Yes, the Parisians do walk around with baguettes in hand.

Paris was wonderful, better than anyone could have planned it. Beautiful in its late-1800s leaf-covered streets. Even the cemeteries were gorgeous.

We arrived Friday night and walked the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triumph, then walked back to our hostel (about an hour when you factor in getting lost and taking picture time). Saturday was the the Louvre, lunch on the Seine (and by lunch I mean bread and cheese and apples), a look at the Eiffel tower, Notre Dame, an amazing dinner at this tiny restaurant at the bottom of some stairs by our hostel, and coffee and crepes at the Place de Clichy, which Van Gogh painted when it wasn´t all neon lights and traffic. Sunday was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery (for Jim Morrison´s grave), and long walk to Luxembourg park, hot chocolate while we let the rain die down a little, another long walk to the Eiffel tower, and then a climb to the top to look at the lights of Paris. We made dinner at the hostel. All in all, by doing the free breakfast at the hostel, bread and cheese lunches, and walking instead of riding the metro, we probably spent 70€ each in Paris. Hooray budget student travel!

Apparently, though, Paris was too perfect. Monday was a fiasco. Ryan Air, our airline, has an airport outside of the city, which means we had to take a bus to the place before we could check in. We arrived at the bus station two hours before our flight, which would have given us just enough time to check in, get through security, etc. Thanks to the bus not leaving the station until thirty minutes later, we missed our check in time by fifteen minutes, leaving us stranded in the airport unable to get on our plane, which hadn´t boarded yet and was sitting right outside the window where we could all see it. Ryanair, you weasel. So we pay to change our flight to Barcelona (hey, at least we´d be in Spain by then). We arrive in Barcelona and buy bus tickets online to Madrid (we used the computers at ISA, who also has programs in Barcelona). We pick the tickets for 4:30, I swear I watch Teresa press the button for 4:30. After we get to the station, get our tickets printed, and are waiting for the bus, Teresa looks at her ticket and says ¨mine says 3:30. Why does mine say 3:30? It´s 4:15.¨ We panic and I go upstairs to argue with the people at the ticket window about how they printed us the wrong tickets and then handed them to us without mentioning that we´d already missed the bus. We end up buying more tickets for the one we already bought tickets for, then running on to that bus as it was almost done boarding by the time we bought our replacement tickets.

Seven and half hours later, we were home in Madrid, only 14 hours later than our planned arrival. ¡Que horror! as Belén said when I recounted the story to her.

But when you look at it a different way, maybe missing our flight only added to the cosmopolitan nature of the trip. So, yeah, all the money we saved by being cheap students went towards getting home on Monday. But we woke up in Paris, ate lunch in Barcelona, and slept in Madrid. Can you beat that?