| Wednesday, October 31, 2007 |
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Greetings from Paris........NOT!
Hello All!
Our anticipated trip has arrived only to not go! Yes...you heard me right..or should I say you read right. Since we booked our trip, i've taken it in stride..not to get too excited. Why you may ask? Well I have a tendency to get overly excited about things only to be disappointed because of expecting too much. So now I've somewhat trained myself to be content with whatever comes my way. Well thank goodness I had that outlook on things....
It's Wednesday Oct. 24, 2007, and Awsome and I had just finished a pretty good dinner that I had bought at our brand new Whole Foods here in Oakland. It's HUGE! Anyways... Awsome decides to get on the computer and says outloud, " I wonder if I need to get a Visa from the Philippines Consulate." Here I am...trying to be calm and not panic, but also thinking nothing of it. After 10 minutes and hearing clicking keys on the laptop, I hear cursing words out of Awsome. And then it finally became clear.....we forgot the most important thing!!!! To get a Visa from the France Consulate!!!!! Awsome isn't a citizen and marrying me does not make him a citizen automatically. He has the choice! Being that, Awsome pretty much needs a Visa whenver he travels out of the U.S.
It's 9pm now and every website we found led us back to getting a Visa for him. On the SF website for the France Consulate, it stated BY APPOINTMENT ONLY and they only open from 9am-12:30pm on Thursday!!! What a long shot!!! We decided to pack our bags, fill out all the necessary forms and print them out...and let's just say our inkjet ran out of black ink...pretty stressful at 11pm, head to Kinkos and copy all the forms TWICE and get a passport photo!!!! After all that, it's about 1:30am and we have to wake up in about 4 hours in order to avoid the HELL TRAFFIC ON THE BAY BRIDGE at 6 AM!!!
It's 7am OCT. 25, 2007 and we're suppose to depart for Paris, France at 4pm!!! We're finally parked at the Sutter/Stockton garage and the France Consulate is right behind the garage on Bush St. We decide to have breakfast at the Starbucks on the corner of Grant/Bush. After feedin our stomachs we decide to wait outside the office, hoping to bump into an employee who might just help us out... NOT!!!
The doors open at 9am exactly and there's a security guard asking what our business is. He's to the point and states that since Awsome is a Philippine Citizen, it would take 9 days to process and there's no way to rush the process. If Awsome was a citizen of Korea, Japan or China, then he'd get his Visa the same day!!!! WACK!!!!! The security guard was nice enough to ask the agents for us, and they said no as well.....
YES...VERY DISAPPOINTING and a very EXPENSIVE lesson in traveling!!! So how did we recover from this..... well after having a good cry, being upset, sad, disappointed and napping after 2 hours from our whirlwind... we booked a trip to DISNEYLAND!!!! THE HAPPIEST PLACE ON EARTH!!!!
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| posted by The Weekender @ 11:00 AM |
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