Jessica bothered me a few days after I got back about updating this blog, posting one last final entry. It feels so long ago now but I haven't even been home a week yet. I feel like the last three months were a part of some stupidly long dream that I've only just woken awake from -- but that I'm awake now, and like any dream all the details are slipping away like sand dissolving beneath a wave.
The last leg of my journey was the most stressful. In London, the only thing we really did was walk around to shop for souvenirs. Andreina was nice enough to buy a present for most people, while I only got myself a set of matching mugs that we two would have together and a neat London hat. The timing of my arrival to Boston and subsequent departure to Denver was really, really tricky -- just about an hour and ten minutes by the schedule, with that time needing to be sufficient to land, get through customs, get through security again, and arrive at my gate before the next flight took off. On our last night in London, we packed up nearly everything we could possibly need and then loaded Andreina up with as much as possible, trying to keep my backpack as ridiculously light as I could manage. I hoped that, with a freakishly light backpack, the time through customs and security would be drastically reduced.
We settled into bed at a little past ten, both of us more anxious than anything to just see the last few hours pass by before we'd head out to our planes. I couldn't sleep at all. I tossed and turned, feeling itchy and excited and also very stressed (about the connections, about getting our tickets to Denver somehow printed up in the morning, about Lucas). Before I knew it, it was 2am, which was 9pm Boston time, in the 24-hour check-in time for our Denver flight. I checked up in and went back to tossing and turning. The itching sensation got worse and worse...and then I found a bug crawling on the back of my neck!
Freaked out, I sat up in bed with my knees curled up under my chin. The only light in the room was a faint glow from the exit sign that lit up one corner of my mattress. I sat still for a bit and then lay back down, wondering if it had been a freak occurrence. Now I felt doubly itchy all over and I was sure I was just imagining it all until I spotted, by the faint glow, another bug crawling on the far side of the mattress.
I got up and moved to the bed above Andreina's, feeling sick and itchy and nervous and stressed. It was almost 4am by that point and I managed to drift back to sleep. My alarm went off at 6:30. I woke Andreina up and after we were dressed, we went downstairs only to be told the lobby didn't open until 7:30. We hung up near our rooms again and just counted the minutes down until we could get back into the lobby and beg them to let us use their printers to get our Denver boarding passes.
Before I knew it, we'd checked out of the hostel and made it to the London Underground. I left Andreina a few stations down; she only had to ride the subway to the end to get to her airport but I had to make a few changes and then catch a suburban train to get to the Gatwick airport.
The next few hours for me were full of gut-wrenching stress as I worried more and more about the connection flight, about what would happen if I missed the plane, about having to buy yet another ticket and wait another day to get home. My flight out of London had a layover in Iceland and the flight out of Iceland was late by about five minutes, five minutes that seemed like years to my worried brain. I felt on the verge of puking from pure panic when, just as we arrived in Boston air space, the pilot came over the intercom and informed us we were in a holding pattern until traffic on the ground cleared up.
My flight to Denver was scheduled to depart at 9:20pm; my flight landing in Boston didn't touch ground until 8:20pm. I was a nervous wreck. As soon as I could, I had my phone on. The first call I made on it these last three months was to Andreina -- I was going to beg her to make a scene, beg the flight attendants, do whatever she had to do to give me the time I needed to get to that gate.
And....our flight had been delayed by 20 glorious minutes!
Andreina, understandably, was in a rotten mood: she'd been waiting in the airport for some 8 hours and was looking at the prospect of a new, unhappy delay to her final departure to Denver. As for me, though, I was ecstatic! I was singing and happy and prancing through the airport, much to Andreina's deep displeasure. At one point, when she started practically cursing out our airline, swearing she'd never fly BlueJet ever again in her life, I made the point that it was probably the terrible storm outside that was to blame and not the airline. She growled at me, told me "Whatever," and stalked off to stand in another part of the waiting area to get away from me.
Our flight ended up being delayed by nearly a full hour and instead of arriving in Denver at 11:45pm, we got there at 12:30am. Andreina, at this point, did a 180-degree attitude turn and suddenly became happy-go-lucky, smiling at everyone and everything. Mami and Allie were waiting for us at the exit from the terminal concourse and had nothing but huge smiles and hugs for us. And, walking up from where he'd been waiting by the baggage claim, Lucas was there. And he was just about as perfect as I could picture him.
This last week has been a mental rush. After getting back early, early on Tuesday morning, Lucas and I drove up to Boulder for my first day of orientation. We sat through classes about how to get help from the professors and academic expectations, and got lunch at a pizza shop that served honey for a crust-dipping sauce. I had orientation until 6pm on Tuesday, and then until 5pm on Wednesday and Thursday with some last minute paperwork on Friday. All day yesterday was moving day; I don't have very much to move at all, but there was long lengths of road to cover and some misinformation on meeting times between me and the lady selling me a dresser, losing us about an hour of move time. Lucas put in his two-week notice at work on Friday, giving DISH exactly two years of his life. Until those two weeks are up, he's staying in Denver so I sit alone now in this Boulder apartment. It's very cute and comfy with a magnificent deck. It's so quiet and empty now, aside from the ridiculously loud exhaust fan in the ceiling that I have serious doubts about. It's nearing 9pm and I go to my first class in less than 12 hours. It's so hard to believe that a week ago, I was in London sleeping in a bug-ridden hostel bed, having just gotten there from Paris, after having been in Strasbourg, Dijon, Lyon, Nice...
I feel like I've just finished some amazing and frighteningly fast roller coaster ride, and the ride has just finished its last loop and is now slowing down for a smooth ride back to its home. My hair is all frizzy, my breathing is still uneven and fast with an occasional hitch, and my hands are shaking, but already the adrenaline is beginning to subside and my heart is beginning to slow and the ride itself, no matter how recent and exhilarating, is beginning to settle in as a fading memory.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Friday, August 12, 2011
Versailles!!!
Last night, I had just finished writing up this blog entry and was cruising through the virtual news reports when Andreina, out of the blue, asked me to text Popi and ask if anyone wanted to Skype tonight. It was a little after 10pm our time, an unusual time to Skype home since normally I've been calling at about 1am my time, 5pm Denver time, when usually everyone has their business for the day wrapped up. But I did as she asked, and within just a few minutes she was talking to Allie, the only one immediately available to chat. And chat they did!! Two hours later, I'm still just sort of twiddling my thumbs on the sidelines while Andreina is chatting a storm, first to Allie and then to Mami once Mami came home with Randy.
I'd given Andreina my headphones for the conversation, in case she wanted it to be more private or couldn't hear over the noise of the traffic below, but I think my ears are tuned to the frequency of my name and Randy's voice. I could hear him, through the headphones on the other side of the room, asking for me. For me!! ^_______^ that kid is pretty much the greatest!
I admit, I sort of stole the phone away from Andreina for a bit while she was trying to have a conversation with Mami...but, seriously, she'd had it exclusively for two hours by that point, and Randy had asked for me!! We had a stupid silly little laugh session for a few minutes and then Andreina commandeered the phone back, talking with Mami for a bit more before Papi made it back home. For a few minutes, it was the three of us talking -- me, Andreina, and Papi -- but them two started talking business and I backed off to let them get those personal matters settled. Papi noticed and asked where I'd gone, and the next thing I knew Andreina had given up the phone and I got to have a very nice abbreviated talk with my father.
It was a very spur of the moment thing, and it ended up being very, very awesome.
We hung up sometime after midnight, approaching 1am, and then Andreina and I both got into bed and, for about 45 minutes, shifted restlessly. I tried to fall asleep but simply couldn't, and I could hear her rolling over every few minutes as well. At about 2am, she got up and tried to just stretch herself out while I pulled up a few clothing websites and browsed the sales. Not very exciting I know, but there was seriously something wrong with my body. It didn't want to go to bed. I was wide, wide wake.
At some point, Andreina went back to bed and I started playing an Audible book (thanks, Papi!), falling asleep to a story about a young girl doing some sort of spy stuff. The only thought that kept going through my head was "And I'm going to have to get up in a few hours for that stupid tour! I'm going to be soooo tired!!"
It proved not to be the case. ^_^ for that, I'm very grateful. Andreina got up before me, sometime about 9:15, and I lazily got up fifteen minutes later only to find that my body had slept very fine indeed on such short notice and that I felt fully refreshed, ready to start another day of walking. I don't think Andreina felt quite the same way...
We managed to make it on time to our tour to Versailles and became part of a group of 8 plus the tour guide herself, a very sarcastic and dry-humored girl from Philly named Linda. I had checked out the tour again last night and discovered, to my dismay, that this tour didn't actually go into the chateau itself, nor actually into any of the palaces on the grounds at all, but that it was a walking tour through the gardens of Versailles. Gardens, I might add which are free for public entry. We were paying 30€ each for something that, if we'd gone by ourselves, would have only cost about 12€ for the both of us for the train over. Being somewhat habitually cheap by this point in my trip, I was mentally debating very intensely over the decision to fork over so much cash, and when I asked Andreina her opinion after spelling out the facts, she expressed no opinion whatsoever, saying "We can spend the day shopping, we can stay in our hotel room all day, I don't care." I decided that, since we were going to Versailles no matter what, and since the tour guide from earlier had bee so wonderful, and since, if we didn't go, we had no other plans for the day and would probably just wander around Paris all day (and by wander, I mean walk, walk all day again, from one side of the city to the other, an activity that Andreina is less and less pleased with the more often it happens) -- because of all these things, I decided to just go, to heck with the money, might as well spend it on a really good last day in Paris even if we don't actually go inside.
It was absolutely the right decision to make!
Linda, from the get-go, was just fantastic! She was funny, made jokes of everything, and told the story of Versailles and it's royalty with such life that I was shocked, absolutely shocked when I looked down and realized we'd been on the tour for over four hours when we stopped for a late lunch break. It felt like time just flew by, and it was all madly interesting.
The gardens themselves are incredible, and the chateau is insanely large from outside. The building has a basement that's as deep below as the upper floors are high. I was more or less spellbound by the stranger than fiction history that was the last few generations of French kings before the Revolution. Much of it was somewhat familiar, either because of my old history classes or dramatized in film ("Marie Antoinette," anyone?) but the way Linda retold it all was just the funniest, most alive, most interesting way I've ever heard the stories told, and she gave all my rusty history knowledge so much added depth with just these little bits of shiny, new details.
We walked through these splendrous gardens for 5.5 hours, with Linda talking nearly nonstop the entire time, before our tour finally came to a close. I think I took a thousand pictures of trees, shaped hedges, flowers, and fountains by the time it all ended.
Afterwards, Andreina and I walked through some of the nearby souvenir shops, got back to Paris, and walked through a few more souvenir shops before making our way back to our hotel. It's getting late and I'm going to try to get some decent sleep, but even if I don't the only thing we're going to do tomorrow is ride the bus and I can sleep the whole way to London! Maybe I'll just try to stay awake all night, so that I can sleep easily on the bus...then again, I remember how much of a nightmare sleeping on the bus to London the first time was! Yea, I think I'll try to sleep tonight instead!
Three more days!
I'd given Andreina my headphones for the conversation, in case she wanted it to be more private or couldn't hear over the noise of the traffic below, but I think my ears are tuned to the frequency of my name and Randy's voice. I could hear him, through the headphones on the other side of the room, asking for me. For me!! ^_______^ that kid is pretty much the greatest!
I admit, I sort of stole the phone away from Andreina for a bit while she was trying to have a conversation with Mami...but, seriously, she'd had it exclusively for two hours by that point, and Randy had asked for me!! We had a stupid silly little laugh session for a few minutes and then Andreina commandeered the phone back, talking with Mami for a bit more before Papi made it back home. For a few minutes, it was the three of us talking -- me, Andreina, and Papi -- but them two started talking business and I backed off to let them get those personal matters settled. Papi noticed and asked where I'd gone, and the next thing I knew Andreina had given up the phone and I got to have a very nice abbreviated talk with my father.
It was a very spur of the moment thing, and it ended up being very, very awesome.
We hung up sometime after midnight, approaching 1am, and then Andreina and I both got into bed and, for about 45 minutes, shifted restlessly. I tried to fall asleep but simply couldn't, and I could hear her rolling over every few minutes as well. At about 2am, she got up and tried to just stretch herself out while I pulled up a few clothing websites and browsed the sales. Not very exciting I know, but there was seriously something wrong with my body. It didn't want to go to bed. I was wide, wide wake.
At some point, Andreina went back to bed and I started playing an Audible book (thanks, Papi!), falling asleep to a story about a young girl doing some sort of spy stuff. The only thought that kept going through my head was "And I'm going to have to get up in a few hours for that stupid tour! I'm going to be soooo tired!!"
It proved not to be the case. ^_^ for that, I'm very grateful. Andreina got up before me, sometime about 9:15, and I lazily got up fifteen minutes later only to find that my body had slept very fine indeed on such short notice and that I felt fully refreshed, ready to start another day of walking. I don't think Andreina felt quite the same way...
We managed to make it on time to our tour to Versailles and became part of a group of 8 plus the tour guide herself, a very sarcastic and dry-humored girl from Philly named Linda. I had checked out the tour again last night and discovered, to my dismay, that this tour didn't actually go into the chateau itself, nor actually into any of the palaces on the grounds at all, but that it was a walking tour through the gardens of Versailles. Gardens, I might add which are free for public entry. We were paying 30€ each for something that, if we'd gone by ourselves, would have only cost about 12€ for the both of us for the train over. Being somewhat habitually cheap by this point in my trip, I was mentally debating very intensely over the decision to fork over so much cash, and when I asked Andreina her opinion after spelling out the facts, she expressed no opinion whatsoever, saying "We can spend the day shopping, we can stay in our hotel room all day, I don't care." I decided that, since we were going to Versailles no matter what, and since the tour guide from earlier had bee so wonderful, and since, if we didn't go, we had no other plans for the day and would probably just wander around Paris all day (and by wander, I mean walk, walk all day again, from one side of the city to the other, an activity that Andreina is less and less pleased with the more often it happens) -- because of all these things, I decided to just go, to heck with the money, might as well spend it on a really good last day in Paris even if we don't actually go inside.
It was absolutely the right decision to make!
Linda, from the get-go, was just fantastic! She was funny, made jokes of everything, and told the story of Versailles and it's royalty with such life that I was shocked, absolutely shocked when I looked down and realized we'd been on the tour for over four hours when we stopped for a late lunch break. It felt like time just flew by, and it was all madly interesting.
The gardens themselves are incredible, and the chateau is insanely large from outside. The building has a basement that's as deep below as the upper floors are high. I was more or less spellbound by the stranger than fiction history that was the last few generations of French kings before the Revolution. Much of it was somewhat familiar, either because of my old history classes or dramatized in film ("Marie Antoinette," anyone?) but the way Linda retold it all was just the funniest, most alive, most interesting way I've ever heard the stories told, and she gave all my rusty history knowledge so much added depth with just these little bits of shiny, new details.
We walked through these splendrous gardens for 5.5 hours, with Linda talking nearly nonstop the entire time, before our tour finally came to a close. I think I took a thousand pictures of trees, shaped hedges, flowers, and fountains by the time it all ended.
Afterwards, Andreina and I walked through some of the nearby souvenir shops, got back to Paris, and walked through a few more souvenir shops before making our way back to our hotel. It's getting late and I'm going to try to get some decent sleep, but even if I don't the only thing we're going to do tomorrow is ride the bus and I can sleep the whole way to London! Maybe I'll just try to stay awake all night, so that I can sleep easily on the bus...then again, I remember how much of a nightmare sleeping on the bus to London the first time was! Yea, I think I'll try to sleep tonight instead!
Three more days!
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Paris, Day 2
Today was official tour day.
We got up "early" (before 10) and got into the city by about 11:30, grabbing some breakfast juice and wandering around the Latin Quarter of the city, through all the touristy souvenir shops and along all the very traditional cafes. It felt like we were really in the heart of Paris: everywhere were tables filled with people just casually lounging about, being cafe people. We had a ton of fun just window-shopping through all the tourist shops and picking out theoretical gifts, in the end buying nothing and walking away with free hands.
Our free walking tour was supposed to start at 1pm so we got over to the meeting place a little early and hung out a bit watching some people dressed up in Indian gear playing their wooden pipes while around us a decent-sized crowd of like-minded tourists gathered. We talked a bit with a girl from Minnesota and another from Australia, and then the tour started.
Our guide was a fantastic guy named Jake, a student from Britain who had studied in France, lived in Madrid, had returned to Paris to relearn the language before he plans on returning to the UK in the near future. He took us through a bunch of sights we missed yesterday, through a few we'd walked through but that he made seem completely brand new with all his descriptions, and kept us interested for the entire 4 hours we walked with him.
It felt fantastic to be surrounded by English speakers all day. Finally, I could understand everyone who was around me...and it was a little annoying at time because some of those conversations were pretty stupid. But I could understand them! Yea!
One of the most interesting stories he told came at the end, the story of how a German, one who had been personally charged by Hitler himself to blow up Paris in the event of a possible liberation during WWII, instead worked with the Allies to buy enough time in fooling Hitler to believing that Paris was being destroyed so that Hitler would turn his attention away and give the Allies a chance to save the city. There was a huge story to it all, and it took up the last ten or so minutes of our tour. We all sat down in the grass and listened like we were little elementary students being told a fantastic mythical legend -- except for Andreina, of course, who elected to stand. Go figure.
After our tour ended, we went on a long walk to inspect the Arc de Triumph up close. The monument is huge! Napoleon had one ridiculous ego, that's for sure!! Our day ended with a quiet ride back to our hotel, grabbing more food for dinner, and together we both complained about the respective love interests who are being unhappily silent on their end of the communication line.
30 Rock is playing in French on the TV in the background and I'm listening to some of my favorite songs via YouTube. Andreina is scribbling away in her journal, and through the open window we can hear the traffic that is still incredibly loud, even after 10pm. It's just something you'd have to get used to if you lived here, I guess. Maybe the streets serve as a powerful amp for all the car and scooter noises; maybe Frenchmen just have ridiculously loud scooters. Whatever the reason, they were still unsettlingly loud last night and they're on track for being just as loud tonight.
The tour guide today was so good that we're going to take the company's Versailles tour tomorrow morning. It'll mean waking up in time to make their 11am meet time. I hope we're up to it!! :)
We got up "early" (before 10) and got into the city by about 11:30, grabbing some breakfast juice and wandering around the Latin Quarter of the city, through all the touristy souvenir shops and along all the very traditional cafes. It felt like we were really in the heart of Paris: everywhere were tables filled with people just casually lounging about, being cafe people. We had a ton of fun just window-shopping through all the tourist shops and picking out theoretical gifts, in the end buying nothing and walking away with free hands.
Our free walking tour was supposed to start at 1pm so we got over to the meeting place a little early and hung out a bit watching some people dressed up in Indian gear playing their wooden pipes while around us a decent-sized crowd of like-minded tourists gathered. We talked a bit with a girl from Minnesota and another from Australia, and then the tour started.
Our guide was a fantastic guy named Jake, a student from Britain who had studied in France, lived in Madrid, had returned to Paris to relearn the language before he plans on returning to the UK in the near future. He took us through a bunch of sights we missed yesterday, through a few we'd walked through but that he made seem completely brand new with all his descriptions, and kept us interested for the entire 4 hours we walked with him.
It felt fantastic to be surrounded by English speakers all day. Finally, I could understand everyone who was around me...and it was a little annoying at time because some of those conversations were pretty stupid. But I could understand them! Yea!
One of the most interesting stories he told came at the end, the story of how a German, one who had been personally charged by Hitler himself to blow up Paris in the event of a possible liberation during WWII, instead worked with the Allies to buy enough time in fooling Hitler to believing that Paris was being destroyed so that Hitler would turn his attention away and give the Allies a chance to save the city. There was a huge story to it all, and it took up the last ten or so minutes of our tour. We all sat down in the grass and listened like we were little elementary students being told a fantastic mythical legend -- except for Andreina, of course, who elected to stand. Go figure.
After our tour ended, we went on a long walk to inspect the Arc de Triumph up close. The monument is huge! Napoleon had one ridiculous ego, that's for sure!! Our day ended with a quiet ride back to our hotel, grabbing more food for dinner, and together we both complained about the respective love interests who are being unhappily silent on their end of the communication line.
30 Rock is playing in French on the TV in the background and I'm listening to some of my favorite songs via YouTube. Andreina is scribbling away in her journal, and through the open window we can hear the traffic that is still incredibly loud, even after 10pm. It's just something you'd have to get used to if you lived here, I guess. Maybe the streets serve as a powerful amp for all the car and scooter noises; maybe Frenchmen just have ridiculously loud scooters. Whatever the reason, they were still unsettlingly loud last night and they're on track for being just as loud tonight.
The tour guide today was so good that we're going to take the company's Versailles tour tomorrow morning. It'll mean waking up in time to make their 11am meet time. I hope we're up to it!! :)
Location:Paris, France
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Paris, Day 1
Andreina chose our last day in Strasbourg to wake up early. Normally, she's been sleeping until at least 10 or so and we'd both planned on sleeping in until as late as possible to eat up the large amount of time we had before our train left for Paris at 4:15pm. Instead, I wake up at about 8:30 to find her already moving about the room restlessly; we both packed up slowly and very aimlessly shifted from one spot to the other until she declared she was too hungry to wait and we ended up checking out of the hotel a little before 10am.
For the next few hours, we wandered around Strasbourg one last time. It was chilly and cloudy and seemed only moments away from raining again. We trudged along towards the train station, got lost, spent a bit of time retracing our steps until I caught our bearings again, and landed in the train station at just about 1pm with still tons and tons of time to kill.
I can hardly remember what we did, specifically. We talked a lot, we walked from one end of the station to the other. I suggested we go back into town for food but one look outside made that seem like one of the worst ideas ever and we grabbed some noodles at the cafe instead. And then, all of a sudden, it was time to board our train and we were off, finally.
The train ride was about 2:20 to Paris. I napped a little on Andreina's shoulder, we talked about student loans and what she wants to do with her jobs, and then we had rounded the last corner and we were pulling into our station. When we grabbed our tickets to the metro, some lady tried to sell us "tickets" on the side for cash and we had to almost push her away from us to make her leave.
When we made it to our hotel, it was half past seven. We walked back to a little market next to our metro stop and grabbed sandwich stuff then called it a day, kicking back in our neat little room, showering and washing our clothes and catching some super-dramatic French cooking competition on our little TV. Andreina passed out at about 11 and I turned in an hour later, or at least tried to. It was hard to fall asleep with all the ridiculously loud scooters zooming through the streets below, especially since we'd left the windows open to keep the heat down. At some point, Andreina got up and very angrily slammed the windows shut.
I woke up at about 8:30 again and twiddled my thumbs a bit, checking out the prices for the train ride to London on Saturday and getting a terrible surprise when the online prices had skyrocketed to over $150 per person! The train ride from Paris to London is less than 3 hours; when I'd taken the train from London to Brussels, the tickets had only cost me 60€ and I'd bought them that same morning. While Andreina slept, I searched online for some sort of cheaper alternative for our trip, feeling more than a little crazed at the thought of having to buy such an expensive ticket. I'd just decided that we'd have to take the bus (it's some 8-9 hrs long, though) when Andreina finally woke up at about 11:15. And she (in a terribly irritated voice) let me now how terribly loud I snored all night, how terribly loud the scooters and traffic on the street had been all night, how she'd lain awake from 1am until 5am, unable to fall asleep at all. It explained why she slept in so late, that's for sure!
We got dressed and then first headed to the international bus terminal to buy our tickets for the ride on Saturday. It's going to take up most of the day. We leave at 11am and we don't arrive in London until 6pm. We're definitely going to have to find something to keep us occupied for all that. With those tickets bought, we headed out to the city to finally see this enormous city.
I got us off the metro at the Republic stop, where there is a ridiculously large monument dedicated to the ideas of a republic. We started heading down a street called Temple something which, according to my map, would dump us to the Bastille monument. Unfortunately, the street we wanted was the Boulevard of Temple something and the street we actually went down as the Ave of Temple something. We went down that street heading through a worn-down and cheap Chinese neighborhood that felt uncomfortably hoody. When the street name suddenly changed to something else altogether, I knew we'd gone the wrong way. Andreina asked if we were just going to go back the way we came and, as much as I hated backtracking, that's what we had to do.
We got back to our original stop and headed down the right street, making it to the Bastille monument, the site of the Bastille prison that had been broken into and sparked the start of the French Revolution. Afterwards, we walked along the river Seine that flows directly through the center of the city. Paris has imported sand and made an artificial beach along the riverbed, even having Disneyland make a huge Disney castle at one point. It's pretty incredible to see so many people out in their bathing suits, sunning themselves on beach towels in the sand, and then to remember that you're in the middle of Paris -- the things those Frenchmen think of!
The river turned and we passed Notre Dame, as in The Notre Dame of hunchback fame. It's on an island between the two banks of the river. We didn't stop, saving that for our guided tour tomorrow, but the spires and towers we could see from the opposite side of the waters were very, very impressive! Andreina mumbled some of the songs from the Disney film as we walked by.
We left the riverside and got back on to the high street in time to reach the far end of the Louvre. I knew it was once a palace, but even so I wasn't ready for just how huge a museum it is! It's larger than some airports I've been in. I want to look up how long it is from one far end to the other because the building seemed to stretch on forever.
We wandered about the grounds for a bit, marveled at the glade pyramid at the entrance and at how long the lines are to get in, and then went over to a nearby Starbucks for some late lunch, the time being almost 4pm at that time. With sandwiches and drinks, we went back to the Champs-Elysées, the front lawn of the palace, sat down on the freshly manicured lawns, and ate while watching little kids play with their mechanical birds and thousands of people milling about being just as touristy as we were.
From there, we walked further through the gardens, getting about halfway to the Arc de Triumph before turning and taking the Alexander bridge to the other side of the river and making our way towards the Eiffel Tower. We passed the Office of Foreign Affairs, which is only notable because it was an obscenely huge building with a front lawn that stretch into a mile of lush green grass that people were using for things from playing frisbee to taking sun-naps. We kept our trek on towards the tower, losing sight of it amidst the other tall buildings along the streets we were walking through, getting a glimpse of it now and again -- and then, suddenly, like a giant jumping out of nowhere, we arrived at it's base!
The Eiffel Tower is awesomely huge!
It stand regally, an iron contraption with rust colors starkly contrasting against the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the grass, the whiteness of the clouds. It's almost elegant, how those four spidery metallic legs curve up to a single point that stretches up against the heavens. The building is very solid and very real, almost more real than all the other buildings around it just by it's largeness and greatness.
We got there a little after 6pm and there was still a crowd gathered at it's base, a huge gathering of ant-sized beings next to this rust-red giant. We got in line to walk up the stairs and waited for about a half hour before we were let through their airport-type security (we had to take off our money belts to get through the metal detectors) and allowed to start walking up the 700 or so steps to the 2nd floor.
The Cinque Terre hiking seems like training in preparation for this climb. As we ascended, we passed pairs or groups of people who had to stop for breaks, huffing painfully, sweating profusely. Andreina, as if in defiance of their weariness, started taking the steps two at a time and I was hurrying to keep up. We got to the first story, which was the equivalent of going up 21 flights of stairs according to a posted sign; then we got to the second story, which was about 44 or so.
The view from that height is incredible. Everything looks like little models, like we're surrounded by miniatures of the city. People turned into little specks; all the lines from the grass mowing lines stand out as if they'd been highlighted in different shades of green; the tallest monuments look inch-tall and the biggest buildings could all be gathered in the palms of my hands.
We stayed up there for a bit and then headed back down, slowly making our way back to our hotel, stopping to grab some noodles for dinner on the way. My legs felt like stiff logs by the time I took my sandals off for the last time today. I get the feeling they're not too pleased with the hours anchors of walking accompanied by the hundreds and hundreds of stairs. It was after 8pm when we got on the metro to start heading back home, and we weren't in our hotel until a little after nine, making today another one of those 8+ hours of nearly nonstop walking days.
Tomorrow we're going to catch a 3.5 hr free walking tour, and then I want to see the Statue of Liberty here if it's not covered in the tour and Andreina has a friend she wants to buy a tie for, if there's any worth getting. We covered a good amount of city today and, depending on what the tour goes through tomorrow, we'll pick a few last spots to cover. Friday, I hope to get out to Versailles for the day and wander through Marie Antoinette's estates. Then Saturday is bus day, Sunday is "quick London" day, and Monday is............
For the next few hours, we wandered around Strasbourg one last time. It was chilly and cloudy and seemed only moments away from raining again. We trudged along towards the train station, got lost, spent a bit of time retracing our steps until I caught our bearings again, and landed in the train station at just about 1pm with still tons and tons of time to kill.
I can hardly remember what we did, specifically. We talked a lot, we walked from one end of the station to the other. I suggested we go back into town for food but one look outside made that seem like one of the worst ideas ever and we grabbed some noodles at the cafe instead. And then, all of a sudden, it was time to board our train and we were off, finally.
The train ride was about 2:20 to Paris. I napped a little on Andreina's shoulder, we talked about student loans and what she wants to do with her jobs, and then we had rounded the last corner and we were pulling into our station. When we grabbed our tickets to the metro, some lady tried to sell us "tickets" on the side for cash and we had to almost push her away from us to make her leave.
When we made it to our hotel, it was half past seven. We walked back to a little market next to our metro stop and grabbed sandwich stuff then called it a day, kicking back in our neat little room, showering and washing our clothes and catching some super-dramatic French cooking competition on our little TV. Andreina passed out at about 11 and I turned in an hour later, or at least tried to. It was hard to fall asleep with all the ridiculously loud scooters zooming through the streets below, especially since we'd left the windows open to keep the heat down. At some point, Andreina got up and very angrily slammed the windows shut.
I woke up at about 8:30 again and twiddled my thumbs a bit, checking out the prices for the train ride to London on Saturday and getting a terrible surprise when the online prices had skyrocketed to over $150 per person! The train ride from Paris to London is less than 3 hours; when I'd taken the train from London to Brussels, the tickets had only cost me 60€ and I'd bought them that same morning. While Andreina slept, I searched online for some sort of cheaper alternative for our trip, feeling more than a little crazed at the thought of having to buy such an expensive ticket. I'd just decided that we'd have to take the bus (it's some 8-9 hrs long, though) when Andreina finally woke up at about 11:15. And she (in a terribly irritated voice) let me now how terribly loud I snored all night, how terribly loud the scooters and traffic on the street had been all night, how she'd lain awake from 1am until 5am, unable to fall asleep at all. It explained why she slept in so late, that's for sure!
We got dressed and then first headed to the international bus terminal to buy our tickets for the ride on Saturday. It's going to take up most of the day. We leave at 11am and we don't arrive in London until 6pm. We're definitely going to have to find something to keep us occupied for all that. With those tickets bought, we headed out to the city to finally see this enormous city.
I got us off the metro at the Republic stop, where there is a ridiculously large monument dedicated to the ideas of a republic. We started heading down a street called Temple something which, according to my map, would dump us to the Bastille monument. Unfortunately, the street we wanted was the Boulevard of Temple something and the street we actually went down as the Ave of Temple something. We went down that street heading through a worn-down and cheap Chinese neighborhood that felt uncomfortably hoody. When the street name suddenly changed to something else altogether, I knew we'd gone the wrong way. Andreina asked if we were just going to go back the way we came and, as much as I hated backtracking, that's what we had to do.
We got back to our original stop and headed down the right street, making it to the Bastille monument, the site of the Bastille prison that had been broken into and sparked the start of the French Revolution. Afterwards, we walked along the river Seine that flows directly through the center of the city. Paris has imported sand and made an artificial beach along the riverbed, even having Disneyland make a huge Disney castle at one point. It's pretty incredible to see so many people out in their bathing suits, sunning themselves on beach towels in the sand, and then to remember that you're in the middle of Paris -- the things those Frenchmen think of!
The river turned and we passed Notre Dame, as in The Notre Dame of hunchback fame. It's on an island between the two banks of the river. We didn't stop, saving that for our guided tour tomorrow, but the spires and towers we could see from the opposite side of the waters were very, very impressive! Andreina mumbled some of the songs from the Disney film as we walked by.
We left the riverside and got back on to the high street in time to reach the far end of the Louvre. I knew it was once a palace, but even so I wasn't ready for just how huge a museum it is! It's larger than some airports I've been in. I want to look up how long it is from one far end to the other because the building seemed to stretch on forever.
We wandered about the grounds for a bit, marveled at the glade pyramid at the entrance and at how long the lines are to get in, and then went over to a nearby Starbucks for some late lunch, the time being almost 4pm at that time. With sandwiches and drinks, we went back to the Champs-Elysées, the front lawn of the palace, sat down on the freshly manicured lawns, and ate while watching little kids play with their mechanical birds and thousands of people milling about being just as touristy as we were.
From there, we walked further through the gardens, getting about halfway to the Arc de Triumph before turning and taking the Alexander bridge to the other side of the river and making our way towards the Eiffel Tower. We passed the Office of Foreign Affairs, which is only notable because it was an obscenely huge building with a front lawn that stretch into a mile of lush green grass that people were using for things from playing frisbee to taking sun-naps. We kept our trek on towards the tower, losing sight of it amidst the other tall buildings along the streets we were walking through, getting a glimpse of it now and again -- and then, suddenly, like a giant jumping out of nowhere, we arrived at it's base!
The Eiffel Tower is awesomely huge!
It stand regally, an iron contraption with rust colors starkly contrasting against the blueness of the sky, the greenness of the grass, the whiteness of the clouds. It's almost elegant, how those four spidery metallic legs curve up to a single point that stretches up against the heavens. The building is very solid and very real, almost more real than all the other buildings around it just by it's largeness and greatness.
We got there a little after 6pm and there was still a crowd gathered at it's base, a huge gathering of ant-sized beings next to this rust-red giant. We got in line to walk up the stairs and waited for about a half hour before we were let through their airport-type security (we had to take off our money belts to get through the metal detectors) and allowed to start walking up the 700 or so steps to the 2nd floor.
The Cinque Terre hiking seems like training in preparation for this climb. As we ascended, we passed pairs or groups of people who had to stop for breaks, huffing painfully, sweating profusely. Andreina, as if in defiance of their weariness, started taking the steps two at a time and I was hurrying to keep up. We got to the first story, which was the equivalent of going up 21 flights of stairs according to a posted sign; then we got to the second story, which was about 44 or so.
The view from that height is incredible. Everything looks like little models, like we're surrounded by miniatures of the city. People turned into little specks; all the lines from the grass mowing lines stand out as if they'd been highlighted in different shades of green; the tallest monuments look inch-tall and the biggest buildings could all be gathered in the palms of my hands.
We stayed up there for a bit and then headed back down, slowly making our way back to our hotel, stopping to grab some noodles for dinner on the way. My legs felt like stiff logs by the time I took my sandals off for the last time today. I get the feeling they're not too pleased with the hours anchors of walking accompanied by the hundreds and hundreds of stairs. It was after 8pm when we got on the metro to start heading back home, and we weren't in our hotel until a little after nine, making today another one of those 8+ hours of nearly nonstop walking days.
Tomorrow we're going to catch a 3.5 hr free walking tour, and then I want to see the Statue of Liberty here if it's not covered in the tour and Andreina has a friend she wants to buy a tie for, if there's any worth getting. We covered a good amount of city today and, depending on what the tour goes through tomorrow, we'll pick a few last spots to cover. Friday, I hope to get out to Versailles for the day and wander through Marie Antoinette's estates. Then Saturday is bus day, Sunday is "quick London" day, and Monday is............
Monday, August 8, 2011
Strasbourg
It's just finished raining again, the hundredth time in the last three days. To say I'm tired of the cloudy weather would be a severe understatement. Turns out, the grey clouds of Dijon were only a preview of the weather we would face for nearly the entirety of our visit to Strasbourg.
Andreina really doesn't like it here. I'd go so far as to say she hates it. With a passion. I'm sure the rainy weather has a lot to do with it -- this morning, for instance, it cleared up for a little bit and she admitted it wasn't so bad a place -- but it also might be the heavy, heavy German influence on the place. Germany, after all, is right across the river; we only have to walk across the bridge to get there. Most of the menus and signs have German explanations as well, and the "Little France" attraction to the southwest of city center smacks heavily of traditional small village Germany. I've suggested we go across the bridge once or twice, but I think I'd have to blindfold her and drag her along to get her there.
With the wet weather and depressing sky, it's been something of a challenge to stay motivated -- to say nothing of the fact that we're on the last week of this trip!! I personally rather like Strasbourg, but I admitted to Andreina that I'm viewing it as a tourist, not as a person living in the place. It reminds me of the Busch Gardens Theme Park back in Virginia, particularly during their Oktoberfest. Imagine all the very stereotypical German houses and you'd probably have a good idea of what "Little France" looks like. So, for me, it brings up so many memories of being in a theme park with my friends that I'm finding myself kind of tickled by all the sterotypical-ness of the place!
It is mysteriously deserted, though, especially being such a populated city. My travel book says Strasbourg is one of the nine most populated cities in France, and it's popular also for being one the sites of the European Union parliamentary sessions. But the first afternoon we were here, the streets were almost uniformly empty as we first walked to our hotel to check in, and then as we walked towards the city center in search of dinner. We could see a crowd in the distance as we got nearer and bearers to the center of the city, but it still wasn't until we were almost in the dead center of the city that the place felt inhabited! It wasn't late by that time, either, probably just around 4 or 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. The lack of people on the skirts of the city made it seem ridiculously creepy!
That first day, we wandered about for a bit, grabbed delicious sandwiches for dinner, walked around the huge Cathedral in the middle of the city, explored Little France, and then headed back to our hotel room. The cathedral is the tallest in any of France and it dominates the skyline from almost any point in the city, providing a very handy landmark for when we were wandering around trying not to get too lost. Little France, like I said, reminded me of an amusement park.
On Sunday, we both slept in until almost 11am and only then got up, very lazily, to go back to exploring the city. By that time, Andreina had already made very clear how little she liked the place, but we had a good conversation about other things as we headed north to check out the EU Parliamentary house that I wanted to see. It was a very nice walk but still heavily clouded, chilly to the point that we we both wearing our light jackets. After we walked to the EU buildings, we headed to a nearby park and walked through their small free zoo that mostly featured birds. I'd thought it would have been a lot bigger and that it would take us a lot longer to explored the zoo, but we were walking away from it in pointless-wander mode again by 1pm.
"Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would," I admitted to Andreina. The EU buildings and the zoo had pretty much been the only things I'd planned on doing the entire day. She laughed at me, having been thinking the same thing to herself, and then suggested we go off to find an English theater to catch a movie. We hopped onto the free Wifi network out here and I found a theater that was playing Harry Potter -- the only catch was Google Maps said it would take 25 minutes to walk to and the movie started in 20. Off we went, speed-walking like devils. Andreina added that if we were too late, we could always watch it the next day, but we still kept up a pretty decent pace.
A quick word about the wifi network: when we were in Nice, the hostel we were at gave us a username and password, insisting it was for the "free wifi" network, and no real explanation after that. Later on, when we'd walked a good distance from the hostel and had gone all the way to the port, Andreina exclaimed, "That's what he was talking about!" then pointed out that there was a network showing up on our phones listed simply as FreeWiFi. It worked well in certain areas of the city, horribly in others, and not at all in our hostel itself. When we arrived in Lyon, Andreina triumphantly discovered that the network coverage extended to even Lyon. We found it again in Dijon and here in Strasbourg so I'm assuming some company has hot spots in most major French cities and that thanks to our hostel in Nice, we are able to sporadically look down at our phones and connect to the interest. It doesn't work perfectly, it's pretty slow and disconnects a lot, and it's not everywhere -- right now, for instance, I'm in my hotel room and I can't connect to the network -- but every so often we'll find a place to stop, check our emails, and find directions to an English theater :)
We made it to the theater with minutes to spare and spent the next two or so hours getting one last Potter fix in to end the series. It's been so long since I read the books and since I've seen the last movie (November! How long ago!) that, even though I had a hazy idea about what was going to happen, the movie managed to keep me completely interested. I kept coming up with quick one-liners, though, and kept leaning over to whisper my jokes to Andreina that at the end of the movie she told me I couldn't lean on her like she was my boyfriend :\
It was heavily clouded and we hadn't eaten yet so we stopped at a place for some lasagna that turned out to be deliciously filling, heating me up just in time to keep me warm when the rain started falling. We got some dessert -- Andreina got ice cream, I got a sweet pretzel -- and then headed back to our hotel, stopping at a market on the way to grab some comfort bread against the rain.
Today, we slept in late again and listlessly got ready to go, leaving our room at around 11:30am. We grabbed some croissants for breakfast and wandered around for a few hours, stopping at random stores to do window shopping, having conversations about where we imagined ourselves in the future and what we'd spend our money on if we suddenly had a million dollars. We decided to go watch another movie, Super 8, and got rained on as we waited for the movie to start. After walking around for almost two hours, with 15 minutes to go before the movie started, Andreina decided that we really needed sandwiches before watching the movie and so we sped-walked again through the city to our sandwich shop, grabbed some sandwiches, and then raced back to the theater with, again, only minutes to go before the movie started. Super 8 was pretty good, for those of you who haven't seen it; if you're ever very bored in Strasbourg with a day to kill, I highly recommend it! We window shopped again afterwards, grabbed some noodles in a box for dinner, and then headed home to escape from the rain that started pouring again.
Andreina really doesn't like it here. I'd go so far as to say she hates it. With a passion. I'm sure the rainy weather has a lot to do with it -- this morning, for instance, it cleared up for a little bit and she admitted it wasn't so bad a place -- but it also might be the heavy, heavy German influence on the place. Germany, after all, is right across the river; we only have to walk across the bridge to get there. Most of the menus and signs have German explanations as well, and the "Little France" attraction to the southwest of city center smacks heavily of traditional small village Germany. I've suggested we go across the bridge once or twice, but I think I'd have to blindfold her and drag her along to get her there.
With the wet weather and depressing sky, it's been something of a challenge to stay motivated -- to say nothing of the fact that we're on the last week of this trip!! I personally rather like Strasbourg, but I admitted to Andreina that I'm viewing it as a tourist, not as a person living in the place. It reminds me of the Busch Gardens Theme Park back in Virginia, particularly during their Oktoberfest. Imagine all the very stereotypical German houses and you'd probably have a good idea of what "Little France" looks like. So, for me, it brings up so many memories of being in a theme park with my friends that I'm finding myself kind of tickled by all the sterotypical-ness of the place!
It is mysteriously deserted, though, especially being such a populated city. My travel book says Strasbourg is one of the nine most populated cities in France, and it's popular also for being one the sites of the European Union parliamentary sessions. But the first afternoon we were here, the streets were almost uniformly empty as we first walked to our hotel to check in, and then as we walked towards the city center in search of dinner. We could see a crowd in the distance as we got nearer and bearers to the center of the city, but it still wasn't until we were almost in the dead center of the city that the place felt inhabited! It wasn't late by that time, either, probably just around 4 or 5pm on a Saturday afternoon. The lack of people on the skirts of the city made it seem ridiculously creepy!
That first day, we wandered about for a bit, grabbed delicious sandwiches for dinner, walked around the huge Cathedral in the middle of the city, explored Little France, and then headed back to our hotel room. The cathedral is the tallest in any of France and it dominates the skyline from almost any point in the city, providing a very handy landmark for when we were wandering around trying not to get too lost. Little France, like I said, reminded me of an amusement park.
On Sunday, we both slept in until almost 11am and only then got up, very lazily, to go back to exploring the city. By that time, Andreina had already made very clear how little she liked the place, but we had a good conversation about other things as we headed north to check out the EU Parliamentary house that I wanted to see. It was a very nice walk but still heavily clouded, chilly to the point that we we both wearing our light jackets. After we walked to the EU buildings, we headed to a nearby park and walked through their small free zoo that mostly featured birds. I'd thought it would have been a lot bigger and that it would take us a lot longer to explored the zoo, but we were walking away from it in pointless-wander mode again by 1pm.
"Well, that didn't take as long as I thought it would," I admitted to Andreina. The EU buildings and the zoo had pretty much been the only things I'd planned on doing the entire day. She laughed at me, having been thinking the same thing to herself, and then suggested we go off to find an English theater to catch a movie. We hopped onto the free Wifi network out here and I found a theater that was playing Harry Potter -- the only catch was Google Maps said it would take 25 minutes to walk to and the movie started in 20. Off we went, speed-walking like devils. Andreina added that if we were too late, we could always watch it the next day, but we still kept up a pretty decent pace.
A quick word about the wifi network: when we were in Nice, the hostel we were at gave us a username and password, insisting it was for the "free wifi" network, and no real explanation after that. Later on, when we'd walked a good distance from the hostel and had gone all the way to the port, Andreina exclaimed, "That's what he was talking about!" then pointed out that there was a network showing up on our phones listed simply as FreeWiFi. It worked well in certain areas of the city, horribly in others, and not at all in our hostel itself. When we arrived in Lyon, Andreina triumphantly discovered that the network coverage extended to even Lyon. We found it again in Dijon and here in Strasbourg so I'm assuming some company has hot spots in most major French cities and that thanks to our hostel in Nice, we are able to sporadically look down at our phones and connect to the interest. It doesn't work perfectly, it's pretty slow and disconnects a lot, and it's not everywhere -- right now, for instance, I'm in my hotel room and I can't connect to the network -- but every so often we'll find a place to stop, check our emails, and find directions to an English theater :)
We made it to the theater with minutes to spare and spent the next two or so hours getting one last Potter fix in to end the series. It's been so long since I read the books and since I've seen the last movie (November! How long ago!) that, even though I had a hazy idea about what was going to happen, the movie managed to keep me completely interested. I kept coming up with quick one-liners, though, and kept leaning over to whisper my jokes to Andreina that at the end of the movie she told me I couldn't lean on her like she was my boyfriend :\
It was heavily clouded and we hadn't eaten yet so we stopped at a place for some lasagna that turned out to be deliciously filling, heating me up just in time to keep me warm when the rain started falling. We got some dessert -- Andreina got ice cream, I got a sweet pretzel -- and then headed back to our hotel, stopping at a market on the way to grab some comfort bread against the rain.
Today, we slept in late again and listlessly got ready to go, leaving our room at around 11:30am. We grabbed some croissants for breakfast and wandered around for a few hours, stopping at random stores to do window shopping, having conversations about where we imagined ourselves in the future and what we'd spend our money on if we suddenly had a million dollars. We decided to go watch another movie, Super 8, and got rained on as we waited for the movie to start. After walking around for almost two hours, with 15 minutes to go before the movie started, Andreina decided that we really needed sandwiches before watching the movie and so we sped-walked again through the city to our sandwich shop, grabbed some sandwiches, and then raced back to the theater with, again, only minutes to go before the movie started. Super 8 was pretty good, for those of you who haven't seen it; if you're ever very bored in Strasbourg with a day to kill, I highly recommend it! We window shopped again afterwards, grabbed some noodles in a box for dinner, and then headed home to escape from the rain that started pouring again.
Location:Strasbourg, France
Saturday, August 6, 2011
Dijon > Mustard
So I didn't even try any of the mustard while we were in the city. Andreina did -- but only because she asked for mustard on her Subway sandwich on the way to the train station this morning, which I think hardly counts at all. We did see plenty of mustard for sale in cute little jars: black current mustard was one of the multiple varieties. There just wasn't any opportunity to eat mustard. It's not like candy or ice cream that you can eat by itself. I'm not going to get a jar of mustard and try it by the spoonful. It'll just be a fond memory of a town.
I'm a little disappointed in myself, in case you couldn't tell. Alas! Alas!!
Dijon was just as I'd hoped: a quiet, gorgeous little village, at least the center that we wandered through. It had a very distinct "Beauty and the Beast" charm to it with all it's brown wooden framework and quaint streets. We arrived a little before 1pm and made our way to our hotel, Le JacqueMart or something like that. It, too, was so very cute and quaint and village-y! To access our room, you hadto go up two flights of stairs, around the corner, and then out across a small courtyard that opened up to the sky! The courtyard had a small table with chairs and a few rose bushes growing -- it was just beautiful! The French woman at the reception was a mature lady who chatted at us with such a friendly vibe to her words that, even though I understood not a word, I had to smile and laugh with her.
It was heavily clouded when we arrived and after we'd walked around the city for only a hour or so it started drizzling lightly. Andreina swatted at the rain like it was a horde of gnats about her, not water droplets! We hurried from canopy to canopy until the rain trickled to a stop, and then we continued wandering about for a bit more. It didn't take much longer before we'd ventured through pretty much the whole of the town center! I bought myself a Nutella crepe (mmmmmmm) and we took a seat in a nearby park where Andreina could browse the Internet while I devoured my snack. A sort while later, on the way back to our rooms, we passed a pastry shop and I picked up another sweet, small cake for me (apricot and vanilla, yum!) while Andreina grabbed some chocolate tart for herself.
One of the first things she'd told me when we got up in Lyon was that she hadn't slept well the night before and had sat awake for a few hours. I wasn't surprised, then, to see how visibly tired she started getting as we walked along. She wasn't excited about anything but she didn't mention wanting to take a nap. I suggested we get back to the hotel to grab our umbrella and, once there, further suggested we simple wait awhile before heading out so that she could take a nap if she wanted to. At first, she was saying, "No, I'm fine, we can go out, are you sure? What are you going to do? Wellllll......" then she passed out almost instantly for a good nap.
I know exactly how tired you feel when you don't get a good night's sleep. It was only a few days ago that I took us back to the hostel in Nice because I was just exhausted. While she slept, I wrote Jessica an email and worked on tailoring my resume towards specific work-studies at Boulder that I mean to apply to within the next few days once I iron out all my contact information.
The rain started again and then got very heavy very quickly, making me very glad to be inside and not wandering the cold streets. I'm very sad to pick out the signs of a dying summer season. The days are chillier in the early mornings and late evenings. It's getting cool enough in the day to comfortably wear long jeans. While we were outside in the rain, I wished for a jacket -- a direct contrast to being in Florence a few weeks ago when the temperature of the rainwater didn't affect me at all! My little toes in these sandals are particularly vulnerable to the cold weather. I'm dreading going back to the socks-and-sandals combination but it might be inevitable, especially since our travels are only taking us further and further north.
Andreina, while we were in Lyon, was doing this weird walk where she stomp/jumped from fallen leaf to fallen leaf and then explained that she and Allie used to play a game on the walk home from school during autumn where they'd compete to see who could make the loudest crunch noise. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the leaves are falling already! I've been running with the summer months so long that this new cooler and grey world is nothing but a tragedy!
In the early evening, the rain stopped and then the sun came out in blinding, bashful glory, as if it had been throwing a tantrum all day and was now coming out to apologize for all the rain. All of a sudden the day became bright and warm again, banishing all thoughts of autumn and the end of summer -- once more, we were in the heat and not even being later in the day could do anything for it!
We took off in search of dinner and came across a place advertising pasta in a box, like fast food Chinese. On a whim and with a shrug, we stepped inside and immediately the delicious smells told us we'd made an awesome decision! The guy behind the counter spoke only very poor English but we were still laughing by the time we'd ordered our boxes of food. I got some delicious cheese-filled pasta with pesto sauce that, even now a day later, makes my mouth water. The guy asked us how we liked Dijon and I gushed about how beautiful the tiny village was, to which he made a horrible face and confessed he hated the place! He asked us about our recent travels and when Andreina mentioned how we didn't like the crowded feeling of Nice, he made the same face, aghast at our tastes in towns! We took our pasta back to the park and ate under the peaceful skies that were growing sleepy with the approach of sunset.
Back in our rooms, we talked about guys and futures and other random things until late. I showed her a music video I'd saved on my iPad and we both did a few aerobic exercises to combat the feeling of slightly too-full bellies. Since we'd made it to our train in Lyon with only minutes to spare and we had a bit of a walk before getting to the train station I Dijon, we both vowed to wake up early enough to have no problems or worries for the train to Strasbourg. Just before going to sleep, Andreina determinedly stuck the room's single chair up against the doorway. I'm still not sure why: Dijon was nothing but small and peaceful and pleasant, but whatever made her feel safer I suppose.
This morning, we made it to the train station with plenty, plenty of time to spare. We're zooming across the countryside again on our way to the Franco-German border, passing herds of white cows in green fields along the way. The landscape only seems to get greener and more lush as we go along, but the skies have returned to a brooding grey. We're going to spend four nights in Strasbourg and, according to my weather report this morning, the first two are going to be rainy. The place I booked for us has it's own little kitchenettes, though, so I'm hoping to be able to cook up some pasta here. And maybe find some pesto sauce. :)
I'm a little disappointed in myself, in case you couldn't tell. Alas! Alas!!
Dijon was just as I'd hoped: a quiet, gorgeous little village, at least the center that we wandered through. It had a very distinct "Beauty and the Beast" charm to it with all it's brown wooden framework and quaint streets. We arrived a little before 1pm and made our way to our hotel, Le JacqueMart or something like that. It, too, was so very cute and quaint and village-y! To access our room, you hadto go up two flights of stairs, around the corner, and then out across a small courtyard that opened up to the sky! The courtyard had a small table with chairs and a few rose bushes growing -- it was just beautiful! The French woman at the reception was a mature lady who chatted at us with such a friendly vibe to her words that, even though I understood not a word, I had to smile and laugh with her.
It was heavily clouded when we arrived and after we'd walked around the city for only a hour or so it started drizzling lightly. Andreina swatted at the rain like it was a horde of gnats about her, not water droplets! We hurried from canopy to canopy until the rain trickled to a stop, and then we continued wandering about for a bit more. It didn't take much longer before we'd ventured through pretty much the whole of the town center! I bought myself a Nutella crepe (mmmmmmm) and we took a seat in a nearby park where Andreina could browse the Internet while I devoured my snack. A sort while later, on the way back to our rooms, we passed a pastry shop and I picked up another sweet, small cake for me (apricot and vanilla, yum!) while Andreina grabbed some chocolate tart for herself.
One of the first things she'd told me when we got up in Lyon was that she hadn't slept well the night before and had sat awake for a few hours. I wasn't surprised, then, to see how visibly tired she started getting as we walked along. She wasn't excited about anything but she didn't mention wanting to take a nap. I suggested we get back to the hotel to grab our umbrella and, once there, further suggested we simple wait awhile before heading out so that she could take a nap if she wanted to. At first, she was saying, "No, I'm fine, we can go out, are you sure? What are you going to do? Wellllll......" then she passed out almost instantly for a good nap.
I know exactly how tired you feel when you don't get a good night's sleep. It was only a few days ago that I took us back to the hostel in Nice because I was just exhausted. While she slept, I wrote Jessica an email and worked on tailoring my resume towards specific work-studies at Boulder that I mean to apply to within the next few days once I iron out all my contact information.
The rain started again and then got very heavy very quickly, making me very glad to be inside and not wandering the cold streets. I'm very sad to pick out the signs of a dying summer season. The days are chillier in the early mornings and late evenings. It's getting cool enough in the day to comfortably wear long jeans. While we were outside in the rain, I wished for a jacket -- a direct contrast to being in Florence a few weeks ago when the temperature of the rainwater didn't affect me at all! My little toes in these sandals are particularly vulnerable to the cold weather. I'm dreading going back to the socks-and-sandals combination but it might be inevitable, especially since our travels are only taking us further and further north.
Andreina, while we were in Lyon, was doing this weird walk where she stomp/jumped from fallen leaf to fallen leaf and then explained that she and Allie used to play a game on the walk home from school during autumn where they'd compete to see who could make the loudest crunch noise. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that the leaves are falling already! I've been running with the summer months so long that this new cooler and grey world is nothing but a tragedy!
In the early evening, the rain stopped and then the sun came out in blinding, bashful glory, as if it had been throwing a tantrum all day and was now coming out to apologize for all the rain. All of a sudden the day became bright and warm again, banishing all thoughts of autumn and the end of summer -- once more, we were in the heat and not even being later in the day could do anything for it!
We took off in search of dinner and came across a place advertising pasta in a box, like fast food Chinese. On a whim and with a shrug, we stepped inside and immediately the delicious smells told us we'd made an awesome decision! The guy behind the counter spoke only very poor English but we were still laughing by the time we'd ordered our boxes of food. I got some delicious cheese-filled pasta with pesto sauce that, even now a day later, makes my mouth water. The guy asked us how we liked Dijon and I gushed about how beautiful the tiny village was, to which he made a horrible face and confessed he hated the place! He asked us about our recent travels and when Andreina mentioned how we didn't like the crowded feeling of Nice, he made the same face, aghast at our tastes in towns! We took our pasta back to the park and ate under the peaceful skies that were growing sleepy with the approach of sunset.
Back in our rooms, we talked about guys and futures and other random things until late. I showed her a music video I'd saved on my iPad and we both did a few aerobic exercises to combat the feeling of slightly too-full bellies. Since we'd made it to our train in Lyon with only minutes to spare and we had a bit of a walk before getting to the train station I Dijon, we both vowed to wake up early enough to have no problems or worries for the train to Strasbourg. Just before going to sleep, Andreina determinedly stuck the room's single chair up against the doorway. I'm still not sure why: Dijon was nothing but small and peaceful and pleasant, but whatever made her feel safer I suppose.
This morning, we made it to the train station with plenty, plenty of time to spare. We're zooming across the countryside again on our way to the Franco-German border, passing herds of white cows in green fields along the way. The landscape only seems to get greener and more lush as we go along, but the skies have returned to a brooding grey. We're going to spend four nights in Strasbourg and, according to my weather report this morning, the first two are going to be rainy. The place I booked for us has it's own little kitchenettes, though, so I'm hoping to be able to cook up some pasta here. And maybe find some pesto sauce. :)
Location:Train to Strasbourg, France
Friday, August 5, 2011
The Lions of Lyon
I declare that Andreina and I together are the lions of Lyon ^_^
We've, once again, boarded a train and are heading further inland of France. This time we've left Lyon and are on our way to Dijon. Andreina asked me what I knew about Dijon and I confessed that I only knew it was the birthplace of its mustard namesake. I choose to stop here for the same reasons I wanted to stop in Lyon: to break up the long train ride from the bottom of France to the top, to see a few French cities outside of the popular Paris, and to perhaps vacation a time in France without going bankrupt as the Parisian prices would have me do!
Lyon was a fabulous city, for all it's mystery. It's apparently the second largest city in France after Paris, a fact I didn't learn until consulting my travel information on the train ride to it. The train ride was very, very nice; for the majority of the time, Andreina and I had a small area to ourselves of four seats, and we both dozed on and off again during the long trip. The first bit we cruised alongside the coast, getting our last views of the big waters before hitting Marseille and turning north. After that, it was glimpses of long farmland stretches, rows of vineyards and cornfields, the watery cliffs giving way to flatlands, then to humps of hills, and finally conceding to majestic mountains. We rode on the TGV train and it picked up speed after Marseille, zooming past the mountains like a ferocious bullet. Occasionally, like a pleasant surprise, I could pick out an old castle among the lush green woods that carpeted the lands, the bricks hiding slyly in the trees. Occasionally, the old castles perched proudly up at the top of the mountainous reigns and for one I was so in awe of its appearance that I shook Andreina awake to make sure she didn't miss the spectacle.
We flew over fields and rivers and finally slid gracefully into the Lyon Part Dieu station.
Sometimes I think Andreina forgets that this, too, is my first time visiting the country, visiting this particular city, stepping off the train onto this particular platform. I've gotten very good at remembering my directions, at backtracking, at inferring which is the way I should go from just a handful of hints and clues in a foreign city; but as we left the train station, she asks me where the metro stop is, which way we should go, what the hotel looks like. I've said over and that I have no idea, that I don't know any more than she does. Se still asks me though and I still have to figure it out.
We got out of the station and made it to the metro stop nearest by, getting to a map of the underground. I'm pretty sure we both looked fairly helpless, starring up and trying to trace out where the metro stop near our hotel was, because a Frenchmen in uniform came up and very nicely helped us out. He provided us with a map of the metro stops and drew large arrows on it to make sure there would be no possible way we could get lost on the short trip to our hotel. In no time at all, we'd made it to our room and threw down our bags, sinking onto the very soft bed.
It was only about 4pm and we'd both slept on the train, but I could tell Andreina was running very low on enthusiasm and I knew we both stank like traveling bums, so when I suggested we just relax for the afternoon and perhaps go out later for an after-dinner treat, she was only too eager to agree with me -- making sure that I knew, of course, that she was more than willing to go out and walk around, buuuuuuut, if I waaaanted to, she was just fine with taking a break from traveling for a night.
It helped that, for the first time since leaving Milan, we had easily accessible wifi from our hotel room. You'll be able to tell from the bursts of Facebook activity on Andreina's profile!
Our room had a hairdryer, which made Andreina almost scream for joy. It also had a TV but the only English channel was the BBC. We left it on the music video station for the most part since more than half the music they played was music from the states. I was mildly repelled when I caught a few episodes of TV shows I recognized (Rome, 30 Rock, Yes Dear) dubbed over to French -- it just didn't sit right with me!
We both washed nearly all our clothes and left them out to dry, then relaxed in our rooms for the rest of the night, taking scouring hot showers, wrapping ourselves up in hotel towels, feeling very luxurious indeed! Andreina had given up on my solid shampoo in Nice to buy regular liquid shampoo and conditioner; she let me use some and it felt like heaven! We also got in contact with home to arrange a Skype session for the early morning our time.
I fell asleep sometime just before midnight, setting an alarm for 1:45am. I woke up just before it went off to find Andreina finally settling in and dozing on her side of the bed. She only got a few minutes of sleep before I woke up her to Skype; afterwards, I laughed and asked her why she waited until just then to go to bed.
After the call home, we both went back to sleep and slept deeply until late in the morning. Getting up, we were both lazy and very slow; the noon bells were ringing by the time we made it outside to start exploring the city.
Lyon has very steep hills, at least on the way from and the way back to our part of the city. I noticed it on the way down and Andreina started groaning about it on the way back up hours later. Our hotel was about 1/2 mile north of the city center, which itself is about 1/2 mile north of the central train station; I headed us in the direction of the train station, which was a good walk through the center of the village to where wee could buy our tickets for the next day.
Lyon changed slowly as we walked south. Near our hotel, it was more suburban, more open air and wider streets with a few small shopping areas. A little further south, the streets suddenly become very narrow and steep, with the shops lining almost all the buildings -- little salons, mini markets, random "Pain" stores (French for bread ^_^). Then, at the edge of the center itself, the narrow streets widen out quickly and it's like we'd been transported to the 16th street mall from the middle of a back alley.
The first place we stopped at was a bread shop to get some breakfast baguettes. Andreina's French slipped a little here. I think she's a little leery of using it in front of so many native speakers. Our next stop was at a Starbucks. It was a very delicious taste of home :)
We walked further and further south, passing cute clothing stores and all the other types of markets you'd expect to find in a city shopping district. We stopped at one place to examine their sunglasses since Andreina is missing her Aviators like crazy. It had nothing and we walked on, stopping at another a short distance later. The shop owner was a lady who came outside to be of assistance, staring on at us while Andreina browsed her sunglasses selection. I was initially very discomforted, having this strange lady watching our backs the entire time like we were petty thieves; however, when Andreina picked out a pair for purchase, the lady very pleasantly asked about our trip plans, complimented us about our "beautiful vacation," and even gave the both of us free little stuffed zebras with magnetic feet! So stare on French lady! If it means free toys for me, I don't mind!
Our walk took us past a red metal lion figure meant to represent Lyon, past a huge sculpture of a bundle of roses, past a few old magnificent churches, and through a very pleasant garden with two enormous statues before we made it to the train station. The French man who helped us s also extremely kind and even advised us on a card I hadn't known of before that would have saved Andreina some 60% off her train fare. I wish I'd known of it before, but it wouldn't have been worth buying now. If she goes back to France for a study abroad program, though, it'll come in handy.
Afterwards, we headed to the other side of the river to visit a cathedral I'd read about, St. Jean's. It's free to enter, something that most large cathedrals have stopped being (I'm looking at you, Westminster Abbey and your bust of Shakespeare!!) and also had a large astronomical clock that was supposed to go off every hour, displaying dancing angel figurines. We got there a little after 2:30pm and Andreina agreed to wait the half hour before the clock struck.
It was extremely peaceful inside the cathedral. You could hear the whispers of other people's hushed conversations over the background music of singing chapel boys, and every so often you'd hear the rude sound of someone taking a picture ("click click"), but there was just a humming energy of peace throughout the stone walls, beaming through the painted glass windows. I don't know much about Catholicism aside from the bloody history we are taught during our World History classes, so it was with a sort of curious wonder that I watched the crowds of people reverently cross themselves, kiss their knuckles, make short prayerful bows to pictures and statues.
Andreina and I sat in the front rows of the pews as we waited. We talked quietly about our friends, about our disappointments, about many things that need to be talked about in a quiet voice and in a protected place.
3pm rolled around and no bells rang from the astronomical clock. We waited a few minutes and I declared the thing broken, so we walked on.
We left the cathedral and turned west to walk up some hundred steps to the top of a hill. Andreina jokingly mentioned that she had noticed we hadn't hiked for a few days and that the hill must be made to make up for that! There was a rose garden that we lazily passed through, enjoying the absolutely beautiful view at the top.
On the other side of the hill was a museum for the ancient Roman ruins that Lyon was founded on, butting up against a hill with the traditional Roman walls sitting so terribly out of place in the midst of a modern French town. It looked like someone had decided to make a cool Roman playground, not that those things had somehow managed to exist from around 15BC. The whole thing was just out of place. Thursdays, however, were when the museum was open free to the public so we wandered through it for a bit. After being in Athens and Rome, it was a pretty lame experience for me, and Andreina said from the start that she thought museums were boring, so we didn't spend too long there before leaving.
We started making our way back towards the general direction of our hotel. We stopped in a few places like scavengers searching for food, but didn't get anything until about the fourth store and even then it was just liquids to quench our thirst. We spotted a supermarket near our hotel and went to drop off the orange juice we'd gotten in our rooms before heading back out to get real dinner. But the supermarket didn't have anything we wanted so we went back to a pizza place we'd originally passed. Its prices seemed a little high, so we went further back to another pizza place even further away, whose prices turned out to be even higher! I suggested a return to the first pizza place. I should probably add that we'd gone up and down a pretty significant hill a few times at this point, first on the way down and back from our walk in the city, and then back to the pizza place. Poor Andreina chugged along behind me and even tried to race me up the hill despite the fact that she was wearing a skirt. She'll make big deal about how she started to win, but I'd like to make it clear that while she started winning, I finished first.
We made it back to the first pizza place but the lady apparently had no idea what I meant when I said we wanted pizza to go and left us standing outside, pizza-less. I was too proud to try and make her understand (I thought I could sense a bit of disdain from her because I was talking in English, and no one who makes me feel disdained is going to get my money!) so we began wandering aimlessly in the area near our hotel, trying to spot a place for food. Andreina started getting very quiet again, which is a sign that she's hungry and tired and not happy, so I attempted some terrible French and asked a random shop owner if there was any pizza nearby, getting only a sharp shake of the head for an answer. We walked on, she got quieter and quieter, but then -- like a miracle! -- a pizzeria sign lit up across the street and our stomachs were saved.
I made Andreina chose the pizza to order since I'd been making pretty much every decision up to that point, on where to go and what to eat and when to head back to the hotel, and she was undeniably upset at having that responsibility. She narrowed the choices down to two pizzas and I made the final decision, then it was time to sit and wait. I felt very foolish, because the price of this pizza was just as much if not more than either of the other two places we'd stopped at, meaning that we'd wasted about an hour of time just walking around, and I felt like Andreina was thinking the same thing and holding it against me. However, when it came time to pay...our pizza cost us about 6€ less than either of us were expecting, making it significantly cheaper than the other places. Ah ha haha!! Triumph!!! And I felt instantly justified in all our walking!
We made it back to our hotel in short order, got in our luxurious showers for the night, and ate our pizza in happiness, watching a few episodes of a dubbed 30 Rock. Andreina went to sleep before me but she told me this morning how she couldn't sleep well at all and had spent some time in the bathroom where she could have the lights on without waking me up. I suspect it has a lot to do with the lovesick symptoms she's been displaying this whole trip over her new interest, Adrian.
This morning, our train was scheduled to depart at 10:22am. I woke up around 8:40 and woke Andreina up at 9. By the time 9:30 rolled around, I started stressing about the time. We made it out of our room and checked out of the hotel by 9:50 and hummed through the metro stops, getting to the one by the train station by 10:15. When I realized what time it was, I told Andreina "We have five minutes to get there," and we both started running like mad women through the metro and up to the train station! Huffing and puffing, we burst into the station and crazily searched the posted schedules only to find that our train had been delayed by ten minutes and they hadn't even decided what platform it would arrive to yet!
We waited quietly until finally the train arrived and we pushed our way through the gathered crowd, getting a pair of seats with large windows.
Andreina's dozing again. Outside, it's heavily cloudy, reminding me of my Venetian days when all the world was gray. I hope it doesn't rain on our single day in Dijon, and that the sun in shining in Strasbourg. My weather forecast tells me it is not, but those things can be wrong! The countryside whirs by again, well-groomed and green farmlands with patches of forest like decorative sprinklings. We make stops at other villages, smaller towns in between Lyon and Dijon; from my spot on the train, these other small villages look like sleepy little hamlets, empty of the vigor that comes with a big city but filled instead with the peaceful tranquility that comes from being surrounded by natural beauty. Our cart is mostly empty now and I wonder if we two are the only ones going to Dijon.
When we left the Cinque Terre and made our way through Nice, I mentioned to Andreina how it felt as if the five little villages were only a hazy dream now that we were in the midst of a big city, that their quiet peacefulness seemed impossible while you were being honked at or dodging buses. I'm hoping that Dijon will prove a short return to the quiet of a smaller city and the further along our train goes, the more hopeful I become! After this, Strasbourg is supposed to be a big city as well, and what else do I need to mention but their names to know how big Paris and London are! We'll see. Maybe Dijon will turn out to be nothing but a single mustard bar ^_^
We've, once again, boarded a train and are heading further inland of France. This time we've left Lyon and are on our way to Dijon. Andreina asked me what I knew about Dijon and I confessed that I only knew it was the birthplace of its mustard namesake. I choose to stop here for the same reasons I wanted to stop in Lyon: to break up the long train ride from the bottom of France to the top, to see a few French cities outside of the popular Paris, and to perhaps vacation a time in France without going bankrupt as the Parisian prices would have me do!
Lyon was a fabulous city, for all it's mystery. It's apparently the second largest city in France after Paris, a fact I didn't learn until consulting my travel information on the train ride to it. The train ride was very, very nice; for the majority of the time, Andreina and I had a small area to ourselves of four seats, and we both dozed on and off again during the long trip. The first bit we cruised alongside the coast, getting our last views of the big waters before hitting Marseille and turning north. After that, it was glimpses of long farmland stretches, rows of vineyards and cornfields, the watery cliffs giving way to flatlands, then to humps of hills, and finally conceding to majestic mountains. We rode on the TGV train and it picked up speed after Marseille, zooming past the mountains like a ferocious bullet. Occasionally, like a pleasant surprise, I could pick out an old castle among the lush green woods that carpeted the lands, the bricks hiding slyly in the trees. Occasionally, the old castles perched proudly up at the top of the mountainous reigns and for one I was so in awe of its appearance that I shook Andreina awake to make sure she didn't miss the spectacle.
We flew over fields and rivers and finally slid gracefully into the Lyon Part Dieu station.
Sometimes I think Andreina forgets that this, too, is my first time visiting the country, visiting this particular city, stepping off the train onto this particular platform. I've gotten very good at remembering my directions, at backtracking, at inferring which is the way I should go from just a handful of hints and clues in a foreign city; but as we left the train station, she asks me where the metro stop is, which way we should go, what the hotel looks like. I've said over and that I have no idea, that I don't know any more than she does. Se still asks me though and I still have to figure it out.
We got out of the station and made it to the metro stop nearest by, getting to a map of the underground. I'm pretty sure we both looked fairly helpless, starring up and trying to trace out where the metro stop near our hotel was, because a Frenchmen in uniform came up and very nicely helped us out. He provided us with a map of the metro stops and drew large arrows on it to make sure there would be no possible way we could get lost on the short trip to our hotel. In no time at all, we'd made it to our room and threw down our bags, sinking onto the very soft bed.
It was only about 4pm and we'd both slept on the train, but I could tell Andreina was running very low on enthusiasm and I knew we both stank like traveling bums, so when I suggested we just relax for the afternoon and perhaps go out later for an after-dinner treat, she was only too eager to agree with me -- making sure that I knew, of course, that she was more than willing to go out and walk around, buuuuuuut, if I waaaanted to, she was just fine with taking a break from traveling for a night.
It helped that, for the first time since leaving Milan, we had easily accessible wifi from our hotel room. You'll be able to tell from the bursts of Facebook activity on Andreina's profile!
Our room had a hairdryer, which made Andreina almost scream for joy. It also had a TV but the only English channel was the BBC. We left it on the music video station for the most part since more than half the music they played was music from the states. I was mildly repelled when I caught a few episodes of TV shows I recognized (Rome, 30 Rock, Yes Dear) dubbed over to French -- it just didn't sit right with me!
We both washed nearly all our clothes and left them out to dry, then relaxed in our rooms for the rest of the night, taking scouring hot showers, wrapping ourselves up in hotel towels, feeling very luxurious indeed! Andreina had given up on my solid shampoo in Nice to buy regular liquid shampoo and conditioner; she let me use some and it felt like heaven! We also got in contact with home to arrange a Skype session for the early morning our time.
I fell asleep sometime just before midnight, setting an alarm for 1:45am. I woke up just before it went off to find Andreina finally settling in and dozing on her side of the bed. She only got a few minutes of sleep before I woke up her to Skype; afterwards, I laughed and asked her why she waited until just then to go to bed.
After the call home, we both went back to sleep and slept deeply until late in the morning. Getting up, we were both lazy and very slow; the noon bells were ringing by the time we made it outside to start exploring the city.
Lyon has very steep hills, at least on the way from and the way back to our part of the city. I noticed it on the way down and Andreina started groaning about it on the way back up hours later. Our hotel was about 1/2 mile north of the city center, which itself is about 1/2 mile north of the central train station; I headed us in the direction of the train station, which was a good walk through the center of the village to where wee could buy our tickets for the next day.
Lyon changed slowly as we walked south. Near our hotel, it was more suburban, more open air and wider streets with a few small shopping areas. A little further south, the streets suddenly become very narrow and steep, with the shops lining almost all the buildings -- little salons, mini markets, random "Pain" stores (French for bread ^_^). Then, at the edge of the center itself, the narrow streets widen out quickly and it's like we'd been transported to the 16th street mall from the middle of a back alley.
The first place we stopped at was a bread shop to get some breakfast baguettes. Andreina's French slipped a little here. I think she's a little leery of using it in front of so many native speakers. Our next stop was at a Starbucks. It was a very delicious taste of home :)
We walked further and further south, passing cute clothing stores and all the other types of markets you'd expect to find in a city shopping district. We stopped at one place to examine their sunglasses since Andreina is missing her Aviators like crazy. It had nothing and we walked on, stopping at another a short distance later. The shop owner was a lady who came outside to be of assistance, staring on at us while Andreina browsed her sunglasses selection. I was initially very discomforted, having this strange lady watching our backs the entire time like we were petty thieves; however, when Andreina picked out a pair for purchase, the lady very pleasantly asked about our trip plans, complimented us about our "beautiful vacation," and even gave the both of us free little stuffed zebras with magnetic feet! So stare on French lady! If it means free toys for me, I don't mind!
Our walk took us past a red metal lion figure meant to represent Lyon, past a huge sculpture of a bundle of roses, past a few old magnificent churches, and through a very pleasant garden with two enormous statues before we made it to the train station. The French man who helped us s also extremely kind and even advised us on a card I hadn't known of before that would have saved Andreina some 60% off her train fare. I wish I'd known of it before, but it wouldn't have been worth buying now. If she goes back to France for a study abroad program, though, it'll come in handy.
Afterwards, we headed to the other side of the river to visit a cathedral I'd read about, St. Jean's. It's free to enter, something that most large cathedrals have stopped being (I'm looking at you, Westminster Abbey and your bust of Shakespeare!!) and also had a large astronomical clock that was supposed to go off every hour, displaying dancing angel figurines. We got there a little after 2:30pm and Andreina agreed to wait the half hour before the clock struck.
It was extremely peaceful inside the cathedral. You could hear the whispers of other people's hushed conversations over the background music of singing chapel boys, and every so often you'd hear the rude sound of someone taking a picture ("click click"), but there was just a humming energy of peace throughout the stone walls, beaming through the painted glass windows. I don't know much about Catholicism aside from the bloody history we are taught during our World History classes, so it was with a sort of curious wonder that I watched the crowds of people reverently cross themselves, kiss their knuckles, make short prayerful bows to pictures and statues.
Andreina and I sat in the front rows of the pews as we waited. We talked quietly about our friends, about our disappointments, about many things that need to be talked about in a quiet voice and in a protected place.
3pm rolled around and no bells rang from the astronomical clock. We waited a few minutes and I declared the thing broken, so we walked on.
We left the cathedral and turned west to walk up some hundred steps to the top of a hill. Andreina jokingly mentioned that she had noticed we hadn't hiked for a few days and that the hill must be made to make up for that! There was a rose garden that we lazily passed through, enjoying the absolutely beautiful view at the top.
On the other side of the hill was a museum for the ancient Roman ruins that Lyon was founded on, butting up against a hill with the traditional Roman walls sitting so terribly out of place in the midst of a modern French town. It looked like someone had decided to make a cool Roman playground, not that those things had somehow managed to exist from around 15BC. The whole thing was just out of place. Thursdays, however, were when the museum was open free to the public so we wandered through it for a bit. After being in Athens and Rome, it was a pretty lame experience for me, and Andreina said from the start that she thought museums were boring, so we didn't spend too long there before leaving.
We started making our way back towards the general direction of our hotel. We stopped in a few places like scavengers searching for food, but didn't get anything until about the fourth store and even then it was just liquids to quench our thirst. We spotted a supermarket near our hotel and went to drop off the orange juice we'd gotten in our rooms before heading back out to get real dinner. But the supermarket didn't have anything we wanted so we went back to a pizza place we'd originally passed. Its prices seemed a little high, so we went further back to another pizza place even further away, whose prices turned out to be even higher! I suggested a return to the first pizza place. I should probably add that we'd gone up and down a pretty significant hill a few times at this point, first on the way down and back from our walk in the city, and then back to the pizza place. Poor Andreina chugged along behind me and even tried to race me up the hill despite the fact that she was wearing a skirt. She'll make big deal about how she started to win, but I'd like to make it clear that while she started winning, I finished first.
We made it back to the first pizza place but the lady apparently had no idea what I meant when I said we wanted pizza to go and left us standing outside, pizza-less. I was too proud to try and make her understand (I thought I could sense a bit of disdain from her because I was talking in English, and no one who makes me feel disdained is going to get my money!) so we began wandering aimlessly in the area near our hotel, trying to spot a place for food. Andreina started getting very quiet again, which is a sign that she's hungry and tired and not happy, so I attempted some terrible French and asked a random shop owner if there was any pizza nearby, getting only a sharp shake of the head for an answer. We walked on, she got quieter and quieter, but then -- like a miracle! -- a pizzeria sign lit up across the street and our stomachs were saved.
I made Andreina chose the pizza to order since I'd been making pretty much every decision up to that point, on where to go and what to eat and when to head back to the hotel, and she was undeniably upset at having that responsibility. She narrowed the choices down to two pizzas and I made the final decision, then it was time to sit and wait. I felt very foolish, because the price of this pizza was just as much if not more than either of the other two places we'd stopped at, meaning that we'd wasted about an hour of time just walking around, and I felt like Andreina was thinking the same thing and holding it against me. However, when it came time to pay...our pizza cost us about 6€ less than either of us were expecting, making it significantly cheaper than the other places. Ah ha haha!! Triumph!!! And I felt instantly justified in all our walking!
We made it back to our hotel in short order, got in our luxurious showers for the night, and ate our pizza in happiness, watching a few episodes of a dubbed 30 Rock. Andreina went to sleep before me but she told me this morning how she couldn't sleep well at all and had spent some time in the bathroom where she could have the lights on without waking me up. I suspect it has a lot to do with the lovesick symptoms she's been displaying this whole trip over her new interest, Adrian.
This morning, our train was scheduled to depart at 10:22am. I woke up around 8:40 and woke Andreina up at 9. By the time 9:30 rolled around, I started stressing about the time. We made it out of our room and checked out of the hotel by 9:50 and hummed through the metro stops, getting to the one by the train station by 10:15. When I realized what time it was, I told Andreina "We have five minutes to get there," and we both started running like mad women through the metro and up to the train station! Huffing and puffing, we burst into the station and crazily searched the posted schedules only to find that our train had been delayed by ten minutes and they hadn't even decided what platform it would arrive to yet!
We waited quietly until finally the train arrived and we pushed our way through the gathered crowd, getting a pair of seats with large windows.
Andreina's dozing again. Outside, it's heavily cloudy, reminding me of my Venetian days when all the world was gray. I hope it doesn't rain on our single day in Dijon, and that the sun in shining in Strasbourg. My weather forecast tells me it is not, but those things can be wrong! The countryside whirs by again, well-groomed and green farmlands with patches of forest like decorative sprinklings. We make stops at other villages, smaller towns in between Lyon and Dijon; from my spot on the train, these other small villages look like sleepy little hamlets, empty of the vigor that comes with a big city but filled instead with the peaceful tranquility that comes from being surrounded by natural beauty. Our cart is mostly empty now and I wonder if we two are the only ones going to Dijon.
When we left the Cinque Terre and made our way through Nice, I mentioned to Andreina how it felt as if the five little villages were only a hazy dream now that we were in the midst of a big city, that their quiet peacefulness seemed impossible while you were being honked at or dodging buses. I'm hoping that Dijon will prove a short return to the quiet of a smaller city and the further along our train goes, the more hopeful I become! After this, Strasbourg is supposed to be a big city as well, and what else do I need to mention but their names to know how big Paris and London are! We'll see. Maybe Dijon will turn out to be nothing but a single mustard bar ^_^
Location:Train to Dijon, France
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Today was Nice
It's the last night of us staying here.
Yesterday, when we got into Nice, we immediately headed to the hostel. It was only about 10 minutes of a walk away. We found the place and got inside, heading up the stairs as some man with a dog started heading downstairs. He stopped us, sputtering French at me, asking if we had a reservation -- and when I, completely confused, said we were checking in, he turned ariudn and leaded us to the reception. He turned out to be the new owner. He is about as French as I imagine a French person to be, meaning that I hated him immediately and only slowly have grown to actually be fond of this befuddled, confused, confusing man.
He had lost our reservations, naturally, and immediately assured us that of course we'd have a bed for the night. I hadn't even thought to worry that we wouldn't at that point! The old owner showed up after only a few minutes and very calmly explained the situation to us in an Australian accent. "You must understand," he says to me, "that even though you booked two rooms in a dorm, it doesn't necessarily mean the same room."
"Well, that's certainly what I expected," I snap back at him unpleasantly.
In the end, the new owner manages to find my reservation for our beds must has to separate us for the first night at least, assuring us we'll be able to switch beds in the morning to the same room. It's a situation that's very unpleasing to Andreina and me, but there's not much we can do about it. And after spending the last few hours on a train, I'm too bushwhacked to care much more about it.
We drop our bags down on her bed and head out to the city of Nice. I vaguely, vaguely remember it, digging through my memories to those short days is like trying to pull out the stuff you'd stored in the back of the closet. I remember being with my friend Jaime, she and I being the two girls in the group, I remember walking forever down a street before finally hitting the ocean, I remember pebble beaches and buying a towel there -- a towel I wouldn't recognize from the pile I brought home from Virginia. I remember the tons and tons of shops, but the rest of my memories are a confused fog.
This day, we head towards the old center. I tell Andreina everything about Nice I've learned from my travel guiders, everything that makes it interesting or special. We wander and wander and wander, and then finally hit the ocean. It isn't anything like I remembered it at first, and then it is, and I wonder if my memories have conformed to my present situation, if I'm just imagining my memories altogether now.
The waters stretch out forever, just like in the Cinque Terre, but now they're headed by tons and tons of people lying mindlessly on the beach of pebbles. There are people parasailing and we sit, watching them go about from the launching to the watery crash at the end. I suggest a short uphill climb to one of the best views of the city and she comes along with me, trying to hide her obvious dislike of more hills. We walk to the top of an ancient castle rock and a little plaque declares the place to have been a guardhouse for the city, capable of spotting enemy ships from miles out.
From there, we stumble across a war memorial that is just monumentally huge. Andreina took a picture of me from the end side of it and my body is a tiny, tiny speck against the massive marble. I had to laugh at the fact that while WWI is listed, WWII is only mentioned as "The Resistance."
We wandered through the streets for quite a bit longer. Andreina had mentioned how early it yet was at around 6pm which I took to mean "let the adventure game begin!" However, she lost her enthusiasm for city exploration about two hours later when we were lost and hadn't managed to find dinner. I have to remember that she's still new to this trip, that she's not used to wandering around for hours with no destination and only a vague idea of where we are at any given moment. I also have to remember that she likes her regular meals, vice grabbing a small bite here and there whenever I happen to remember to eat. I hadn't realized how much I'd fallen behind on my food schedule.
She doesn't let me know, though, when she's tired or hungry or in any other way upset. She only becomes very quiet, to the point where I'm the only one talking. It's a very oppressive sort of quiet, let me tell you!
I had intentions of stopping at a grocery store for provisions but, by the time we managed to find the area nearby our hostel, all the shops had closed. Andreina was about 5 minutes away from smothering me in my keep for lack of food, I could tell, so I forced her to walk with me down the street towards the train station where I was certain that more restaurants would be open. I was right and we managed to find a pizzeria, grabbing a heavy pizza and a "brick," some sort of greasy food concoction on the lines of an egg roll.
After eating, Andreina was a lot happier.
It's really, really different to have another person along the road with me. I love it, hands down, I love having someone to talk to and share ideas/observations with. I love just knowing that someone else will remember these things with me. But it comes at the price of constantly worrying that the other person isn't enjoying the trip as much. I'm always, always watching to gauge her mood, from how far we all to the sights to the scenery, always trying to pick out if looking at flowers is what makes her happiest or if looking at the ocean does or if shopping does, and I file away all that data in the back of my mind for instant recall; "oh, Andreina isn't too talkative, better get a chocolate croissant to boost her mood" is the sort of lines that run through my head. I know, of course, what sort of thing I enjoy, what sort of attraction will keep my attention, and now I constantly worry about whether she is also enjoying France to the extent she had expected. And I'm the big sister. I have my role play -- it's one that comes automatically to me. If someone tries to talk to her, I'm there like the bulldog making sure they know she's not some naive traveler but that she has a (potentially) angry sister to watch her back.
I'm glad she's here. I'm also glad I got to hear just myself for the last few months. The contrast is one I'll remember forever.
We ate our "brick" in front of the local Notre Dame and then headed back to the hostel, getting there about half past nine. I talked to the owner about a suspicious puddle of water that had formed nearby the room's mini-fridge and then went up to my own room two floors up to go to bed.
I slept horribly. The other girls in my room were of the typical hostel variety, young and party-ers. There's no other place in the hostel for people to lounge about and gather aside from their rooms; I had to try to sleep with the lights on, some music playing, the other girls all intensely locked into a card game. They kept playing for about another half hour before two left, leaving me alone in the room with the last girl, trying to get some sleep. Our hostel is located along the rail line and near some trafficked streets; I fought to sleep against the noise of trains breaking and scooters accelerating all night. By the time morning came along, I woke up with bricks of sand in my eyes with the feeling of sand weighting down all my bones unpleasantly.
I went down to wake Andreina. We eventually got back outside, walking along to get some fresh fruit and baguettes for breakfast and then to get to a park and eat them. We talked about boys and friends and random memories. We found out we could get free wifi signal from a nearby hotel and stayed there for a bit longer. Then we went t the train station and bought her tickets -- and my reservations -- for the train tomorrow. After that, I begged off for a nap. My body was decelerating fast and I could just feel the tired clanking of my bones, the intense yearning for a nap.
We took a nap in the afternoon for about two hours and then hit the road again in search of a chateau that I'd seen a sign for the day before. Our walk took us over an hour before we finally reached the chateau, sitting to enjoy the view of the city and then heading back to grab some supplies for dinner and lunch tomorrow.
Our dinner was some delicious sandwiches. I had to ask the hostel owner for a knife since Andreina refused to; the sandwiches were simple but delicious and we have enough leftovers to tide us over until at least Lyon if not through tomorrow altogether. We talked and talked and talked -- I'm sometimes surprised to find my tongue capable of saying new things after all these hours of talking together. I am scared of repeating myself and dully saying the same thing over again but that luckily hasn't happened yet.
Andreina's French has been complimented multiple times now, from the first time we ordered baguettes to ordering croissants to ordering more baguettes. She glows every time someone says something. I, personally, don't really enjoy French as much as I thought I would. The throat-growling noise that they make on a regular basis is enough to turn me off to it. I'm more willing to listen to Spanish and Italian.
Hopefully, the Internet works well at the hotel tomorrow night. We'll be leaving for Lyon in the morning, a 5 hour or so train ride. We're that much closer to being home, that much closer to me being able to physically beat Lucas for not answering my emails or texts, that much closer to college to finally start, that much closer to being able to take a shower without wearing flip flops.
Yesterday, when we got into Nice, we immediately headed to the hostel. It was only about 10 minutes of a walk away. We found the place and got inside, heading up the stairs as some man with a dog started heading downstairs. He stopped us, sputtering French at me, asking if we had a reservation -- and when I, completely confused, said we were checking in, he turned ariudn and leaded us to the reception. He turned out to be the new owner. He is about as French as I imagine a French person to be, meaning that I hated him immediately and only slowly have grown to actually be fond of this befuddled, confused, confusing man.
He had lost our reservations, naturally, and immediately assured us that of course we'd have a bed for the night. I hadn't even thought to worry that we wouldn't at that point! The old owner showed up after only a few minutes and very calmly explained the situation to us in an Australian accent. "You must understand," he says to me, "that even though you booked two rooms in a dorm, it doesn't necessarily mean the same room."
"Well, that's certainly what I expected," I snap back at him unpleasantly.
In the end, the new owner manages to find my reservation for our beds must has to separate us for the first night at least, assuring us we'll be able to switch beds in the morning to the same room. It's a situation that's very unpleasing to Andreina and me, but there's not much we can do about it. And after spending the last few hours on a train, I'm too bushwhacked to care much more about it.
We drop our bags down on her bed and head out to the city of Nice. I vaguely, vaguely remember it, digging through my memories to those short days is like trying to pull out the stuff you'd stored in the back of the closet. I remember being with my friend Jaime, she and I being the two girls in the group, I remember walking forever down a street before finally hitting the ocean, I remember pebble beaches and buying a towel there -- a towel I wouldn't recognize from the pile I brought home from Virginia. I remember the tons and tons of shops, but the rest of my memories are a confused fog.
This day, we head towards the old center. I tell Andreina everything about Nice I've learned from my travel guiders, everything that makes it interesting or special. We wander and wander and wander, and then finally hit the ocean. It isn't anything like I remembered it at first, and then it is, and I wonder if my memories have conformed to my present situation, if I'm just imagining my memories altogether now.
The waters stretch out forever, just like in the Cinque Terre, but now they're headed by tons and tons of people lying mindlessly on the beach of pebbles. There are people parasailing and we sit, watching them go about from the launching to the watery crash at the end. I suggest a short uphill climb to one of the best views of the city and she comes along with me, trying to hide her obvious dislike of more hills. We walk to the top of an ancient castle rock and a little plaque declares the place to have been a guardhouse for the city, capable of spotting enemy ships from miles out.
From there, we stumble across a war memorial that is just monumentally huge. Andreina took a picture of me from the end side of it and my body is a tiny, tiny speck against the massive marble. I had to laugh at the fact that while WWI is listed, WWII is only mentioned as "The Resistance."
We wandered through the streets for quite a bit longer. Andreina had mentioned how early it yet was at around 6pm which I took to mean "let the adventure game begin!" However, she lost her enthusiasm for city exploration about two hours later when we were lost and hadn't managed to find dinner. I have to remember that she's still new to this trip, that she's not used to wandering around for hours with no destination and only a vague idea of where we are at any given moment. I also have to remember that she likes her regular meals, vice grabbing a small bite here and there whenever I happen to remember to eat. I hadn't realized how much I'd fallen behind on my food schedule.
She doesn't let me know, though, when she's tired or hungry or in any other way upset. She only becomes very quiet, to the point where I'm the only one talking. It's a very oppressive sort of quiet, let me tell you!
I had intentions of stopping at a grocery store for provisions but, by the time we managed to find the area nearby our hostel, all the shops had closed. Andreina was about 5 minutes away from smothering me in my keep for lack of food, I could tell, so I forced her to walk with me down the street towards the train station where I was certain that more restaurants would be open. I was right and we managed to find a pizzeria, grabbing a heavy pizza and a "brick," some sort of greasy food concoction on the lines of an egg roll.
After eating, Andreina was a lot happier.
It's really, really different to have another person along the road with me. I love it, hands down, I love having someone to talk to and share ideas/observations with. I love just knowing that someone else will remember these things with me. But it comes at the price of constantly worrying that the other person isn't enjoying the trip as much. I'm always, always watching to gauge her mood, from how far we all to the sights to the scenery, always trying to pick out if looking at flowers is what makes her happiest or if looking at the ocean does or if shopping does, and I file away all that data in the back of my mind for instant recall; "oh, Andreina isn't too talkative, better get a chocolate croissant to boost her mood" is the sort of lines that run through my head. I know, of course, what sort of thing I enjoy, what sort of attraction will keep my attention, and now I constantly worry about whether she is also enjoying France to the extent she had expected. And I'm the big sister. I have my role play -- it's one that comes automatically to me. If someone tries to talk to her, I'm there like the bulldog making sure they know she's not some naive traveler but that she has a (potentially) angry sister to watch her back.
I'm glad she's here. I'm also glad I got to hear just myself for the last few months. The contrast is one I'll remember forever.
We ate our "brick" in front of the local Notre Dame and then headed back to the hostel, getting there about half past nine. I talked to the owner about a suspicious puddle of water that had formed nearby the room's mini-fridge and then went up to my own room two floors up to go to bed.
I slept horribly. The other girls in my room were of the typical hostel variety, young and party-ers. There's no other place in the hostel for people to lounge about and gather aside from their rooms; I had to try to sleep with the lights on, some music playing, the other girls all intensely locked into a card game. They kept playing for about another half hour before two left, leaving me alone in the room with the last girl, trying to get some sleep. Our hostel is located along the rail line and near some trafficked streets; I fought to sleep against the noise of trains breaking and scooters accelerating all night. By the time morning came along, I woke up with bricks of sand in my eyes with the feeling of sand weighting down all my bones unpleasantly.
I went down to wake Andreina. We eventually got back outside, walking along to get some fresh fruit and baguettes for breakfast and then to get to a park and eat them. We talked about boys and friends and random memories. We found out we could get free wifi signal from a nearby hotel and stayed there for a bit longer. Then we went t the train station and bought her tickets -- and my reservations -- for the train tomorrow. After that, I begged off for a nap. My body was decelerating fast and I could just feel the tired clanking of my bones, the intense yearning for a nap.
We took a nap in the afternoon for about two hours and then hit the road again in search of a chateau that I'd seen a sign for the day before. Our walk took us over an hour before we finally reached the chateau, sitting to enjoy the view of the city and then heading back to grab some supplies for dinner and lunch tomorrow.
Our dinner was some delicious sandwiches. I had to ask the hostel owner for a knife since Andreina refused to; the sandwiches were simple but delicious and we have enough leftovers to tide us over until at least Lyon if not through tomorrow altogether. We talked and talked and talked -- I'm sometimes surprised to find my tongue capable of saying new things after all these hours of talking together. I am scared of repeating myself and dully saying the same thing over again but that luckily hasn't happened yet.
Andreina's French has been complimented multiple times now, from the first time we ordered baguettes to ordering croissants to ordering more baguettes. She glows every time someone says something. I, personally, don't really enjoy French as much as I thought I would. The throat-growling noise that they make on a regular basis is enough to turn me off to it. I'm more willing to listen to Spanish and Italian.
Hopefully, the Internet works well at the hotel tomorrow night. We'll be leaving for Lyon in the morning, a 5 hour or so train ride. We're that much closer to being home, that much closer to me being able to physically beat Lucas for not answering my emails or texts, that much closer to college to finally start, that much closer to being able to take a shower without wearing flip flops.
Location:Nice, France
Monday, August 1, 2011
The last of the 5 cities
We're on the train now, still in Italy but only for a little more than an hour before we cross the border into France, destination Nice. Andreina sat out in the passage hall for the first bit of this ride, since there were no seats, and as I drifted to sleep she scared my half to death by trying to slip her sunglasses over my eyes. I don't think I've ever woke up so hard, my heart beating so fast!
Yesterday, I woke up a little after 8:30 and decided to just read a little before actually getting up. I'd heard church bells ringing the morning before; my plan was to wait until after they'd announced the 9:00 hour before waking up Andreina and getting out of the hostel by our 10am lock-out. I'd completely forgotten that it was Sunday! It wasn't until I got reeeeaaaally suspicious of how long it'd been since I'd checked the time, plus the fact that everyone else in our room had cleared out, that I looked at my phone again and, completely startled, realized that it was 10am already! I woke Andreina up and the two of us madly scrambled to get dressed/brush out teeth even aaa we heard the jingling of the cleaning cart coming down the hallway. We left our room just as one of the hostel workers was pulling out his keys to unlock the door.
The first thing I wanted to do was get to the town with the biggest train station, Monterossa, and check out train times to getting to Nice. We jumped on a train and were having a pleasant conversation when the ticket checker came by, asking to see our tickets. We'd bought a two-day card with unlimited access to the area's trains and parks the afternoon that we'd arrived. I though that 2-days meant 48 hours, meaning that our passes were valid until that afternoon; unfortunately, I was wrong and the inspector made a huge scene about how our tickets were invalidated and then fined us for riding the triangle without passes. I'm still a little steamed about that. I wanted to hit him over the head and tell Andreina to run while I kept him down but no, we paid on fine there on the spot and sullenly (at least I was sullen) got off in Monterossa.
We got Andreina's tickets for the next morning then traveled back to our town (having also gotten valid tickets for this train ride -- I was waiting for that inspector to come by again, I would have smacked his nose with them!). Then we went on a walk up the hills again, stopping to pick blackberries until my small ziploc bag was full and to grab more grapes. the view is so spectacular on those hills. The watered stretch out forever, dotted by little sailboats and bigger ferries. I talked about growing my own berries one day along with apple and pear trees; Andreina talked about memories of Grandma's strawberries, raspberries, and crabapples.
For most of the rest of the afternoon, we jumped back into the waters, swimming in those gorgeous turquoise waves and sunning up on the white boulders where the waves musically crashed around us. We had ice cream that tasted more fresh than any ice cream I've ever tasted, and grabbed more bruschetta. For dinner, we found a pizza place that had free wifi and delightfully ordered a pizza to share while we checked neglected email accounts.
It's always unusual to go for a day or so without being able to check my email. I know it's not such a necessary part of my life but it's become so. To my shame, there was even a NPR article that came out not too long ago about how to disconnect your life. It's like a fix! I blame it on being away from home and being so very used to having a 24/7 connection to my Internet identity for the last few years.
I'm trying to remember how Nice was when the ship stopped there a few years back, 2007 I think. I remember the pebble beaches and how uncomfortable they are; I remember giggling at the topless beaches; I remember what seemed like a horribly long walk to the train station down the strip, but my guide books now tell me it's only 15 minutes and I hope that's correct.
The train now is cruising pleasantly along the curve of the cliffside. To the left is huge stretches of ocean occasionally obscured by grandiose apartments; to the right, bigger houses that dot out into the forested hills. There are few buildings here that are plainly or neutrally colored, few that come in white, black, or brown. Most of the buildings and homes are the colors of sunsets or the dawn: fading pinks, pale purples, powerful reds and oranges. And there are palm trees everywhere. All the roofs are made of rounded ceramic tiles and all the windows have wooden shutters. It's all very beautiful and you can't help feeling a sense of peaceful affinity for the world.
Today marks the two week point before we fly back home. That countdown is always in the back of my mind, like a silent stalker following my way through Europe.
Yesterday, I woke up a little after 8:30 and decided to just read a little before actually getting up. I'd heard church bells ringing the morning before; my plan was to wait until after they'd announced the 9:00 hour before waking up Andreina and getting out of the hostel by our 10am lock-out. I'd completely forgotten that it was Sunday! It wasn't until I got reeeeaaaally suspicious of how long it'd been since I'd checked the time, plus the fact that everyone else in our room had cleared out, that I looked at my phone again and, completely startled, realized that it was 10am already! I woke Andreina up and the two of us madly scrambled to get dressed/brush out teeth even aaa we heard the jingling of the cleaning cart coming down the hallway. We left our room just as one of the hostel workers was pulling out his keys to unlock the door.
The first thing I wanted to do was get to the town with the biggest train station, Monterossa, and check out train times to getting to Nice. We jumped on a train and were having a pleasant conversation when the ticket checker came by, asking to see our tickets. We'd bought a two-day card with unlimited access to the area's trains and parks the afternoon that we'd arrived. I though that 2-days meant 48 hours, meaning that our passes were valid until that afternoon; unfortunately, I was wrong and the inspector made a huge scene about how our tickets were invalidated and then fined us for riding the triangle without passes. I'm still a little steamed about that. I wanted to hit him over the head and tell Andreina to run while I kept him down but no, we paid on fine there on the spot and sullenly (at least I was sullen) got off in Monterossa.
We got Andreina's tickets for the next morning then traveled back to our town (having also gotten valid tickets for this train ride -- I was waiting for that inspector to come by again, I would have smacked his nose with them!). Then we went on a walk up the hills again, stopping to pick blackberries until my small ziploc bag was full and to grab more grapes. the view is so spectacular on those hills. The watered stretch out forever, dotted by little sailboats and bigger ferries. I talked about growing my own berries one day along with apple and pear trees; Andreina talked about memories of Grandma's strawberries, raspberries, and crabapples.
For most of the rest of the afternoon, we jumped back into the waters, swimming in those gorgeous turquoise waves and sunning up on the white boulders where the waves musically crashed around us. We had ice cream that tasted more fresh than any ice cream I've ever tasted, and grabbed more bruschetta. For dinner, we found a pizza place that had free wifi and delightfully ordered a pizza to share while we checked neglected email accounts.
It's always unusual to go for a day or so without being able to check my email. I know it's not such a necessary part of my life but it's become so. To my shame, there was even a NPR article that came out not too long ago about how to disconnect your life. It's like a fix! I blame it on being away from home and being so very used to having a 24/7 connection to my Internet identity for the last few years.
I'm trying to remember how Nice was when the ship stopped there a few years back, 2007 I think. I remember the pebble beaches and how uncomfortable they are; I remember giggling at the topless beaches; I remember what seemed like a horribly long walk to the train station down the strip, but my guide books now tell me it's only 15 minutes and I hope that's correct.
The train now is cruising pleasantly along the curve of the cliffside. To the left is huge stretches of ocean occasionally obscured by grandiose apartments; to the right, bigger houses that dot out into the forested hills. There are few buildings here that are plainly or neutrally colored, few that come in white, black, or brown. Most of the buildings and homes are the colors of sunsets or the dawn: fading pinks, pale purples, powerful reds and oranges. And there are palm trees everywhere. All the roofs are made of rounded ceramic tiles and all the windows have wooden shutters. It's all very beautiful and you can't help feeling a sense of peaceful affinity for the world.
Today marks the two week point before we fly back home. That countdown is always in the back of my mind, like a silent stalker following my way through Europe.
Location:Train to Nice, France
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