Georgia's Elective Diary - part 5 (Bonne année et bonne santé)

The past 6 days have most certainly been an adventure! Beginning my first solo journey around the world, visiting cities I've never ever thought I'd get to, and many, many hours staring at the grey speckled walls of airports. 

My journey began on Sunday, with the first of four flights to get me to France   (Wellington to Auckland) delayed 45 minutes. They broke the plane. Eventually arriving in Auckland I discovered plane two was also delayed approximately 45 minutes. I went shopping. It took great self restraint not to spend all my money on the MAC counter. Finally I got on my flight to Hong Kong. 

Being greeted as I stepped off the plane by someone with a sign for all passengers on flight LX139 to Zurich should have raised warning bells, but my first thought was that we must have arrived late, and they wanted to escort us directly to the next gate. How disappointed I was to discover that in fact no, there was no plane to Zurich in Hong Kong, and that said plane left Zurich 12 hours late (I found out later that it two had broken in Zurich, being replaced just in time for winter to hit Zurich, dumping the airport in a foot of snow and promptly closing the airport). Four hours standing at the SWISS ticketing counter making friends with some delightful Australians, a lovely Swiss family and my fellow NZ travellers, and we were finally rebooked and given accommodation in the lovely Marriott for the night. At this point "night" equated to four hours, but those four hours spent in a stunning hotel, with a warm shower, and a cozy bed were so satisfying. Twenty six hours after my journey first began, I finally departed on my plane to Zurich. 

We arrived to a true winter wonderland, with an amazing snowfall to land in. This is possibly the most magnificent sight I've seen in all my travels and flying experience. A short turnaround and I was taking off on my final flight to get me to Paris. In true keeping with this journey as a whole, there was a problem with the flight, this time the plane had been changed to a smaller plane, and was now overbooked, with people were being offered compensation to fly the following day. No way was I going to wait even longer to finally get to Paris! I made sure I was as close to the front of that queue as possible, and made it on to the plane,  arriving in Paris at 7pm, and finally getting to see my friends at 8.

We spent our first day in Paris doing all the big name sights. After our first photo shoot of the day at the Eiffel Tower, we walked to Montparnasse for an amazing 56th floor view of the city, then wandered towards the Seine in search of lunch, eventually deciding on a creperie as we couldn't make up our minds about any other places we passed! We stopped for yet more photos outside the Louvre, then wandered past the plentiful Christmas markets on the Champs Élysées, where we all chose a treat or two. We continued on towards the arc de triumphe, stopping for the all important trip into sephora (absolute mayhem, will have to wait until I get to America for my proper sephora fix!)  and finally reached our final photo shoot of the day at the arc de triumphe. These photo shoots take some time, with four girls, and both camera photos for the good quality, plus phone photos to upload to Instagram necessary before we can move on. Plus trying to get a few group shots in there - one of us really ought to have bought a selfie stick !!

The next day was our big Versailles adventure. Arriving just after 9 as we were advised, we stood in the cold cold air for nearly an hour and a half just to get inside the palace gates. This gave us plenty of time to fully catch up on each other's first half of our elective as I hadn't heard much from Steph, Hannah and Ange's trip through Africa. This time I also spent seriously regretting my footwear choices, as the shoes I'd bought to Europe with me just didn't quite cut it for the cold Parisian winter. I tried to distract myself from this by providing a lesson on the history of Versailles to the girls, but the year 10 history class with Ms Hutchinson seem way too long ago to remember much detail. 

Eventually we made it inside and joined the throngs of people all pushing to get inside the palace building. There was a very obvious culture divide during this, with some people not caring for others welfare in the slightest as they tried to push their way through the masses to get to the front of the queue. We made it about halfway the palace without too much pushing and shoving when we finally realised our party had dropped from five to four. 

OH SHIT, WHERE IS ANGE? 

We searched the last two rooms we'd been in, but with no sign of her we continued through without her, hoping to meet up again at the conclusion of the palace tour. Two hours later, after a lot of waiting round, and Steph and I returning once through the entire building just in case she was still inside, we concluded that we just were not going to be reunited at the palace, and wandered through the gardens without her. Don't worry - when we got to our hostel that night there was a huge sigh of relief to discover she was there! That reunion was amazing!

Versailles itself was absolutely amazing and something I'd wanted to see for many years. I'd love to return in summer to see the grounds at their peak.

That night, being New Year's Eve we planned for a big adventure. I bought a bottle of G H Mumm champagne, remarkably cheap in France, and we had a lot of fun getting ready all together. We hopped on the metro - free for New Years and made it as far as our change but were unable to get on another train as they were wayyyy too full. So with only 20 minutes till midnight we sprinted through the streets of Paris hoping to make it somewhat closer to the Eiffel tower or the scene of the action near the Champs Élysées.  We didn't make it, but our celebrations near the seine was magical regardless. Returning to the hostel, Steph and I spent the remaining night at the party the hostel was putting on, decorating our faces and arms in body paint and celebrating into the small hours! 

Our final full day in Paris was a more leisurely one after everyone deserved a sleep-in from the night before. We wandered down to the city and had coffee and a pan au chocolat at a gorgeous restaurant, then yet another photo shoot outside notre dame. As the lines to enter circled the entire building, we passed on that and wandered through the little boutique shops on the island, along with the Shakespeare company bookstore. We wandered up through Marais and finally had a bite to eat around 3.30pm. We concluded our night with a trip south and an authentic Vietnamese meal. 

I'm now flying south over the Swiss alps and heading to sunny Malta!