19 April
Because of the aforementioned planning snafu's, I was arriving in Nice much later than the rest of my group. This lead to quite the eventful hostel-finding experience...
This included everything from rides offered and rejected of overly friendly plane seat neighbours, trying to guess the correct bus stop at night in a foreign city, meeting some kind fellow travellers, and experiencing with them a shuttle ride up the mountain to our hostel that - among other thing (including nervous hilarity) - was absolutely terrifying.
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SHUTTLE WANTED FOR QUESTIONING
about the attempted quadruple homocide of innocent hostel-goers. |
20 April
I woke up the next morning and enjoyed a good (free!) hostel breakfast during which Christine was awesome and offered to spot me some cash so I could pay for the hostel. (I had had a slight cash crisis the night before and the hostel refused to take cards). It took a few hours into the day to realise that it was Easter, simply because it seemed so little like Easter. Took the life-threatening drive back down to the rail station, took the rail to the train station, had and resolved another minor crisis involving train kiosk machines that were confusing in themselves and also refused to speak anything but French, then finally got on our train.
Because we arrived in Marseille so early, our check in to the hostel unfortunately didn't involve actually getting keys. Instead, we paid, dropped off our bags in the luggage room, and departed in search of sustenance. It was Easter so we had very limited options.
Side note: This meal also enabled some cash-getting, so I could pay back Christine. (Thanks, again!)
Went back to check in and hang out in the room. Multitudes of napping/showering/skyping home ensued until we decided it was once again time for some food. (... I know, I know. Keep in mind, we were just super tired at this point!)
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Easter Dinner.
Yummm |
There's nothing like a eurotrip to make you appreciate the luxuries of free refills and toilets. It was decided during this meal that we would open up a restaurant called 10 euro, 10 euro (if you've never been to mainland Europe, the title is a mocking of the street vendors that are just simply everywhere) where you could come in and get a drink for 10 euro with free refills and free toilets.
We realised what European people must think when they come to America (or what we will think when we go back to America). "Free water?! Free refills?! But we can, because there are also free toilets!"
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| Guys, we found a palace. |
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| These are obviously meant for napping, right? |
I can't express to you all how ludicrous this day was. At this point in our trip, we had been going non-stop for such a long time, we had simply just hit a wall. The exhaustion was a source of humour between us all but at the same time was just way too real to be satisfied with its existance as nothing but a joke. It demanded on being felt. This resulted in a rather pathetic and yet amazing form of sight-seeing that day.
This is hardly exaggeration, we did always have a destination in mind, but never walked more than five minutes (or as little as one minute) before either finding a bench or a ledge to lean on and "enjoy the view". It was an unspoken agreement and I hardly think it was conscious, but it happened.
The worst example of this were these metal sculptures, clearly uncomfortable, but good enough for us to spend an hour on. We talked ourselves into thinking that the "no climbing" sign nearby didn't apply to us. We weren't climbing, we were laying down... obviously.
Me at some point during this experience: "I expected to be smelly and hungry, but not completely and totally exhausted. I don't think I'll ever be not tired again."
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We did eventually get up, but it was for gymnastics, because when you're me or Anna,
you apparently can't look at a big space of grass for too long before you start tumbling on it. |
Because of the surprisingly (or not) large amount of food talk that had taken place (specifically concerning those foods unavailable to us in mainland Europe that we missed), we left only for the motivation of eating.
After our stomachs had been satisfied, we did finally make it to Fort St Jean... only to lay down some more, obviously :)
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There is simply no caption to do this picture justice.
I will only say this for TJ, I was in fact standing on a step. |
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Taken at this beautiful mirror (art? memorial? random cool thing?)
on our way home every night in the middle of Marseille. |
Our dinner options for our last night in France sounded delicious. They included, but were not limited to, ravioli in the cheese of bush, and fried sea pizza. Needless to say, many inside jokes were born that still live on to this day.
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