Hey Blog! I’ve missed you!

I know you probably all think, as this blog might suggest, that we’re still wasting the time away watching The Disney Channel in Trijntje’s apartment. As much as I wish that were true, we’ve actually been up to a ridiculous amount of stuff! Firstly, I got a job! in Prague! Depressingly far away from the Dutch kinfolk we’ve come to love, but still in the general vicinity, and more importantly with a work visa on the horizon which will enable us to stay in Europe and not be kicked out in 3 weeks time. Plus, it’s the home of Chris’ good friend Megan who has been super amazing with helping me find a job and so generous in letting us live temporarily in the living room of her gorgeous apartment while we look for our own place.

I’m planning to make a post all about all of the different places we’ve stayed on this trip, so I’ll save the details for that post.

So, after an epic Keizerstraat house party and some tearful goodbyes to our Dutch loves (and some delicious seafood and rousing conversation about Zwarte Piet on the Scheveningen harbor),

 we bid farewell to our bicycle propelled existence in Holland. But we had one issue, our place to stay in The Netherlands was up, but Megan wouldn’t be back to receive us in Prague for another week, soooo… what else to do but spend the week in Paris!

So, we hopped on a surprisingly pleasant 7 hour bus from the Hague to Paris. The company, called FlixBus, was a LOT like Megabus (even down to the much-promised but actually non-existant wifi) and Chris and I snagged seats on the upper deck overlooking the huge windshield and had a front seat view of the Dutch, Belgian & French countryside as we rode by.

 I should also mention that it was cheapAF. It was less than 20 Euros each to go from The Hague to Paris! Which was 8 times cheaper than the cheapest train. And cheaper than our taxi fare from the bus station to our AirBnb in Monmartre, Paris.

So, we did Paris! The weather was completely unpredictable, ranging from 90 degrees one day, and us sweltering in our teeny tiny apartment to 55 and rainy when we went to visit the famous cemetery and see the friendship bracelet laden grave of Jim Morrison only to be kicked out by a very serious guard blowing a whistle to clear out the graveyard at closing time.

 That day was great because the bad weather forced us to be creative with finding things to do and we ended up at the most amazing and bizarre bar/cafe/I don’t even know what that was accessible only by a weird slightly precarious tiny stairway into a loft area covered in astroturf, bean bag chairs and strange art and a DJ playing ethereal African music in front of giant David Lynch-ian projections. We played a gigantic connect 4 at which I strictly dominated Chris and ate some weird/delicious salmon things and a chocolate tart.

  
 We also visited the Eiffel Tower and found a secret spot away from the hoards of guys trying to sell you light up trinkets and sketchy beers in a bucket of water.

  We listened to a podcast from the delightfully nerdy Rick Steves about the origin of the Eiffel Tower and then had our whiskey confiscated in the 3rd of three different purse searches before hiking up the tower. We also found a secret room where they were showing a huge three wall projection of some cool Eiffel Tower history. We just happened into the room near the restrooms, there were no signs telling people to come and watch and the only other people to join us were a pair of tiny kids that has evidently alluded their parents and also discovered this amazing hidden room, and a few staff members who would casually walk in and walk straight through a hidden door in the center of the projection to what I assumed was some kind of strangely placed staff break room. The view from the tower was absolutely stunning and even more so under the light of a beautiful full moon. In a possibly whiskey induced emotional state I cried at how beautiful the moon and the tower looked and a huge tour walking by pointed and “aww’d” at me. I also lost the heel to my shoe halfway up the tower! We walked up an ungodly amount of stairs during our week in Paris. We stayed in the world’s tiniest AirBnB studio just half a block from the Sacre Coeur which is the highest point in Paris. It was romantic and beautiful, but also painful on the thighs.

One night, we walked nearly 5 miles down to the catacombs and back to Monmartre on the hill. We were keeping ourselves on a super tight budget so we survived mostly on 2 Euro Croque Monsieurs from our favourite bakery down the street,

 baguettes, beer and stinky cheese (only one of which was too stinky to handle and we had to throw away instantly although I’m pretty sure the stench lingered with us for a good half hour). We drank absinthe in a tiny indie bar on a side street near the Moulin Rouge and discovered a hidden room in the back with a couch fashioned out of an old bathtub

 . We hung out with the skeletons of 6 million Parisians in the epically creepy but strangely calm and comforting Catacombs.

 We got our photo taken by a tiny French girl on a daddy/daughter date with her dad in an adorable hold in the wall restaurant called The Little Windmill. She told us and her dad translated, that she likes to take photos of people enjoying their time together because being together is fun (He said he and her mom had split up and she now always wanted to document everything).

 And most nights we had movie screenings in our little fold out couch bed with popcorn and beers and watched all the Paris movies we could think of. First the original Moulin Rouge about Toulouse-Lautrec’s life, then The Doors, La Vie En Rose & Amelie. On our final night we watched the moon rise over the Sacre Coeur Cathedral.

 Desperately attempting to avoid the obnoxious street musician standing in the middle of the crowd on the stairs playing a variety of 90s hits, we hopped a fence and sat on the lawn of the hill so sloped that it took a core muscle workout to keep from sliding down it. While we mostly managed to avoid the vibe-harshing music of the street musician, we were still inundated by guys trying to sell us overpriced, lukewarm Heinekens, but the view was spectacular!

The next morning we went and had our first and only meal out in Paris at the Two Windmills of Amelie fame. The breakfast was decadent and delicious!

  I even found myself enjoying Steak Tartare, which I find revolting in general (especially when I accidentally ordered it on our first night out in The Hague! – Who would’ve thought that ‘Filet American’ at a late night street food place would mean Steak Tartare on a bun??). Then we came home to pack, which is when pretty much everything went downhill for a horrrrrrible 24 hours. We were late leaving our airbnb because I got confused about the time our flight left from the 24 hour clock they use here. So we stuffed everything quickly into our bags and were ready to go 2 hours before our flight. 40 minutes to the airport and our Uber was there. Home free, right? Weeeeelllll, halfway to the airport, I’m bickering with Chris because we were both stressed after having to leave so quickly and I suddenly realize, WE FORGOT OUR PASSPORTS AT THE AIRBNB! Uggghhhhhhh, it takes us about 3 blocks to finally translate to the driver that we have to go back, I don’t know how we’re going to pay for the ride because Uber’s system doesn’t really allow for alterations in the route, and oh, side note, WE NO LONGER HAVE KEYS to get in. YIKES. And I don’t have internet or cell on my phone. And our air bnb host is out of the country! This is not good. And I’m really, really regretting having the bright idea of hiding our passports while we were in Paris.

So we spent a good hour going back, trying to track down our host’s sister, waiting for her to arrive, getting our passports back and speeding back to the airport. Halfway back to the airport, we’re set to arrive only 40 minutes before our flight, our driver gets a call, speaks frantically in French and finally turns to us and in broken English says “You did not TAKE key, no?” And we’re like huh? Only to realize that when his sister arrived and handed Chris the key to run up to the 3rd floor to grab the passports, Chris accidentally stuck the keys in his pocket in his hurry to get back in the cab! At this point Chris and I just both simultaneously released epic sighs of frustration and our uber driver said “We have French saying that says ‘some days it is better to have stayed in the bed. yes, this we say here in France.” Thanks, dude. Message received. After a very awkward stop at an ATM and shelling out 60 extra euros for his extra time and him taking the keys back to our airbnb host, we run run run to the gate 40 minutes before our flight only to be rejected by a snooty frenchman at the counter that just shrugged and said “no. too late.”

I think the most frustrating thing about sitting in a weird airport cafe with all of our luggage, sobbing and desperately researching other trains/planes/automobiles to take us to Prague was realizing that we ate super meagerly and penny pinched through our entire week in Paris only to lose over 500 euros by simply forgetting to pack our passports. The only options we ended up with were taking a 20 hour bus with two different bus changes in France and Germany, or waiting 24 hours and getting on the exact same flight but the next day. So, we opted for the latter and went to priceline to figure out where the hell we’d be staying that night. We could’ve stayed in a sketchy 2 star for 50 euro or a swanky 4 star with a pool for 100. So I decided, look, I’m miserable, I’m going to splurge on this nice hotel and at least have something to look forward to in the next 24 hours of purgatory. This ended up being a mistake. The hotel was horrible! Our room had a stunning view of the wall of the building next door. When I called to see if there was maybe another room with a better view (the hotel was definitely mostly empty) the woman on the other end just yelled “THERE IS NO BETTER VIEW MADAME.” Cue more tears. Chris decided that, hey, maybe the fact that we haven’t eaten in about 10 hours is contributing to Libby’s constant leaking face, let’s order a pizza! Genius, right? Until we couldn’t find a way at all to order from the myriad pizza places in the area without speaking french and spent about 2 hours talking on the phone trying desperately to google translate our way into some pizza and failing miserably. Not to mention the complication that we had no cash as we had to give it all to the cab driver. Cue perfectly timed call from my mom and dad. They facetimed me just to say hi and see if we had made it to Prague only to find a red eyed bawling mess on the other end. They finally talked me down from my hunger fueled madness and my mom adorably paypal’d me money so we could afford to order room service. My parents are the BESSSTT. After some scary french phone interactions with the cranky hotel staff, we finally had full bellies and went down to get a beer and breath a sign of relief by the pool before being kicked out by the frantic confused bar tender.

  
  
But the important thing is, we MADE IT TO PRAGUE! We’re HERE! And I’ve spent a week at my new job! I think I finally have a handle on all of the many Czech names and complicated diminutives! More to come soon. I’ll get back into the habit of updating this more often so I don’t have such long epic posts. Let me know if you guys enjoy reading these or if they’re just pointless. Although even if it’s the latter, I’ll probably keep doing them anyway. I’ll probably find this amusing in the future, right?

Missing Texas desperately,

Libby