ze Teh-Jeh-Veh

The TGV. What can I say about the TGV except it’s fast, it’s wonderful, and it can cross a country in, like, 3 hours. I will endorse the TGV for free. And if you go first class? Ooooh, you get a plug for your laptop and more leg room. It was actually really funny because I wanted to take pictures of the French countryside, hearing so much about how pretty the countryside was.

EXCEPT, it went by so fast, all my pictures was blurry. So I gave up, and settled into the really relaxing train. And, in all the trains we took, I fell asleep on Baptiste’s lap within ten minutes of getting on.

A Coca-Cola costs 3 euros, by the way. P180! Extortion. Just because of the monopoly.

P.S. I super appreciate that Baptiste's Dad was able to wangle us first class seats coz of his frequent flier miles!

homecoming

So who wins the best boyfriend award? Baptiste, from day one of my trip!!! Do you know how he greeted me at the airport? Well, technically, not the airport, but the TGV station.

We-ell, first off, after what felt like the longest, agonizingly slow, nerve wracking flight in the world, we finally landed in the Charles de Gaulle aeroport at 6a.m. There wasn’t anything bad about it, like turbulence, but after a little more than 10 months of not seeing Baptiste, combined with feeling like I was folded in half for about twelve hours, I was more than ready to get off the flight.

So we get off and with the backpack that Baptiste christened as my turtle bag (and I don’t blame him. I DID look like a turtle) and my other ginormous bag, I head to immigration. It was a zoo. It was a huge room with a line that did not seem to shorten. While all the other European Union citizens breezed through with their identity cards (those bitches), everyone else joined the same agonizingly slow line. And the weird thing was, I wasn’t really annoyed by the line. I’m sure 8 out of 10 people in the world, or some such statistic, wants to see the Eiffel Tower or the Louvre or the Arc du Triomphe. And in a weird way, it was kinda nice, knowing I was in Paris and in the other side of the airport, was Baptiste.

After I actually heard someone say “I never thought I’d get here!” as he got to the passport control booth, I had my own turn and I grabbed my bags, checked my Iphone and panicked because it was 7pm and our train was at 8 and I had NO IDEA where the TGV was. Plus I was terrified that what happened in the movie Taken would happen to me. What if someone had already spotted me? What if I had given myself away as coming from the Philippines alone? What if someone thought I looked 13 and innocent? My DAD could never whoopass like Liam Neeson!

I plopped my overweight luggage onto a cart, crossed my fingers that I was reading the right signs and headed off to the Gare SNCF. After about a mile of huffing away, I got to the Gare SNCF station from the 2^nd floor and mentally cursed Baptiste for making me walk all the way to the train station. I estimate that I was hauling 40kgs of stuff and gifts with me. I weigh about 45 kgs. Love will make you carry heavy things.

I went down the escalator to the main floor, thinking I had to meet Baptiste by the screen board… except there were screen boards everywhere! I stopped by the side of the escalator, look down to make sure all my bags are there, and when I look up, my gorgeous, amazing hunky boyfriend is walking towards me with a bouquet of roses. Trust Baptiste to buy roses, bring it to Paris just so he could greet me with it, before we traveled back. Those had to be the most well-traveled roses.

And of course, the first thing I have to say, after the hugging and the kissing, I have to go, “I’m hungry.”

And Baptiste pulls out 3 pain au chocolats in a paper bag.

Isn’t he wonderful?