-Avignon, France-
You will FINALLY start to see a bunch of my own pictures. Hurray!
Everything up until now has been boring in comparison to the rest of our trip. I know, hard to believe ;)
Our room in the hostel in Paris was a furnace. Not only am I sleeping with earplugs, but also a little eye cover for the light. I am probably the most high maintenance sleeper on earth, but I came prepared...except for gross boys farting in our room. Did not prepare for that.
That morning we meet some new girls staying in our room that are each travelling all by themselves. One is travelling until her money runs out. I think this is crazy, personally. I wouldn't have made it past London if it weren't for Chelsie, and now in a country where I don't speak a thing past "fromage" and "bonjour", I would have been even worse off!
We head to the train station after breakfast to catch our train to Avignon. I have never even heard of the place. Chelsie planned it, and that was fine with me. Apparently it is very beautiful and a great smaller city to take a stop in before our next country.
We are elated that our seats on this train are facing forward for our ride there. It's also the nicest train we have been on yet. I just have to quote the next thing I read in my travel journal because it's funny: "We are happy that smelly b.o. (body odour) mental case man has stopped walking around." HA! I don't remember that, but I am really glad I wrote it down!
France's countryside is whipping by us outside our windows, and it's gorgeous. We see small villages built up on hills, and even a small castle in the distance.
We arrive safely in Avignon, and don't have a clue how to find our hostel. It's another sunny day out, and we are there in the afternoon. The language barrier totally got worse! We manage to find the local bus to get right into the city, (yes, imagine a French ETS...um..how do you know where to get off??) Our bus driver manages to understand relatively where we want to go and he tells us to stay up at the front so he can tell us when to get off. Phewf.
We get off at our stop...or so we think...and begin to try and find Hotel Minstral. As we walk down the street, we pass two young guys walking the opposite direction. They say something to us in French, and we make the confused face and shrug our shoulders and laugh. They try again, and we look at each other laughing again. The one boy bursts out in utter disbelief,
"You no speaky a Frenchy??"
"No!" We laugh.
"Whaaa?!?" They look at each other and laugh and we just keep on walking!
We ask some random locals where the hotel might be...by pointing to the name on the map. They manage to point us in a direction down a side road, and we go walking some more. We somehow stumble across a small city sign high up on the lamppost pointing that the hotel is down this street, and we find it! It's quiet, clean, and cute. An older gentleman runs it himself. It seems that he does the administration and the cleaning all himself as well.
Our room has a roll-shutter on the window (amazing), television and air conditioning (more amazing!!). We are so excited to be here!!
Avignon is a quiet place, not big-city like Paris, and we are already feeling more comfortable here despite our lack of French vocabulary. The center of the city is surrounded by a large brick wall, but the outside (where our hotel is) is quite ordinary with traffic and businesses and homes all around.
We are ready for dinner and find some business cards for a few restaurants in the area. One of the places is called the Creperie, and is in walking distance. French crepes, yes!
The Creperie in Edmonton is classier than this place, I have to say. It's like a fast food crepe restaurant. Hilarious already. It is also empty. Totally and utterly empty. I think it's around 5pm? Apparently the French don't eat dinner until 8, 9, um..our bedtime. Seriously, they don't.
We go inside, and there are two guys working. One looks a bit older, in his 30's? The other is about our age. They have big smiles. Their smiles grow bigger when they realize we speak zero English, and we are Canadian.
The younger one of the two is our waiter. We sit on the patio because the weather is so great. We order some savoury crepes by pointing to things on the menu, hoping we know what it is we are getting. Chelsie is trying to ensure that her crepe doesn't have meat. It's super hard for us to communicate with this guy, conveniently he doesn't know a scrap of English. It's thoroughly entertaining. This is already the best dinner by far, but it gets better.
The other guy working comes out when our waiter goes back inside, and he knows a little bit of English. He comes to tell us that our waiter thinks that I am very...what is the word...(we wait paitiently for him to find the word)...very...beautiful! This news brings lots of laughter from us. The waiter has a crush on me. Oh dear.
Our very sheepish waiter comes back to get our plates and convinces us to order dessert, even though we are super full from our huge Denny's-like meal. We choose a chocolate/banana ice-cream crepe. Sure, why not. He brings it out, and his number is written in chocolate sauce on the plate! He motions that we should call him. We take down the number, and eat the massive dessert. By the way, his name is Franckie.
This is the first "real" tip that we leave at a restaurant. We tell him we will call and leave.
I wasn't kidding...the dessert was a monster!
We head off to the shopping mall nearby that has a grocery store inside. We buy our breakfast for the next morning, and discover the huge section with the alcohol...something you don't find in a Canadian grocery store!
The mall reminds me of Bonnie Doon...or Westmount. Not big, not much going on, not many good stores.
Here is Chelsie with her purchase from the grocery store. This will be the first of a few...to take home of course!
On our walk back, sometimes a car driving by (with males in it) would flash their lights and maybe even wave a hand out the window. When we come back to our hotel, we ask our host what that means here. Apparently it's the way guys here show girls walking down the street that they like what they see.
I wish I could show you pictures of us at the start of our trip. Our expressions were usually pained from exhaustion, but trying to smile despite our discomfort. But the smiles in these photos are completely genuine, we are totally happy to be here in Avignon. We are having the best time of our trip by far.
Back in our room, we are trying to figure out what to leave on Franckie's voicemail before we make the call. We are just hoping he doesn't pick up and we can't actually have a conversation with him!
We sift through her phrasebook of French vocabulary, and decide that we will tell him that we want to meet at the movie theatre by the restaurant tomorrow night at 6pm. I can't remember who ends up leaving the message out of the two of us, but it is left, and we hope he gets it...and that he understands it. Either way, we plan on seeing a movie in French tomorrow night!
Turning on the television in our hotel room, we come across a news channel covering a story about some festival or concert thing in Rome with tons of teenagers in attendance. It's taking place outside the coliseum, and it's showing the teenagers putting on backpacks full of alcohol. There are even paramedics there specifically for the people getting wasted and blacking out. This is all in French, but it's impossible not to get the jist of what is going on. Completely entertaining television in a foreign language.
-to be continued...
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