I'm back folks! I took a little hiatus there for a minute. With the holidays and everything, I thought it would be nice to take a little break. I'm back now, and I have more travel tips and crazy stories to tell you! So let's just dive right in, shall we? Are you excited? Because I'm very excited!
Wade and I got it into our heads that we wanted to surprise everyone and come home for Christmas. We purchased our plane tickets in October, so I had to keep this exciting secret for two months! Now, most of you would find that a semi easy thing to do. Most of you don't know what it's like to try to keep a secret from the Asay clan! It was probably the hardest secret to keep! Of course our parents knew we were coming. I mainly told my mom so I didn't have to suffer with keeping this secret alone. It's always better when someone has to suffer right along with you! Anyway, we did succeed in surprising everyone, and it was pretty fun!
One thing we should probably talk about is the 11 hour plane ride to get to Utah! We left from Amsterdam (word to the wise: go in the summer; it isn't as fun in the winter). Anyway, the flight was pretty uneventful. We watched movies and ate. They just bring you a ton of food on international flights! Anywho, we were right over the Salt Lake Airport when a freak storm hit. We couldn't land. So we circled the airport. Still couldn't land. We circled the airport about five times. We waved to Logan the first time, but on the third go, it got old. Finally it was time to land. Now folks, I've gotten used to flying. I'm not as scared of it as I was at first. This landing instilled the fear right back in me. As we were making our descent, the plane dropped ten feet! Like we were dropping out of the sky! Everyone was screaming, babies were crying, and my hand was crushing Wade's hand! Poor Wade. After the drop, it got worse. The plane started shaking so bad! Five people threw up. That's right, FIVE! When we landed, everyone clapped! That's how much we all thought we were going to die. The flight back was pretty uneventful. We didn't drop ten feet, so that's always good.
We had a lot of fun in Farmington and Evanston. We went to a Jazz game, Temple Square, sledding, and spent some time with our awesome families! I was sad to leave. It wasn't as hard this time though. We’re halfway done with this France experiment, so I think that made it easier. It was nice to have an actual bed and not to twins pushed together. It was nice to have a rectangle pillow and not a big square one. I miss that already! It was nice to go to church and know what everyone was saying.
We decided it would be really fun to fly back and spend New Year's Eve in Paris. Oh, how naive we were. I'm not one for big crowds and neither is Wade. Why we thought this would be fun, I have no clue. We were pretty jet lagged when we got to the hotel. We couldn't check in for another hour and a half, and it was really cold out, so we sat down in the hotel lounge and fell asleep in some chairs. I'm not embarrassed by the fact that I fell asleep in a public place. I was just that tired! I did wake up to a woman screeching at someone to shut the door to the hotel because it was cold. Folks, it was an automatic door that would open whenever you stepped on the rug. There were some very confused hotel patrons walking in at the time. Cool it lady, can't you see I'm trying to sleep in a public place here?! When we finally got into our room, we crashed. We slept a solid four hours. It was heaven!
We woke up at seven and decided to put on our coats, scarfs, and hat. We braved the cold to see Paris at night. In retrospect, when you find out the Metro is free all night, maybe that's a good indicator to not be out past midnight. It was our first warning sign. We were just happy it was free! Our next warning came when we were walking in some pretty popular places, and there were few people out. It was nice to walk by the Louvre and not have a million people there. We walked all over Paris. It was nice to see the city at night without all the people. That was fun. As the night wore on, we began to realize why no one was out at seven. By ten o'clock, we were the coldest we had ever been. Wade's hands were numb, and my feet were numb. We were cold and tired and still had two hours to go. We ended up by the Eiffel Tower because they usually make it sparkle cool colors when it hits midnight on New Year’s. So we stood there for two hours, just waiting. It was still pretty fun! People kept offering us half full bottles of champagne and were always offended when we declined their gracious, drunken offer. When midnight struck and the lights started, it seemed worth it all!
Now let's talk about the portion of the night where it took us two hours to get back to our hotel! So after the lights, everyone rushed to the metro, including us! We got to the closest metro, and it was a zoo! We couldn't even get down the stairs. We decided that it was no big deal. We would just walk to the next stop! We were able to get down the stairs and to the platform but folks, there were hundreds of people down there! I'm not even exaggerating! Just crowds of people waiting for a train that no one could get on because it was full. We decided to cut our loses and get the heck out of there. The stairway out was clogged with people coming down. It took us ten minutes to push through that crowd and feel the sweet relief of the cold night air! We then decided to get an uber. The problem with that was there was traffic in every direction with people trying to get out of the center of the city all at once! We tried uber and then canceled it because there was nowhere it could pick us up. We tried uber five times as we walked out of the city center. We canceled it five times as we walked out of the city center. We finally decided it would be smart to start walking back to our hotel, an hour away, and see if the traffic would clear out over there. We walked for 30 minutes until the roads were less busy and an uber could get to us. Folks, seeing that uber pull up almost brought tears to my eyes! We got back to our hotel at two in the morning. We looked like such partiers! In reality we were jet lagged and cold. We stumbled into bed and decided it was all worth it to see Paris at midnight!
I hope this post has given you a lot of info. If you haven't really been paying attention, here are the Cliff Notes. Secrets are never safe with the Asay family. Planes can drop ten feet. Big square pillows are the worst! The awful screeching lady at the hotel wants the door to be shut. I may have looked homeless sleeping on a random chair. Always heed the warning signs. Wear extra socks... that's just all around good advice! Don't be naive about the metro being free. Midnight in Paris is my new favorite thing. And last, but not least, an uber can bring a tear to anyone’s eye!
Thanks for reading folks!
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