- Line 3 has a map that lights up! Like whoa!
"Where's the bus station?" I asked Tristan as we walked up the stairs at Point de Levallois-Becon, the last stop on line 3.
"I don't know. This doesn't look familiar," he mused in a manner that was much more calm than I would've taken on in his position.
"Ummm..."
"Uhhh..."
"...Uh...er..." I'm roughly as helpful in times of need as a hamster in a blender. Yeah, know what I mean? (It's okay, I don't either.)
"I'm going to ask for directions."
A nice man at a nearby car dealership recognized the name Eurolines and pointed us to what he thought was the right direction, even drawing us a map in the process. We got back on the metro and went a few stops to Porte de Champarret. And then the cycle continued.
"This still doesn't look familiar."
Although Tristan didn't give any signs that his blood pressure was reaching unhealthy, life-crushing heights, he definitely wasn't feeling calm as we tried to find his bus back to London with less than half an hour to go before it was supposed to leave. Another nice man at a gas station gave us the same directions as the man at the car dealership. Surely the chances of two people (who spoke good English) giving wrong directions to the same place would be slim, right?
...I think you know where this is going.
After much harried walking and thoughts of, "Oh my god where is this place?" we found the bus station-esque parking lot that the strangers had directed us to. Sooo not the right bus station. A man at the ticket counter went on the Internet to help us find information about Eurolines. New destination? La Defense.
We hopped back on the 1 train, but as soon as we got out of the station Tristan knew it was wrong.
"Let's go to the Pompidou. I can use the Internet and find out where the station is."
We made our way back to the land of free wi-fi where Tristan confirmed that we went to the wrong end of the 3, not that the lack of Euroline buses didn't already give that away. Back on the metro we went.
When we got off at the other end of line 3 in Gallieni, we were immediately met with signs proclaming, "EUROLINES, THIS WAY, DUMBASS" (or something less harsh). It's funny when you have a 50/50 chance of going the wrong way and you end up going the really wrong way. But I can't say it wasn't a little fun to (accidentally) go to the opposite ends of Paris and freak out a little. Probably more fun for me than Tristan.
- Tristan doesn't like this photo, but it's not as though I look all that hot either
After Tristan bought another ticket back to London for 11 PM we went back to my apartment to chill out, eat many bowls of Bonnie's "gazillion kinds of vegetables" soup and show Diana that we were both alive and relatively well since she had probably been worrying about my afternoon disappearance and wondering why I had unintentionally deserted her. During the downtime Tristan convinced Diana to go to London with him just for a day since she had never been there before. If I didn't already have plans I may have been inclined to go also, but I didn't really want to ride a bus for 6+ hours.
If you want to test the strength of a friendship, just get lost on the metro for a few hours while trying to catch a bus to another country and see what happens. Still feel awesome/don't want to kill each other by the end of it? Then you're probably good. [pats you on the back]
It was a good experience on multiple levels. But let's not doing it again.