Jojo dropped me off at the TPA airport, where my flight left at promptly one hour late. This was allegedly due to inclement weather, although it was 80 and sunny in Tampa and we never encountered a drop of rain. In any case, I wasn’t worried about the delay since I had a 3-hour layover in NYC-JFK anyway.

Or so I thought.

I was juuuuust about to hand over my ticket and board the plane when I heard an announcement seeking volunteers to take the next flight. I stopped texting Lacey and hung up with J (because, yanno, my crackberry is glued to my ears/fingers) and went to check out the situation.

The plane is oversold by 8+ tickets. The LED marquee keeps flashing “Best Deals, Guaranteed!” (An actual seat, however… not so much, apparently.)

The guy at the counter (Freddie, if you’re taking notes) says he’ll offer $400 flight credit and a pair of meal vouchers if I’m willing to take the 9pm flight instead of the 5pm flight. Plus, he says, AlItalia serves way better food. Mmmmm, better food, you say? No problem.

(Except, of course, there’s always a problem…)

I end up waiting in line at the counter until about 6:30 before I got my new ticket to Rome via AlItalia instead of Delta. And then I had to exit the airport, walk down the street with my luggage, enter a different terminal, wait in line to go through security again, only to discover that the new ticket they printed me != boarding pass, and I have to go check in for my new flight through AlItalia. Oh, and the bag I had checked in Tampa is still on the plane that already left for Rome…

The folks over at AlItalia were super nice, particularly when they informed me that the 9pm flight had been delayed until 11:50pm (later changed to 10:50pm). This was not as sparkly as 9pm. Being good sorts, they got me on a completely different flight, which was scheduled to board in… 10 minutes. (Remember the part where I’m still not through airport security?)

Happy to be arriving just a couple hours later than my original flight (assuming I make it through security on time) I tear through the checkpoint as fast as possible and sprint toward my gate when I remember–oh yes. My meal vouchers. Each worth a hefty $7.

There’s no time to go to a restaurant, so I stop by the first shop I pass and try to buy a horseshoe travel pillow. No dice. Food only. Fine. I end up buying a bottle of water and 5 packs of gum. They weren’t thrilled about it (why do they *care* in what manner I choose to waste my food vouchers??) but after some insistence that gum was surely a foodstuff, I’m once again off for the gate.

Natch, the plane is running late. An hour late. And then another hour on the tarmac because we were cleared #24 in line for takeoff. Good times. Please stay seated with your seatbelt fastened. Indefinitely.

At long last, however, we were on our way! Yay! I was seated next to a super-friendly Italian guy who gave me lots of random pointers and never laughed at my bad Italian, except when I said “ho spegnuto” instead of “ho spento”. (Stupid irregular past participles! He knew what I meant!!!)

After much shenanigans, we arrive in Rome, safe and sound.

I head to the AlItalia counter to inquire after my luggage. They direct me to the Delta counter. The Delta folks direct me back to the AlItalia counter. Right when my head was about to explode calculating how much it was going to cost me to replace everything in that bag, one of the other volunteer-bump passengers takes pity on me and shows me to the storage room between the two offices where all the orphaned bags are kept.

Thanks, I tell him. It helps to speak the language, he replies.

(I cannot tell you how much that little bit of snark irked me. I *know* it helps to speak the language. I’m here to learn Italian, after all. I even asked after my bag in Italian. However, no level of fluency would’ve made me ask, “Is there a secret hidden door with no signage whatsover that might be hiding a cache of lost or forgotten bags?” Especially since they’d've mentioned it if they realized such a thing existed. But anyway. Settle down, E.)

Since we were (bizarrely) not required to fill out any customs forms on the plane, I anticipated some form-signing action in the airport or at least a barrage of questions (why are you here? how long are you staying?) from the customs folks.

Nothing. Not even a “buon giorno”. Just an outstretched hand for the passport, a quick stamp, and off you go. Good for speed, and all, but… weird?

Have you ever been bumped from a flight, voluntarily or involuntarily? If you’ve flown internationally before, are you used to filling out customs forms or breezing right on through?

One thing I want to say about the Charles de Gaulle airport that first-time visitors may not be aware–if taking the public transportation, be prepared to get screwed. Although there’s a metro station inside the airport, it costs about $10 or so to go through the gate. (Even though individual Metro trips are about $1.25) For example, last year when I picked Brian up at the CDG airport, it cost me $10 to enter the airport because I came by train (yes, I paid $1.25 for the Metro ride, then $10 to enter the airport) then $10 apiece to leave the airport. Bogus, bogus, bogus.

Disneyland Paris is the same way. You take the regular $1.25 metro, and Disneyland is the last stop. However, to exit the Metro gate, you must pay an exorbitant fee. I think it was close to $20. Each person, each way. So factor that cost in to your travels. (One may be able to circumvent the system through one devious plot or another, but you can’t count on that. There are Metro attendants there to watch for such shenanigans.)

So, after dropping my stuff off in my hotel (which is a hotel/hostel on the Republique square) I took the Metro to Trocadero. The Trocadero stop not only has an awesome view of the Eiffel Tower, but also features vendors who sell a variety of hot, yummy crepes. I got mine with nutella–deelish! I also arrived just in time for the Eiffel Tower lights to go all sparkly and do their glittering thing. This was cool for me, since I’m usually fairly far away from the tower after nightfall and all my past photos of it lit up at night have been from a distance.

I asked some Americans if they’d photo me in front of the tower, which is how I got the horrifically blurry shot attached to this post. Imagine that’s me, with a hot chocolate crepe in my hand, and the Eiffel Tower sparkling in the background. =)

Erica

P.S. You might notice the bright straps on my shoulders in many of my photos. These straps belong to my backpack, known affectionately as the R.B.O.P. (Yes, my backpack has a name. Can you guess what it is?)

Seven minutes go by as I traverse the winding road, followed by another seven. No lake. The twisting road forks. Twice.

Erin hadn’t mentioned any forking going on, so I randomly pick a path and continue walking. Another seven minutes of no lake tick by, and I begin to suspect that the lake was really a “lake”, a trick designed to be rid of me forever, a la Hansel and Gretel.

Wandering on the edge of a dense cabbage patch, I hear a strange sound, kind of a metallic rattle, and double-check my camera (which hangs around my neck in true tourist fashion.) The camera was off, but I might have left it on, since it turns itself off automatically.

Shrugging, I continue on and in a few more steps… again, the mechanical rattling. I realize the sound is not coming from me or my camera, but from the tall, tangled grass alongside the muddy pathway. Another five or six feet later, the rattle is accompanied by movement within the underbrush.

At this point, I’m convinced that rattle snakes run rampant throughout the path to the “lake”. Robotic ones. Vicious, evil, snakebots.

Then up ahead I see the edges of what could conceivably be called an apple orchard, although there were only a couple rows of sparse trees. Assuming the lake is on the other side and that Erin merely counts to seven in some weird new way, I stride resolutely down the dirt trail, doing my best to ignore the warning rattle of the animatronic snakes hiding in the overgrowth alongside the path.

Seven minutes later, I’m past the apple trees and into the woods. No more mechanical snakes, but still no lake. Curiouser and curiouser.

A watery trail snakes into the woods, and I roll up my pant legs before sloshing down the spongy dirt path. The lake must be on the other side of the woods, I tell myself. I’ll just follow the trail to the lake, and *then* I’ll be seven minutes from Erin’s house. No problem.

Seven minutes later, the trail forks, one path climbing up the hill, the other curving around below. Deciding I’d be better off taking the high road (ach, Loch Lomond) so I’d have more of a bird’s eye view, I tromp gaily along the path until it, well, ends. Not to be deterred, I continue making my way through the trees until I rediscover the path. Or, “a” path, since I cannot be sure whether this continues the trail I’d already been on or was part of a different trajectory altogether.

Another, oh, say, seven minutes go by. No lake (of course) but what I do stumble upon (thank goodness not literally) is a fly-laden pile of animal excrement, so massive that it covers the whole trail and I have to pick my way through the moss and the grass to get around it.

Snakebots are the least of my concern, now that I realize the woods contains elephants, or maybe dinosaurs. Erin totally didn’t mention that the trails led through the original site for Jurassic Park and that I ought to watch my back for the occasional Tyrannosaur.

The next few times the trail twists and forks, I pick a path completely at random because hey–if there are velociraptors gadding about, what does it really matter?

So now I continue along, marching to an internal recitation of Frost (the woods are lovely, dark and deep) and wondering if maybe I should’ve chosen a different path on one of the many forks I’d passed.

But at the foot of a cluster of trees, I come across a giant marker, affixed with a poster of woodland critters and their names. The whole thing was in German (of which I mostly know words like “und”, “grosse/kliene”, and the conjugation of “to be”) but based on the pictures, there are neither robotic snakes nor ankylosaurs.

(Allegedly.)

Luckily, in another seven minutes or so, a break in the trees affords a view of houses and a horse farm, and once the path leads out of the trees I do in fact come across water. Yay!

A bridge bisects the picturesque lake, and various people walk around its circumference, jogging, pushing strollers, walking dogs, smoking cigarettes, etc.

One corner of the lake even has a paved road, which a quick peek determines that it leads to a four-way (paved) intersection. One of those streets must lead back to Erin’s house. But which one?

A quick glance at my watch tells me I have 25 minutes until Erin gets off work and heads home. If the seven minute trail truly exists, that should be plenty of time to return before she has a chance to worry about where I might be. Of course, since I didn’t *arrive* via the correct path, I had absolutely no idea which road I should take. And as I walk around the lake, I realize that almost all of its “corners” lead to roads with further intersections. If I took one, I’d either get back quickly… or get really, really, lost.

So, since I’m of the “always be prepared” mentality when travelling alone, I fish in my backpack for the sticky note on which I’d written the name of her street before leaving the house. All I had to do was ask someone which direction to go, and I’d be home free.

However. (You knew there’d be a however, didn’t you?)

Not only had no one by the lake even heard of Erin’s street, the question I most frequently got in return was, “Well, what town is it in?”

???

“What town?” I manage. “What do you mean, ‘what town’? What town are we in right now?”

Come to find out, we weren’t exactly in a town right now. The lake occurs at the intersection between various towns and is shared by them all. Depending on if I wanted to go to this town or that town, I should head up this hill or down that hill or around that corner or along that field.

Since I, in my infinite wisdom, had utterly failed to write down more than the street name, I had no idea how to get back except… back through Jurassic Park, up the hill, past the cabbage patch and the snakebots, and through the serpentine neighborhood streets to Erin’s house.

According to my watch, I wouldn’t make it in time. As it turned out, my watch was right.

Erin was home and changed by the time I got there. (I, at that time, learned that we were in Miesenbach. Good to know.) She said she was going to give me another 15 minutes before driving around looking for me, which would have done neither of us any good since I was nowhere near any paved streets.

All’s well that ends well, of course, so we piled into the car and headed to Kusel to visit the castle. (The Kusel Castle? I sound like Dr. Seuss.) This castle is cool for several reasons beyond the basic all-castles-are-cool foundation. First, it’s right in the middle of a semi-residential area (unlike, say, Neuschwanstein) so there’s an intriguing vista of old and new mixing together. Secondly, it houses a restaurant in which you can (and we did!) eat dinner.

We had a great time exploring the grounds and climbing up the winding steps to the top of the tallest tower and looking out the windows at the panorama below. Castle towers always have such amazing views. Since I like to read books set in Medieval times (OK, I read novels set in basically any time period) I had fun imagining how it would’ve been like to live there, with the people bustling about and rushes covering the floors and so on. (I’m pretty sure that the view from the top at that time did *not* include a two-lane highway.)

Fun photos attached of our adventures in the Kusel castle (later discovered to be called Lichtenburg castle). Link to more info: http://www.burglichtenberg.de/en/index.htm

So, today I started out with a hotel-provided breakfast of croissants and cheese slices. I forgot all about the cheese slices on a plate until I saw them this morning, and it made me laugh. It’s some kind of cheese that I don’t know, sliced in a square like Kraft Singles but it’s the color of Swiss (minus holes) and cut super thin. Next I went to the Atocha train station to reserve my tickets and then realized I hadn’t brought my Eurail pass with me. (oops.) So I came back, swung by El Corte Ingles to get some band aids for my ampollos and then up to the room (4th floor) to get my Eurail pass and my mp3 player.

At Atocha (which looks like Jurassic Park inside–very cool) I stood in a long, long line, but not as horrendous as last night, which is good. I was able to get most of my tickets except for Italy and a couple for France, so that’s one hassle mostly hurdled. I then decided to walk to el Museo del Prado and spend all day looking at art with a rented audioguide, but… on my way I passed the sidewalk sale. Those of you who know me well know that I’d rather stick my head in an oven than go shopping, but this was a sidewalk sale of *books*. Books, I tell you! I absolutely, positively, cannot be trusted around books. I think I bought some from every single vendor. I had to throw out all my clothes just to pack them in my suitcase, and it’s only the 3rd day. (OK, I didn’t throw out all my clothes… but that’s the choice I would’ve made if it came to that.) How could I pass it up? Some English-language authors like Robin Cook and Stephanie Bond (translated into Spanish of course) and a ton of Spanish authors, and some from other countries.

So, when I finally made it the half-mile or so to the Prado Museum, my shoulder was already weighed down with more or less my body weight in books. (Or at least it felt that way.) Instead of spending all day at the museum (the beginning hour or so of which was spent book browsing) I stayed until about 5pm (rather than 7:30) before I gave up. I’ll come back in a couple weeks, maybe. (It’s free on Sundays, although more crowded.)

The weird thing about being in Madrid is that although I’m toting the camera everywhere I go, I’m hardly taking any pictures. I’ve been pretty much everywhere (and documented 99% of it on film previously) so there’s no real reason to take yet *another* picture of XYZ statue or ABC fountain. I did notice that the entire city is under major construction (Retiro Park says they’ll be done in 4 months, not sure about the people re-bricking the streets) so I’m interested in coming back in another year or two and seeing the upgrades. I did get to ride in a brand spanking new Metro train, the sort where you can see from one end all the way down to the other end, rather than boxed off cars.

I met some people from Oregon who were in Madrid by way of Ireland, and who told me that people from Edinburgh call people from Glasgow “soap dodgers” (which is a hilarious insult) due to their alleged stinkiness, and that Glasgow is the 2nd most likely place in the world to get stabbed. (#1 is some place in South Africa.) Apparently, gang members in track suits strap machetes to their thighs and stab people–rival gang members and ignorant tourists alike–who wander into their ‘hoods. And these ‘hoods aren’t your typical ghetto… they’ve been razed and replaced with government housing in the form of the tallest skyscrapers in Ireland. So the people on the street basically don’t go near tall buildings, because if they do, they’ll be stabbed. (If I decide to tour Glasgow someday, I’m guessing I better not pack a track suit.)

After all that fun, I came back to the hotel and did some work because tomorrow morning I get up nice and early so I can fly to Frankfurt to see Erin!

There’s lots of good eats in this area, but the restaurants are more expensive.

We rode up the little sky train (I know there’s a word for it in English, but right now my brain refuses to let on what that might be) and were let out near Sacre Couer and the square. (The sky lift thing costs the same as a Metro ticket, BTW.)

Sacre Couer is beautiful, and you can get another great view of the city from this vantage point as well.

Afterward, we headed to the train station and bopped on over to Belgium. Bri was excited to see Venkat and Anjali, and we all headed out to see the Grand Place all lit up at night. (Place like “plahss”, meaning “plaza”, not “place”.)

We ate dinner at an outdoor cafe and Bri got to eat Mussels in Brussels. (And I finally caught on that in the song Land Down Under, the singer says he met a man from Brussels who had a lot of mussels, not muscles. Ohhhhhh.)

Bri also got to visit the Mannekin Pis and the Golden Lady, and we got our picture taken with Vincent Van Gogh. Oh, okay, not the real Vincent Van Gogh, but a guy whose entire career is to dress like a statue of Van Gogh (that’s right, he doesn’t dress like the man, he dresses like a statue of the man) for tips. Fun!

Today we got up and visited the Louvre. This was Bri’s first time and he was a little overwhelmed by the sheer amount of *stuff* crammed into such a large space. Whatever your interest is, the Louvre is bound to have a room (or wing, or entire floor) dedicated to that area.

Next we went to the Eiffel Tower. Too impatient to stand in the ridiculously long ticket line for the elevator ride to the top, we stood in the shorter (and free) do-it-yourself, walk-up-steps line.

We made it up as far as you could walk–just under halfway–and I thought I would die of an asthma attack. Good Lord, that’s a lot of stairs. The view was spectacular, however, and worth every step.

Near the Eiffel Tower is an unofficial viewing area, just on the other side of large, oblong fountain pools. (I believe this is near the Trocadero stop.) Here you can get a Kodak-perfect photograph of the tower while noshing on the hot, fresh crepes and chocolate. Yum!

We rounded out the evening with a trip to the Arc de Triomphe at night, to see it (and the Eiffel Tower, which you can also see from here) all lit up at night. The lights on the Eiffel Tower do patterned flashing at regular intervals, which is neat to watch.

1) You must see La Sagrada Familia. It is not to be missed.
2) There is nothing else around it. Pack some water/snacks.

We were just as amazed and horrified by this massive, melting monstrosity as I had hoped and feared. It has tall, jutting peaks dripping Gothic elements like wax from a burning candle.

Most people who see La Sagrada Familia either love it or hate it. I thought it was cool. Bri did not. I find Gaudi’s architecture to be an intriguing clash between Salvador Dali and M. C. Esher. You gotta see it to believe it.

This building was also undergoing renovations, so I definitely hope to make it back out here and see it without bright yellow cranes obstructing my view.

Our hotel was right by the Arc de Triomf (yes, spelled like that–the Catalán instead of Castellano kept tripping me up, too) so that was one of the first sights we saw.

Next we went to the Art Museum which looked more like a palace than anything. One of the current exhibions was of fairies, and reminded us of our friend Margarita in Cincinnati. Wish she could’ve seen it. The Place Espanya was neat and gave a nice view. I could see La Sagrada Familia in the distance and it totally whet my appetite for Gaudí archetecture. I cannot wait to see it up close.

We went to the Poble Espanyol, which let me just say was AWESOME. If you ever get to Barcelona, you must check it out. It’s a massive, sprawling trip backward through time, representing various cities in Spain’s past. We had a delicious dinner and left when it was dark, only to come across a wicked cool fountain light show.

We walked past the Louvre and the big obelisk, the Assemblee Nationale, and other monuments.

Next we went to Invalides where we wandered the grounds and took a gander at Napoleon’s tomb in the dome church.

Afterwards, we swung by the Arc de Triomphe. I’m not sure if he was more impressed by the Arc or more terrified by the crazy traffic circling the roundabout surrounding it. (Something like a gazillion lanes. Rumor has it that car insurance companies don’t cover accidents at this site.)

I did some laundry, made my goodbyes to Venkat and Anjali, and headed back to Paris. (I just can’t keep away.) I mostly trolled around doing nothing, enjoying outdoor cafes and the like.