First impressions of Paris

I like to travel alot, but travelling isn't always super fun.

This 12 hour flight from Singapore to Paris was one I’ve been dreading for a long time. It was twelve hours of confinement. Sure, you get food, and even in flight entertainment. But it was still 12 hours of sitting down, doing mostly nothing but hearing children scream, and others snore. 

I slept like a baby most of the flight and when I woke up, I saw a beautiful vista of the world passing by. Wow. Really, it was awesome.

Sunrise from the plane

The hours flew by and we were soon on solid ground. Bonjour Paris! 

We went through customs and headed straight to rent a car. Or rather, we wanted to.

“Madame, we have no work to do here. There are no cars,” one of the guys told my mom.

Huh? Apparently, summertime in Europe is peak period, so you don’t really expect to turn up and get a car without booking online. Like us. 

There were several things running through my mind. The most dominant thought was "Oh. Shit. What are we gonna do without our freaking car?"

Eventually we got one at Hertz. One that could fit all our luggage. It cost a freakin bomb (2700 euros) for 2 weeks. Seriously, that's expensive shit even by my standards, and I'm really not one to save.

Tadah! Our lovely companion for the next two weeks.

 And so there, we were raring to get into Paris! Murphy, however, had some other ideas.

I flipped on TomTom my best friend and started to program the hotel address into the GPS. Except that the only options showed were Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand.

WTF???? I downloaded that bloody Europe map and paid 60pounds for that shit! Don't tell me you didn't get it! After threatening to condemn TomTom to a dusty eternity in the storeroom of Singapore, he finally came to live and switched over to Europe time. He was probably jet-lagged too.

According to TomTom, it would take us 35mins to get from Charles de Gaulle Airport to Champs-Élysées. Well, he was wrong.

It took us two fucking hours, and we moved bumper to bumper every inch of the way! If you ever fly to Paris, heed my advice, don’t ever travel to the city during peak hours in the morning!

 

 

No, all these cars aren't parked. It's a jam smack in front of the St Magdalene Church. 

OK so we eventually reached our hotel, which had no parking lots. And no drop off bays. And a bus lane right in front of the hotel.

 

After the chaos of finding a place to unload luggage, trying to get horrendously heavy luggage across the cobblestone layered street and finally parking the car, we got the hotel room without any broken backs. Well I guess that’s why they call it luggage. You lug them like mad.

PS: You may be wondering why the hell luggage was so heavy when we just arrived. The answer is simple: Mom was travelling with us .