One fun thing about living up in the air is it means that I get to travel… a lot. And this weekend I’m taking that to the extreme, with a rather crazy routing that goes from Dallas down to Mexico City, then crosses the pond to Paris, and finally takes a quick hop to Dusseldorf, where I’ll be running a marathon on Sunday. (Like the flight wasn’t marathon enough!) The itinerary is a long one, but that’s the tradeoff for getting ridiculously cheap tickets – $380 roundtrip with taxes included. I’ll take a few extra layovers for that low price!
This week has also been kind of a rough one for me at work. I honestly didn’t get enough sleep this weekend, what with saying goodbye to my friends and having to pack up everything I own, then disrupting my schedule further by taking a late night flight to Dallas on Monday night. But since we’re coming up on a huge milestone for my project, I wasn’t really able to catch up on any of that missed sleep; there’s just too much to do. (That said, I’m not using it as a badge of honor. I will be the first to tell you that I am loving being so busy – in this case, it’s pure productivity, and it’s so much fun!)
My hours are going to get crazier still when I switch to working night shift (i.e., starting my day at midnight) for the next few weeks, and I’m not 100% sure how I feel about that – particularly given that I’m a bit sleep deprived as it is. But the crazy routing I’m taking tonight actually works in my favor on that front. I guess I just hadn’t really thought through the geography when I booked, but it wasn’t until I was bored on my layover and actually looked up the flight time that I realized just how far out of the way my routing to Mexico City took me. Instead of being annoyed, though, I was thrilled to learn that it’s 10 hours from Mexico City to Paris. 10 hours in which I don’t have email or phone and no one can reach me? Glorious! I think this sounds like the perfect way to spend my last weekend before things ramp up even more.
I found it particularly amusing that with my chosen itinerary, I’d get to practice three languages – Spanish, French, and German. My Spanish is rather limited (“y wifi a qui?” is my bread and butter), but has been made stronger by at least a few trips to Spanish-speaking countries (Peru, Spain, Peru again). My French, on the other hand, is pretty good – I studied French in school for 8 years, though it’s gotten a bit rusty and out of practice. But my German, on the other hand, is non-existent… and I unfortunately haven’t had the time this last week to improve it much at all. (It doesn’t help that the app I downloaded to try to help, Duolingo, is teaching me lots about grammar but not much that I can actually use. I really don’t think I am going to spend my trip differentiating between “The boy eats THAT bread” while “The girl eats AN apple.” App fail!) So perhaps this will be the weekend I finally learn more than the elementary counting to five that we were all taught in 5th grade when choosing which language we wanted to study? I’m excited for that and tasting “das bier”!
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Insert break here when I went to go board my flight, discovered that the plane had a mechanical problem that delayed us 3.5 hours, and the result was that I missed my connection to Dusseldorf by quite a bit. The soonest the airline could get me to Dusseldorf would be on Sunday morning – too late for the marathon. I suppose I could have gone to Dusseldorf anyway, but I’ve chosen to just stay in Paris for the weekend rather than take an extra flight. (Woe is me, obviously.)
It seems like I just can’t catch a break lately with being able to run a marathon as planned – I’ve had one canceled, one where I got food poisoning, and now this one where I can’t get there in time. Am I cursed with marathons, or what?? But perhaps a weekend curling up with a book, a croissant, and some chocolat chaud in a little cafe is exactly what I need… I do love Paris!
PS – if anyone has any Paris tips (suggestions on where to go, what to do), I’m all ears! I’m pretty much just winging it 🙂
What a bummer that you won’t be able to make it over here to Germany, but I guess there are worse places than Paris to spend the weekend! One of my favorite things to do in Paris is visit the Pompidou Center — lots of great contemporary art and ever-changing exhibitions. Enjoy!
I’m hoping to check it out today – thanks for the tip!
I was solo in Paris in October for about 10 days — loved every second! There are so many great places to eat. My favorite meal was at Table d’Aki — teeny-tiny place run by a husband and wife with no other staff. It was incredible. I wrote several posts during my stay — first one is here in case you are interested: http://biscuiterie.blogspot.com/2013/10/bonjour.html.
Thanks so much, Michaela! I should have thought to ask you for recs 🙂