The flight jinx

Remember last summer when I tried to fly to Paris? My dad and I fought off oncoming contraflow traffic to get me into New Orleans right before Gustav hit. I was afraid my flight would get canceled and I’d be stuck in the middle of Katrina No. 2.

Well, the next flight I took after that, or was supposed to take, was from Beauvais to Barcelona. Yeah, Ryanair. Canceled due to fog. They surely tried to take my money. It required some costly calls and a certified letter to get my $$ back.

I did successfully make it to Ireland via Aerlingus in November.

On the way home from France … 

France calling

A month ago I was “French fried frites, yo.” Ready for some dollar menu, to see my college friends again, to speak fluently everywhere, to comprehend television in my sleep. All I wanted was America.

But here I am. Back one month, and all I want is France. Maybe it’s melodramatic of me, but I think I miss the freedom most. I miss being anonymous, blending in. I miss the feeling that my every action would not set off some reaction that would eventually get back to everyone I knew. It’s not that I was running around making a fool of myself, but I reveled in that traveler’s bliss of being here one day, gone the next, remembered or forgotten inconsequentially.

I Amsterdam, I (Am)sterdam

So it took a day as equally bleak, cold and rainy as the day I left Amsterdam for me to finally get around to writing this, my Amsterdam story.

Canal in Amsterdam.

I’m not sure what drew me to Holland for my birthday. Maybe it’s the one place in Europe everyone expects you to visit when you’re abroad. It was my birthday and I admittedly wanted something crazy. I already did 21 (on a dry Sunday in Oxford, Miss., no less). I knew the Tulips would be out of season. I guess I really knew nothing about Amsterdam before I planned the trip, save that you could get really high there and buy a hooker. Isn’t that the appeal of Bourbon Street, too? I do Mardi Gras every year …

But thank you Amsterdam. I think you changed my life a little, you changed my semester a lot and you changed how I look at travel. No, the pot’s not that good. (I mean, maybe it is. I wouldn’t know.)

Guess the poorly pronounced French word, the game

So not too long ago, I posted a piece about France that I wrote for The Knoxville News Sentinel. In it, I joke about assigning points to different French sightings.

Well, the game exists!

Over the weekend in Amsterdam (I know – more later!), I mostly hung out with French guys. My travel buddy hates speaking French if she can avoid it. So, in a room with six French boys who spoke minimal minimal English, she asked questions such as “What is your favorite cheese” and I translated the really hard stuff.

Paris, je t’♥

The first time I wrote this, it was on graphing paper. Funny how the French don’t have college rule. I still have yet to buy a decent journal or frilly French stationery. Or maybe it’s true that the real Paris and the real France are dead (frilly stationery gone too), lost to another generation of American students seeking the old world. This is what a man selling post cards informed me near the market on Edgar Quinet.

My baguette and groceries.

One of the cutest things I saw today was in one of the metro stations: Je t’♥. Things like that make me believe that the old France isn’t so much dead, just changed. It is a shame that the French have developed their own pervasive McDo rip-off (Quick), that I can speak English at information booths and get perfect directions, and that Levi’s and Converse are all the rage.