Getting to France Alive (Amazing Race part 3)

In the last episode we left our heroines outside of a hostel in Prestwick, Scotland, without a key and a promise that one could be found under the flowerpot. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that part before. Since we arrived so late, the owner of the hostel said that she would just leave the key somewhere that we could find it.

What she failed to mention, much to our dismay and amusement, was that the yard was full of flowerpots. Double-digits worth of them. Hoping that the owner followed the same logic as we did, we checked the small flowerpot near the door. Nope. We checked the one on the other side. Nope.

The one on the step to the porch. Nope.

The one on the path leading to the porch. Nope.

The one across from the last one. Nope.

We checked every flowerpot we could find, to no avail. What were we going to do? We didn't want to wake up the owner of the hostel, after all she had made a bunch of special arrangements for us. Then it dawned on us: the key could be under the pot with a tree in it! But how do we pick up a giant ceramic pot with a tree in it? The answer: very, very carefully. It was a team effort. Alex and I picked up the pot, and then with some crazy aerobics I managed to lean down, look under the pot, and extract the key. Awesome! The taxi driver probably thought we were mad (he had waited outside to make sure we got into the hostel/marvel at two Americans rearranging flowerpots in the rain in the middle of the night).

We got inside, and this is what we found:

Our lovely, wonderful room with one hard bed (which I love) and one soft bed (which Alex loves)

Breakfast and a taxi number set out for us!

Seriously? Shampoo for thin blond hair? Heavenly.

I took a shower for the first time in a couple days (ahhhh), had a cup of tea, and went to bed. For two hours. Our alarm went off at 4AM...we can sleep in til 4:30, right? So we did. 4:30 and we both had to essentially fly out of bed in order to make our taxi. We got outside at 5:02, and our taxi driver informed us that he was about to leave because he had been waiting for ten minutes...we were both like "uhmm k" because we had requested a taxi for 5AM, not before. But no matter. The taxi takes us to the airport.

We check in without issue, stop at Starbucks (!!!) poke around in the duty-free store, and head for our flight. This is where the fun starts (because everything that happened up to this point was horribly, horribly boring, right?)

Here we are on the plane before take-off. Don't we look happy and awake?!

Being college students with a limited budget, we flew with Ryanair, a budget airline. And when I say budget, I mean budget. All told my flights cost me less than 200 dollars round trip. Of course, this means that we flew in an airplane with an advertisement-covered interior, whose speakers randomly played techno music, and whose flight attendants sold scratch cards. They have an impeccable safety record, but needless to say, riding in an airplane covered in gaudy colors is kind of worrisome. Plus it was cloudy, so there was quite a bit of turbulence. This scared Alex a little bit, but mostly I slept through it.

And then this happened:

BING!

I wake up.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are now beginning our descent into Paris-Beauvais. We ask that you please return your chairs and tray table to the upright and..."

I'm asleep.
...
...
...
Someone screams. No, a few people scream. I snap awake, unaware that I had been sleeping, to see what's going on. I look out the window through my sleep-blurred eyes and see the ground moving in an S pattern below us as the plane makes an unreasonable amount of noise and we jolt suddenly downward. We're crashing. We have to be. Why else would the ground swerve? Why else would the plane keep getting louder? Why else would my life flash before my eyes? And then I feel the resistance normally caused by the brakes of a plane against a runway, take a deep breath, and look again.

Oh look, there's the airport. At the same level was we are. We're not crashing! Good, I thought, because my last thought would have been something along the lines of "Aw gee, my mom is going to be so mad at me for this!"

Nonetheless, I was happy to be alive:

Here I am being happy and alive!

Alex got through customs with her faulty visa by pretending not to speak French (way to go, border patrol), and we ventured off into Beauvais for a few hours, which I will tell you about soon, I'm sure.

Phew.