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Nigel's last full day in Europe :( Very, very sad faces all round. Particularly because we had to get up at 4:00AM. Sad, grumpy, sleepy faces! We had a relatively smooth journey back to Paris all round though. We met a Brazilian girl at the hostel in the morning who was also leaving for the airport so instead of having to wait for the bus we all split a taxi because it worked out to be not too much more expensive. Then we flew from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, & Zagreb to Charles de Gaulle airport. From there we had planned to go out to Beauvais, which is about an hour out of Paris, to stay in a hotel near Beauvais airport because I had an early flight out of that terminal to Stockholm the following morning. At this point we hit a bit of a glitch when a very unhelpful lady at the help desk gave us incorrect directions for where to wait for the bus out to Beauvais. By the time we actually got correct directions to the departure point (which was in a completely different terminal of CDG airport) we only made it there just in time to watch the bus we wanted to be on driving away. No problem right? Because she told us they came every hour…well we should've known not to trust that. No, actually they go three times a day, & there wouldn't be another one going out until 6:00PM!! :S
We also discovered that the buses back to CDG from Beauvais are very infrequent as well, which means that if we had gone out there, Nigel would have had to go back through Paris then out to CDG airport the following day to catch his flight home to Perth. So we sat in a café at the airport for a while scratching our heads & trying to work out what the hell to do. Eventually we settled on finding a last minute deal for a cheap hotel near the place where the shuttle leaves Paris to Beauvais airport, from where I could get out to my terminal by bus, & Nigel could catch the train back to CDG in the morning. By the time we actually made it there it was about 3:00PM…so we'd be in transit for nearly 12 hours & were both exhausted.
We stayed in the aptly named Median hotel, which was really rather Median indeed. There was no hot water & the shower head was bung…which was a shame because I found that out after I'd put hair dye in my hair & had to spend several chilly minutes in a cold shower washing it out! (The hair dying turned out to be quite an interesting incident in itself…turns out the cheap "Auburn brown" dye I went for from the local supermarket was really rather heavier on the auburn than I was expecting…haha fortunately I think it's growing on me!). We spent what was left of the afternoon repacking & organizing things, & with Nigel giving me lots of tutorials on how to reload my sim card & other such technical things :P It was pretty cold & drizzly outside, & the traffic was backed up crawling past on the street below. Every now & then I'd have a bit of a random, sporadic cry, brought on by extreme tiredness & thoughts of Nigel leaving the next day! Somewhat amusing actually :P
In the evening we had dinner in the hotel restaurant downstairs, too tired to go anywhere else. It too was Median! Hehe We thought the braised beef cheek with fresh pasta sounded safest…other menu items included something about crystallized gizzards & veal tongue or something…It was OK…actually the pasta was really nice! I mean, it was literally just plain, boiled pasta, but it was fresh & home made, & between that & some bread & butter I was perfectly satisfied :) Nigel got to eat all the braised beef cheek to restore his meat intake levels so he too was happy! hehe
P.S. No photos from today so thought I would just include one from the previous day of me & my Croatian kitty friend :)
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