Travel Day from Hell

We left Florence early to catch a 6:30 train back to Rome. We decided to walk because the station was not that far away, but it was creepy because it was dark and the streets were empty. We arrived in Rome and caught a different train to the airport and killed 3 hours at the airport. From there, we flew to Paris where we had reserved a hotel room right across the street from Gare du Nord – the train station from which we were leaving in the morning to head to Amsterdam. We also had to pick up my other bags and computer from J.B.’s

Although the hotel looked okay online, when we checked in the place looked more like something that rented rooms by the hour. We should have known something was wrong when the front desk didn’t even ask for our passports….like EVERY other hotel we’ve stayed in has. We then went back to the train station and caught two metro lines back to J.B.’s. The whole way there, we started freaking out about our crappy hotel and finally both decided we weren’t staying there. With the big suitcases and the computer, we hailed a cab and tried to explain that we needed to be taken to a hotel in Paris (we were currently in Bolounge, just outside the border). The cab driver spoke no English and, despite Melissa’s best efforts to whip out her 10th grade French, didn’t know what to do with us. Thankfully, a group of people came by and helped explain that we had a crack whore hotel and needed to be taken somewhere better.

We drove around with our cab driver from hotel to hotel for 40 minutes before we finally found a place. There was an exposition in the center of Paris and everything was full. But, one hotel called another property and found us a room. From there, the receptionist called a cab and was kind enough to explain we needed to be taken to the crack whore den to pick up our bags and then taken back to the new hotel. We were thankful because we didn’t want to be stuck in that neighborhood at night trying to hail a cab. After the cab driver, who spoke a little English, agreed that our fire trap, disgusting, flea-infested, drug and prostitute haven hotel was in a bad neighborhood, Melissa even managed to tell the cab driver, kidding and in French, that he should call the police if we didn’t come out with our bags in 5 minutes…

In the end, despite wanted to break down knowing that (at one point) we had NO PLACE to go in Paris (because we were stupid and panicked enough to “secure” the keys to J.B.’s apartment in a way that they were not retrievable before finding a place to stay….), it turned out okay. The new hotel was beautiful, had a balcony and was two blocks on the backside of the Arc D’Triomphe.

We are now in Amsterdam – Yes, I have already seen both pot and women in windows and we didn’t even go to the red light district. I will write about that later.

Until I write again…