Once we got the airport, we met up with the others (Matty, Nelson and David) and quickly checked in. Seeing Matty was such a relief. I was so stressed and scared that we were going to be late while I was on the bus. I was also stressing whether they would let me on because I booked my flight under 'Sharon Wong' not 'Sharon Wai Yang Wong'. But in the end, it was just pointless stressing. They just glanced at my passport and automatically ticked me off their passenger list.
I sighed a massive relief. I was so worked up the whole entire morning and it was only then I could start breathing properly.
We boarded the plane, the type where you had walk on the tarmat to get on, and settled in for the hour or so flight to Paris.
I fell asleep and when I next woke up we could see land outside the window. It seemed like we were landing soon because we were very close to land but our plane kept on circling around the area. It was then that the captain informed us that due to hazard weather conditions we would continue circling Beauvais for a further 10 mins to see if we could land before we head to Lille instead. Looking from the window, the weather looked fine. But what did I know. In the end, we headed to Lille.
Initially from Beauvais, it would take us 1 hour to get into Paris. Now that we were in Lille, we had to take an extra 2 hour bus ride to Beauvais and then take our original airport transfer to Paris. A total of 3 hours bus ride. Unbelievable for the one with motion sickness, ie. me. During the last hour ride into Paris, Matty was slightly worried about our accomodation. The confirmation indicated that we check in by 2 but we were already late by 1 hour. David and Col insisted that it would be fine so Matty just quietly anxiously waited to get to the hostel.
From the bus terminal we took the metro to our hostel and checked in. We just made it before the cut off time for our accomodation but Col's booking was unfortunately cancelled because she was suppose to arrive between 11 and 3. When we got there it was already 5:30. However, with her expert haggling skills Col secured a bed for the night, and the receptionist was kind enough to continue trying for beds for her for the rest of our stay.
The hostel area was very sketchy and ghetto. There were ethnic people everywhere on the street outside our hostel and metro selling all sort of things. For example, Malboro ciggy's and metro tickets. I felt really uncomfortable there so I was really eager to see what David's neighbourhood was like.
David lived literally on the other side of the metro map to us. So it took us around 20 ~25 mins to get to his place. It was very residual and nice to something more local. We visited his place and got to meet his family before we went off to get dinner. By that time, all of us were starving.
The first stop was at the bakery, the baguettes were heaven. It was so good. Could not resist ourselves from eating it so we had to go back and buy another one. After buying dinner, which consisted of bread, cheese, jam and red wine, we headed back to our hostel and walked to Sacre Coeur. Since it was the station next to us, it only took us 15mins to get there.
The view from there was absolutely gorgeous, rather cold though but the food and wine helped warm us up a bit. We stayed for a while until we decided to head back to the hostel and rest up for tomorrow's walking tour, customarily planned by David.
That night we had no hot water but we met 2 very nice Brazillian girls who were sharing the room with us.
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