Britta's Post: Paris Day 7

As a general rule, any time prior to 6am does not exist to me. By this I mean that even 5:59:59am is dedicated to sleep. Pretty much the entire reason I opted out of synchro is because of their morning practices, as I simply do not do mornings. As Signa mentioned in the last post, we didn't get to bed until 1:30 in the morning. We had to wake up at four in the morning. Astrid set her alarm to Beyoncé's Partition, but I didn't even hear it and Astrid had to shake me awake. Whatever. It is kind of her fault that I was so tired, because I got zero sleep the night before. In the middle of the night, she placed her foot in the small of my back, and I decided not to try to move it because she would've been so annoyed if I woke her up. Then she pulled it away, and then kicked me full force in my back and I almost fell off the bed. About fifty seconds later, after I finished swearing quietly at her, she started cackling so loudly, seemingly at me. Wrong move on her part because I smacked her on the back causing her to wake up and get mad at me for hitting her. She was completely on my side of the bed and I shoved her over. The parental unit woke up briefly and scolded me, which was so ridiculous. Anyways, the next morning Astrid told me that she had been laughing at something that happened in her dream, and doesn't even remember kicking me. So, back to 4am. We caught a taxi to the airport in Rome at 5am. Once we got inside the building, we got in the long line that eventually ended at the desk where we would deposit our luggage and have our passports checked. So, naturally, we had to ensure that we had our passports. Mom had told me the day before that she had my passport, and when we were eating breakfast at the hotel, she had placed some passports on the desk. At the airport, everyone grabbed theirs out, but I was still digging around in my carry- on bag for mine. I asked mom for it because I remembered that I gave it to her. Mom disagreed and said she gave it back. This, of course, lead to us pulling out of the line to unpack and check my carry-on and then my big pack. It wasn't in either place, so now I was kind of shitting a brick. Astrid and Signa stood there rolling their eyes at each other the whole time about how disorganized I am. Finally, mom decided to check her bag just to be sure. She pulled out her raincoat from her suitcase, and guess what folks? AM had my passport. I was about ready to cry at this point, or vomit, or pass out. I re-packed and we got back into line, when mom muttered "well, she won't be talking to me for a while" because I was obviously stressed and maybe a tiny bit pissed off. When we were waiting for the flight, we stopped at the bathrooms, and the toilets were so annoying. You had to put literally your entire weight onto the toilet seat in order to keep it down. If you even so much as shifted to, like, grab some toilet paper or something, the seat started to pop up and hit you in the butt. When we were in line to get into the plane, a group of old nuns decked out in their habits that obviously aided in their vow of celibacy tried to cut to the front of the line. There was a lady behind us that was having none of it and marched straight up to the nuns and sassed them to get to the back of the line. The lady that Astrid and I sat beside on the plane was a super friendly makeup artist from Rome, and she and her sister were flying to Paris. Her English was really impressive, but she told us how she was a super nervous flyer. This became obvious when she tried to leave her seat or maybe even the plane while we were taxiing down the runway, and we both had to stand up so that she could get through. At least until the hot flight attendant came over and made her take her seat again. She also thought that the flight attendant was hot, because when he first walked by, she told us that she had "heart eyes" for him, and then mimed hearts in front of her eyes towards him. Obviously "he's smokin' hot"', "10/10", "I'd tap that" and other such expressions were gaps in her knowledge of the English language. It was sort of bizarre because during parts of the flight, they played American music through the intercom system. We arrived in Paris at 10am, took the train from the airport and then walked the rest of the way to our apartment through some really nice areas with a lot of men-only bars. Suddenly, all of the well dressed guys milling around made more sense. The place we are currently staying at is an apartment on the very top floor of the building, and there are (Astrid counted) 8 billion steps up to our door. It is beautiful, despite my first exclamation upon seeing the upper floor being, "is this a hobbit-hole?" and then proceeding to hit my head so hard I had to lie down for a minute. I wasn't the only one to get injured in our first ten minutes of being there, because Signa managed to miss the last two steps down the super narrow staircase and fell down, now Dad says she probably has a broken toe. At the very least it is definitely bruised and inflamed. We went for lunch at a café in the neighbourhood and it was so good! We all decided to head to the Louvre which happens to be the childhood home of King Louis the Fourteenth, until his ego became too big for his palace and he decided to build Versailles. It was super crowded, but the weather was far more bearable than Italy, with some cloud cover and a cool breeze. Once we got inside we discovered that it was sweltering and there didn't seem to be any AC. Since the museum is inside a giant glass pyramid, it was like he world's most populated greenhouse. We shoved through the crowds and saw the Mona Lisa, Venus Di Milo and the Raft of the Medusa. I found out the hard way that they did indeed have air conditioning, and it was coming out in concentrated jet streams from these secret vents in the floor that I didn't notice because the artwork is not on the ground. I walked over one of them in my dress and it flew up and I'm pretty sure I flashed some people. Oops. On the walk back to the house, I walked over another vent, but this time a super large one on the sidewalk outside, and I pulled a bit of a Marilyn Monroe, except not cute or elegant. It was actually kind of tragic because I spazzed and tried to bunch up my dress but there was too much of it to hold on to at once and mom had to help me pull myself together. I swear I have more wardrobe malfunctions than anyone else that I've ever met. We took a break at home and I had a nap then did some people watching from our gorgeous balcony. Then we walked into a nice square and ate outside at an Italian food restaurant. Then we walked home, got ready and went to bed.