We made it!

After almost two days of travel, we made it to Paris! It’s almost surreal that we even got here. Traveling was exhausting and we are so tired, but we want you all to know that we’re safe and how it all went for the first two days.

Departure

Our flight was at 5:10 pm pacific time departing from Vancouver Int’l Airport, that meant that we had to leave Burlington at 11 am in order to have enough time for the US-Canada border and the airport security. Thanks to my awesome mom driving us up, we headed for our neighbors to the north. The longest wait we had was a 50-minute wait at the border, that was no fun since it was so stinking hot, but despite that we made it to the airport in good time.

When we got to the airport we expected a long wait at the security check, taking our shoes off, fumbling around with our things. Not the case. The wait was the shortest I have ever experienced, about ten minutes from start to finish. It was so fast we hardly had time to figure out what we had to put separate bins. We didn’t have to take off our shoes, we didn’t have any body scanners to go through; the only thing was that Andrea had to get a “random crotch swab”, haha.

Once we were through security we had about four hours to kill. Luckily there were lots of shops to browse. When that was exhausted we found some chairs at the end of an empty terminal and hung out for a while laughing at people. Andrea even got a few handstands in to keep the blood flowing. I sat and watched.

Our plane boarded on time and we had no problems finding our seats and getting comfortable. We were in the middle column with no window seats, so that was bummer. But soon we were taking off and had plenty of on-board entertainment to keep us company.

We started off with watching an episode of Elementary which we synced up between our two screens. When that was over and we parted ways each watching different things, Andrea stuck to comedies whereas I watched a couple movies. We both tried to sleep several times, but it was virtually impossible to get more than 20-30 minutes of sleep in before being woken up by a kid kicking your seat or the toilet being flushed (oh yeah, did I mention we were sandwhiched between restrooms on both sides of us?)

Arrival

I cannot express to you how long that flight felt. I felt like we were in the air for FOREVER! It was a nine-hour flight to Amsterdam, so we took-off at 5:10 pm and arrive at 11:30 am the next day (that would be 2:30 am pacific, so imagine how weird it felt to be awake and barely have slept that night. We got off the plane and made our way to the “arrivals hall”. I (Matthew) was personally hoping for more “Amsterdam-y” things around to make it feel more like we were somewhere foreign, but it really just felt like a generic airport most of the time. We eventually found were our train would be departing (3 hours later) and got some pizza. After we stuffed our faces we walked around Schiphol Airport some more, finding an awesome “I amsterdam” sign outside the airport. After snapping some shots, it was time for more waiting

Waiting was painful!
Not only were we super tired, but we also couldn’t find comfortable seats to sit on, resorting to a bench with no back, but also our suitcase was too heavy to carry around so we had to take a baggage cart with us everywhere. The good part: there was free wifi… for a while, then it expired. We waited and waited and waited and finally we were ready to take our train to Paris!

On to Paris

We got to board our train to Paris, a three-hour trip, at 3:30 pm (mind you that this is essentially 6 am with no sleep) and boy were we relieved! Thalys Railways really treats their 2 klas passengers well because once we sat down we were practically asleep already. The chairs were so comfortable and they had these awesome wings next to your head that you could lean on and not hurt your neck. Needless to say we both took advantage of the opportunity to get a nice nap in.

At around 6:30 pm we arrived at Paris Nord train station! Finally, in Paris!

After awing at how cool the station looks (which we swear we’ve seen somewhere before) we went on to find the Metro station to get to our flat. After consulting the information desk (and making myself (Matthew) sound like a total American) we got our Metro tickets and rode it across central Paris to Vaugirard Station and successfully navigating the Paris streets to our final resting place for the next couple days!

We are so excited to be here but we are almost more excited to sleep, so bonsoir and good night!