Also, yeah, I'm late with this post. I was trying to finish it up yesterday, but found out I could not log in to our hostel's WiFi. So, everything said here applies to yesterday. I'll try to do better today.
So yeah, we left to Miami early this morning. I have been quite vocal about the subject, but in case someone did not know yet, I suffer from "mild" acrophobia. That's fear of high places. For instance, thinking of flying makes me kinda queasy, and I get light-headed for watching falling scenes. So I was less than ecstatic about the 13+ hours flights today. (Judging by past experiences, landing is the worst part. I get this constant feeling of falling, you see.)
Well, the flights went great! During the first take-off and landing I was so tired (more than half asleep) I barely even noticed. During the second take-off I guess I succeeded in distracting myself somehow, so it was not absolutely horrible either, though my hands were trembling. The landing was a different matter, though. It was going all fine and dandy, until somewhere around 200 metres above land I realize the plane is losing altitude too fast. Only because of this realization I succeeded to somewhat contain myself (as in, I did not scream out loud, though it WAS close) when the plane crashes to runway, bounces (I kid not) back to air and then finally succeeds to land properly.
Did I speak about Charles de Gaulle International Airport already? Guess not.
That place is a way better labyrinth than airport, trust me! I like to think it's because of the French poet/lover mentality, compared to, say, punctual Germans (Frankfurt?). We had an hour to find our plane, which was supposed to be in the terminal right next to one we arrived in. If the flight hadn't been delayed by like half an hour (NOT our fault, it's just the poor organizational skills of the French again) we would've been late, maybe missed it altogether.
For the Frenchies' defence I must say they can sure make food. I don't think I've ever heard of airplane food that was actually tasty! We had lunch and dinner in the plane, and I positively enjoyed both.
But we actually made it here. I was starting to doubt at some point.
So we gets to Miami, passes the passport check, and takes a taxi to our hostel. We barely got to the taxi and start moving, when the driver turned off the meter. We were a bit worried about what was to come, but we got to the hostel and the driver even came up with a price. It even sounded quite reasonable price, even if he pulled it out of his, erm, back pocket.
So we walks in to the hostel, right? And we go to ask about our reservations and stuff.
Originally, we were supposed to have a six-man dorm. Then it got changed to six places in an eight-man dorm. Well, in the end (because of some cock-and-bull story about hostelbookers.com, vacations, and hackers) we didn't even have that. We're sleeping in two different rooms, three of us in each. It's not really a big deal, it's just the principle that's annoying me.
The accommodation is obviously not the end of it. When we were suitably accommodated, we left to go see the Ocean Drive and get something to eat. I was really hungry at that point, so I figured to take a pizza, while everyone else got hamburgers. (Yeah, we decided to eat American.) When my food came... Well, take a look at the picture.
To top it off, the hamburgers the others were eating were huge! And we learned that apparently the American way of tipping is that the tip gets added to the bill automatically. I can assure you that I would have skipped the tip altogether if it hadn't been included. (The pizza was tasty and the service was good, so I didn't want to ask them to remove the tip from my check.)
Despite the negative tone of this post, we've had loads of fun and we will have an awesome trip.
Does anyone know what the language is? What does it say?
The text looks like Chinese, not sure what it says though :)
VastaaPoistaNice to hear that things went quite well despite the hardships :)