How a Facebook status saved my life

I do not believe I will be sharing any more stories from Ireland. There isn't much to say. We drank so much beer and cider in classic, heavy bar glasses that I got an accidental bruise on my finger that will soon castrate my nail; Galway was like heaven after a grueling eight hour bus ride from Belfast; and we didn't exactly do a damned thing in Cork besides go to the Blarney Castle, which I found a waste of time, money, and effort lugging around my camera just to take pictures of what I'm positive is simply the mini version of the Hogwarts theme park.

I must describe to you, though, how I happened to go to one of the best cities in the world. Our last night in Cork consisted of devising the several plans we had for our last days in Ireland. The group consented that returning to Dublin would be the best idea since we all were to fly out of there anyway. But I was a bit tired of Ireland and didn't see what else Dublin had for me, and I happen to have an enormous crush on the l'île de France. So I bought a ticket and the next evening was headed for Paris.

(Although this shot is not exactly

flattering, I found it fitting. You

can see the bruise on my finger

and how sweaty and lonely I was at the Louvre.)

For some reason I wasn't at all concerned with where I'd lay for my head for the three nights I was to stay there before I returned back to Dublin to catch my flight home. I only got concerned when nearly all the hostels were booked (and expensive), and the one Parisian I knew was in Thailand. The other dear French girl I knew was several hours away from Paris. On my Facebook status I asked if anyone knew a place I could crash in Paris for a few nights. Well, if the one Parisian guy I knew was in Thailand, my one Californian Aunt would certainly be in Australia, right? My Uncle George relayed the info to Aunt Carol, who commented on my status.

"Tonight is my last night in Paris. Let me know if one night helps."

Um, yes.

My first thought was, great! This will save me 40 euros and give me time to find my own hostel.

My plane was too late to use any airline shuttle service, so an expensive cab ride seemed to be the only option. I didn't even tip the guy, but in my head he didn't care because I winked at him. A doorman helped me out of the car and opened a golden door into the Park Hyatt Vendôme. Oh. My. God.

Traveling with a backpack and having a weakness for Top Shop means you have to wear as many clothes as possible, plus those boots you swore you'd need, with your extra socks stuffed in your coat pockets and the mini backpack your friend gave you on your front side like those trendy baby sacs, except I was the one who needed to be carted around because I looked like a special child sweating from the Parisian heat soaking through my multiple layers. I smelled. My backpack looked like a huge boil bobbing through the immaculate lobby.

After verifying that I was in fact Carol's niece and I was not here to assassinate her sumo-wrestler style, they gave me a key and I crept into her dark room.

"I'm awake."

"Oh, sorry. I'm just going to take a shower."

"Did they tell you I got you tomorrow night, too?"

"No you did not." I tried not to yell.

I was almost mad at her. It was too nice. Here I am, Miss Mooch, advertising on Facebook for a measly couch, perhaps a blanket, and come to find out I will be staying, not one, but two nights in a very posh hotel often visited by celebrities and the like. (Apparently that same weekend Eva Longoria and her husband were there, and I think Justin Timberlake? I don't remember.)

I stirred at the sound of her getting ready in the morning to eat breakfast and leave for the airport, but the next thing I knew I was alone in the room. Later she told me she tried to wake me up several different times but I was a stubborn sleeper, probably because it was the first real, comfortable bed I had slept in in two weeks. Luckily, breakfast was complimentary to me, another big thanks to Carol and her golden or diamond or some other gem or metal membership.

With a tummy full of fresh juice, coffee, smoked salmon and other trimmings of the sparkling buffet table, I set off to get lost in search of the Rodin Museum. After I came back to the hotel, changed rooms, showered again (the shower was bigger than my space at the hostels and had two faucets), and ate the complimentary chocolates, I ran to the Eiffel Tower to meet up with a bike tour group I had booked online while in Cork, then shared some wine with some flight attendants and pilots on the Eiffel Tower lawn at 1 in the a.m. Weird day.

I drank a lot of wine on this trip. I, like most people I guess, pledge allegiance to the saying, "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." As you know, Ireland for Hannah meant beer and cider. And so Paris had to mean wine and cheese, two things I would take a bullet for.

The next day I roamed around a bit and sat in a garden staring at a map not looking for anything in particular for about 20 minutes. I heard some Americans, so I wandered over and sat down.

"Hi."

"Hi." A couple stood up after they concluded the conversation and left me and the tall, well-postured young man to ourselves.

"Where are you from?"

"Chicago."

Jonathan was a dancer who, just for fun, auditioned for the Opera in Paris and was now taking the week to travel by himself. After we talked for four minutes and each discerned we were not interested in romancing, killing, or mugging the other, we spent the rest of the day together consuming three bottles of wine, walking until I got the blisters described in a previous post, eating cheese on the Champs Elysées, and dancing a bit to smoky techo music. I stayed up all night the last night so I wouldn't have to find a bed to sleep in then flew out the next morning.

I want to go back to Paris desperately. But more than anything, I want to share it with someone. I don't know what it is, but Paris really is meant for lovers. I didn't really believe it until I experienced those few days I had to myself, probably because my last trip to Paris was anything but charming. All I want to do is take someone I love to a crêpe stand and show them how delicious the simplest treat can be. (Sorry for the sappiness. But I'm really hungry and nothing sounds better than thinly fried batter and Nutella.)

Thanks again, Carol and George, for this extraordinary adventure. I am not only grateful for the coincidence but also for your extreme generosity. You're great!

Looking on the brightside

I'm so happy I don't have enough money for more than half a tank of gas at a time. Now I don't have to wait around while I fill up a full one.

Guinness is good for you

Disclaimer: Although I don't feel I need to defend myself for all the drinking stories I've posted lately, I feel a small preface is necessary. While I was not drunk my entire time abroad, drinking did happen to be our main activity, at least in the evening. Not only is it the Irish way to have at least one beer at some point during the day, drinking in another country is the best way to meet people and have a good laugh. Also, I think any reader, whether my relative or a cyber buddy, would rather hear a story about a fun night than about how I sat on a tour bus for five hours and saw some cool rock formations. Pretty scenery is better told in pictures; Hannah's disheveled experiences are better told in words.

This post will include a few words on Dublin and Belfast. Later, I will continue my account.

We were having a couple beers at Karl Strauss when Erin was telling me about her upcoming trip to Ireland and Spain next month. I got really jealous. So I bought a ticket. A very expensive ticket.

Having already been to Spain a few years ago, and having no desire to return, I was just going to travel with the group of six (me, Erin, Heather, Chris, Jen, and Kallie) in Ireland then return home from there. Our first day in Dublin, Erin and I knew we just wanted to get a Guinness at a pub: the quintessential Irish initiation. The next night was when I indulged in many a quintessential beverages. Too many, if you care to know. I don't know why. I think I was just excited to be in Ireland and really thirsty I guess. Erin and I still wanted to go out, because the bars seem never to close in the Temple Bar district. Kallie wanted to go back to bed because she had just gotten in that day and was tired. But when we dropped her off at our room (Kallie and I shared a room with four strangers; Erin and the other three in our group shared another room with other people) she got scared because our Swiss roommates were apparently really drunk and turning lights off and scratching at the door or something. (When I asked the boys about it later, they didn't know what I was talking about. But then again, we had a bit of a language barrier and they were probably a bit out of their minds and unable to remember anything.) I tried to lay down to go to sleep, but I had the spins. Never go to sleep with the spins. You'll wake up with them. So I went downstairs to use the pay phone to call Theodore with my phone card. Phone cards will be the death of me, I swear it. After sitting there for about five minutes unsuccessfully connecting with the boy in California, I started crying. (Surprise surprise.) I turned around and see a pretty French Canadian girl waiting to use the phone, but she was too polite to kick me off. I sat on the steps while she used the phone and her friends talked with me, letting me practice French.

"I'm sorry I'm so drunk. This is so frustrating and embarrassing," I said.

"No. Don't worry about it. It's normal," one girl said.

"Normal?"

"Yeah. In Canada, it's totally normal to be drunk. Don't worry."

For some reason, they made me feel so much better. I didn't feel good enough to drink that much on the trip again; but at least I no longer felt guilty for having a couple extra beers. (NOTE: If you want to sleep in on a trip to Dublin, or even Galway, don't stay in the center of town. Around 6 or 7 in the morning, you will hear a clank-clanking so loud you'll think it's your shitty, hostel bunk bed crashing around you. It sounds like a screamless riot in the street. No yelling. Just throwing things at each other. You will look out the window with a blistering headache and see people rolling their empty kegs--the kegs you helped finish--down the cobblestone streets. They will do this for about two hours. Good luck.)

(TIP: If you go to Ireland, yes, order Guinness. But be sure to order the cider they have on tap as well. It's Bulmers, normally. It's delicious always.)

The next few days in Dublin were fine. We did some good dancing, saw some pretty parks. The next town we went to was Belfast. Every time we would tell people about the cities we were going to visit, they would nearly vomit when we told them we were going to Belfast.

"Why would you go to Belfast?"

"I don't know. We just kind of picked it."

"But it's so boring."

"Well, we'll decide for ourselves."

They were right. The moment we got off the bus, we were a bit disoriented. We had to exchange our money because Belfast is in Northern Ireland, which is a part of the UK, which still uses the pound, which sucks for us because it's a higher exchange rate than the euro, which is much easier to use than the pound. We walked for what felt like an hour (later I was told it was only 30 or 40 minutes) until we finally found our hostel: The Linen House. Sounds like a hip name for a hostel. But no. It smelled horrible and it was so crowded because I guess a bunch of people were staying there to see Pearl Jam that weekend. We were all scared to sleep on the beds because there were all these stains and almost visible bugs crawling in and out of the pillow case threads. (We all dressed our pillows in shirts and sweatshirts for the two nights we were there.) But we liked the brick walls, even if it felt like we were sleeping in an alley.

The city was weird, too. I have a theory that the reason the city is a little less defined than most major cities is because it doesn't really know who it is. It's not quite a tourist spot; (They have Giant's Causeway and boast being the construction site of Titanic, which Erin thinks is rather presumptuous given the fact that the monstrous boat is now only known for sinking.) it's not quite a party town; (We went out one night and it was just bizarre: weird music, bad dressing. We did see our first real Irish bar fight in Belfast, though. The club was closing up, the DJ kept shouting "Give it up to our California girls Hannah, Heather, and Erin!!!" and playing an embarrassing techno, Irish jig rendition of "Single Ladies", when a girl tapped Heather on the arm and said, "Look. Look. A fight. A bar fight. Look." Like it was some sort of pack of animals: those coyotes everyone knows roam Mission Viejo because we hear their howls; when you see one you're not shocked, but you stare until it's passed so you can talk about it over breakfast the next morning. We look over and there is a group of eight or so people tangled up and moving around like a blob. I really thought they were playing that game, Pretzel, where you get tangled then have to untie yourselves. The bouncer and DJ ran over to break them up. Excitement.) and it's not quite a shopping town. (We went to a mall that looked almost identical to an American shopping mall. It was weird.) Everything closes early and we never really felt comfortable.

What was cool about Belfast was going on the tour of Giant's Causeway. I don't feel like taking the time or energy to describe it, so just look at the pictures. But basically it was an all day tour with the Carrick-a-Reed rope bridge, Giant's Causeway, and the Bushmills whiskey distillery. Our tour guide was hard to understand over the bus speakers; but when we did catch his anecdotes, they were all incredibly depressing.

"See that thing that looks like a shadow in the water? That's actually a salmon farm. One time, jelly fish stung all the salmon and they all died a horrible death and the people in this village lost their income for the entire fishing season."

"See that castle on the right hand side? There used to be 200 servants working in that castle for the family that lived there. Then lightening struck the side of the building and all 200 people fell to their deaths into the water."

"Coming up on your left hand side are three famous caves. The third cave was where kids would came to do horrible things because they did not have a fulfilling home life."

Meat eater

Airplane stories are not the most original. Everyone's got one. I don't have any real statistics, but I'd have to guess about 80% of all stand up comedians have at least one airplane or airport joke. Even my last blog post involved my misery on a plane. And alas, here comes another one: how I managed to get to L.A. from Paris sleepless and tipsy, blistered and bruised, and still managed to keep track of my luggage while following TSA regulations.

Only by the explanation of a bona-fide miracle did I manage to sleep two nights in one of Paris' nicest hotels right in the center of Place de Vendôme. (More on that later.) But, due to empty pockets, I was left sans bed for my last night, so staying up until I had to catch my flight at Charles de Gaulle early in the morn was my only option. I hung with my new dancer friend all day until he got tired and dropped me off at a bar, where I met some new friends to keep me company, one of whom stayed with me right up until I got in the cab. Out of pure thirst, honest, I drank a beer and a half in about 40 minutes. And after drinking wine all day and only getting a few hours of sleep the night before, that is probably what did me in. I got my luggage from hotel storage, changed out of my dress and uncomfortable shoes and realized I had huge blisters all over my feet. I had been walking all day.

I sat down in the cab and the driver was very sweet, letting me practice French with my limited knowledge of the language. It's when I got out of the car when I started hobbling and feeling dizzy. I think when I'm buzzed I tend to get really dramatic in everything I do. When I was going through the security check point I started acting like I was queen of the conveyor belt, over emphasizing my unbuckles and unzips, taking my shoes and coat off so quickly that I almost hit the man next to me. I envisioned myself a little George Clooney from "Up in the Air," snapping and twisting my luggage to the rhythm of the outdated music I had in my head from the bar. (Note: I love to dance. I don't know why. Every time I have an opportunity to go out and dance, I will. I went out dancing in Ireland and Paris a few times but the music was always just a bit off. Even in an of-the-moment type of city like Paris, the music they play in clubs is always from five to 10 years ago, and often with an unnecessary electronic twist that is really such a turn off. A club we went to in Dublin actually played "Summer Lovin' " from "Grease" and the kids went nuts. So while I was performing my little running through the airport masquerade I had some old song stuck in my head, pretending like I was in a movie from many years ago. I hope I lost readers months ago so no one really goes on this site anymore; that was terribly uninteresting information and not exactly relevant to the story.)

I make it to my gate with just...an hour to spare. I was running around for nothing. I eventually made it onto plane number one (I had two more to go), sat down in my seat, and that was the last thing I remembered. I guess I passed out or something because I don't remember taking off, looking at the person next to me, or mouthing the words of the flight attendants explaining to help yourself with your oxygen mask before you help others. The next thing I know, we're landing, I have a box of food on my lap, and I'm not just opening a package or holding a package. I have some sort of meat inside my mouth and I am unwillingly chewing and digesting something I hadn't eaten in over three years. After I became vegetarian I had accidentally eaten meat in small forms, in pastas and soups and such. But two days ago, sitting on that plane with my eyes barely open and blurred from Carlsberg and sauvignon blanc, I was eating a significant amount of some sort of thin ham meat thing, until I realized what was happening and I threw it down. I ate the rest of the breakfast, although I don't think I was hungry, then waited for landing so I could hobble off to my next plane.

In the Dublin airport, the alcohol had worn off and I got all the feeling back in my feet...to my dismay. After I came home I took off my shoes and discovered about 10 blisters as the reason for my tears, yes, tears while going through customs and finding my gate. When I sat down on the next plane while everyone else was still filing in, I started to cry. Like I said, I get dramatic. I think I was crying because a) I was tired, b) I just spent a lot of money on my trip and was now in debt, c) my French skills had been lost with years of neglecting practice, and d) I just ate a few handfuls of meat and was awaiting the uncomfortable repercussions in my digestive system. I stopped crying when my Danish seat mate sat next to me. He was very nice but smelled like he hadn't had a shower in days. Then I realized I hadn't had a shower in a while and probably smelled, too. So I had another beer on the plane because I had some extra euros left over that I wasn't going to be able to exchange. We watched "Taxi" with Queen Latifa and Jimmy Fallon; we both laughed a lot and kept looking at each other with our ear phones on while pointing at the screen and making a ruckus. It put me in a good mood.

I was a bit more optimistic on the next plane because it was my last one until Theodore was going to pick me up from LAX and I could pass out in the car. There was just one problem. Oh yes, the quintessential problem of piling hundreds of passengers into an airborne tube and keeping them there for five hours: a shrieking child. After that ride, I don't think I ever want to have a child. It was the kind of shrieks where it starts off low for a short second then suddenly bursts into high gear, expelling the air from the angry lungs in a loud, unbearable, dizzying moment then a pause to contemplate the meaning of life then starting low and shrieking again. It was like sitting in the stands of a NASCAR race, minding your business, eating a pretzel, then hearing the cars scream past in a thunder that riles up the crowd until they're gone. The audience looks at each other with disbelief then waits again for the next loud whir. My temper was rising.

I disembarked the plane with the reminder of my bubbly painful feet and walked outside to wait. Apparently Theodore drove past me once in the busy LAX arrival circle, yelling out the window trying to get my attention. But I just stared right past him with tears in my eyes. When we finally saw each other on the next round, I sat down in his car and started that little laugh/cry thing I do when I don't get enough sleep and I can't read my feelings. Then I showed him my feet.

This is what I love about Theodore. I smelled like shit and I was acting like a mad woman. But the only thing he could really say is, "Ohhhh, can I pop those for you?" Gross, I know. But he did. He cleaned up my feet for me with water, a safety pin, and band-aids. Just like a real disciple.