I had a bad weekend. A terrible weekend. A terrible, horrible weekend. To be quite honest, it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend.
It started off with Chandra and I waking up... hung-over, but needing to leave as soon as possible, because who knew when the next bus was going to come around since one in ten of them were running Thursday thanks to the off and on transportation strike (I def. live in France). It was early in the morning when we got to the bus stop and it was still foggy. Several old people stood around with blank stares facing off towards the left as they all searched for a bus. This scene was straight out of a creepy horror movie. On with the trip... We get to the train station with plenty of time (even after I had to buy a new coat and buy plastic baggies-not to mention deal with the transportation strike). So we had a large breakfast/lunch to calm our stomachs. At this point we mentioned about how great everything was going and then Chandra used the whole Meet the Fockers example when their travels seemed great until the brick flew through his rental car window and he didn't have insurance-it was all downhill from there.
When we got to the Grenoble Airport, we ran into a bit of trouble. Smaller airports are more strict. This one was strict about the liquids. We had them in baggies. Unfortunately the container that my expensive face wash, Chandra's face lotion and eye makeup remover were too large (even though the liquids inside the containers were less than the 100ml max). I begged the security lady to let me pour my facewash into another container and she said no... what a mean lady. This started my mood off great.
Then we get to Stansted. As we are walking to customs, Chandra realizes she no longer has her purple bag that had her ipod, cell phone, wallet, and PASSPORT. It was left on the plane. We reported this loss immediately to the officials and waited as someone "looked" for her life on our plane. No such luck, so they handed her a piece of paper-this was her only sense of identity. We then checked into our hostel. It was nice and I wish I could have experienced more hostels since I have been here. That Thursday evening, we hung out at the police station as Chandra filed a report and cancelled her credit card.
Friday, we spent half of the day at the US Embassy-the ugliest building that we saw in London. After about five hours of waiting around, running around, and taking vows Chandra had a passport. Then we went to the French Consulate to see about a visa. Of course the French consulate would be closed at 3 pm on a Friday afternoon. One man actually opened the door and Chandra explained her problem to him (fortunately she speaks French well enough, because he hardly spoke English) and he explained to her that she needed to email someone or something and fax something to someone and well you get the point, but neither of us had phones (my battery was dead at this point), so he disappeared back into the building. He came back and told her that she would be ok to go back to France, but she would need to return to London to get a new visa. She then told him she leaves in three weeks, so all troubles were over and he told her she was fine. After such a day, we found a cupcake shop and decided to treat ourselves.
At about 5:30 am, I woke up to an alarm on someone's phone. This lasted for about 45 minutes as Chandra tried to wake her up a few times to tell her to turn off her alarm. Later, we went on a free walking tour of London-Free=good! Unfortunately, we saw random places in London...not Buckingham Palace or Harrods! Later that evening, we met with some friends and actually enjoyed some time in London.
Getting back to Grenoble was an adventure as well. We had to leave our hostel at 2 am to wait for a bus that was about 20 minutes late. We weren't sure if it even ran that late, so I made the mistake to go into a fast food restaurant where there were five drunk people and a guy who didn't speak english who tried to help me but they were really curious about where I was from. One guy tried to give me his sprite. Interesting.
So eventually we got to the airport, when we were informed at the security check-in that we were only allowed one bag (including a purse). I had my backpack (completely full of books and clothes), my camera bag, and my purse (also full). I didn't have 32 euro to check the two other pieces of "luggage" in, so my only option was to put on every article of clothing on and try to fit my camera, camera bag, and purse in my small, almost falling apart backpack. So, I after putting on a thermal shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a short sleeve shirt, another longsleeve shirt, a sweater, a cardigan, and a thick sweater, two scarves, and my coat that had three books shoved in the pockets, I was finally allowed to enter in the waiting zone where I baked while I waited to get on my flight.
The trip was probably the worst experience I have had, but probably the most memorable.
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