J'Adore La France! (And it's a Big One, so Do Not Read unless you have Plenty of Time)

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Our trip began at about 12:00 midnight… After packing my miniature messenger bag full of all the bare necessities (thank God for space-saver vacuum bags) I headed over to Jeanette’s apartment and helped her finish getting ready… She was a smidge behind schedule, since she’d had to go to a Shakespeare play for class (starring Patrick Stewart, no less! Apparently he’s not too friendly when you take his picture, though, so word to the wise) and had just gotten back. We decided to take the night bus to Victoria station, since the tube was already closed. So we headed to the bus stop, and waited…and waited…until we became far too antsy to wait for said bus, whose routes and punctuality is generally quite sketchy, and instead opted for a taxi to whisk us away to the station. Our flight left at 6:20 a.m., so we had to be at the airport by 4:20 a.m., and we knew the bus would take a while…so we were taking no chances.

Victoria was completely dead at 1-ish in the morning. We saw a handful of people with rolling luggage by the bus terminal, and decided to follow the crowd. Our particular bus wasn’t meant to depart until a little after 2 a.m., but the taxi dropped us off way ahead of schedule, so when the coach began loading, I asked the driver if we could hop on this one instead of waiting around. He kindly obliged, and Jeanette and I found ourselves rambling through the dark streets of London in the wee hours of the morning almost (but not quite!) too excited to sleep…

But doze we did, and after an hour and a half, we were at Stansted. It’s really funny how Ryanair considers Stansted to be a London airport: I suppose it’s not too far out, but it’s a heck of a drive to get to anyways, as it’s actually in Essex. Ah well, cheap tickets are cheap tickets, and I can’t complain about that.

The scene that greeted us when we got to the huge, vaulted room that housed the airline desks was funny: it looked as though an army of hobos had decided that Stansted Airport was as good a place as any to rest their weary heads, and thus the cold tile floor was littered with so many sleeping travelers, trying to catch a little shut eye before the airline desks opened. When in Rome (as the saying goes), sleep on the floor with the hobos; and so we followed that slightly modified adage and settled down for a nap…

I awoke to the sound of chatting travelers, rolling luggage, and the authoritative click of the flight attendants’ heels as they passed by, en masse, with their smart little suits and caps. European flight attendants are infinitely more stylish than the American variety: travel a bit around Europe and you’ll know what I mean…they still wear those little militaristic hats cocked rakishly to the side. Adorable.

At any rate, it was time to rise and shine, head for the wrong desk line (whose attendants were actually bound for Krakow), be sorted out to our appropriate line, and make our way to Bed Number Two for the morning, a little row of plastic waiting-room seats at our gate. Eventually the plane came in, and we boarded (by walking out to the plane and climbing up the rolling steps—very Beatles circa 1964 of us!)…

Another sleepy flight and we were in Montpellier, France. My first trip to the continent! The sun was shining, the sky was blue, and I was ecstatic.

The weather was not so much warmer as we might have hoped, but it beat London. I encountered my first completely foreign language signs at the airport, and it was trippy! That, at least, drove home the fact that I wasn’t in proverbial Kansas anymore. I have, however, come to the conclusion that all airports, everywhere, are exactly the same. The French airport looked exactly like the Irish airport, which looked exactly like the Mexican airports I’d been to in the past. In a way, this constancy is a little disappointing right off the bat, since there’s always the traveler’s silly expectation that upon landing in an unexplored land, things will actually be different. Alas, such is sadly not the case.

Sitting outside on the sidewalk, waiting for the bus to the city center, we encountered a French snail clinging to the concrete wall we were leaning against. We made a big touristy to-do about taking silly pictures of us pretending to eat it. Ah, Americans.

The bus dropped us off at some unspecified location in Montpellier, and we were left to our own sad devices, armed with rusty French and insufficient transport maps. Wandering about, we stopped at a drugstore so I could pick up some contact solution. The brief encounter with the sales associate was the sad moment in which I realized my French did, in fact, suck. We eventually figured out that I did not want the solution dure, and bought the exorbitantly priced soft contact solution instead. The experience rather saddened me: I’d taken 6 years of French in high school and had stupidly decided not to continue in college…

Asking for directions went a little smoother. Jeanette and I went into a nearby hotel, asking where to catch the train to Séte. A very confused front desk attendant pointed us in the right direction, and when we got to the gare, we tried to use the automated ticket vendors, to no avail. Thus we had to stand in queue, talk to another French woman agitated at our horrible language skills, and miss the first train out of there. Ah well, c’est la vie.

As we waited for our departure time to roll around, we wandered around Montpellier. It’s a very nice town (at least, what little I saw of it is), full of white and grey stone buildings, parks, and miniature railways everywhere, traversed by colorful, bullet shaped trams. The sky was blue, there were few cars, and the town felt rather sleepy—as I suppose any town would be at 10 am on a Saturday. We stopped at a little bakery, completely ravenous, and bought our first Croque Monsieurs. Honestly, not as delicious as they looked—I think the ones we’d gotten had been sitting out for quite a while, so the cheese on the inside had a strange, bogey-like consistency. Mmm mmm, good. Haha! We sat at the park there, munching away while kids played all around this giant boulder-turned-waterfall , and enjoyed the morning. We then headed to a little al fresco café, and ordered a couple of drinks…I finally got to say Je voudrais une limonade, s’il vous plaît, just like I’d been taught by Mrs. Faletti back in the 7^th grade. I got this delicious drink called ‘Pschitt’, which came in the smallest, cutest little bottle you’ve ever seen. I wanted to take it home with me, it was that spectacular.

And so we watched the world go by from our little café table at the bustling restaurant… The people in the nearby seats were drinking espresso and generating enough smoke with their ubiquitous cigarettes to hail several ships with an S.O.S. signal. It was like the movies, haha—so irreversibly French.

We headed back to the station and caught our train to Séte. The train was mighty nifty, though: it had little compartments, like in the Harry Potter movies, and Jeanette couldn’t help but recite a few lines from ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’. The views out the windows were amazing: the towns we passed were full of whitewashed plaster buildings, with bright azure doors and shutters, and tiled roofs. The ground was sandy with tall bits of scrub and grass, like chaparral. To the south, the blue, blue Mediterranean Sea…

Upon arriving at Séte, Jeanette and I bought a little map at the train station and plopped ourselves down in the waiting room, no doubt looking utterly confused. We were awaiting the arrival of our new friend, Raquel…

I suppose this is as good a time as any to mention how we planned on staying in Séte for the weekend. I’ve discovered an amazing website that is dedicated to this thing called the CS2 “couch surfing” Project. Basically, it’s a social site that connects people around the world through an internet database of profiles, and facilitates people’s travels abroad, allowing them to stay with locals and really experience the culture, rather than staying in hotels. It’s a really forward-thinking project…it promotes global understanding and unity, and at the same time helps out poor college students with housing abroad. Brilliant!

So Jeanette and I had contacted a few people in Séte through the site, and we had a couple of positive responses. So we were planning on staying with Raquel, a journalist who lived in the Pointe Courte neighborhood of Séte, and also meeting up with Patrice, a computer technician, for drinks and a little local culture.

And so Raquel had agreed to meet us at the train station. After a few minutes of waiting, a young woman approached us tentatively, as if trying to match our pictures to our faces…we recognized her instantly: brightly colored peasant skirt, funky pink glasses, a halo of dark, frizzy hair that refused to be tamed—it must be Raquel! Alas it was, and in a flurry of greetings, laughs, and thank-you-so-much’s, we started the short trek to her apartment. Jeanette and I oohed and ahhed the entire time, and Raquel couldn’t help but laugh at us. Our host spoke excellent English (which was a welcome change, after our train station language humiliation!) and told us about her life… She’s from Marseilles originally, but has lived in Paris and even America; she settled in Séte because it’s so adorable and colorful, and I couldn’t agree more. We walked along the Canal connecting the sea to the Bassin de Thau, the inland quay. The water was bluer than a robin’s egg, and the sun plus the sea plus the quaint houses plus the fact that I was just in France was enough to put a silly grin of absolute giddiness on my face.

We walked to her neighborhood, La Pointe Courte. It’s on a tiny point jutting out into the quay, full of incredibly narrow streets lined with stucco-sided, tan and whitewashed homes with miniature flower boxes and colorful laundry hanging out to dry from upstairs windows. There were plenty of scooters parked along the rows of houses and stray cats darting in between alleys and lounging on awnings, and you could smell the sea air and fishermen’s nets hanging out to dry on the driftwood poles. This is the neighborhood of the fishermen, where they live and work from their tiny fishing shacks or cabanes; and despite being the most quaint and colorful part of the town, it is surprisingly untouched by tourists. Which, of course, worked out beautifully for us!

Raquel’s apartment was so cute, too. (Apparently my vocabulary has become incredibly limited since entering France—everything in Séte is cute or adorable or quaint—but I just can’t think of a better way of describing it!) There were boldly painted walls with ethnic furnishings and narrow wooden staircases connecting all three floors; candles and funky glass mobiles as decorations; windows looking out to the quay from above the terracotta tiled rooftops…the perfect retreat. We also met her boyfriend, Sylvan, a very nice guy from close to the French-Spanish border, with a shaved head and mutton chops. He didn’t speak very much English, but we all laughed and chatted and fluttered our hands about like madmen to get our points across—and having Raquel as translator was helpful, too! Soon after arriving, Raquel invited her neighbor over to meet us: Marion, and 18 year old girl with a love for American rap, R & B, and pop music…and who also didn’t speak a lick of English.

Raquel and Sylvan couldn’t stay with us in town, unfortunately, since Raquel had scheduled a visit to Marseilles to see her parents that weekend. So as they packed, Marion took us on a tour of downtown Séte…

The town is very interesting; in a way, it almost reminds me more of Mexico than of anything I’ve yet seen in Europe. The architecture is similar, for one thing, and there’s this air of shabby quaintness about the buildings—like they’re falling apart gracefully, and with a lot of character. There were palm trees lining the streets, and the main roads running parallel to the ever-present networks of canals. All the docks and streets were lined with boats in various stages of dilapidation, but all were quite cheerfully painted, regardless. In downtown Séte, Christmas decorations still hung above the streets, unlit; Marion joked that they were just waiting until next season. There were tons of stores and cafes with outdoor tables, and we were tempted to stop, but continued on to the sea instead. We passed the docklands of the town, where all the fishermen were making ship repairs and folding their nets, and eventually made it to the Mediterranean. Breathtaking. It was still sunny, and the blues of the sky and sea met, and it was hard to say where one ended and the other began, except for the telltale glimmer of the sunshine on the waves. We climbed over the concrete barrier and lounged along the rock breaker, soaking in the late afternoon warmth.

As we walked on, Marion became gradually more talkative. I did my best to uphold my end of the conversation, and I kept asking questions about everything I saw—a good way to learn some new vocabulary, it turns out! ‘Dolphin’ is ‘dauphine’, ‘squid’ is ‘calmar’, and although I could never quite recall the translation of ‘seagull’, I’m relatively certain it begins with an M…

By the time we returned to Raquel’s, I felt I had a much better grasp of the language. It just took some reminding! I can understand why people say that the only way to really learn a language is through total immersion. Jeanette and I found ourselves talking to each other in a mixture of French and English by the time the weekend was over—complete with the appropriate hand gestures and the sound effects that we found to be common among the people of Séte!

We stopped at some clothing stores downtown at Marion’s bidding…Everything was much cheaper in Séte than it was back in London. And Marion was quite the bargain hunter: she’d gleefully point out the sale rack of every store we went into (which generally featured skimpy, club-hopping clothes of indeterminate quality—but there’s no accounting for a French teenager’s taste) and kept trying to steer Jeanette and I clear of the little street-side bistros we were attracted to like moths to a flame (C’est trop chère! she’d emphasize)… Eventually we managed to slow Marion down enough to let us get an iced tea at one of the cheaper cafes, and then returned home to Raquel’s.

By the time we made it back, Raquel had departed for the weekend, so Jeanette and I visited Marion’s home next door. She has two adorable cats that lounged on the windowsills, and her family’s house is tiny and adorable. Her mother had painted murals of Séte on the walls, and we sat and chatted over a couple of chocolate waffles proffered by our host. Afterward we went back home and recouped a bit before heading out to the train station to meet our other couch surfing contact, Patrice. We couldn’t seem to leave Marion behind, though, so she accompanied us. (I honestly believe we were something of a novelty for her: I know we were her ‘first’ Americans, and having us around for the weekend was no doubt quite exciting, haha.) He was a super-nice guy, a bit taller than me and blonde, with a huge smile. We learned he’d lived for a little while in Boston, and thus spoke very good English. He was relieved to hear our French was less than par, because he was anxious to practice his own language skills with us! But we felt bad ditching Marion that evening, so we visited for a bit at the gare and decided to meet up with Patrice the next night for dinner.

That evening, Jeanette and I wanted to find a typically French restaurant to splurge a little—it was our first night in the country, after all! But Marion would hear none of that, and after much confused debate, we ended up at the one restaurant on la Pointe Courte: a little diner that only served paella, a delicious seafood and rice dish. The restaurant made a huge cauldron’s worth each night, and patrons simply dished out of it. The ambience reminded me of Popeye’s (read: Poh-pay-es) Restaurant in Cozumel, Mexico…cracking white plaster walls with fluorescent lamps swinging each time the door opened and let in some sea breezes…the whole place stuffed with little kids and their families, all of whom knew each other and seemed to be gossiping about the neighborhood news…a chubby, mustached proprietor, who was exceedingly pleased to learn that his fine little establishment was host to a couple Americans… And the food was excellent. We bought Marion’s plate as a thank you for the great tour we’d had earlier that day, and retired to Raquel’s.

By this time the long hours of travel were catching up with us, and Jeanette was about to pass out on Raquel’s red bean-bag couch. Marion was still going strong, though, and try as we might, we couldn’t fully explain the concept that we were insanely tired because we’d been awake, with a few short breaks, since 8 a.m. the previous morning. Jeanette gave up and went to bed upstairs, but I felt compelled to keep Marion company—because Lord knows she wasn’t leaving of her own accord. As I sat on the couch, Marion busied herself by rearranging Raquel’s furniture and decorations…a strange habit, and I kept laughing uncomfortably and asking her what on earth she was doing. She kept insisting she was doing Raquel a favor by cleaning…Umm...Okay… Haha, so I eventually said I was going to head to bed, and she suggested I leave her our key to Raquel’s so she could finish cleaning and leave un cadeau, a present, for us in the morning. Much questioning and debate ensued, and with Jeanette’s agreement, we decided to leave her the key, and after she left she’d place it in the flowerbox for us to get in the morning. We figured we knew where she lived (right next door), so what was the worst that could happen?

In the morning we surveyed the living room, and found the place rearranged slightly…not too drastic, though, which was good. We didn’t know how we would have explained to Raquel that her neighbor was an ambitious Trading Spaces designer and that we could find no polite way to stop her—so thankfully it would be easy enough to replace everything before Raquel’s return. Marion stopped by that morning to bring us our present: a couple rolls of pain au chocolat. You guessed it: bread with chocolate baked into it. A great way to start off the day! We thanked her profusely, and she mentioned that her brother could drive us to the top of Mt. Saint-Clair, the giant hill in the middle of town. He was sleeping at the moment, though, so we instead asked for directions to the supermarket, and she showed us the way.

After returning to the flat and making up some excuse about taking a nap, Marion left…and Jeanette and I snuck out to town. We stopped at a bakery to buy half a baguette, and at a couple of different markets to buy a bottle of blush wine and a wedge of Brie cheese. Raquel had left us a couple of pastry pies, the specialty of Séte, and we journeyed to the sea for a picnic.

The tide was coming in, and as we sat on the breaker, the sea spray would splash all over us—and our food. It was beautiful, but not so conducive to eating. So we opted for a quiet seat along the interior harbor, listening to the boats’ masts clink and the water lapping at the hulls... The pies were delicious; a flaky crust that contained a fish and tomato mixture…the wine was mighty good, too, and we polished of a full bottle between the two of us. As we sat on our perch, some wandering locals called down to us from the street, shouting ‘Bon appétit!’…we laughed and waved, wishing them the same, and took a walk along the coast to the lighthouse. The day was greyer than the previous one, but at least it wasn’t raining. Jeanette filled the empty wine bottle with French sand and walked back home.

We stopped by Marion’s to see if her brother was up for a trip up the hill, but he wasn’t feeling so well (or so Marion said—Jeanette and I are pretty sure he’s just shy), so instead we walked around the neighborhood, weaving our among the narrow streets and walking along the quay, taking in the fishermen’s shacks, nets, and tackle, and breathing in the salty air.

Jeanette and I decided to stop back out at the grocery stores again, to search for some of those delicious chocolate waffles we’d discovered through Marion. We stopped in one store and asked the owner if he carried them, but he didn’t and told us the store down the road did. As we were walking back the way we’d come, the same shopkeeper was chatting in the streets with a friend in English. As we passed he joked with us a bit, and upon learning that we were American students, invited us into his shop to have a seat and visit for a bit. He asked me if I’d heard of Cassius Clay, and of course I had. He gleefully explained to me that he had the same name as Clay: Muhammad Ali. He even went out to his car to grab his ID card and prove it to us. It turns out our new friend was originally from Iran, but went to school in England and worked for GM in America, before moving to France for political asylum. He’d been owning the shop in Séte ever since, but he kept telling us to be careful of the people there, because they were very hot and cold, or as he said, ‘It’s my darling one day, and forget you the next.’ Apparently he wasn’t such a big fan of the French, and told us how much he loved Americans and the English. He ended up buying us a lovely lunch of pizza and Croque Monsieur from the eatery next door, and we sat in his store with him, watching French Agatha Christie television and comparing notes on our countries and cultures. He asked us back for coffee the next morning, and we agreed. After that, we returned to the flat, and Jeanette and I got ready to head out to Patrice’s…

Patrice lives on the other side of town, so it was quite a walk. We met up at his apartment—he has a really nice, rather large one—and then left almost immediately for the bar he wanted to show us. Called ‘Au Bout de la Rue’, it was a small place, full to bursting with locals. Since it was so busy inside, we decided to sit on one of the outdoor tables, and Patrice ordered mussels in garlic and olive oil (absolutely amazing) and a little bottle of regional white wine. We sat and chatted for a long time, and he told us about his time in Boston, and about how much fun America is. We laughed about the language differences, stereotypical Americans and Frenchmen, and even delved a little into politics. It was hilarious whenever Patrice couldn’t think of how to say a certain word or phrase in English; he’d screw up his face and smack himself on the forehead, and although we could tell he was very upset with himself for forgetting, we couldn’t help but laugh a little at his contriteness and self-deprecating ways. He would then mutter about how horrible he was at English, and we’d happily insist to him how marvelous his language skills were, and how glad we were that he understood us so well, and how compared to us, he was a multi-lingual genius…which seemed to buoy his sprits somewhat!

Patrice also had a tendency of becoming suddenly philosophical at the strangest moments, and Jeanette and I couldn’t help but laugh a little on the inside… It seemed so stereotypically French to us. I had no idea that the caricatures one sees in comedy sketches were based on any sort of reality, exaggerated or otherwise!

We were talking about Jeanette’s accident a long time ago where she smashed her finger in a doorjamb, and all were laughing heartily when Patrice mentioned that his grandfather shot off his two trigger fingers when he was a soldier during World War II, just so he could be spared the agony of war. Jeanette and I glanced at each other quizzically as Patrice stared at his fingers for a couple of solemn moments, the mood of revelry shortly broken, and we weren’t quite sure how to proceed. After a few minutes he broke out of his solemn reverie, and conversation continued as normal—but Jeanette and I still joke around about the awkward, oh-so-French moment. It’s like Robin Williams’ skit about the French, where he’s pretending to smoke a cigarette and cries ‘Life eez shit, get to know zees!’…only this was firsthand. Crazy.

We moved inside when it began to rain, and the bottles of white wine kept coming. Fortunately Patrice knew the owner of the bar, and since he’s such a regular patron, he didn’t have to pay for all the drinks. I also tried French beer, which Patrice warned would be bitter, but after drinking so many a pint of Guinness in my day, it would be hard for baking soda to taste bitter to me. There was a DJ in the back of the bar, but nobody was dancing. But when Dusty Springfield’s ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ came on, Jeanette and I couldn’t help but sing along a bit, and move to the music. Apparently the whole place caught on, because it seems in no time everyone was dancing and drinking and having a marvelous time. I danced with Patrice, accidentally broke a couple of wine glasses in an overambitious twirl, but after profuse apologies on my part and plenty of assurances that it was not big deal on the owner’s, we kept dancing the night away. Patrice said that in all the times he'd been there, he'd never seen everyone dancing like that--so apparently us American girls started the trend!  We closed the bar down, and afterwards found ourselves running in the flooded streets, rain pouring down in sheets, giggling like madmen as we made our way back to Patrice’s apartment.

He kindly let us borrow some pajama pants and his tumble dryer to make our jeans semi-wearable, and we spent the next few hours hanging out there, eating leftover fried calamari and potatoes, and playing each other songs on the guitar. He had two guitars, but wasn’t really good at playing them, so I tried my entire Bob Dylan repertoire on him and Jeanette, to no avail. We compared songs, and Patrice whistled some very intense, stirring renditions of French folk songs. Jeanette and I giggled on the inside…again. He was so into it; so intense about his whistling! We couldn’t help ourselves.

He had another ‘Patrice Moment’ (as we soon began calling them after we met him) when he mentioned that he believed a pimp lived on the story below him. Jeanette simply said, ‘Wow, that’s funny’, when he turned to look at her, saying ‘You know, I’ve thought about zees, and I don’t tink eet’s very funny.’ He continued on about how such relationships were negative and pointless, and how they didn’t really offer anything to the participants besides instant gratification, and how important was that, really, in life?  He sat and pondered that for a while… Jeanette and I were again dumbfounded at the sudden seriousness, and exchanged chagrined looks, but were beginning to recognize this as a standard course of conversation for our new friend. Rest assured that giggling ensued after we left the flat. Much giggling. So French.

And so after a bit more visiting and music, we retrieved our jeans, thanked him for his hospitality, and retired to Raquel’s. Thankfully the rain had died down somewhat, so we weren’t quite as soaked as we’d been earlier.

The next morning we didn’t wake up until late. It was dreary and raining outside, so we decided that walking up the endless stairs of Mt. Saint-Clair was a bad idea. We headed into town in the rain to meet up with Muhammad again. Apparently he had been expecting us at 8 am, but we showed up closer to noon. Alas, he’d already hit the wine bottle for the day, and was slightly tipsy (I guess they start early in France!). So as we were drinking tea and coffee, and eating our pastries, he was hitting on us, telling me that I was ‘very sexy’ today, and trying to get us to stay for lunch. The poor guy! It was a riot, but we thought it was time to leave, and after many thanks and goodbyes (as well as a too-long kiss on my cheek, which ended up being more of a nibble, hilariously) we parted ways. Yay me for reeling in the short, old Iranian men. Woo hoo.

The rest of the day was spent hanging out with Marion, and eventually we went out for dinner in town. We stopped at a café for a drink first, where I had a fruit juice and Jeanette partook of a hot chocolate, and then went on to dinner. Apparently that custom is pretty regular there: drink at one place first, then move on to another restaurant for food. We had delicious paninis and chips, and stopped at a bakery on the way home to pick up chocolate chip cookies for our couch surfing friends. It was the only ‘American’ thing we could think of to gift them with, since we’d both forgotten to bring anything with us from home to give as host gifts.

As we dropped Raquel’s cookies at her house, Marion invited us to meet her parents. So we stopped next door and were heartily welcomed in by her mother (a tiny, stout woman with a ruddy, happy face and crazily curled hair) and her father (tall, black haired gentleman with a moustache who was busily cooking mussels). They were happy to meet some Americans, and we all exchanged pleasantries and sat down at the kitchen table. We were offered salami and an interesting snack made of pork rinds and drippings—which was actually quite good. Conversation was stilted at first, until I complimented Marion’s mother on her wonderful murals. She burst forth with embarrassed thanks, and took us upstairs to see the other ones she’d painted. She even pulled out drawings she’d done as part of her hairdressing school’s curriculum, and we oohed and ahhed over each and every one. The father said I had I had an American face, a sort of ‘girl-next-door’ visage, and they all thought my accent was cute—much like American girls find British men’s accents to be cute. Marion and her mother joked around about the way I said ‘Pointe Courte’, and we all laughed together whenever we had to resort to hand gestures to get our points across. It was truly amazing, speaking with these people. I was completely exultant, because I realized I could understand everything they were saying, whether it was addressed to me or not! I’d remembered French! I was thinking in French, even! Quite a moment…

Afterwards, we called Patrice and asked if we could visit for a bit, and he agreed. So we walked over there only to find he’d just finished up a dinner party, and his guests were still lingering around the table. They were all smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, and no doubt talking about very philosophical things. I felt like I was peeking into one of the academic salons of centuries past, with their emotive hand gestures and ceaseless puffing. Jeanette and I lived in that hazy, otherworldly cloud for a few minutes, stupefied by their quickly spoken French. We didn’t want to intrude any more than we already had, though, so we gave Patrice his cookies (which he much appreciated), bid our farewells to his guests, and exchanged hugs and les bises (kiss-kiss on the cheeks) at the door before leaving.

Our weekend had been wonderful, and Jeanette and I fairly danced through the streets on the way back to Raquel’s, we were so happy. I honestly feel I experienced more local culture during that one weekend in France than I have so far during my entire month in England! Mainly because you’re so insulated from the locals here in London; when you live with people, in their homes, they take you in and show you around in a way that no Londoner passing you on the streets would dream of doing. I must say, couch surfing is quite a noble project! Bringing people of the world together, one couch at a time! Hahaha…

Anyways, Raquel called and said she wouldn’t be coming home until late that night, and we had to get some rest before our 4 a.m. wake up call. So we cleaned the flat a bit, and bid our farewells to Marion, thanking her for being such a good friend that weekend. And, of course, we exchanged phone numbers! When I my head hit the pillow, I was out like a light…until early, early morning, when it was time to get going and head to the gare. I said goodbye to the apartment, to the neighborhood, to the canals and sea and the countless fish in it. I said goodbye to Séte, turned my back, and headed down the road…

…Only to learn that the particular train we had planned on catching required tickets that could only be acquired by previous reservation… Alas, Jeanette and I decided to B.S. it, and use our old tickets from Montpellier to Séte in the ticket machine, hoping that if we were caught we could feign ignorance of the French language and pull the 'stupid tourist' card. So we snuck onto the TGV, and thankfully never were questioned. A pang of guilt came over me, but I’d rather feel a pang of guilt than be stuck in Séte and miss my flight!

And so we walked through Montpellier in the wee hours of the morning, eventually catching a bus to the airport, and taking a fitful nap before boarding at 8 that Monday morning. I bid farewell to France…a great country. Can’t wait to go back!

We landed at Stansted by 10:30, caught our bus to Victoria, and took the tube home just in time for a quick shower before I had to head to my first class of the week. Talk about cutting it close! Hahaha.

So here I am, home in London. Glad to be back, but sad to see vacation behind me. Ah well, there’s plenty to do here, too. In a couple weeks it’s off to Italy, and then my mom and sister are visiting after that. No lack of excitement here! Hope all’s well with you back home, or wherever you are.

On a final note…Morals of the story:

1. Couch surf whenever possible; you’ll see more of the local culture.

2. Even if you’re a bit rusty in a native language, give it a shot—you’ll remember more than you thought you would.

3. Avoid les bises with tipsy Iranian men. It’s generally just a bad idea. :)

Santé!