On Monday, August 18th, we journeyed across the
Italian border into my favorite country, ever:
FFFFRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNCE.
If France were a man, I would marry him.
If France were a weather pattern, it would be 75 degrees and
sunny with rainbows every day.
If France were a type of food, it would be the best organic
pistachio ice cream made from free-range cows ever tasted.
Jessica: “If France were a fruit, it would be the apple of
my eye.”
Anyways.
I don’t quite understand why
I love France so much. I just do. I just
love it – the food, the people, the culture, the countryside, the rich
history, the language. To those who don’t know, I have been studying French now
for eight years, and last year I interned in the French Alps through a cultural
immersion program offered by my university. It was during those six weeks in
July and August that I decided to change my French minor to a major. Now, here
I am, about to study in the country for an entire academic year.
Clearly, I am addicted.
Jessica and I began our French travels in the beautiful,
beach-y tourist trap that is Nice. We tanned, swam, ate goat cheese and baguette,
and drank wine while watching the sun set on the horizon.
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| "Nice is sooo nice." |
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| The tankini goddess. |
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| Big sunglasses are all the thing now, right?? |
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| Baguette, wine, and cheese on the shore. |
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| C'est la vie. |
From Nice, we traveled along the coast to the ocean city of Marseille.
Originally, we were expecting to stay in Marseille for three days, continue to
darken our tans and watch beautiful European men emerge out of the water in
tight black swim trunks. Evidently, however, the Fates had a different plan for
us. While this plan did not include beaches, a clean hostel within walking
distance of the shoreline, and fabulous seafood, it did include bed bugs, a completely imaginary hostel that has the
incredibly ability to disappear whenever it hears that Dani and Jessica are
coming to visit, and the Ghetto.
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| The only picture I got of Marseille... from the train station. |
Now, we don’t know when Jessica was first bitten by bed
bugs, but we can basically assume that they kept her company in her bed in
Florence just a few days previous to our voyage to Marseille (luckily, I was
able to evade the buggers until we got to Barcelona about a week later – now we
both are covered in enormously angry, red, itchy spots. More on this later).
Nevertheless, it was around the time that our travel plans went to hell in
France that her bites began itching with a vengeance.
We exited the train station as per usual – both of us
hungry, hot, and Jessica itchy – and immediately jumped on the metro to get off
at the designated stop indicated in our hostel booking. Ten minutes later, we
left the metro to discover that we were not only hell and back from the beach,
but also leagues away from Marseille’s city center. We emerged into a new land,
a land of graffiti, dirty condoms stuck on the road, creepy street side markets,
rundown apartment buildings, noisy highways, and very, very questionable
individuals. Only slightly disheartened at this point, we followed our
handy-dandy MapQuest directions uphill, backpacks pressing down upon us and the
sun a constant reminder of our close proximity to the Equator.
Twenty minutes later, after finally reaching the little blue
“you have arrived” dot mocking us on Jessica’s iPhone… we had not arrived.
The hostel was nowhere to be found.
It literally did not exist.
Hopelessly and entirely disheartened, we wandered up and
down the road, desperately searching for the hostel…to no avail. I don’t know
how long it took us to turn around and head back down the hill, but a quick
conversation with a local confirmed what we believed all along: that the hostel
was an invisible hoax, taunting us with its previous lies of shelter and
comfort.
Sad, dejected little cartoon characters once more, we made
the long trek back down the hill, miserably piled ourselves into the metro, and
unhappily returned to the train station. It was there where we realized that
our hostel booking in Marseille had been mysteriously cancelled and the hostel
itself had completely vanished from the hostel booking website.
WHAT.
Less than an hour later, we had booked a private hotel room
in an air-conditioned, three-star hotel in the heart of Aix-en-Provence and
were on the first train out of Marseille we could find.
Tuesday, August 19th
Tuesday through Friday was spent primarily eating.
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| Quiche made with goat cheese and honey, paired with un café. |
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| Le Fondant au Chocolat. |
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| And the classic Tarte Tatin. |
Other activities included watching and making fun of
Twilight, as well as a hike in the mountains of the Concours.
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| Have you ever seen water so blue? |
Also, posing on one of many of the city’s fountains.
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| It's the inside that counts, right? |
Looking back on it, our disastrous change of plans in
Marseille was a happy accident. We had a great, relaxing time in
Aix-en-Provence, with only one problem – Jessica’s skin was still erupting with
red, angry spots. Itchy and grumpy, she thought
she was just having an allergic reaction.
Then, we got to Barcelona, and realized that we were being
eaten alive.
Friday, August 22nd
What a first night in Barcelona. We both had really wanted
to go out dancing for a long while now, so we said, “Where’s better to party
than Barcelona!?”
So, we headed out the door… and it immediately started
pouring cats and dogs.
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| Smiling through the sudden downpour! |
Running through puddles and getting soaked to the bone, we
made our slow way to the club, running from awning to awning and laughing the
whole way. We arrived at the club to find that the dance floor wasn’t even open
– at 11! Little did we know, at the
time, that Spanish people don’t actually go out until two o’clock in the
morning. After much Sangria, sitting, and talking with our new friends Chloe
and Simon, the dance floor finally opened up and we fulfilled our legs’ needs
to jam.
The next morning, the spots came. They started on my right
foot, but as the day went on, they began appearing up both my legs, on my arms,
and my back. That evening, I realized what was happening: we were being
attacked in our sleep. Our previous theories about allergic reactions or
contagious skin diseases evaporated – all that was left was our horrified recognition
that our beds were infested with blood-sucking parasites.
Bed bugs are a traveler’s nightmare. Nocturnal, they only
become active at night. While you’re sleeping, they bite you, releasing a
chemical that makes you unaware that you are even being bitten. Sucking your blood, they often leave linear trails of
“breakfast, lunch, and dinner” bites along your skin… or, in my case, many of
them can sit in one concentrated area on your skin and attack you at once,
creating an angry, red cluster of bumps instead of a trail. They get in your
clothes, your bag, and accompany you wherever you go if you’re not careful
enough to eradicate their spread. Jessica must have had them in her bed in
Florence… then, we had them in both our beds in Barcelona. I was able to find
one early this morning before it quickly escaped into the darkness of the bed
folds once more.
We tried to spend the rest of our time in Barcelona the best
we could, eating many tapas, taking part in a walking tour of the city, and
seeing the Sagrada Familia. We thought staying busy would keep our mind off the nasty bites.
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| Tapas are basically mini meals that you can mix and match. |
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| Yay Spain! |
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| Sooo weird. It's almost as if there was an original church, but that church started growing rock fungus all over itself. |
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| Thanks to Gaudi for this amazing piece of art! |
Jessica’s purse was then stolen. Luckily, her passport and
Eurail pass were not in it, but she lost two credit cards and her driver’s
license, as well as 50 euro.
And our bites continue to get more and more itchy as time
passes.
At this point in time, we are both very uncomfortable and a
little low from the most recent theft. This week has been pretty hard for both
us, but we are trying to keep our spirits high as we make our way through
Madrid to our final travel destination: Paris. Traveling is certainly fun, but
life tends to throw its curveballs at you no matter where you are in the world.
I know we will get through this, but cross your fingers that our bites heal properly
and that no more robbery or bed bugs will be in our future. Until then, we must carry on!!!
With that, I leave you another Lord of the Rings reference.
Love,
D
