The Eiffel Tower was amazing at night. The girls really wanted to go all the way to the top this time so we took stairs to the second floor and waited in line for the summit elevator. After standing in line for a while without it moving we realized that we would not make the elevator before it closed so we gave up again. We were disappointed but at least we got to see the city at night one more time.
We caught the metro to the train station and were riding along peacefully when I began to notice that the station names did not sound familiar. I looked at the map and realized that we had gotten on the wrong metro! We switched trains at the next stop and backtracked, then caught the correct metro. We pulled the watch out of the backpack and realized with horror that all of that "City of Lights" magic had whittled the time away. When we finally arrived, we raced out of the metro, ran through endless tunnels to fetch our bags, then sprinted to the platform in time to see our train pulling away. If we had been 1 minute earlier we would have made the train. As the train disappeared into the night we began to realize the significance: we were stuck in Paris at midnight with no place to sleep. There was a flood of emotion as angers boiled over, tantrums were thrown and tears flowed. Jolene and the girls just watched me and then calmly helped me off the station floor. Needless to say, it wasn't the highlight of the trip. It was touch and go for a while but I managed to find a hotel across from the station with one vacancy from a couple who cancelled an hour before. Jolene was able to get the station manager to write a note explaining our situation on the unused tickets in hopes of securing a refund. By 7:30 the next morning we were on a train to Spain and what looked to be a $600 mistake only cost us about $75 in an unplanned hotel stay.
We are now in San Sebastian, Spain in a nice little apartment overlooking the beach. The weather is unseasonably warm right now and we even did some body-surfing today.
Our place is the upper one with the two white stripes.
Jolene and I lived in Spain so it feels familiar coming here. It's nice to be able to understand the customs, the food, and especially the language. It's amazing how well you can communicate when you actually know some verbs! We will be here for a couple of weeks and our plan is to just settle in and hopefully become like Norm from Cheers in one of the bars down the street.
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