This has been the longest three days of my entire life, and do I have a few stories to tell! Starting on the 25th I guess:
July 25th:
During this day I decided to basically do two things, one, go to see the Tour de France. Second, go to Greece a few days later.
At 7:00 pm I was in the train station n making reservations for a train to Paris and ran into a girl named Nicole, who I had met on the pub crawl, She just graduated from Stanford, lucky duck! Got her email address. I also met Ash and Sibyl here.
Sometime in the afternoon I flirted quite a lot with the two girls from Mexico, finding out that one was named Wendy -- from Peter Pan, and the other remained nameless. They were going to take off to Greece that evening, or something along those lines. Eventually one of the girls, the nameless one, and I got to know each other better. I made dinner with all of them, and just enjoyed myself in general. Finally Bj introduced himself to them, and she said Ana. I laughed, stormed out of the room, and she got all excited (because she didn't tell me her name but told Bj). We laughed in the end. Eventually we got a little cuddly, but nothing happened with it. That evening after taking it pretty easy and deciding not to go to a pub crawl with Sibyl and Ash, I walked her to her train, and kissed her on her cheek. She turned, and we just kinda kissed on the lips. The most interesting part was it was a real light kiss, and also that they invited me to go to Greece with them. They were going to get an apartment down there. I went back to the hotel, wrote a few emails, read a little, and found the girl to get their email addresses. I was just finishing writing them down when I stepped outside and they were all there! Apparently a bunch of scary guys were harassing them on the train so they got off, the policia said it was a good decision. We kissed later that night, but I went to bed at about 1:00 while they stayed up later.
Everybody in my room woke up early on the 26th, I woke up at 9:55, with just enough time to check out. I checked out, got some breakfast, and headed over around town just kinda wandering. At about 4:00 I found out that my parents were getting married, and shortly after this i was on a couchette to Paris. It was kinda expensive. I got int he train and fell immediately asleep. Over the entire night I was in a four person couchette being the only one who spoke English, but we all got along fine. I slept the entire way, and arrived at Paris-Percy, and jumped on the metro. I went downtown to where the finish line was going to be, but realized that I had a big huge bag on me. I was walking along some street looking for a hostel or some place with lockers and heard some guy say Mr. Williams! It was a little odd most certainly, and when I looked over, out of 6 billion people, there was Robin Williams! The actor! I could not believe it. So I said, "it must really suck having everybody know who you are" and he replied "it must really suck having to carry around that big bag around" and then "it looks like we both have burdens." I chatted a little while about my journey and he chatted back. Not wanting to intrude on his walk I said goodbye, and took a left up some street. Good time in Paris so far! I found my way to a train st station, then to a second train station, then to a third where there were lockers. I locked up my bag, and ran into this guy named Robert who just graduated from college. He had been traveling for quite a while as well and decided to come to see the Tour de France. We set off on a mission: finish line. In short, a lot of walking and pushing through a lot of people ended us up by a couple from New York on their honeymoon, except they were supposed to be in Edwards islands, but they bored them. So, here are the two of us, meeting up with them, and they break out a HUGE bottle of champagne. We all get glasses and are drinking champagne with good company (and all arrived early enough to get some chairs form the park) with perfect seats about 1/2 a block from the finish line. AMAZING! We were on this little leveled area, and the camera flashed over us whenever the riders went by. So, we got to see all the riders and lance Armstrong doing their thing. Which to the four of us, all outdoor people, was just amazing. I have never been so excited in my entire life. Eventually, after many hours, the entire th thing ended, and we all set off downtown. We went to the Champs Elysees, were the finish line was, and bought a few Boutique's,and Aaron, the groom of the marriage, bought us all crepes and we saw the parade go buy. Got to see Merck, Armstrong, Induran, Ullrich, it was just insane. Eventually the parade ended and they went back to the hotel. Robert and I looked up on timetables the places we were each going to go, and headed off to the trains station. I picked up my bag, which is where the troubles started, and we walked over to the Nord station (from l'Est). We parted as I took a confusing metro to the Lyon station, and after about an hour of wandering around and asking people I learned that the train now left from the l'Est station, right where I was. Jumped on the metro again and went back there. I eventually caught a pretty late train to Zurich, arriving at 6:30 in the morning. I walked around for a while, and jumped on another train to Milano which will then take me to Florence. The ride so far has been simply amazing, there are hills and lakes surrounding me. Reminding me somewhat of where I am from, just REAL hilly and all the hills that aren't covered by rock or trees are covered by this great green crass stuff. I almost feel enchanted riding on this train, where I am now, looking back at all the mazing houses nestled into the hills. So old, people are wandering around outside there houses every now and then. I wish i could stay at one of them. Well, I am going to eat a little food I think.
This entry is from my journal and was written on Aug. 28, 2003. It's been tagged with Travel and The WTF and Notes on Life and Moving Onward. There have been 0 comments so far.