Further Up and Further In ...: The Good News Is ...

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Good News Is ...

Yes yes, we all know that the good news is Jesus. But on an update from Paris, I must give you the other good news - we are staying at a Marriott Courtyard Hotel! Now, to go along with this, as well as a puzzling credit card statement that my Mom may stumble upon later, here goes ...

We arrived in Paris on Sunday afternoon/evening, deciphered the Metro system:

(thanks Daddy, I think because of you I get a strange exhilaration at the challenge of figuring a new one out EVERY city we travel to) and headed to our "hotel".

http://www.booking.com/hotel/fr/hoteldelaterrassepar.en.html

There you can see it online. Here is our picture.

They also display a brochure depicting pictures of the rooms and lobby unlike anything I've actually seen in the place - a very flagrant display of false advertising. And if you search for availability it says it is fully booked. It is a cheaper hotel, roughly comes out to 20 Euro per person, or 60 for our room each night. But as you walk into the hotel you realize THIS is NOT what I had in mind. No elevator, a smell of glue, men putting in new carpet along the small winding staircase, and our room being on the 4th floor did not bode well for our stay. We reached our room (after much huffing and puffing) to find a room not much bigger than our beds, and a bathroom - very tiny - whose door cannot open out all the way without runing into one of the beds. Okay ... I guess for 20 Euro each, this isn't a bad deal, we paid more at our beautiful hostel in Luxembourg. We also realize that hey, this is just a place for us to sleep, and we will be out on the town most of the day anyway. It's got beds and a shower therefore good enough for sleeping.
So we headed back out, stayed out until about midnight, and came home to crash. At some point during the night either Jesus or Hillary's stomach woke her up (we think mostly Jesus, but you can decide), and she used the facilities, only to find while she was looking in the mirror, a bug crawling up her neck. YES, a bug crawling up her neck. She quickly trapped it in the sink, checked for others on her body, and moved to scope out the rest of our beds. Bugs on the pillows. In the bed. Not a ton of bugs, but more than 5 which sure feels like a ton of bugs. Picture necessary:

EEEEEWWWW. She was taking pictures of them for proof to show to the reception in case they wouldn't believe us when we complained, and I woke up from a flash from her camera. I turned to ask her if everything was alright, and she somewhat calmy replies, 'um, there are bugs in our beds ...' and Bianca and I needed no further instruction to jump straight out of bed and try to brush off any bug that may have still been in contact with us. This was at 4 in the morning.

We all head downstairs to see if the reception is open, or at least if we can use the internet in their lobby, since due to some quick thinking Bianca thought of some possible alternatives of hotel options since her step dad has points with Marriott that he never seems to use. PRAISE THE LORD. We head down and find a sleeping receptionist who we promptly wake up and attempt to communicate about the bugs. Difficult between either no French or no English, but creepy crawly sign language and a trip to the room were enough to get the message across. It's a good thing Hillary trapped two in the sink or he might not have believed us. But as we came back out from the viewing in the bathroom there was one on the pillow, so case solved. Meanwhile Bianca is madly trying to connect with family over the internet - interestingly enough facebook chat came to our rescue, even if I don't want to admit it I must. Also good thing we're 9 hours ahead and it was 9 or so in Seattle.

So by the blessing of the Lord (and Bianca's Mom - thank you THANK YOU) we were able to get out of that hotel, more or less fully refunded (the guy attempted to charge me for that night even - like we actually slept more than 4 hours in bug infested beds and I should pay for it - No. I turned to him and said, 'You want me to pay for tonight?!?' with a pretty good look of disbelief, and he seemed to agree that was asking a bit too much) and were on our way to the Marriott at like ... 6:30 in the morning? They said check-in would be at 3, but we figured we could at least leave our bags. In reality, they let us in our room on arrival, and it is SO amazingly beautiful and different than the nightmare we were in merely hours earlier.

So, the good news is we are now in a Marriott Courtyard. The bad news being we had to sleep in bug infested beds to get here - which also means we've found a couple stragglers trying to hop along for the ride. Bianca made a good point, they've already won, they got the room at the other hotel, I just wish they'd leave us alone!! Every once in a while one of us feels like they're crawling all over as well, but that's just the human psyche for you.

Other than bugs and moving all of our stuff on the metro, Paris has been wonderful!! We took an illuminations tour - one of those sightseeing buses by night that also came with a boat ride on the seine, and it was fabulous. Some pictures of that on the blog to come as well. Yesterday we made the Louvre, Saint Chappelle, and the Cluny Museum (that one has that tapestry of the Lady and the Unicorn - fabulous!). Today I'm hoping for d'Orsay, Rodin, Orangerie, and the Army Museum.

Hope you all are very well, and have enjoyed reading the exploits of my trip to France thus far. I'll let you know if anything else ridiculous occurs, as we have free internet in our hotel! Very nice. Some other pics:

1 comment:

I am Kate Maxwell said...: so rad... i feel like only you would get stuck with bugs in your bed...; 10:58 PM

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I dreamed a dream ...

A place for documenting the strangeness that radiates my imagination while I slumber. Oddly enough it is not due to any medication, go figure ...

18Oct2010
It happened. I've reached a new ... low? I am currently taking a class about the Doctrine of God. We've recently been reading Thomas Aquinas, and discussing the simplicity of God. My dream the other night involved me going for a jog (which I never, ever, do ...) and during said jog I recall a conversation with my jogging buddy, in which I say, "Ah, so the fact that God is good supersedes my ability to comprehend His goodness." That is right. My subconscious is actively processing theology while I sleep.

11March10
In real life, my friend got married in January, but I was unable to attend. HOWEVER, in my subconscious, I dreamed that she redid the entire wedding for us on campus - it was half so we could be there, and half so it would be documented (photography and video) because they didn't do it the first time. WHAT a party.

11/04

Weirdest dream - we are in an alternate universe exactly the same as this one only different. You following? I feel like all the people from seminary here are with me, and we're in some sort of lodge that's out in the woods. It's huge, because it houses like, 400 people comfortably, but this isn't the weird part. We have to be very careful about venturing outside, because there are these evil people out there waiting for us - they want to trick us, manipulate us, and make us one of them. How do we tell who they are? They always come as sets of identical twins. The thing is we somehow all ended up here, and we're trying to get back to our world, so we need to get outside the lodge and search for the path back. But every encounter with these 'people' is SUPER risky, because they are very persuasive - like sirens (the mermaids, not the ambulance noises). It was scary/awesome/crazy.

10/10
IT HAPPENED. I dreamed I was a part of High School Musical live. Along with a couple of my friends here at PTS, we were some sort of dance ensemble extras, but I'll take what I can get. But what I do remember is something more along the lines of not actually being hired to do it, but they felt like they'd let me prance around pretending I'd be in it. In other words, I had no idea what I was doing, but while doing that no one kicked me out ...

22/10
My mom is always paranoid that I'm gonna get that flesh eating bacteria and my whole face will disintegrate. Well, I dreamed that I was checking out a scab that was on my leg, and realized that it had become quite a dent. THEN I saw that I had a scab on my ankle that was really quite deep (although healed, nothing gross, it was all just regular skin) that when I tried to see how deep it was I found out it went ALL THE WAY THROUGH MY FOOT and I could see out the other side. Straight through my ankle. I even caught a glimpse of bone. WEIRD.
I also had a brief dream about this show we were filming that was kind of a contest between nuns and cops - the cops had to run through this kind of supermarket area grabbing the things they would need on doing their rounds or whatever you call it. Since nuns don't really bring a lot of stuff with them on their ... rounds? more like they don't have those ... they had to run around grabbing beads and things for putting together necklaces and rosarys, only they had to attach them together using blue masking tape. The nuns were getting all mad because the cop's task was much easier, and much less tacky.

8/10 (that's october...)
I can't remember all the details, just that it was happening Indiana Jones/National Treasure style. We were doing some sort of ancient biblical treasure hunt (thank you seminary?) and I was traveling alongside this main guy (no idea who) who was dragging along with him two young boys. They had a special title, because they were like, kid geniuses. Innate sense of direction and ridiculously good memory for every kind of fact. The kind of person you want at trivia night. The guy was yelling at them, "Come on! you've got to remember the stuff from Leviticus!" ... ??? I have no clue. We're on some beach somewhere and I'm more or less tagging along for the ride because I think I was initially kidnapped, but now I'm like that girl in National Treasure who's just too curious to leave. I'm sitting on the bank, looking up at this sort of stone wall that runs parallel to the water (not into it) and I end up picking out one of the stones and when I turn it over ... hark a clue! It has a swastika sign on it (hello Indiana influence) with a halo above it ... I don't know how I feel about that, but in any case, I yelled, "I found something!" and then promptly proceeded to wake up ... boooooo.

16/6
Apparently we are family friends with Nelson Mandela. He came to stay at my house, which is a lot larger on the inside than I remember, and the backyard is absolutely enormous. I was also hosting a student group of African American students for a meeting at my house, who were delighted to have Nelson Mandela visit for a little while, and then he went to the kitchen to do some dishes ... I was also called racist by one of the students there because I had used the phrase 'What kind of people' when saying something like 'what kind of people would do such a thing?' which doesn't really sound racist but does ask the question do I categorize people by their actions more than
I should ... anyway, I wish I really did know Nelson Mandela, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't let him do the dishes ...

7/6
So I'm working at the INN in Seattle apparently, and Ryan Church asks me to make some sort of interactive deal as a part of his talk. He's preaching about prostitution and the dangers of selling sex or us buying into the current trends that just promote sex, so I decide to make a type of quiz that makes people aware of the way humans function in relation to the reality that 'sex sells' (in case you haven't read it, the book For Women Only has some eye opening facts and figures). He hands me a tape with parts of his talk already prepared, and we're talking VHS, but that doesn't even phase me I just go looking for a VCR. I find on in a common room somewhere, a TV/VCR set hanging from the ceiling and there are people socializing and eating in the room, but I just grab the closest thing to stand on (a miniature trampoline?) and move to put my tape in. I put it in and push play, and realize it isn't rewound as it's playing something taped off the TV, all in German. I rewind some more, and it is a clip from Oliver Twist (I don't think I've ever actually seen Oliver Twist) where Oliver is encouraging another orphan in the orphanage that they aren't stuck here for life, they can be whoever they want to be. This is communicated by the song my subconscious created, which I will entitle, 'You Can Be A Man'. This is what I woke up to - with it stuck in my head ... You can be a man, if you want make a plan, you can be a man ... I can sing it to you sometime if you want. I love that my subconscious is capable of writing songs, it gives me hope for my conscious ...

29/5 (I'm in Europe so I have to write it like that)
There was an ambulence running by outside our hostel this morning, and I think I dreamed that there was an airplane flying overhead that was losing pieces of itself all around us - but in my dream is more frustrating that scary. Like "really? it's losing chunks of airplane over MY street? can't it move one block over?" I am SO proud of my thoughtfulness of other people that may have been on the plane in my subconcious.

27/5
I was climbing a mountain with Bill and Claire and some other WSU students, only the mountain was pretty much a vertical pile of sand for most of the top, and you had to stick your arm in it and twist a little to get a good 'grip' in order to pull yourself up more and more. IT was CRAZy. But I got to the top with the rest of the.