Dream diary
Aug. 29th, 2013 07:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
semperfionaWe had taken a spur-of-the-moment trip to Europe. It was sponsored through some group, I'm not sure which, and someone dropped out so we joined at the last minute. It was to be France for three days, Belgium or Germany for a day and England for a day.
No memory of the travel to Europe, but there we all were in Paris (T, C, Rosa and me). We had a hotel called something like Ostropole (it was not Metropole) with a yellow plastic-like modern facade.
First day Rosa and I went to a casino, the Astra. We didn't gamble but just looked around. Then the tide came in and began to submerge the building. Everyone left, in a mostly orderly fashion as this happened quite regularly. We got a taxi back to our hotel and the car had to drive through an arm of the sea which now covered the casino and a goodly portion of the district. Did I mention that dream-Paris was nothing like the real thing, not even in geography?
The next day we took a drive down to the southern coast, although the drive down was elided by my dream. We had a little rowboat, which my dream kept calling a paddleboat, and rowed around in the ocean. We had also used it in the submerged district the previous day. The return drive was harrowing. Tammie was driving, I don't know why, she never drives when we're all together, and definitely never drives anywhere she's never been before, but she was driving with aplomb along one of those cliffside coastal roads that is just barely wide enough for one car and not blinking when we had to pass parked heavy equipment so that we skimmed the guard rail on the left side of the road right over the pounding surf yards below.
Back in Paris, we paddled around the submerged casino district again: you could see its neon lights under the water. Then we decided to go back to the hotel--somehow we no longer had a car, so we needed a taxi again. Chris hired one, but he insisted that he would drive. Taxi Man gave in, eventually, despite his arguments about car insurance and taxicab license.
It was a normal yellow taxi from the outside, but had three barebones rows of seats inside. We all got in, Chris got in the driver's seat and we set off, with the taxi man navigating. His English was very accented and his voice was soft, so Chris kept missing his turn directions. We drove right past the hotel, missing three consecutive right turns to get into the parking lot and finally Chris heard him tell us to turn left.
The left turn took us into a very steep very twisty rollercoaster of a road with many crossroads. This route was exclusively used by taxis and had tolls applied to the taxi license at every corner via RFID or the like. We missed a lot of turns and ended up trapped at the bottom of a very steep hill with nowhere to go. The car we were following to the hotel (yeah, I don't know where that came from either) had taken a jump at a previous point, as part of the correct route, but we missed it and now could not fathom how to get back. Taxi Man told us to get out of the car, handed us his cabbie medallion-equivalent on which we had racked up untold charges, and said to take it to Illinois or England and get rid of it there.
No memory of the travel to Europe, but there we all were in Paris (T, C, Rosa and me). We had a hotel called something like Ostropole (it was not Metropole) with a yellow plastic-like modern facade.
First day Rosa and I went to a casino, the Astra. We didn't gamble but just looked around. Then the tide came in and began to submerge the building. Everyone left, in a mostly orderly fashion as this happened quite regularly. We got a taxi back to our hotel and the car had to drive through an arm of the sea which now covered the casino and a goodly portion of the district. Did I mention that dream-Paris was nothing like the real thing, not even in geography?
The next day we took a drive down to the southern coast, although the drive down was elided by my dream. We had a little rowboat, which my dream kept calling a paddleboat, and rowed around in the ocean. We had also used it in the submerged district the previous day. The return drive was harrowing. Tammie was driving, I don't know why, she never drives when we're all together, and definitely never drives anywhere she's never been before, but she was driving with aplomb along one of those cliffside coastal roads that is just barely wide enough for one car and not blinking when we had to pass parked heavy equipment so that we skimmed the guard rail on the left side of the road right over the pounding surf yards below.
Back in Paris, we paddled around the submerged casino district again: you could see its neon lights under the water. Then we decided to go back to the hotel--somehow we no longer had a car, so we needed a taxi again. Chris hired one, but he insisted that he would drive. Taxi Man gave in, eventually, despite his arguments about car insurance and taxicab license.
It was a normal yellow taxi from the outside, but had three barebones rows of seats inside. We all got in, Chris got in the driver's seat and we set off, with the taxi man navigating. His English was very accented and his voice was soft, so Chris kept missing his turn directions. We drove right past the hotel, missing three consecutive right turns to get into the parking lot and finally Chris heard him tell us to turn left.
The left turn took us into a very steep very twisty rollercoaster of a road with many crossroads. This route was exclusively used by taxis and had tolls applied to the taxi license at every corner via RFID or the like. We missed a lot of turns and ended up trapped at the bottom of a very steep hill with nowhere to go. The car we were following to the hotel (yeah, I don't know where that came from either) had taken a jump at a previous point, as part of the correct route, but we missed it and now could not fathom how to get back. Taxi Man told us to get out of the car, handed us his cabbie medallion-equivalent on which we had racked up untold charges, and said to take it to Illinois or England and get rid of it there.
