My failure to be short and sweet : 
Paris: Arrive at Montparnasse among over-excited, vacation-expectant children. My Latin Quarter abode, the Young and Happy Hostel, is along a cute street of delicious late-night food and gift-giving bakeries (a little paper bag of chouquettes). My capital “I” Irish roommate teaches me how to put fake tanner on her back after almost fainting when she heard I'd never used the stuff before. Erin and her daddy give me a lovely introduction to Paris, involving lots of strolling (we're perfecting the art), expresso breaks and views of Le Tour Eiffel itself. After Daddy Ryan leaves, Erin and I spend hours in Pére Lachaise eating cookies and talking about boys and then make our way to the Champs Elysee as the sun goes down and the city lights up.
Lyon: Hostel on hill kicks a$$ despite secret 7 euro charge for HI membership. We eventually get over this massive act of deception and marvel happily at the view of Lyon from the hostel's garden veranda. We discover France's best 3.50 E sandwiches stuffed with seasoned meat and on seedy bread, and proceed to eat one a day until we leave. We sit by the river (one of the city's two) in the sun with the Lyonnaise youth and watch rollerbladers pop in and out of the skatepark bowls [show complete with interludes of small children on scooters without helmets, eeek]. We meet a lovely friend, Krysia, and walk around the greco-roman ruins and Lyon's equivalent of Central Park. The park would be beautiful and refreshing and lovely (it seems that the average French park involves far too much tan gravelly stuff and weirdly trimmed trees), but the beauty is eclipsed by our mad hunt for bathrooms. We worry about humanity as mother pulls almost-urinating child away from thickly treed area into long line for filthy toilets. Finally, my elusive love life + dependably good and cheap French wine leads to our positing about an underworld war waged against us. This blabbering leads us to Prium, a new friend who rolls beautifully with our epic tale and takes us out on the town with his friends to dance all night to a reggae jam band. We <3 Lyon.
Geneva: The evil powers step up their game and refuse us a hostel because Erin is without her passport. Sophie, a friend from Reed who is living in Geneva, comes to our rescue. We get a dinner of cheese, bread, meat and olives to eat on the docks of Lake Geneva and Sophie makes us a bed on her bedroom floor. Thank you Sophie!! In the morning, Evil poses as the SNCF website and directs us to a train station that doesn't really exist. We fight back by buying over 10 euros of train snacks. Our success is marked by the absence of the usual boarder control at the station and we make it back into France successfully!!
Chambéry: Sweet valley town in the mountains with lovely weather, good vibes and Erin's friend Katie who gives us a great wandery tour and a blow-up mattress. We even go clubbing and then out for a real Sunday morning brunch, my first in France.
Aix-en-Provence: Temporary home to three American boys, good friends of Erin's good friend, who take us in for a couple of nights. Bizarrely, two of these boys live in an incredibly nice, adult apartment and are teaching fellows at an American art school. Whhhattt? Yes, it's true. The story of the Minstrel Provencal wind is also true, so despite the sun, we shivered and after a good walk around the charming, colorful city we spent much of the day inside a café. In Aix (pronounced Ex) we also ate the most delicious fruit/nut bread in existence, I am sure.
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| And 30 minutes west of Marseille we find THIS! Cassis, you kind of blew our minds. |
Cassis: Somehow we stumbled upon this Southern France paradise. Were we actually in Italy? Or in a dream? After a bus ride with a strange group of strangers who were far too eager to have us over for cous cous dinner, we arrived at our hostel in awe. Yes, this giant, spacious house with a pool, gardens, a grand view of the Mediterranean and hotel-comfy beds was actually a hostel. As I had a nasty sore-throat and we were both a bit weary, we renamed the place “Rehab” and spent two days eating well, sleeping loads, and hiking in the Calanques. The rehab image was helped by the controlling but nice hostel-mum, who gawked at the fact that I was going hiking in regular boots: “It might be a little...catastrophhhhhe.” Shaking her head, she lent us a flowered children's back-pack, and we were on our way. Our hike was seriously gorgeous and without catastrophe. Cassis was so pretty it was almost eerie. Why were there no tourists?? Who lives here??
Montpelier: On the way home we stop and hang out with our friend Kelliiii. She studied abroad in Montpelier and pines after it often, for she now lives in an itsy-bitsy town near Erin. We are kind of exhausted, as it is the end of our trip, but instead of napping we sit outside a burger shop and people watch while drinking multiple tiny expressos and eating fries. We then go out and meet a depressing, uninteresting American boy band who don't seem to be having much fun at all despite EuroTour. They try to describe their music and we don't understand. When they eventually play in the basement of the bar, it kind of hurts our ears. We stay in funny, very smelly youth hostel. In the breakfast area, to which Erin and I trot in our socks and Pj’s, I pass off the torch of clumsiness and Erin spills milk all over the kitchen. This is just the beginning to her clutsy downfall (I'm somewhat to blame). Sorry love! We spend our final saturday walking around Montpelier. It is a really lovely town, especially on a sunny morning.xoxo
More soon!
