On this particular morning, it was I who couldn’t sleep. I sat in bed, hungover from my cocktail of melatonin, allergy medicine, champagne, and jet lag. I woke up at six fifteen to the sound of bustling streets outside our window as Parisians hurried to get their Friday over with. I remember the excitement of Fridays. No matter what happened on Friday, I was going to be home free at 5:00 p.m. for the eternity of two days.
While Ash slept, I did some work on the budget we had set up on Google Drive and looked for Airbnbs in Belgium and the Netherlands.
It was a huge concern of mine that we would run out of money while overseas. I wanted to make sure we came home with at least six thousand dollars to get our lives back on track, so I created a spreadsheet on Excel to record our daily spending.
We calculated that from what we’d saved for two years, we could spend one hundred and fifty dollars a day on Airbnbs, food, drinks, and activities for the entire trip and come back with six thousand dollars. We created this dynamic budget so that we could correct the problem early enough if we were blowing money too fast. As I worked on this, I heard Ash stir.
“Kyle?” she said sweetly from the corner of the studio.
She always does this when she first wakes up and I am not in bed. She never needs anything; she just likes to hear my voice to make sure I am around.
“Yes, baby?” I replied.
She received her comforting confirmation and then rolled back asleep.
Ash woke up a few hours later, furious at me for letting her sleep the day away. It was only 10:00 a.m., but the feeling of not maximizing every second of her day stresses her out. In my opinion: quality > quantity. (There are obvious exceptions to this rule, like light beer and Legos.)
Ash got ready (she didn’t want to rest her day away, but she had no problem doing her hair and makeup for half an hour), and we left the apartment to go back to the Eiffel Tower. Sure, there were plenty of other things to do in Paris, but most things were expensive. Spending the day basking in the sun on the lawn out in front of the Eiffel Tower sounded great to us.
We took the line 9 metro all the way from Bastille to the Eiffel Tower and got out at the Palais de Tokyo. Before we got to the tower for the remainder of the afternoon, we stopped at a corner store to grab a bottle of wine, two Carlsberg tallboys, and a pack of cigarettes. (We didn’t smoke cigarettes, but that made us the only two people in Paris who didn’t. We wanted to embrace the culture and do as the Parisians do.)
We then sprawled out in the grass on the lawn of the Eiffel Tower and waited. Every hour, on the hour, the tower would light up and sparkle for five minutes. As we sat there on the pristine lawn, two thoughts came to mind. First: I can tell this trip is going to be a life-changing experience because it’s only the first week and I am completely out of my comfort zone, with no structure to my life right now. Second: Holy shit, I hate smoking cigarettes.
As the night went on, we had to jump a fence to escape some obnoxious eighteen-year-old kids who were partying loudly. I mean, wow; I remember my first trip to the Eiffel Tower. We stepped over a low-netted area and then lay on what appeared to be forbidden lawn to watch the tower glisten. It was extremely romantic. Ash pulling down her entire romper to pee behind a tree was not. It did succeed in making both of us laugh uncontrollably for an entire hour between the tower’s glistening. We ended up lying there until 2:30 a.m. before crawling back to the subway, exhausted from our three days in the City of Light.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the subway closes at 2:00 a.m. in Paris. We had just missed the last train. Although Uber was indeed available, it had surge pricing at this hour, which meant a fifty-dollar ride. Even when there are technological shortcuts, they don’t always beat the old-school method of public transit. Take the fifty-dollar Uber the six miles home and obliterate our budget? Hell no, I thought, we are backpackers and we can use the exercise. (At least that was what we told ourselves as we started the six-mile trek home.)
After a few hours, we made it all six miles, and although we were beyond tired, mentally and physically, we were feeling great. What’s more: our budget was somewhat preserved. I say somewhat, because although we didn’t take the fifty-dollar Uber, we ate an entire pizza, pomme frites (french fries), and a monstrous croque madame from a restaurant that was still open at 5:00 a.m. We were grossly ashamed of our late-night feast, yet unequivocally satisfied.