Late Night Escapade

This past weekend I learned that the metros stop running at 1am, but I thought that they stopped running at 2. I ended up getting home at 4:30 am then got up at 8:30 to go on an all day bike ride/treasure hunt around the city in teams of 3-5 people. Details below...

So, a couple of girls from my French class and I decided to go have a night on the town last Saturday. Nichole (from Colorado) heard of a place close to our school that had good music and cheap(er) drinks, so we decided to check it out. Note, my school is almost all the way across town from where I live. We had a good time, tried a couple of different bars in the area, had some drinks and a bit of creme brule w/ nutella, then decided to call it a night. Gunna and I have to take the same metro home, where Nichole has to head the opposite direction and is a lot closer. Nichole got on the train no problem. Gunna and I got to the station at 1:30 thinking we had plenty of time to catch the train home. After sitting for a half hour and realizing that everyone had left, we realized that the metro was no longer running. Shit. So, we tried another line and the same termine announcement came over the intercom just as we arrived. Hmm, how about a taxi then.

The taxis here are a bit expensive, but it was a lot better than walking home, which probably would have taken a good 1.5/2hours. In every other large city in the world all you have to do is raise your hand and a taxi will eventually come. In Paris, however, there are designated taxi stations and, especially at 2am all are either full or not running. We waited at the transit station (with a lot of other people by the way) for about 30 minutes until we realized that all the people waiting in the taxi que either spoke English or Spanish. Not a good sign. Final options: late night bus or walk. There was one bus headed in our general direction, so as soon as we saw it we jumped on. It wasn't til after we started moving that we realized it was the right line going the wrong direction. So, we got off at the next stop actually farther away than where we needed to be. Eventually the right bus came full of tired drunk people and we took it to Bastille and walked from Bastille. I eventually got home around 4/4:30 exhausted. I can't believe the metros stop running so early here!! It is so incredibly stupid. The bars don't close until after 2! Lessons learned: go to bars within walking distance, or plan your bus route ahead of time.

Just a bit about Sunday: I joined the Paris group through the Couchsurfing website. There are all kinds of people who propose different events and everyone who is a member (over 1000 people) are from all kinds of backgrounds. One of the events that was organized was a bike treasure hunt around the city. Like I said above, teams were composed of 3-5 people; each having to have at least one English speaker and one French speaker. The game was to answer as many questions about the different districts as possible in 5 hours, each question being worth a certain number of points, and the team with the most points at the end wins a prize of some sort. Our team was much more focused on stopping at parks and getting coffee in the afternoon than answering questions about the name of the church where such and such a king was beheaded and getting the most points. We also didn't really plan for efficiency either. At the end though, we still managed to not come in last and I had a blast all day (we came in second to last). I also know now where I can rent bicycles. Bike is a great way to get around Paris, but the weekends are really the only good times to do it as most everyone doesn't work and doesn't drive. There were probably about 60 people who participated in the event and of course we all met up at a bar afterwards for some beers and socializing. I met some really great people from Paris of course, but also from Mexico, the US, Canada, Italy, and England. I had a really great time, but had to make it home because the grandparents were in town last weekend, and there was no way I was going to miss out on grandma's apple tart.