Day 23

Today was pack up day, getting ready for the big trip to Paris. Row met up with us at the apartment in the morning to say goodbye and to swap photos and stuff. After saying goodbye, we trained and bussed our way to Luton airport. This was a lengthy bus ride, which therefore meant many of us felt a bit average by the end.

The flight to Paris was uneventful. For a flight, that’s probably a good thing. When we landed, Sandra called the apartment people to organise them to meet us at the apartment. The lady said that she’d meet us there in one and a half hours. We thought, well, that’s a while, but ok, sure lady. We’ll wait out the front for her.

We had arranged a private car to take us to our apartment. We found the drivers easily, and they were friendly guys. Going down the highway, we came across heavy Paris traffic. Balls. The driver told us that on the weekends a number of Parisiens head out of town so traffic on Friday’s is hideous... There were many motorbikes cruising down the highways between the cars. The driver told us that it’s so common in Paris that they even have motorbike taxis from the airport for the businessman who needs to get to his meeting on time.

The traffic was pretty bad. The GPS said we had about 11 minutes of travel time to get to our apartment but it took us over an hour. In the end, this worked out well, as the apartment chick arrived 2 seconds after us. Hooray for good timing!

The apartment was nice. Small, but nice. It also had the best WiFi speed out of all the apartments so far. After we got our stuff sorted, we went for a walk around the block to have a look and find a supermarket. It turned out that our apartment was really close to the Moulin Rouge which had been completely unintentional. Finding the supermarket was harder than we thought, as it was a bit late. However, while dad went down to find some wine underneath another store, he found one.

It was a Friday night, so a lot of people were out. We had our dinner, and went to bed. Going to sleep was a little hard, as our apartment was on the ground floor next to the street. You could pretty much hear everything that went on outside.