Arrival Day: St. Christopher's Hostel

Sunday, 18th of June 2017

During the plane ride I discovered I’d left my plug adapter at home. I hoped I could buy one at the airport, but the thought of having to try and find a place that sold one, as well as the baggage claim made me nervous. I tried to sleep during the flight, but kept looking at my watch every hour, hoping 6 had passed, but it was quite slow. I felt exhausted upon arrival, and nervous. As I walked toward the baggage claim I kept looking for shops but there weren’t any. I went through customs and then found a little shop before I got to baggage, but they didn’t have US-Europe converters, only UK-Europe. The lady who worked there said there was a larger selection upstairs. I made my way there without too much trouble and bought an adapter. I felt much better that was one less thing to worry about.

View from my window at St. Christopher's hostel

Once in baggage claim I began to worry again as people were clearing out and my bag had still not come around. There was one other family on my flight whose bag didn’t come out either, and they graciously led me to the baggage information desk. Once there we were told to file a claim on a kiosk type computer, and there was a white haired man who worked there helping us. We were told our bags were not loaded because we were standby (I work for an airline and was so lucky to be able to fly standby and have a reduced fare) and they were in too much of a hurry to take off since the flight was already an hour delayed.

This was understandable, as I wasn’t cleared to get on until the very last minute. They had already sent out bags to Albuquerque from SLC, and the next day they’d go from Albuquerque to Paris. They promised to have our bags delivered the next day, and I gave them my hostels address.

Next to find St. Christopher’s at Gare du Nord. The signs made it easy to find the RER, and I had no problems buying a ticket and finding my way to the hostel. My plan was to check in, take a shower, and then walk around to explore the area. I should also note I didn’t book my hostel until I got on the plane, and ended up having to pay an exorbitant amount for just 1 hour of Wi-Fi during the plane ride. Since I was in a hurry to find a place I could easily navigate to, and all the places I had bookmarked as possibilities were then sold out, I picked St. Christopher’s because it has easy directions and storage lockers. None of the places I could find had any beds in female dorms available, so I booked a mixed dorm with 6 beds. Another little source of anxiety, but it didn’t bother me as much as I was just excited to be in Paris.

The tiniest bathroom I have ever seen.

When I got there I showered and I felt very tired and jet-lagged, but I wanted to stay awake, at least until 8 pm Paris time, so that I could get my sleep schedule changed. I left the hostel to walk around the neighborhood to find that it was not a very nice place. I passed two sex shops within sight of the hostel, and then forgot to pay attention to where I was. I found a market and bought a Greek salad with eggplant, and some quinoa with mustard dressing for dinner. After getting turned around a bit I found my way back to the hostel, but realized I was too tired to trust myself to navigate, and the streets were a bit scary, more smelling of urine and people begging for money.

The hostel itself was very clean, and I didn’t feel unsafe there at all, but the streets were a bit sketchier. After eating, it was about 4 in the afternoon and I couldn’t wait another 4 hours to sleep. I went up to my room, which was on the 6^th floor. I soon found out none of the rooms here were air-conditioned, and I had come on the hottest week of the year. It was in the upper 90’s. The windows only opened a crack, and there was one fan in the room. With no one else there yet, I took the fan and put it on my bed at the foot, closed the curtain on my top bunk and slept like a rock for 2 hours.

When I woke up I went back downstairs to eat the rest of my salad and quinoa, made a plan for what I wanted to do the next day, and went back upstairs. There I met my roommates. Willie aka Guillermo is from Argentina, Carlos was from Peru and Steven from the UK. They were all really nice, and any fears I had about staying in a mixed dorm were gone. Willie only spoke Spanish, so we had to use google text to talk to each other. Carlos didn’t speak English, but knew some French and so we were able to communicate quite poorly in our broken French. Steven was most helpful, and showed me how to download offline maps onto my phone for navigating.

I called and got to talk to my family before I went to bed, as was the plan for every day while I’m gone. Amy is the most upset with me being gone, but they seem to be having a fun time since Mike bought them the Lego Batman movie, which they’ve been asking for a while now. Despite the heat, and not having any shorts to wear to bed, I wasn’t too hot, and just slept without any blanket or sheet on top.