Our next French stop was Nice, France. We got on the bus and spent about 9 hours getting there. Now, I'm not the type to get car/sea sick in any way- but that road was so twisty and turny that by hour 8 I got pretty sick to my stomach. Not anything serious as in "pull the bus over!" but sick enough to keep me from talking and to keep my head in my knees. I could barely lift my head to take in Nice as it appeared from the hills. I also left my sunglasses in a bathroom because I was rushing and afraid of the bus driver. This was after I lost my camera and absolutely determined to take extra care of the rest of my possessions(while in Nice I also thought that I lost my guidebook and so we spent the rest of our trip without one. I found it tucked into the back of my bag once I got home. Oops.). I failed.
This time we were a little more organized and arrived in Nice with a place to stay. The hostel was right in the middle in the old city, perfect location. We only booked one night in Nice in hopes that a couchsurfer would answer our requests(they never do) and ended up in this awesome little suite a few streets from the main hostel. A nice Canadian guy lead us there and the room had a bunk bed, a mini kitchen, a bathroom and a little dining table. Very impressive! We had bought things for dinner and two cheap bottles of wine since it was a Friday(Saturday?). We had met these American girls who told us where the party was and after we ate we got ready in our room. During the getting ready/eating process we decided to have a few glasses of wine. As the time passed and I tried to get the 2nd bottle open with the cork thing on my Swiss Army knife I ended up getting wine all over the place. All over us, all over the table, all over the walls, on the floor. Since it was our second bottle(and we are light drinkers) we just laughed it off and left it for the morning. We grabbed our key and headed towards Wayne's Bar. Baillie was in high heels, and since she's not used to heels it doesn't take long to hurt her feet. Nice was mostly cobblestone(always funny when combined with drunk girls and heels) so it took us a bit to walk to the bar. When we got to the front of the line Baillie was carded immediately. We had thought it might happen since she's tiny but the American girls said that they had been studying there and knew all the bouncers, so if they vouched for us, we'd be let in. When the vouching time came, we looked at this girl and she just looked at us, kind of smiled and went in with a small "sorry". She got freaked out. So off we went, a little annoyed(Baillie is 21, and the drinking age is 18) we walked back to get her passport.
Luckily for me I have a driver's license that can fit neatly in my bra when I don't bring a wallet but Beef had a passport that only fits neatly in her pantie elastic. She was wearing a very tight skirt so when we finally got back and got up to the bouncer he looked a little confused when she stuck her hand down the front of her skirt and pulled out her ID and then again to get it back in place. We probably would have been a lot more secretive about the whole thing if we were less drunk. When we got in I had to go to the bathroom. Baillie came with me and I dragged her into the stall where she found 20 euro. Could have been mine if I had just let her wait outside. Regrets. Anyway it didn't take long or many more drinks until we hit the dance floor where an American DJ was playing very fun, sing-a-long type tracks. We worked our way to the front of the stage where some girls pulled us up. We spent the rest of the nights dancing up with the DJ and singing with the crowd. Goood times. Once we had enough we went outside and sat on the street(classy, I know) where some French guys approached us and we had a few words with them until it turned kind of hostile and we left. FYI, guys in Nice yell the dirtiest things at you when you walk down the street(maybe they did in all the places, but we could actually understand this). We we quite out of it by that point and Baillie kept on trying, very confidently, to get into random buildings thinking it was ours. Now, normally I have ZERO sense of direction. I mean I never, ever know where I am but I could navigate Nice no problem. It kind of freaked me out. Somehow during our walk we met a stag party on the street and had arranged to go out on their boat with them the next morning. A time, a place was set. Obviously we never showed up. We finally arrived and collapsed, happily, into our little French beds to sleep off the wine to awake perky and ready to face the day.
The second day in Nice it became pretty obvious pretty quick that we were not going to find a couch to surf, so we tried to book another night in our nice little room. We had to wait for the eccentric hostel lady to come back and she ended up letting us both sleep in this single bed in the dorm, since it was all she had(she also had this crazy old dog named Polo who didn't react to anything. Touch, noise, etc. Yet she would yell at this kid for upsetting the dog and you'd look down at the thing and it was just standing there unmoving an looking exactly the same as it did all the time. It was all a bit odd). The kicker was that the suit-place didn't have dish soap so the poor cleaner had to clean our dishes and wine covered room when we didn't get it the second night. In our defense we did ask the front desk for cleaning supplies but they told us just to leave it. Although I've slept better we were pretty excited to only pay half of what we would have and wished we could do that at every hostel we stayed in.
It has been a while but I know we went to the beach where we saw a lot of really old, really magenta, really leathery naked people. We also had to go shopping for new sunglasses for me and a new bag since my third one had broken. We went to Monaco and saw the casino and the palace and the wealth so that was pretty neat-o. Then we got some adequate sleep and moved onto our next destination: Marseilles.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Friday, July 16, 2010
South of France, Grenoble.
After we bid Switzerland adieu we walked over to the train station to be taken to Grenoble. We gave ourselves just enough time to board the train comfortably and I'm sure it would have gone over smoothly if we had actually booked a train and not a bus.
We walked around the train station very confused trying to find our departure, showed a few employees our tickets asking them to help us and couldn't(they thought they could, we followed wrong directions all over that station). We started getting worried when the 20 minute mark until the "train" departure went by, freaking out when the 15, then the 10...We were in a state of panic when, finally, a woman looked at our ticket, looked at us, and asked almost disbelievingly if we knew that this was in fact a bus ticket, and not a train. We could barely laugh at our mistake when we thanked her and ran like idiots(you can't look like anything but an idiot when you're trying to run with a 75 litre backpack on) to the bus part of the station and caught it just in time! We had bought the ticket the day before,not even 24 hours before, and we made such a ridiculous mistake. The only reason we could laugh at our stupidity was because we caught the bus, if we hadn't it would have been a whole different set of emotions.
It was a long bus ride so it's a good thing I could fall asleep with an injection of adrenalin to the heart if I wanted to. I am a great sleeper. When we arrived it was about 10pm, still dark, and yet again we had absolutely no where to stay. So Grenoble isn't a very big city and since we weren't in the centre, it was dead. Across the street from the station we saw a big map, so we walked towards it- and, thankfully, there was a sign on that map for a youth hostel. Not so thankfully it was out of town and the busses had stopped running by that point. We looked around and found the dingiest looking hotel we could and settled in for an interesting night.
Once we walked through the creepiest hotel ever..everything squeaked, the lights in the hall turned on one by one by motion sensors as you walked through them and some not at all.. and got into our room we decided we were hungry and needed food. The front desk guy(who would sit in the dark dinning room) told us about a place called the Indian Bazaar or something that would be open at midnight. So off we went to find an Indian grocery.
We were wandering down some side street that had these dark allies coming off them when we saw and heard an, about, 13 year old girl crying and an older(50?) man in a leather jackets holding tightly onto her wrist. As we walked by another man walked out of the same ally and asked us what was happening..we said we didn't know and all 3 of us started walking towards the scene. That's when we decided it might be some trap to get us into an ally so we told the guy we'd watch from the street. Without his 5"1' and 5"8' teenage backup, the guy got scared and just walked by the two fighting. We got even more freaked out when we could see the girl, still crying, trying to get her wrist free and the man leading her deeper into the ally. That's when I tried to take a picture and then we ran off to find a pay phone.
When we phoned the police, I was on the phone, it was clear pretty soon that the guy could not understand one heavily anglophone/wanna-be-Quebecois accented french word that was coming out of my mouth. The French was okay, it was the accent he didn't get- since Baillie understood every word. After about 10 minutes and he finally understood where we were, and what the situation was ("A 50 or so year old man is dragging a 13-something unwilling, crying girl into an ally...at midnight") he responded with "Well, if we send a car out now maybe they will have left that area by the time we get there." or aka "It's not worth sending a car". We told them we didn't care and they needed to send someone! We were in a state of shock that the Police, THE POLICE, were almost refusing to check out this situation(flash forward, they never came).
We didn't feel comfortable leaving on our food quest so we stood in plain sight a bit away and flagged down men to go check in on things. A few really nice guys stopped and they went to check out what was happening. We were also amazed how many people would stop to look at the girl situation, seem worried, then shake their heads and walk off. Anyway, apparently the girl had been broken up with and had run away from home and creepy jacket man was her dad. The guys left satisfied but we stayed until her grandfather came and she left willingly with him. Then we walked to the grocery store that was actually a restaurant and got greasy rice to eat in our greasy hotel room. End first night in France.
Grenoble round 2 was a distressing day for me. It started out really well(first we sent out a whole bunch of emergency couchsurfing requests so we didn't have to stay in that hotel again). We left our bags in some pub for "storage" that cost us about 12 euro each to leave in the doorway and then we walked the centre of the town to taken the sights. It was nice. We walked around the city, hing out in some nice parks and then I lost my camera. I had decided to keep it on my wrist so I would remember to snap some memories, but then I left it alone to defend for itself somewhere. So we spent the day seeing some sights, and then seeing them again as I frantically looked for my camera. I never found it. It was lost along with almost all of my pictures of Italy..a months worth of pictures. I cried. I cried by the bus station and then I cried on this bench in front of a restaurant in front of all the workers. Then we hit up a a grocery store and got some crackers and tuna and olives and returned to my crying bench and ate like hobos with our grubby hands as the restaurant workers, again, looked on. We were a bit of a mess. At 11 pm the guy who had answered our couchsurfing request came to pick us up and we spent an excellent night at his house. He played us some original music, gave us food and was very nice all around. We were his first ever surfers and his enthusiasm showed through. We, the jaded hosts, knew this kind of enthusiasm wouldn't last and were very grateful to him. He saved our behinds. In the morning he drove us to the bus station and we boarded for our next destination: the French Riviera, Nice.
We walked around the train station very confused trying to find our departure, showed a few employees our tickets asking them to help us and couldn't(they thought they could, we followed wrong directions all over that station). We started getting worried when the 20 minute mark until the "train" departure went by, freaking out when the 15, then the 10...We were in a state of panic when, finally, a woman looked at our ticket, looked at us, and asked almost disbelievingly if we knew that this was in fact a bus ticket, and not a train. We could barely laugh at our mistake when we thanked her and ran like idiots(you can't look like anything but an idiot when you're trying to run with a 75 litre backpack on) to the bus part of the station and caught it just in time! We had bought the ticket the day before,not even 24 hours before, and we made such a ridiculous mistake. The only reason we could laugh at our stupidity was because we caught the bus, if we hadn't it would have been a whole different set of emotions.
It was a long bus ride so it's a good thing I could fall asleep with an injection of adrenalin to the heart if I wanted to. I am a great sleeper. When we arrived it was about 10pm, still dark, and yet again we had absolutely no where to stay. So Grenoble isn't a very big city and since we weren't in the centre, it was dead. Across the street from the station we saw a big map, so we walked towards it- and, thankfully, there was a sign on that map for a youth hostel. Not so thankfully it was out of town and the busses had stopped running by that point. We looked around and found the dingiest looking hotel we could and settled in for an interesting night.
Once we walked through the creepiest hotel ever..everything squeaked, the lights in the hall turned on one by one by motion sensors as you walked through them and some not at all.. and got into our room we decided we were hungry and needed food. The front desk guy(who would sit in the dark dinning room) told us about a place called the Indian Bazaar or something that would be open at midnight. So off we went to find an Indian grocery.
We were wandering down some side street that had these dark allies coming off them when we saw and heard an, about, 13 year old girl crying and an older(50?) man in a leather jackets holding tightly onto her wrist. As we walked by another man walked out of the same ally and asked us what was happening..we said we didn't know and all 3 of us started walking towards the scene. That's when we decided it might be some trap to get us into an ally so we told the guy we'd watch from the street. Without his 5"1' and 5"8' teenage backup, the guy got scared and just walked by the two fighting. We got even more freaked out when we could see the girl, still crying, trying to get her wrist free and the man leading her deeper into the ally. That's when I tried to take a picture and then we ran off to find a pay phone.
When we phoned the police, I was on the phone, it was clear pretty soon that the guy could not understand one heavily anglophone/wanna-be-Quebecois accented french word that was coming out of my mouth. The French was okay, it was the accent he didn't get- since Baillie understood every word. After about 10 minutes and he finally understood where we were, and what the situation was ("A 50 or so year old man is dragging a 13-something unwilling, crying girl into an ally...at midnight") he responded with "Well, if we send a car out now maybe they will have left that area by the time we get there." or aka "It's not worth sending a car". We told them we didn't care and they needed to send someone! We were in a state of shock that the Police, THE POLICE, were almost refusing to check out this situation(flash forward, they never came).
We didn't feel comfortable leaving on our food quest so we stood in plain sight a bit away and flagged down men to go check in on things. A few really nice guys stopped and they went to check out what was happening. We were also amazed how many people would stop to look at the girl situation, seem worried, then shake their heads and walk off. Anyway, apparently the girl had been broken up with and had run away from home and creepy jacket man was her dad. The guys left satisfied but we stayed until her grandfather came and she left willingly with him. Then we walked to the grocery store that was actually a restaurant and got greasy rice to eat in our greasy hotel room. End first night in France.
Grenoble round 2 was a distressing day for me. It started out really well(first we sent out a whole bunch of emergency couchsurfing requests so we didn't have to stay in that hotel again). We left our bags in some pub for "storage" that cost us about 12 euro each to leave in the doorway and then we walked the centre of the town to taken the sights. It was nice. We walked around the city, hing out in some nice parks and then I lost my camera. I had decided to keep it on my wrist so I would remember to snap some memories, but then I left it alone to defend for itself somewhere. So we spent the day seeing some sights, and then seeing them again as I frantically looked for my camera. I never found it. It was lost along with almost all of my pictures of Italy..a months worth of pictures. I cried. I cried by the bus station and then I cried on this bench in front of a restaurant in front of all the workers. Then we hit up a a grocery store and got some crackers and tuna and olives and returned to my crying bench and ate like hobos with our grubby hands as the restaurant workers, again, looked on. We were a bit of a mess. At 11 pm the guy who had answered our couchsurfing request came to pick us up and we spent an excellent night at his house. He played us some original music, gave us food and was very nice all around. We were his first ever surfers and his enthusiasm showed through. We, the jaded hosts, knew this kind of enthusiasm wouldn't last and were very grateful to him. He saved our behinds. In the morning he drove us to the bus station and we boarded for our next destination: the French Riviera, Nice.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Switzerland
So I've been home now for about two weeks and no longer have the need to blog... but I have high hopes that one day I will become an old woman and, if I really am my father's daughter, senility will kick in soon after that and I wont be able to remember anything. So here's to hoping I'll still be able to read! Also, since I am unemployed(loving it) and unmotivated(in Calgary!), I have become nocturnal and have to fill the long, cable-less hours doing something. So I type. I type for me.
Switzerland will be a very short blog since we only spent a night there, it was over a month ago, and my memory is questionable(why the whole Alzheimer's thing seems probable).
Before I got to Switzerland, in my mind, I would imagine me near beautiful mountains, people on bicycles, clear blue water, watches, eating chocolate and fondue--now I would imagine me living on a box with a stolen child trying to get the homeless sympathy vote. If you want to go there, you have got to have deep pockets. Switzerland was so crazy expensive we spent our whole afternoon of our first and only day trying to find a cheapish bus to take us to France. I would love, love to go back- but only as a rich widow(I might settle as budget savvy traveler).
I flew into Geneva from Rome and met Baillie at the airport. She had arrived a few hours earlier and supposedly got the lay of the land before she had to meet me...this later proved false as we got lost in the rain for a good while at about midnight.
I arrived, we hugged, loud scene, etc. etc. When all that was over we realized that it was about 10 at night and neither of us had bothered to look up a hostel. So my last month of travel begun.
We got on the bus and decided to head towards a main part of town but got lost in the rain for a bit(as mentioned above). When we arrived in a decent looking area our only course of action was to wander until we found a hostel sign and we eventually did. We went in, got in line, asked about vacancy, were laughed at, discussed how likely it would be to get away with sleeping on the couches, inquired about horse ownerships, and were finally referred to another dwelling. When we arrived there they had a couple beds available and we paid a lot for them- thus beginning the milking of our bank accounts by Switzerland. This was the only time we arrived in a strange city in the middle of the night without a place to stay or knowledge of the area...and I would love that to be true- but we did it many other times and I'm sure we would have done it many more.
In the morning we decided to take in the sights..and once we saw the price tags on things we quickly realized that we couldn't stay the 5 days and see the other cities we had planned on seeing. (At this point Beef was on a 25 euro a day budget. At a later point that went down to 10). After we took the morning to find and book our bus to Grenoble we went down to the water(a turquoise clear blue, so clean for a city, so clean for anywhere) to take in a super underwhelming flower clock that turned out to be a few wild flowers and spinning hands, the big, famous jet stream that was broken or something and neither jet nor streamed, some fountains, and grass lounged. When it was time to eat I was really wanting to try some fondue, but it cost your first born and so we headed to the grocery store. Food is expensive, very, so we got some rice cakes and olives and sat on the curb to enjoy our feast. As we were eating a Roma woman approached us and we gave her a euro or two. As a reward for this selfless deed we got yelled at/lectured by this Swiss guy in a suit(they weed out the poor) about how we just helped devastate the country by giving this woman a couple coins. As if she could do much with them anyway. The game "I'm that crazy Swiss guy" was born.
Later, we looked through the old city, walked these beautiful green paths, took lots of beautiful pictures(that are gone forever) and eventually had to make our way to the bus station. We boarded the bus and headed off to the next city to again arrive in the middle of the night with no place to stay- because not only do we make the same mistake twice, but over and over again.
All in all, Geneva was a beautiful city and I've heard from friends that Switzerland is one of the most beautiful countries. I'm sorry we missed out on it. So I'll be back, Switzerland. I'll be back to make your Roma wealthy, eat carbs, ski off carbs, and enjoy everything you have to offer. And since I have recently decided to win the lotto, hopefully it wont take me too long to do. Ohhh to reminisce!
Switzerland will be a very short blog since we only spent a night there, it was over a month ago, and my memory is questionable(why the whole Alzheimer's thing seems probable).
Before I got to Switzerland, in my mind, I would imagine me near beautiful mountains, people on bicycles, clear blue water, watches, eating chocolate and fondue--now I would imagine me living on a box with a stolen child trying to get the homeless sympathy vote. If you want to go there, you have got to have deep pockets. Switzerland was so crazy expensive we spent our whole afternoon of our first and only day trying to find a cheapish bus to take us to France. I would love, love to go back- but only as a rich widow(I might settle as budget savvy traveler).
I flew into Geneva from Rome and met Baillie at the airport. She had arrived a few hours earlier and supposedly got the lay of the land before she had to meet me...this later proved false as we got lost in the rain for a good while at about midnight.
I arrived, we hugged, loud scene, etc. etc. When all that was over we realized that it was about 10 at night and neither of us had bothered to look up a hostel. So my last month of travel begun.
We got on the bus and decided to head towards a main part of town but got lost in the rain for a bit(as mentioned above). When we arrived in a decent looking area our only course of action was to wander until we found a hostel sign and we eventually did. We went in, got in line, asked about vacancy, were laughed at, discussed how likely it would be to get away with sleeping on the couches, inquired about horse ownerships, and were finally referred to another dwelling. When we arrived there they had a couple beds available and we paid a lot for them- thus beginning the milking of our bank accounts by Switzerland. This was the only time we arrived in a strange city in the middle of the night without a place to stay or knowledge of the area...and I would love that to be true- but we did it many other times and I'm sure we would have done it many more.
In the morning we decided to take in the sights..and once we saw the price tags on things we quickly realized that we couldn't stay the 5 days and see the other cities we had planned on seeing. (At this point Beef was on a 25 euro a day budget. At a later point that went down to 10). After we took the morning to find and book our bus to Grenoble we went down to the water(a turquoise clear blue, so clean for a city, so clean for anywhere) to take in a super underwhelming flower clock that turned out to be a few wild flowers and spinning hands, the big, famous jet stream that was broken or something and neither jet nor streamed, some fountains, and grass lounged. When it was time to eat I was really wanting to try some fondue, but it cost your first born and so we headed to the grocery store. Food is expensive, very, so we got some rice cakes and olives and sat on the curb to enjoy our feast. As we were eating a Roma woman approached us and we gave her a euro or two. As a reward for this selfless deed we got yelled at/lectured by this Swiss guy in a suit(they weed out the poor) about how we just helped devastate the country by giving this woman a couple coins. As if she could do much with them anyway. The game "I'm that crazy Swiss guy" was born.
Later, we looked through the old city, walked these beautiful green paths, took lots of beautiful pictures(that are gone forever) and eventually had to make our way to the bus station. We boarded the bus and headed off to the next city to again arrive in the middle of the night with no place to stay- because not only do we make the same mistake twice, but over and over again.
All in all, Geneva was a beautiful city and I've heard from friends that Switzerland is one of the most beautiful countries. I'm sorry we missed out on it. So I'll be back, Switzerland. I'll be back to make your Roma wealthy, eat carbs, ski off carbs, and enjoy everything you have to offer. And since I have recently decided to win the lotto, hopefully it wont take me too long to do. Ohhh to reminisce!
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