From Underground to Metro: Je suis perdue!

June 10 ‐ London

This morning, after packing all our stuff, we decided to have a picnic to enjoy the sights on our last day in London!

Scary, eh?

Of course, we first had to stop and take pictures in front of the National Gallery one last time!

I preferred to imitate the lion with my golden mane! 😉

We then headed towards the Victoria gardens, right outside the Westminster Abbey.

What a cute sign!

There we ate a delicious picnic of fresh bread with various cheeses, dried fruits, and nuts…

…that is, until it started pouring down rain!
We tried to find shelter, but the more we walked in search of a nice cafe, the harder it rained. Finally, we were able to wait out the majority of the storm in a warm covering until we could brave the wind again.
We had made it practically to the hotel again, with the rain storm almost over, when we decided to stop in the National Gallery cafe for some tea. Ida and I ended up splitting a vegetable curry pastie- yum! Just what we needed!

After picking up our bags from the hotel, the time had come to go to the train station. There, we had our very first French exchange, in which the man turned to Ida and said, “Parlez-vous francais?” To which she simply pointed at me. He then asked me how long we were staying in Paris. When I said 2 weeks, at first he thought I said 12 weeks, which was slightly embarrassing… at least now I know to annuniciate more so that my deux doesn’t sound like douze. Finally, after our exchange, he told me that since we had a three-hour train ride, I should teach Ida French on the way…

…which is exactly what we did! I taught Ida the three most important phrases to know: pardon (excuse me), merci (thank you), and Je voudrais… (I would like…).

We also went over some of the basic vocabulary in our phrase book, specifically:

Pourriez-vous parler plus lentement, s’il vous plait? (Could you speak slower, please?),

Pourriez-vous repeter, s’il vous plait? (Could you repeat that, please?),

and probably the most relevant one for our trip…

…Je suis perdue! (I’m lost!)

Paris

Finally, we arrived in the beautiful city of Paris! Of course, for the first 30 minutes we only saw the train station, where we ran around frantically trying to figure out how exactly we were going to get to our apartment. When we tried to ask the man selling subway tickets, he was so rude to us- we definitely had our first experience with the infamous Parisian rudeness! That was not as cool of a French exchange as the earlier one on the other side of the train tracks.

When we eventually made it out of the Metro, all the stress was worth it, though, because we got to see such a beautiful view!

Ah, much better!

After such a frantic day, we knew the perfect place to go for our introduction to Paris: a creperie! Ida had one with mushroom, ham, and cheese, while I had one with three cheeses (which makes it gourmet!). We split our sucre et beurre dessert crepe. Delicious! The French are definitely good at making comfort food.

…and while we waited, we could even watch the cook make them!

Au revoir!

-Zelda