The plane arrived at 9:15 pm as scheduled in CDG Airport, Paris. The bags also arrived as scheduled, so at least I didn’t have to worry about getting back to the airport to pick up my luggage. My only concern was that I didn’t have time to exchange my US$ to Euro, as my designated taxi driver had already diligently waited outside of Terminal 2 for me. Moreover, I do not speak French while he does not speak English. Parfait (Perfect).
Anyway, we went straight outside and sure enough, we immediately load up my bags and went straight to Formule 1 Hotel at Cergy St. Christophe. The video below showed just a glimpse of how dark it was when I began the journey. You probably couldn’t see any signs whatsoever and could barely hear my voice over the French radio station, but a footage is better than nothing, I guess.
(Note: The video was regrettably removed since I couldn't get it to work in Blogger. Technically, it finished uploading and everything, but it did not show up when I viewed the blog. If I have some spare time and can figure out what went wrong, I will upload it later, along with the hotel footage.)
So anyway, after a brief reroute (the driver first took me to Formule 1 Hotel at Cergy St. Martin – luckily I brought my GoogleMap print out), we arrived at the designated hotel. The taxi driver was very kind to deduct the excess “reroute expense” from the total cost, and he even accompanied me inside to make sure the reservation was fine before bidding farewell. That was very gentlemanly of him. By the way, there is a Chinese food restaurant right next to Formule 1 Hotel ^_^.
I should be heading to bed right? No. I brought my plug converter with me, and I plugged it in with a US-made surge protector. Guess what? The surge protector short-circuited when powered on. Terrified? HELL YEAH! Anyway, several prayers and shaking hands later, I plugged in my cell phone charger along with the converter. Nothing bad happened, everything seemed normal. The telephone charged normally and everyone’s happy. But I didn’t dare to plug the surge protector again. Perhaps I would never do it again.
All done? No. Suddenly the fire alarm blared out excitedly, and everyone’s kinda pissed off. Especially the shirtless, fat guy staying at across my room who went outside and yelled at the receptionist for a bit. The receptionist guy told me (in French) that somebody smoked and triggered the fire alarm. Dormitory living, anyone? Apparently, the smoking guy (or girl) was persistent in smoking (either that, or the fire alarm was feeling too excited) so that the alarm blared several times after that incident. Someone finally came over and inspected the alarm or something. I did not know exactly, as I was already subconscious at that time.
Oh yeah, there was a hot French guy staying about two doors away from me. When I first smiled at him, he winked at me. Sometime later, he knocked on my door just to say “Good evening” in French. I just smiled and shut the door as soon as I opened it because I was afraid in having further conversations in a language that I only knew 0.0001% about. Anyway, at last I was ready to sleep.
- to be continued... -
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