i've got a ticket to ride... twice
first off, please excuse any gross misspellings you may encounter in the following. for some reason, the french have taken it upon themselves to rearrange the entire keyboqrd, including putting the A on the top row, the W on the bottom, & requiring a shift for the period.
i arrived thru the chunnel safe & sound & hoarse from discussing my life story with seatmate, danny (yeahn he doesn't get it either). he was kind enough to not only escort me to my metro gate, but also circle a ton of places to go check out on my map. after he left me at my gate, i pulled out the ticket that someone in london had given me... it was good for 1 metro ride, so i figured out it would be a good way to get to the hostel. for some reason, however, the gates were wide open & dark. i'm sure i looked confused because a good(intentioned) samaritan decided to shove my only ticket into the non-working gate machine (this was after she launched my luggage & her child over the gate). realizing it was stuck, & the ride was free anyway; she took off, causing me to whip out the tweezers & retrieve the ticket.
once arriving at the hostel, i met a nice young brazillian who wrote doan the request i was to take to the metro office to get a metro pass for the week. after trying my "parlez-vous anglàis?" (& getting my credit cards rejected from the automated machine) and receiving an ominous shake of the head, i held up the sign & was able to buy the pass (with the lady laughing at me, but i'm okay with that). the pass is good all week starting monday; something i failed to realize as i was trying over & over to get it accepted in the gates last night. i finally hopped the gate (which, of course, is a non-non) and started on free train ride #2. on the return trip, i was finally able to use the carnet ticket i rescued from certain demise earlier.
today was the usual hours upon hours of walking around, finding a ton of things closed (patheon, notre dame, supermarket), learning some new words (push, pull, where is, and exit come to mind) & finally stumbling upon an internet cafè, where hopefully now i can use my time left after typing this thing FOREVER to find a new place to stay, as the craphole i'm in right now is, how you say, le suck.
current mood: this keyboard is killing me