So I arrived in Paris...

I think it’s every writers’ dream to be holed up in a café with a coffee and a cigarette on the go while trying to come up with the next best seller! Especially if that café is in a little square in Paris. It’s actually true what they say everyone jets around on a Vespa wearing a fancy helmet and sunglasses – when the weather’s nice which it so happens to be on my first day here. However, since I haven’t got the patience or the dedication to sit here and write a full on novel a blog on my travels is the next best thing.

But there are some things that aren’t told to you when you speak to someone from or who has been to Paris and that is most people speak English, if you’re a lone ranger like me entering a city in a mystical land is extremely daunting. For fear of sticking out like a sore thumb by asking for directions by everyone I came across instead I got out my phone, bought some data (gonna regret the phone bill) to find my way. Two hours later I arrive at my hostel. A pretty dingy place to be honest but I suppose that’s what you’ve got to accept when you’re on a tight budget like myself. It’s late in the evening and all the touristy things are closed for the day so I go to the nearest café and voila here I am.

The café I’m at, all the staff and most of the costumers can speak English as I sit here and, like a snoop, listen in on other people’s conversations even the people who are French are flittering between speaking English and French and I know for a fact that if I had just asked for directions my first evening here would have run a lot smoother (and cheaper).

Another thing they don’t tell you is the sheer number of homeless people there are as soon as you walk out of the station, I know they’re probably harmless but it’s still pretty terrifying! They’re not scared about coming up to tourists and striking up a question or two. As my French is pretty fucking poor (excuse my French haha) they tend to move on quickly after that. But be prepared.

What I also found walking into the fresh air of Paris is that all the roads are utterly complicating, they all begin with the same name and you can easily become lost. My original plan was to get the metro from the main station to my hostel but I thought “Nah! Let me see some of the city since I’ve just arrived.” In all honesty DON’T! I should have stuck to my guns and gotten on the train, what was supposed to be a 30 minute walk turned into a 2 hour disaster. If you’re here for a couple of days you’ve got more than enough time to go exploring once you’ve dumped all your stuff. That being said the train ticket machines are pretty complicated too, once I conceded and went into the nearest metro (their underground station) to get to my bed, I found they didn’t list the station I needed to get to so again, don’t bother wasting your time otherwise like me you’ll have a bunch of angry commuters muttering behind you. Go to the service desk and buy your ticket there, it’s easier and you definitely don’t need the added stress if you’re on your own in a foreign country – the people on the desk speak English too!

Rereading what I’ve written so far I see that it’s coming across as a bit of a horror story but it’s really not, it’s just my first time being in a foreign country all on my own. The people I’ve encountered so far, the café owner, McDonald’s worker (yes that was my first meal here haha) and the guy on reception at my hostel were so welcoming and sympathetic. You expect this of the hostel workers but everyone else not so much; you can understand that they can become frustrated by people who don’t speak their language. However, this isn’t true and I stand by my statement that everyone has the capacity to be kind towards another regardless of one’s nationality and it really touches someone, especially me – a ditsy blonde, when a stranger goes out of their way to help you.