Julie will be in Paris, France until Dec. 17.

“We missed it!”

Kathryn burst into my room. The door slammed against the bookcase, whiplashing me awake.

First thought: amorphous mental blob of expletives.
Second though: “Well, that’s what I get for not setting my alarm and always relying on Kathryn to wake me up.”
Third thought: “Eh, I’m okay with it.”

What exactly we missed was the bus to the Loire Valley Chateaux, which left at 6:30 in the morning. It was now 7:30. The Club International des Jeunes à Paris — The International Club for Young People in Paris, the organization with which we were planning to go on this trip — was long gone on its way to the first château.

In truth, though, I have to say I’m proud of how we handled the situation. We had a glass of Orangina, sat down at the computer and figured out how to get to the Loire Valley by train. Then, feeling more than a little pleased with ourselves, we set out for the train station and successfully bought tickets to Blois.

Onboard the train, however, our tranquil jubilation in our success was unfortunately peppered with ear piercing screeches from a small child whose mane of curls prompted us to dub him “Simba.” After positing that perhaps he was trying to create a kingdom with his unusual amount of crocodile toys, I expressed the fervent hope that no one else on the train could speak English.

Upon arrival at the Blois train station we had to call the trip chaperone, Alaa — Allo? Alaa? — to divine the group’s current location. Apparently, however, the entrance to the Chateau de Blois was easier described than found, as Kathryn and I spent a solid half hour circling the perimeter without any sign of the group or the entrance. Sparing the details, it was later revealed, after a nice lunch and an even nicer glass of wine, that the entrance was a tiny inconspicuous door peeking out through a couple of massive gates.

Overall, Blois was fairly blah, and I greatly preferred our visits to Chenonceau and Leonardo da Vinci’s house the next day.

However, in order to get to see these places, we had to survive the night.

At the Hotel Étap, Alaa began handing out room assignments. We were to be three to a room, and there was no guarantee we would get our requested roommates. Kathryn and I were thankfully put together, but little did we know that our third roommate would soon become the stuff of legends.

When one bears in mind that this was supposedly a club for young people, the presence of a 70-year-old German woman named Helga becomes slightly more strange. And, as the laws of the universe would dictate, she was bequeathed upon us, the 19- and 20-year-old college juniors. I guiltily remembered having made fun of her knee-high pantyhose/capri combo earlier in the day.

My incomprehension of why she was even on the trip aside, Helga didn’t seem especially giddy to be our roommate either. She had clearly been separated from her friends (who were in their 40s — really loose definition of “young” over here), and neither her English nor her French were particularly great. We did the best we could — Kathryn and I had to share the bottom bed while Helga slept up top, and we spent the greater part of our evening out of the room with some other students from our program who kindly invited us to dinner.

When we returned, Helga was still out. We hoped to be asleep before she returned, but it was not to be. She arrived shortly after us, and proceeded to strip down to her navy blue underpants — an image that I am certain would require a lobotomy to erase. If the weirdness had ended there, perhaps it could be, if not forgiven, at least politely ignored. But Helga was a snorer. And not just any snorer, but a champion snorer. A veritable Tony Jaa of nasal martial arts. And so my sleep quota for that evening couldn’t possibly have exceeded four hours, by a generous estimate.

Arriving back home in Neuilly the next evening, feeling the sort of guilty tourist exhaustion you can’t really complain about, lest you be reminded of all the people in the world who never get to see beautiful French castles for the low low price of 100 Euro, I found an immaculately clean room and delicious meal waiting for me. I felt a surge of appreciation for my host family, which devolved into uncontrollable laughter upon the realization that my host mom had actually found a hair ribbon of mine in a basket and tied it around my lamp, as though my clean room were a present to be unwrapped. That sweet, but somehow hilarious gesture was the maraschino cherry on top of my utterly ridiculous Sunday.

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