a lesson in details

For those of you that really know me, you are well aware of my inattention to details... i have always been a big picture kind of of person. This is usually doesn't cause me too many problems, because this is offset by the many detail oriented people in my life-- we all have our roles... i'll dream big.. you figure out how to make it happen.... anyway.. i say it usually doesn't cause problems, but in the first moments of our trip to france, i thought i was going to lose Hilary due to this... Now, I need to say.. i worked really hard (even amongst the chaos of finishing school) to plan more than i usually would so that Hilary and i had a better chance of being successful travel partners... she likes a plan, i figure things loosely put together usually work out in the end... so I booked hotels... good of me right? Anyway... i researched to find places that were convenient to the train station and the the towns... and actually all of our accommodations turned out to be great... anyway.. i booked the Hotel Mondial, which was a lovely little place in a little square not far from the busier square in Tours, France. Anyway.. i sent hilary the confirmation emails to print out because i don't have access to a printer... All seemingly good, except that the email i sent her about the hotel mondial was actually a pre-confirmation email... and i failed to open the actual confirmation email... anyway we showed up at the hotel and when we tried to open the door it was locked. Can you believe a hotel locked on a sunday afternoon? Well, we waited for a few minutes.. i am sure looking quite silly with our giant pack-backs,...(which by the way if you need to pack a backpack i will be happy to sneak things OUT of your bag for you). After about 30 minutes i decided that i would go to the restaurant next door and look for some guidance. I met a very nice waiter Nicholas... who asked me if I had the code to get in the door...CODE??? No I have no code... so we showed him our reservation, and he shook his head.. no code... i had already told him that... He went inside to phone the hotel for us... but returned with the news that it was only a message... it is actually closed. We decided to find an internet cafe -- Nicholas pointed us in the right direction...and he tried the phone again... probably needless to say, but nicholas thankfully spoke English very well! And he told us that his restaurant would be closing but would reopen in 2 hours .. so we waddled off to the cafe to see if my error was correctable. We got to the cafe, and when I opened the actual confirmation email I found a message telling me to call a number for the code to door. Great! So we went to find a pay phone to call for the code... which in theory is great, but they don't take coins in pay phones.. you need a calling card... so there was another hurdle to cross. By this time we were starving and so we sat down to have a bit of lunch/dinner... and across the street was a little place to buy phone cards... so we bought a phone card and made our way back to the pay phone. Feeling like we were really making progress Hil and I called the number to get the code... when we finally figured out how to use the card... we were greeted by a very quick french recording... which at the end switched to english and then cut out... we tried three times and then realized that we were going to have to beg Nicholas for help again...we trekked back to the hotel/restaurant, and they had just reopened... he tried to call the number for us, and again told us it was just a recording... apologizing to us.. right, we should have been apologizing for harassment! He offered to call around and find us a hotel... which he did, but he booked us into a 3 star hotel... big money... and i was sure i was still going to have to pay for the first night anyway... so even bigger money. But at least we had a place to stay, and i still had someone to travel with for the rest of the trip... Hil and i started for the new hotel, but decided that we would check all of the one star hotels we could find on the way,... which we did... but they were all complet! Finally i started talking to a lady in the street near a hotel, which she actually ran, and i told her of our problem... she pointed us to a hotel that was actually owned by our hotel and she thought they may be able to help us out... but it was closed... we had just come from that hotel! She told us that hotels sometime open after 6 on sundays,... so we should try back... so we occupied ourselves until 6 and miraculously it was OPEN! Yeah... we are saved from the overpriced 3 star hotel...The girls were so very helpful! It was wonderful. The called around to find our code... and we stopped by the 3 star to tell them thank you but we were sorted.. and we went back to unload our ridiculous bags... Nicholas and the girls set the tone for the entire trip... who says the french are not kind and helpful...and I from now on, will read all confirmation emails... before the trip!