The beauty of cheap flights is also its biggest vice - they’re cheap. For 40€, you can fly roundtrip from Pisa to Paris. How wonderful! What RyanAir neglects to tell you, is that your flight will land an hour and half outside Paris where your only option is one bus company that charges about 26 euro roundtrip to get into the city. Still, you try and look on the bright side, forget the fact that your seat doesn’t recline, you have negative legroom, not even one free drink, and just enjoy your flight followed by another hour and a half bus ride.
I had the pleasure of not only flying with RyanAir to Paris (Beauvais), but of flying RyanAir from Pisa airport. Our flight was of course, in ritardo of a hour and a half. For those of you who haven’t travelled to the beautiful country of Italia, you will not be aware of how Italians have absolutely no sense of forming a line. Once one person saw an airplane they thought would be ours and so stood in line, the entire herd of passengers waiting formed a “line”. I put line in quotations because “line” to Italians means everyone standing around, it doesn’t matter where, just stand near someone, whether you stand to the side of the real line or directly behind someone, it doesn’t matter. So I decide, being the “expert traveller” that I am, to sit comfortably in my seat and wait until the doors are actually open and just slyly make my way to the front of the blob of people and casually blend in with the rest. This of course works like a charm, and while I am not first on the plane, I was not in the back. Upon entering the beautiful RyanAir jet, I discover that none of the first rows are full, everyone had filled into the back of the plane. No idea why, but I took a seat in the second row to make sure I got off the plane first! (Obviously!)
RyanAir thinks they save gas or something if they do not allow passengers to sit in three rows towards the front of the plane. These aren’t the first rows of the plane, but somewhere random towards the front (like rows 3-4-5). Well, this apparently causes confusion to many travellers and requires an announcement every two seconds of how those rows are not available. It is surprising how people will still sit in those rows. I saw one couple being told by the flight attendant DIRECTLY and they STILL tried to sit there. Upon landing in Beauvais, the passengers gave the pilot and crew (and probably plane as well) a traditional round of applause. To be honest, after the worst landing ever (I thought we were going to crash into the runway and then explode), I was both grateful and surprised to be alive as well.
Paris.
What a beautiful city. I have never been one to ooo and aww over Paris. I’m not the typical girl who yearned to stand under the EiffelTower with her lover and walk hand-in-hand. I always thought of rude French people and cold. Nevertheless, I had to check it out. At top of my list of things to do in Paris were: Louvre, EiffelTower, eat, croissants, crepes, Notre Dame, bread, shop! Not necessary in that order. I am proud to report that we managed to check every item off the list! Thanks to Daniela and some of David’s friends, we were able to check out the best of Paris in two days (probably less than that). I could’ve wandered around the streets of Paris all day, drink a cafè au lait and eat croissants all day long. The shopping was amazing and the city had so much charm. I didn’t even feel like I needed a map because everywhere you wandered to was beautiful!
I returned from Paris with a wonderful surprise awaiting me at home! A new kitchen! After only a few days, the new kitchen is up and running! The dishwasher is still mysteriously not working, but other than that, the rest is up! Valentina and I have shared some meals together already and I made lots of tea and soup this weekend (I was sit in bed). I have attached some pics….
