Sunday April 20 - Trip Home from Paris

Finally… Sunday’s blog … and this whole past week as well just to make things simple!

So I woke up around 10:30 at Antoine’s with everyone else and realized this isn’t good! I automatically thought that I had missed my train, so I apologized and quickly headed back to Benjamin’s to get my things and get to the train station to figure this all out. Well, while I was on the platform waiting for the metro to get back to Benjamin’s, I realized I had my train tickets on me in my wallet! So I pulled them out and checked the time – and realized my train didn’t leave till around noon – YAY! So I had plenty of time to get back and gather my things up. I had planned to head over to the souvenir shops in Montmartre this morning as there was at least one more things I had wanted to pick up – but I realized that I didn’t want to risk it and decided that I might have a friend going back down there who could pick it up for me – or find it somewhere else.

So, I got back to Benjamin’s and started getting my things together to head on back home. Benjamin had a meeting to go to, so after thanking him again for hosting me and giving him his key and map booklet back, he headed on out while I finished up. Once that was done, I trucked my suitcase down the six flights of steps (that wasn’t fun!) and walked the block or so up to the Gare du Nord train station. Once there, I checked which platform my train departed from and then headed on over there. Of course, as I had gotten the cheap tickets, I was in the very last car of the train! But when I got there, everyone was waiting outside still as the doors hadn’t been opened yet – and the train was supposed to leave in five minutes! Yikes!

But they realized this and opened up the doors, so we all piled on. Once I was on board, I realized that I had forgotten to put my ticket in the machine on the platform to “composite” or activate it – so I figured that if they came and checked, I would just explain the issue if they even asked. One cute thing though was that in the seat across the aisle, a man was traveling with a cat in a carrier which was really cute! Soon enough, we pulled on out and I was on my way back home! For some reason though, they never came to look at our tickets – not that I would’ve been in any trouble to begin with – but I’ve gotten used to them checking. After about an hour’s ride, we were pulling into the Gare Lille-Flanders station and I was back in Lille. From there, I hopped on the metro and headed back to my room.

Once there, I was able to relax for a bit as I unpacked my suitcase and organized my things. I sat down and balanced my accounts and the usual money issues, as well as double checked my expenses against my budget. It actually ended up looking really good! I had gone about $115 over my budget in London, but I came in under my budget in Paris by about $95. So in the end, I actually did very well with both trips and staying on budget (unlike the trips in Feb – oops!).

Normally, this was when I would sit down and get all my blogs updated and online, and start working on uploading my pictures. Well – this time that was absolutely not the case! I had to start on the ton of school work I had due the next few days – But I’ll do that in another blog to make it easier and shorter!