I was wrong. The 'live' person was just an operator that told me I'd just have to wait until Monday.

Figuring there was nothing we could really do about it at the time, we decided to go ahead and do the tour of the Palace since we'd paid for it. I'm sure my mood didn't help the situation, but I wasn't really all that impressed. I mean yeah, it's really big and luxurious, but you just kind of shuffle through it room by room and with so many people there it's just crazy. Here are a the few pictures that I did take:

From there, we decided that the only real solution was that I must have accidentally left it on the train because I had been so careful with my bag because I know that pickpockets are bad in Paris. We headed back to the train station to see if we could find a lost and found where someone might have turned it in. We finally found the office, but of course nothing had been turned in. The guy at the window said to check with the Eurostar office upstairs though too, because it had just happened that morning.

Upstairs we went and met Hussein, one of the awesome Eurostar employees. He seriously deserves a raise. He looked everywhere he could think of, but unfortunately they didn't have my bag either. He said to go file a police report (which the lady at the embassy also told me to do) and that if they found anything they'd let me know. At this point, we finally started to accept that fact that we weren't going anywhere. I went to the police station and told the guy at the desk what happened and he gave me a 'sucks to be you' kind of laugh, which it did, but at that time I was not amused. To be honest, he was really nice and gave me all the information about the Embassy again just to make sure.

After we were done there, I had a brilliant idea: what if the train cleaning people didn't see the bag and it somehow got back to London on the next train?! Back we went up to the Eurostar office. Hussein was busy this time, but we got another awesome guy whose name I don't know. He agreed that it was a possibility and told us to come back in about an hour and a half and he would personally go look on the train to see if it was still there. In the meantime, he tried to get a hold of the Eurostar office in London to see if they'd found anything. We later found out that they were also closed on the weekend. An hour and a half later, the train came back but all of his efforts were for nothing. This was our last hope and now we were really stuck.

Not speaking French posed a bit of a problem. That and the fact that all we had were the clothes on our backs made the situation quite interesting. We debated about just staying in the train station and living like Tom Hanks' character in The Terminal, but we figured people would find out and get mad. That and it was pretty cold in there too. We ventured out onto the street in front of the station where there were several hotels to choose from, only one of which looked like it measured up to our standards from the outside, which of course had no vacancy.

The hotels there have a good idea in putting the prices on the doors. We checked a couple, but the nicer ones were booked. We finally found one the called the New Hotel and decided that the lobby looked pretty good, so we would just suck it up and stay there. It couldn't be that bad, right? Wrong. The whole room was about the size of my bedroom at home and the bed was honestly the hardest I've ever slept on. Those of you who were at the 'hooker hotel' with us can get a pretty good visual, but for anyone else, here are some pictures. I know you're going to be jealous...:



The ceiling. It was almost as if our room was an afterthought or something.


Hot curtains...


Bathroom


This was the shower. The bathroom was so small that I couldn't even stand back far enough from it to get the whole thing in one picture. No we didn't' use it. I know that's gross, but you wouldn't have either if you'd seen it in person. Trust me.


Room with a view. Note that we were on the 6th and highest floor and our window opened all the way.



Ok, that's the end of part 1. I'm tired and I have to get up to go to Amsterdam in like 6 hours. I won't lose my passport this time I promise. My intention is to do Paris part 2 tomorrow night, so until then, so long everybody.