Let's back it up a bit

...and go back two weekends to when I went adventuring in the south of France.

So. Looooong story but basically some of my friends had planned a trip down to the south and I begged to come along and they very graciously acquiesced. But because this was a popular travel weekend (four-day weekend for Ascension, the weekend of the Grand Prix, first weekend of the Cannes Film Festival) I couldn't find any trains to Menton, the town where we'd be staying. (The others had had a hard enough time finding trains, and they'd prepared well in advance of me.) So I was all bummed and thinking I'd have to figure out something else to do, when I had a stroke of genius. I found a map of train routes and started looking up trains to other towns in the same general direction, but not nearby, and then trains from those smaller cities to Menton. And as luck would have it, there was a train from Lyon to Orange around 7 am, and then another from Orange to Menton at 1 pm! (Sure, I'd have to transfer at both Marseilles and Nice, but whatever. I was gonna get there!) This plan would get me into Menton around 6:45 pm, and I'd get to explore Orange. Awesome!

That Thursday morning I woke up feeling not so great, rushed out of the house to the train station, made it in time, and went up to the platform at 7:20 to catch the 7:25 train. At 7:25, the station randomly decided to move the train to a different platform, so we all schlepped over there and then waited another 10 minutes for the train. When it finally arrived, I settled in happily (albeit still headache-y). I was on my way! (Little did I know that that would be the smallest travel problem of the day.)

I arrived in Orange absolutely starving, so I bought a pain au chocolat (croissant with chocolate in it) for 80 cents. It was still warm from the oven - awesome! Then I kind of explored the town - there was a market, so I walked around there for awhile, then I visited Orange's Arc de Triomphe. Now before you go thinking, "Hey, Orange, quit copying Paris and get your own damn monument," I should tell you that Orange's Arc de Triomphe is roughly 800 years older than Paris's. It's from Roman times and was built to honor the victims of the Gallic Wars. (Thanks, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory on all that.)

The Arc de Triomphe in Orange.

After my trek out of town, I made my way back in to visit the Roman theater. Now by this point in my travels, I've seen a pretty fair amount of Roman ruins, and after awhile it's just like, Okay, here's another pile of rocks that used to be something important. It's really sad, but I've started to take stuff like that for granted a little bit. But this was FANTASTIC. The Roman theater in Orange is one of the best-preserved in the world (arguably THE best preserved in all of Europe), and is one of only three Roman theaters that still has its behind-the-stage wall intact. (The other two are in the Middle East.) The theater was, in short, really impressive and the audio tour was really good, too. That's how I learned this fun fact: See the statue in the alcove on the wall in the picture below? That's the statue of the emperor, put there to remind the people of Orange who was boss (since they were a conquered town). Even cooler? The statue's head was removable, so you could switch it out for another emperor later on down the road. Gotta hand it to those Romans, they were always thinkin'.


I spent a lot of time at the Roman theater (including a lot of time lying on the seats with my eyes shut and my head resting on my travel bag, listening to the audioguide and hoping my headache would disappear soon), so I made only a quick pass through the art museum across the street (my ticket covered both). I wasn't all that impressed anyway. Even though it was still a bit early, I decided to head to the train station. (It was a little outside of the center of town and I didn't want to get lost and be late, although it was fairly easy to find.) I was getting hungry again so I bought a croissant at the same bakery on the way back out of town, as the only other food around was at sit-down restaurants and I really didn't have time for that.

I got to the train station about 40 minutes before my train was set to leave, sat down with a book, and waited. And waited. And then waited some more, because my train was late. This was a bit of a bummer, but no big deal, since I had half an hour to make my connection at Marseilles. I'd been planning on getting some real food then, but if I had to wait until I got to Menton, so be it. (Nice would be a no-go for food-getting since I only had 10 minutes to make my connection.) The train finally pulled in and we set off. I slept a little bit and my head felt a little better. But then we remained stopped in one station for a long time. And then when we set off again, it was really slow going. And then we stopped again before backing up back into the station, where we then sat for the next ten minutes. Long story short: I was definitely going to miss my train from Marseilles to Nice, and I had no idea when the next one would be. Luckily, the conductor announced that there would be another train from Marseilles to Nice leaving at 3:57 pm (half an hour later than the original train). Thank God! Another woman in the compartment with me got out her cell phone to call someone and tell them she was going to be late, since she'd be taking the 3:57 train instead of the original one. Perfect, I said to myself. I'll just follow her.

Which is exactly what I did. We got to Marseilles and I creepily trailed this woman onto the train to Nice. I sat across the aisle from her and breathlessly asked, "Est-ce que c'est le train à Nice?" ("Is this the train to Nice?")

"J'espère que oui," she replied. ("I hope so.") We got to talking a little after that (I managed to carry on a conversation! With a stranger! In French! Hurrah!). Turns out she was going to Cannes to see her father, who was in the hospital, and she was dreading trying to get around the town with all the festival craziness. I told her I was from the US, near Boston, and she said she'd been there once and it was a nice city. She was also a student at Lyon, she said, "a long time ago," and I told her I was loving it but that I was really looking forward to meeting my friends for a weekend off...if I could make it there.

We sat in the train. 3:57 came and went. Then 4. Then 4:30. Then 4:45. Finally, we pulled out of the station at about five past five. RIDICULOUS. I was not pleased with the SNCF, although I hid it better than the guy sitting across from me, who muttered disgustedly every so often and scoffed at the conductor's apologies over the PA system.

So on we went. At least it was a pretty ride. Menton is in the Alpes-Maritimes area, which is exactly what it sounds like: The Alps come right down to the Mediterranean coast. This is so bizarre for me, because when I think of the Mediterranean I think of warm breezes and soft summery evenings and palm trees and generally a more let's-live-it-up kind of atmosphere, while the Alps conjure up images of skiing, quaint mountain towns, Heidi and her grandpa in a mountain cottage somewhere, and Julie Andrews twirling around in a field warbling, "The hiiiillllllllllllls are aliiiiiiiiiiiiiive with the sound of muuuuuuusiiiiiiiiiic!" The Alps, in my head, are traditional. Cozy. Straightlaced. The Mediterranean is more free-wheeling and fun. Thus the whole idea of the Alps and the Mediterranean together kind of messed with my mind a little bit. (And maybe made me realize that I was basing all my assumptions on stereotypes from movies I only half paid attention to.)

We had another random, stupid period of being stopped somewhere between Antibes and Nice, but at least the view was a lot nicer than it had been at the Marseilles train station. I finally made it to Nice, checked the board, and saw that another train to Menton wouldn't leave for the next 40 minutes. I sighed. Just my luck. I was supposed to have been in Menton for like an hour at this point, not just barely making it in to Nice. Stupid SNCF. I picked up a refund request envelope (if the train's more than 30 minutes late, you're entitled to a full refund for your ticket), but I don't think I have all the proper paperwork to actually obtain said refund. Again, I say: STUPID SNCF.

I went to the Relay store (the convenience store that's in basically every train station or airport) and bought dinner, aka Pims cookies. (I'd never had them before, and I stand by my decision to make them my dinner. I want some Pims right now. RIGHT NOW.) I bought a bottle of water from a cafe kiosk thing, and then realized that there was actually a train to Menton leaving in the next minute and a half, so I booked it to the platform, settled myself in, and inhaled about six Pims before I managed to slow down enough to chug 3/4 of the water bottle (the first liquid I'd had all day). Made it into Menton, got lost on the way to the hostel, walked up a gigantic hill (the wrong hill), walked back down the hill, got not-terribly-enlightening directions from the hostel worker my friends put me on the phone with when I called them, managed to figure out, based on said directions, the right way, walked up another giant hill, and arrived at the hostel, hot, sweaty, gross, and exhausted. (But not hungry because I'd just eaten about 12 Pims.) The hostel put me in a different room than the other girls, but Nayab and Kelly and Amanda talked to the guy and he agreed to put me in with them for the night, but said I'd have to move the next day since someone else would need my bed. Whatever, it was better than nothing. A few minutes later he told us he'd worked it out so I could stay in that bed both nights. Excellent.

We headed outside to sit around and chat and snack at one of the picnic tables, and we were joined by Yoshi, a guy the others had met before I got there. He was from Japan and was traveling through Europe for awhile, so it was really interesting to talk to him and hear about what he was up to. Then we were joined by a guy named Jeff who'd just moved back to France from Geneva. (Before that, he was living in Antarctica, working at recording, I think, seismic and geothermal measurements. Cool!) That's what I really like about traveling, particularly in hostels: you get to meet all kinds of people and learn all kinds of stuff. It's really fascinating.

We sat around for quite awhile, which was fun, but eventually I was getting tired and still feeling gross from my travel day, so I took a shower and went to bed (as did Kelly and Amanda, although Jake and Nayab stayed out for quite a bit longer and ended up sleeping outside for awhile before having to climb over the gate to get back into the hostel, since they'd forgotten their key. Oh, adventures.)

I would go on further, but a.) my laptop has 4 minutes of battery life left, and b.) I have a crapload of stuff to get done before Monday, when my last week of classes (!!!) begins. If I get enough work done, maybe I'll write some more later.