Lincoln Cook

Eurotrip 2011

Washington D.C. - France - June 18th, 2011

My trip began at Dulles Airport on Saturday afternoon. I sat in the terminal by my gate after making my way through all the security checkpoints. After a few hours, the plane began boarding, and I climbed on once my section number was called. I got lucky enough to score an aisle seat which would come in handy since I had just downed about half a gallon of Gatorade when TSA would not allow me to take it on board, and I knew I would have to get up often to pee and stretch. However, a man in the row in front of me asked to trade so that he could sit next to his family, all of which were on my row. Of course I gave up my aisle seat to sit in the dead center of the five-seat row. One of the ladies sitting next to me turned out to be a B.O. smelling French black lady, and the man’s kids behind me were the kick the back of your chair and scream types. All of this, however, didn’t seem to bother me much once we were in the air, and I was indulged in the onboard movie. I watched “Just Go With It” with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Anniston three times on the way over. This was mostly cause I wasn’t paying much attention and was drifting in and out of sleep most of the time.

At last I reached the De Galle Airport in Paris. I hopped off the plane, went through customs which took all of twenty seconds, and made my way to the arrival gate. I checked the times of the plane my parents and brothers took from Charlotte to see it was a few minutes behind. Soon enough they came through the arrival gate. Together we took the RER metro train into the city. A foul smelling homeless man played the accordion on the way. Out the window there was nothing but graffiti covered walls and an overcast sky. We changed trains once we got into downtown Paris, and it was just a short trip to our hotel’s stop.

After checking in, we took a short nap since none of us had slept well on the plane, and it was only about 7 in the morning in France. When we awoke, we went out to find something to eat. Our first café experience in France was what we would come to get used to as the waiter being a dick at first because we didn’t know the language and were being difficult, followed by excellent service, and they always seem to warm up to us. With a little sleep and food, the five of us walked towards the Eiffel Tower, only a few blocks from where we were staying. There, we hopped on a boat that would take us through the city via the Seine River and stop to let us off at Notre Dame. The boat did take us through the city where we saw some amazing architecture, but it only paused briefly at the Notre Dame stop. So briefly that by the time we got up to get off, the man doing the docking had already closed the gate and was pushing off. We rode it back to the Eiffel Tower, and Mom got a refund for some of the cost of the tickets. When this little venture was over I think we were all still so tired and jet lagged that we headed back to the hotel to fall back asleep. It was only about 5 in the afternoon and as soon as I crawled on top of my two-pillowed make shift bed (since we were in a 4 person room and everyone else had a bed) I was fast asleep.