Off we went! I was at the CDG Airport to pick her up ahead of time and she was coming in at 11:30. Perfect. The terminal had changed last minute, but no worries; I was on top of it. So I am watching the flights come in and manda’s lands. Woo hoo! I’m waiting….and waiting….and waiting. Where the hell was she? I’m beginning to worry a bit that maybe she lost her baggage or that something went wrong somewhere between getting off the plane and getting out the doors. Hmm. She had my cell number so all I could do was wait. Hmm. I finally get a call around 12:30 asking where I am? “What?! I’m at your door waiting for you to come out! Did I miss you!?” I’m thinking I would be the biggest epic fail if I had missed that. No effing way. No no, well turns out I hadn’t. She was in a totally different terminal. How did that even happen we will never know? But I was off for terminal 3 to find her. Stay there I said. Off we go. She said she was near the shuttle. Perfect. I was familiar with the CDG shuttle after meeting Jewels and the girls there before Barcelona. Fabulous. Off we go. Get there and no Manda. Seriously? Where is this girl!? Turns out I had to walk another 10 minutes or so to finally get to her but I found her! Yay!
We were now off to find Eveline’s house! This was a dear friend of Amanda’s mum and we would be spending our two evenings there. How lucky. We actually had no problem tracking it down. We took the RER down, and then a quick taxi over to her house. Sensational. Navigating was off to a good start.
Manda has a tour book of Paris which was perfect since it included everything. We decided to head first to Notre Dame. It was packed and yet you still felt so small standing in front of it. The strangest feeling. But after this we decided to hit the grand of the grand…the Eiffel Tower. How gorgeous. Even being my 3rd time to Paris, you are speechless. It’s phenomenal. I did something new this time which was fantastic: Amanda and I went to the top of the Eiffel Tower! Ah! Talk about windy though eh? Wow, it was crazy. Like literally, hair flying straight up windy. Too funny. But what a view; gorgeous and breathtaking. We both stood there staring literally at all of Paris. Of course as well, in true Parisian style, there was a champagne bar at the very top. Of course. Eveline had planned to have dinner at 7 and we rushed back as fast as we could to get back in time. I think we managed to be a bit late, but the lines were out of this world long getting back down to the ground level.
Dinner was delicious and she had a friend over which was also fun. We had had an eventful day to say the least and it took us all of 5 minutes to fall asleep.
Wednesday was the day that I was looking forward to the most: DISNEYLAND BABY! Oh gosh, this was going to be so damn cool. It would be my first time ever going and I couldn’t wait. My tagline for the day was “22 going on 7” but damn was I ever excited. The whole experience of the princesses and Mickey and well how cool right? And the fact that a) it was in Paris was sensational and b) that Amanda had free tickets just was the icing on the cake. We started the day by taking our picture with….MICKEY! Can you believe it? How perfect. We then packed the day with the most brilliant children’s rides such as the merry-go-round, for example. We almost went on a roller coaster, but turns out Amanda wasn’t the biggest fan (I don’t blame her – I mean the girls inside sounded like they were being tortured they were screaming so damn loud) so in our perfect timing theme of the day we caught the cast performance in front of the Disney castle! How fun! We had seen the parade by chance earlier that day, and now this, it was just perfect timing.
The day was wonderful and young and just so damn cool I was thrilled with life. We walked through another Disney village afterwards, who knew right, but it was a ton of fun. Since it was a late night when we got back, we had a key to Eveline’s place, but oh god you would not believe how hard it was to get in. We just couldn’t get it. I swear we must have been at the door for a good 45 minutes trying the key. Amanda, then me, then Amanda…it was insane. We were in tears laughing, slash at 1am wondering what the hell we were gonna do. Ring the doorbell? That was the whole damn point of having a key! Buah – well they had heard us at the door and thankfully came to our rescue, but first thing in the morning we got a lesson on how to use the damn key. This would happen to us.
The next morning was our last in Paris and we rushed early to go see the Louvre and Mona, of course in addition to the Arc de Triomphe. It was a whirlwind morning slash early afternoon but we managed, somehow to catch our 3pm train back to Lille. Yay us. The afternoon went pretty quickly with a bit of walking and some dinner. Out cold to say the least.
The next morning Jess was arriving at10:57 and Amanda luckily woke me up at 10:52. Oh crap batman. I got dressed and ran to the train station. Luckily we met just in time and the day was going to start. Once we weren’t rushing, we all got ready and headed to vieux Lille for some crepes. Of course the girls had to have crepes. French crepes and essential to the visit. We did a bit of shopping as I showed them the sites, which included the Beaux Arts museum, Grand Place and the fantastic mini streets. It was Nicoline’s ‘going away’ party, so naturally we had a pre drink at our place and met up at Magnum. To cap the night I took the girls to the illegal baguette joint that we love so much, and the girls agreed it was sort of like heaven in your mouth with the fresh bread with baked ham and cheese inside. How could it not be right?
The next was Amanda’s last before setting off on her sensational adventure of Italy, so we got up, walked around and the girls the day before had made up their mind on making a dessert: essentially baking a chocolate cake. Since my lovely apartment lacks in the area of ovens, a good friend Simon agreed to let us use his. Wonderful. So we take the walk over to his place, ring the bell….and nothing. They were all there as I’m calling their cells, but apparently they were on silent, and Basia’s phone was stolen at another party of ours, so that was no longer her number. Oh man. Brilliant. So we walked right back home to chill for a bit before taking Amanda to the train station.
It was once again fantastic to see a familiar face and so cool to be setting her off for what will be a hell of an adventure for her.
Oh Europe. We all love you.
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