The cursed holiday

New Years Eve is a cursed holiday for me. Every year something always happens to make it a train wreck of a night. What better way to welcome a new year? Not that I want to get into it, but in the past couple of years there was the time we thought my friend Justin was dead, the time I accidentally mixed prescription medicine with alcohol (sidenote, turns out I'm deathly allergic to amoxicillin), and then the fist fight between my two good friends; just so you know what we're dealing with. My friends and I have learned to look back at these and laugh (oh Justin, remember that time we thought you were dead? har har har), but I don't think I'll be laughing about this one for a long time. (The rest of the entry is me whining, so feel free to stop reading here).



The story is a simple one though. My family is nice enough I suppose, but being around each other for more than a few hours at a time begins to cause a lot of friction. Someone decided we had to go down to the Champs Elysees (though later there would be much arguing about whose stupid idea is had been with nobody eager to take credit). We sensibly decided that we would be able to make it across Paris in 15 minutes on New Years Eve and get over there with plenty of time to admire the Arc De Triomphe before the corks popped. During the four days we were there we typically spent as much time planning our route as actually in transit, however, this being our first night we argued 20 minutes prior to setting off and then the whole time on the train. It quickly became apparent that we weren't going to make it, and decided we didn't want to spend new years on the subway so we jumped out at the nearest stop and tried to follow the crowds hoping it would lead to some festivities. So now here we are, Paris, the city of love and fine wine, except we are under a bridge in the middle of nowhere because it started raining. We rung in 2008 much like we would spend the rest of our trip, arguing over a map. We looked for the train station we'd just come out of but couldn't find it again. Also being unable to locate a cab we began our long walk home shooting mental daggers at anyone smiling.