Rather than taking the tube for two stops, I decided to walk to King's Cross/St. Pancras Station. The weather was very cold, but actually quite nice. The area (right along Regent's Park) was beautiful. London makes me wish I knew more about architecture. St. Pancras itself is a gorgeous building:
Bryan and I had planned to meet up at Platform 9 3/4 in King's Cross, partly because we are huge geeks and partly because we needed some exact spot to meet at. Unfortunately, construction meant that the Platform (not a real train platform, just a little tourist spot) had been moved from its logical position between platforms 9 and 10. I found it by asking station employees, and waited nervously for Bryan to show up. We had agreed that if I didn't make my connections (which seemed very possible given the craziness of my plan) he should get on the Eurostar to Paris anyway, and I would get on the next one and hopefully be able to use my ticket. We didn't have a plan for what to do if he missed it. I decided to go to St. Pancras and look for him, which was fortunately successful. After some airport-level security, we boarded our train to Paris.
The train was quite nice, and took only 2.5 hours to make it there. By the time we arrived in Paris, it was almost 9pm and we were quite exhausted from almost 24 hours of traveling (for my part, at least). All we wanted to do was get to the hotel and collapse, which led us to make the biggest mistake of our trip. We debated taking the subway, but decided a taxi would be easier with our luggage and our lack of knowledge of the subway system. A friendly man waved us over to his taxi and asked us where we wanted to go. We gave him the address, and loaded our stuff into the car. He was quite nice, chatting with us about how much he loved Obama (most Europeans do, actually). After a fairly short journey, we arrived at the hotel and he told us the fare: 70 euros. Naturally, I flipped out at him and told him that there was no way in hell we would pay that much money for a cab ride. At the very most it should be 20 euros. He pulled out a sheet of paper and showed that he was a flat-rate taxi rather than a metered taxi. I told him that he had clearly tried to cheat us, since he knew what a short distance we were going, but he stood by his claims and would not budge on the price. I told him we didn't have that much (a lie), and he said he would take us to an ATM to get it. After long negotiations and eventually breaking into tears (again, my response when angry), we paid the fare. Our luggage was in the back of the car, so there was no way we could just give him less money and attempt to get out of there. We felt like incredibly dumb tourists- this was one of those things you read about and shake your head at, but it's not supposed to actually happen to you. Never let your guard down, folks, even when you're exhausted. Cab drivers are looking to cheat people in that situation.
The hotel itself (Hotel du Nord et de l'Est) was actually quite nice. It wasn't in a very touristy area, but still had plenty of stuff nearby. It's near the Place de la Republique:
We went out to find some food and had no luck finding places with English menus, so we settled at a fancy pizza joint. Parisians seem to love pizza, though it's quite different from the typical pizza in the states. We ordered a 4-cheese (including brie and goat cheese) and a smoked salmon pizza, both of which were absolutely amazing. I'm still reminiscing about how good they were. We also had a lot of wine, since wine in Paris is cheaper than soda or water.
Next: sight-seeing in Paris, eating French food (including escargot!)
No comments:
Post a Comment