Lost in Paris

    Once upon a time, we decided to venture into Paris. We had a twenty-hour overnight layover, so why not? We took the train from the airport and found ourselves in a world speaking only François. We found a charming restaurant and all sat down to a three-course meal! And for the first time in my life... I had real, genuine, french fries. Actually French fries. Wow. I also got calamari and this desert that was cheese and honey. French people are so fancy. I looked to my right and watched a woman use her knife and fork to cut a piece of lettuce from her salad. Nobody cuts their lettuce.
    Dinner took awhile, but we finally got out into Paris after the sun went down and started to walk around. We saw Notre-Dame and eventually found the Eiffel Tower -- but it kept being farther away than we thought. We walked, walked, and walked -- and somehow the tower was always behind a building and never around the corner we thought it was. But eventually, after walking across Paris, we found it. We took all our pictures and looked at the tower in awe. But we had to leave because the last train back to the airport left at midnight and we didn't want to miss it. Don't worry, there was a bus system we could take if worse came to worse.
    So we found a train stop closer to where we were and walked there, but it was closed (even though we thought they still had twenty minutes). We walked back across town to another stop, but they were closed too. We found a map and stared at it for eternity. Paris had gotten cold and none of us brought adequate enough jackets to be out very long. We then walked across town to a different train stop and our leader went down inside as we stood in the cold to see what he could figure out. He came back up awhile later and summoned us. We followed him down and watched as he tried to buy tickets and after a confusing conversation with a French man, figured out that he could not.
    We tried to leave the train station, but we were locked in.
Underground.
    Then a man that was locking up came to us and dramatically opened the gates so that we could get out. He pointed at a bus stop and said "quick. Number 14!" We looked to see bus 14 drive away before we could get to it. Our leader decided (after looking at the bus routes in French) that we could also take bus 13 if that one came back first. We sat in the cold for maybe twenty minutes when bus 13 came along. Our leader hopped on holding his Euros and his hopes to get us back to the airport.
He asked the bus driver "can I buy a ticket?"
The man said yes.
He tried to hand him money.
The man said no.
He asked if we could get tickets.
The man said yes.
He tried again to get tickets.
the man said no.
Language barriers sure make things difficult...
    Before we knew it, the bus man had to leave, our leader stepped back off, and we all watched as our bus drove away. We sat at the bus stop for even longer waiting for the next bus. A man came up and used the map plus some exuberant hand gestures to eventually communicate to us that we actually needed to walk across town again to another bus stop and take a different bus to a place called "Charles something-in-french," So we did. We found the stop, waited for the bus, and decided that instead of waiting to figure out how to buy tickets and all like last time, we would just pile onto the bus and figure it out later. Our bus came eventually and the first time we actually made it onto a bus ride was at 2 AM (which felt like 3 AM for all of us because we were used to Israel time at this point).
    We rode the bus and tried to figure out where we were in the first place, what stop we needed to get off on, and how long until we would get there. A woman watching us asked where we were headed, and we told her the name of the stop. She was kind and explained that we were on a bus going in the complete opposite direction. We couldn't tell if she meant we needed to get off or if she meant the bus would get to the end of the route and turn around and eventually go where we needed. We thought (and hoped) she meant the latter, but no one knew enough words in the other person's language to really be sure. So we rode the bus and it was nice and warm. My bad ankle had been acting up since we left the Eiffel Tower and I had consequently been lagging behind and hobbling through Paris so it was nice to sit down. I also had blisters on my feet for a few days beforehand and I didn't put any band aids on them this time so they were just getting worse. Nonetheless, I was loving the adventure. It made things more exciting. 
    Suddenly we came to an empty corner in the middle of nowhere and were told this was the last stop and we all had to get off. Our leader talked to the bus driver and we all stood in the cold. We couldn't just get off and stand in an empty part of Paris in the middle of the night, could we? We said we needed to get to the airport and the bus driver's face looked utterly shocked. The airport? First of all, that bus didn't even go to that "Charles something-in-french" place even if it did turn around. Second of all, that "Charles something-in-french" place is not where the airport is at all. Third of all, we were stuck in the middle of nowhere on the completely wrong side of Paris.
    The bus driver informed us that another bus would be coming in twenty or so minutes and we needed to take that bus back to where we just came from so that we could wait there for a different bus that would actually take us where we needed to go. So we began our next wait. A few of us super cold people crammed into an escalator that was turned off. It blocked the wind and we were warmer closer together. A few other people searched out bushes to pee in because everywhere we went was closed. Girls were crying or getting mad. People were almost falling asleep. I was humming VeggieTales. To be honest, I was hoping something like this would happen ever since I found out that we got to go to Paris. I like stories, adventures, and weird memories of being stuck in French cities until awful hours of the night.

in the escalator

    Suddenly, someone came to save us! A man fetched taxis for us. But he could only get two taxis so the crying-and-tired-and-bathroom-needing people all piled into the two taxis and the rest of us volunteered to wait. We had to wait another hour because the taxis would take half an hour to get there and half an hour to get back to us. We went back to our cold escalator and waited. Finally, they came back and we were able to ride in warmth to the airport. We got there at 3:45 AM with exhausted feet and a story to tell.


    Honestly probably the best Paris experience I could have asked for.