The best laid plans of mice and men...

... do often go awry*.

Yes, I am back from Winter Vacation.  In fact, I've been back for almost a week, and I think I've spent the days since then vacationing from my vacation.  It was a good vacation, but... well you'll see:

Our comedy of errors began, oh, so, long ago on Friday February 12th when we took the last train to Paris.  

(Actually, my comedy of "errors" began the day before when Professor Connelly from McNeese State University emailed me to say he really liked the manuscript I submitted for the MFA program and would there be a good time to chat on the phone.  That is another story, which I shall relate later.)

The quote does say "the BEST laid plans," but I'll go ahead and admit our plans were perhaps not the best laid.  One might say they were moderately well-conceived and rather sloppishly put together.  

So the last train to Paris left at about 9:40 on Friday night, and we arrived at Paris Montparnasse around 11:15 or so.  The really great idea we had -- in order to save money -- was to arrive at Montparnasse, rather than Charles de Gaulle, then catch the last RER train to the airport.  This probably saved us less than €20.  Investing that €20 in the train directly to the airport would have saved us from kicking off our trip with confusion and panic.  In Paris, we found out that part of the tracks between Montparnasse and CDG were under construction.  According to the signs, there was a shuttle between another station and the airport.  (Without pointing any fingers, we should have known about this.)

We ended up taking the train to the stop we thought was the right one.  When we got off the train, we were at what could be any anonymous station somewhere within Paris' banlieues.  We stood with several other luggage-carrying foreigners until our savior arrived in a blue coveralls and a yellow reflective safety vest.  

"Charles de Gaulle?" he yelled.  

"Oui, yes!" the crowd of us said.

"Zis way!"

And we followed him.  He led us down the stairs out of the metro and to a coach bus waiting for us.

This brings me to the real genius part of our plan.  We had 6am flights to Lisbon.  Again, they were cheap.  Our brilliant idea was to stay the night in the airport.  Yes, it can be and is done by many people all over the world every second of every day.  But, that is often either done by the involuntary or homeless.  A recap of our night at CDG: it was cold, and it was uncomfortable.  And we were hungry.
I didn't sleep at all in the airport, and it was a relief to board the plane and pass out for the entirety of the three hour flight.  The plane nap somehow revived us, and we arrived in sunny Lisbon.  Despite warnings of sneaky cab drivers, we took a cab to the hostel, and he did not gyp us.  The hostel was very nice and very cheap.  Giddy -- probably from both lack of sleep and the sun, which we haven't seen in ages -- we set off to explore Lisbon.  We almost immediately headed for the water.  We made a pit stop at a corner grocer, mostly because it had an appealing fruit stand outside.  The woman at the counter saw us looking at the bottles of port wine and proceeded to let us sample several of the wines.  That little shot of alcohol only improved our spirits, so when we found ourselves at a rather dingy area of the port (meaning the water, not the wine), we decided to take inordinately silly pictures in which we look a little worse for the wear.  Or, at least, I look very worse for the wear because that 24 hours without sleep had taken its toll on my immune system.  I didn't know then, but I was about to develop a very bad cold.

Then, we went to the Castle of São Jorge.  This meant an uphill hike through Lisbon's Alfama district, one of the most visually interesting parts of the city.  The Alfama district is the only part of the city that wasn't destroyed in the 1755 earthquake.  It was historically the Moorish part of the city and was just beautiful to walk through.

Then we saw the castle.  The thing with castles in Europe is: well, they're everywhere.  So castles kind of become a moot tourist attraction.  The Lisbon castle, however, is cool.  According to Wikipedia the Moors also did their thing on this castle, which makes it different from a lot of the more medieval-knights-in-shining-armor castles.
After the castle, it was much-needed nap time.  I think we tried the famous Lisbon pastries at some point too.  Lisbon is know for these pastries that are one of the best things I've ever eaten.   The Pastéis de Nata are like flaky little quiches with custard filling.  We proceeded to eat one or so of these fabulous pastries every day that we were there.
Anywho, we ended our first evening with the best dinner ever.  Seriously.  Meredith has a friend from Lisbon who reserved us a table at this random little restaurant.  It was crowded.  When I saw the drab looking trays that the food came on, I knew we were in for something good.  It just screamed home cooking.  I had cod, apparently something you are supposed to eat in Lisbon.  I asked the waitress "It's good?" "Si, si" she said, nodding enthusiastically.  And it was.  In fact, I don't think a single meal on our trip could rival that first night.  My cod was cooked in butter and garlic with a side of potatoes and a green salad.  Plus we has a carafe of wine and cheese and bread before the meal.  They charged for the bread, and we still only paid like €11 each, which, when you have been living in France, is downright cheap.

We ate well, and we headed back "Home" (literally, the name of our foyer) where we made a wonderful discovery.  Our room had no form of heating!  At all!  We had to request extra blankets, and I quickly discovered that once I had optimized the position of the blankets and my layers not to move and to go to sleep.

I am going to publish here for now!  I know that is very anti-climactic because nothing too terrible has happened yet!  But I am very tired, and I am having a hard time gathering my thoughts.  Just thinking about everything we did makes me exhausted.  I promise more soon.  Here's a quick preview to whet your appetite: delays! missed rendez-vous! prostitutes! liars and cheats! a nasty cold!

Bonne nuit tout le monde!

*Quote from Robert Burns's Poem "To a Mouse" later became the title of one of the most famous novels in American Literature. Of Mice and Men, which I am embarassed to say I own but have not read.  I added "do" because I think it adds a nice emphasis on the predicate.  Plans do, quite often, go to hell.