I wrote this all out once and went to hit publish but accidentally closed it without publishing it. Needless to say I became excruciatingly bitter towards the story in general and have had a bias against writing it again so this may not be the most well thought out or well written blog entry to date (not that they are all that well written in the first place).
I came home from the country on a Friday and spent several days with my friends. A couple nice nights out, some shopping and sushi eating with Augusta, Annie and their mom and then some casual evenings spent at WOS. On August 7th, my last friend, Morgan, left Paris. I am in the city of lights, alone. The next day, the teenager flew home from Texas and her dad was driving her to the beach to meet with the rest of the family and he asked if I wanted to tag along. Sure! I love the ocean, why not? I spent 3-4 days at a beach house in Sarzeau in the west of France just relaxing, reading and laying on the beach and generally not doing anything too strenuous.
Let it be known that laying in a hammock with a 4 year old never ends well. I was laying in the hammock, reading a book, and up walks A, asking me what I'm doing and telling me that he really likes my dress. Before I could even thank him for liking my dress he bounds up into the hammock and the next 5 minutes become a balancing act that I ultimately end up losing. Before I know it I am face down on the ground and I've lost my spot in my book. But if that's the worst thing to happen to me all of vacation, I can't really complain.
Also while at the beach there was apparently a meteor shower. JP took me outside to show me the stars and JC came with. JP set me up with a lawn chair and pointed me in the direction of the big dipper. The two men then began telling me everything about stars. Plus, I don't know if you were aware, the French know EVERYTHING.
When I got back to Paris (after many disbelieving looks from the children, YOU ONLY STAYED 4 days! THAT'S NOT A VACATION) I was greeted by the family from Texas who was staying in the host families apartment. Let me tell you, they are some of the nicest people you will ever meet. They asked my recommendation for a side trip out of Paris. I told them I had only ever been to the west of France but it was gorgeous and there were a lot of nice things to do there, so they asked more and I ran upstairs to grab all the pamphlets that Papi had gotten me at the office of tourism (Papi saves the day again). Midway through helping them plan the trip they just stop and invite me along. I politely decline because I don't have enough money to travel with them and they won't take no for an answer and tell me that of course they would pay for everything. Not a single one of them spoke French so I would be doing them a favor by going along.
I agree and it's settled. We plan the following: train to Nantes, spend the day in Nantes, stay the night at a hotel in Nantes, take a boat down the river to St. Nazaire, spend a night in St Nazaire, take a train to La Baule for a day at the beach and then take the train back to Paris after the day at the beach.
We get up the morning we are supposed to leave, head to the train, I get us tickets, we get on the train and we make our way to my second favorite city in France. We get off the train and someone hands me a map and all of the sudden I am Tour-Guide Barbie. I am in charge of getting us to our hotel. Anyone who knows me knows that I couldn't navigate my way out of a paper bag that has an arrow pointing to the exit. I eventually do get us to the hotel, it's not too bad, we drop our stuff and then proceed to wander Nantes, I show them all the cool cute things that I liked from my first trip and they generally really like it there. We stop in at the tourism office to buy tickets for the boat. They tell us that all of the boat tours for the rest of the season had been cancelled. Strike one as a tour guide. Aw crud what are we supposed to do now?
No big deal, we will just take a train from Nantes to St. Nazaire. We go shopping for a little bit, stop and get some food and some ice cream and then head back to the hotel. We get up, have breakfast and then take a train to St. Nazaire. Again, we get off the train and somehow I am the tour guide again except this time I have NEVER BEEN TO THIS CITY and iPhone maps decided it hated me and switched off. I apparently took us a ridiculously "un-scenic" and round about way to get to our hotel, but eventually we made it. We spend a little time exploring, seeing some cute things, shopping, generally just hanging out. We get so lost on the way back from dinner that I have to stop and ask for directions 5 times, and of course, I was leading us in the completely wrong direction. I cried. Strike 2 as a tour guide. The next day is a bank holiday so we planned on going to the beach since everything was going to be closed.
We wake up and it's rainy. Crap. Everything is going to be closed today since it's a bank holiday. Double crap. I don't feel well. Triple Crap. We had a train ticket to get to the beach and needed to buy one to get home from the beach. The ticket office was closed and the machines don't work with American credit cards. So much crap, everything is crap. I am the worst tour guide in the universe. Strikes 3,4 &5. This is the point where the family from TX begins to call me 'Frommers' after the tour guide company/guide books. This family is still so nice, they do not worry about anything and tell me everything will be fine.
We go to the beach anyway. We get there and stop at a little coffee shop to use the internet and try to figure out when/how we can buy train tickets back to Paris. We had bought a deal in St. Nazaire 5 people can travel any TGV train in the Loire Valley for 48 hours for like 50 euro total. This ticket would unfortunately not get us all the way back to Paris and we wouldn't have to mess with the machines that wouldn't take our cards or the ticket booths that weren't open. Brainstorm. We are at a loss. We go back into the ticket office of the train station and by god, it is open. We have left our luggage in St. Nazaire at the hotel so that we wouldn't have to worry about taking it and dragging it all over the beach so we need to find a train from La Baule to St Nazaire then from St Nazaire to Paris. This is absolutely impossible for less than 600 euro for all of us and without us having only an hour to spend at the rainy beach. Strike 6. Why are things never normal in my life? We all pool our ideas and decide to take a later train back to St. Nazaire, book the hotel for one more night and enjoy the time we have at the beach and take the train back to Paris the following day.
We buy the tickets, make the hotel reservation again and I am not joking, the sun comes out of the sky. We walk towards the beach and I see people walking around. I start to look around and I realize against all odds that it's a bank holiday, stores are open! If it starts to rain again, we have something to do! We walk along the beach for quite a while and collect shells. My favorite is a tiny little pink one. It's gorgeous and sunny and I am wearing a cute new jean jacket that the family from Texas bought me as a thank you for helping them. (I know what you're thinking... a jean jacket? What is this 1996? But its so cute and very stylish here...so shut up). We sit down to lunch at a gorgeous little restaurant where the people were so nice and the food was so delicious, we then shop for a while and take a train home and everyone is happy. We go back to the hotel, the concierge points us in the direction of a cute little creperie for dinner and everyone is even happier.
We take the train back to Paris the next day with zero problems. The night we get back, the family tells me that they bought tickets with a tour company to go to Versailles and then to Giverney and they ask if I would like to go along with them as well. I make them swear that it's not an inconvenience and they do, so I agree.
We hop on the little tour bus that drives us to Versailles and I spend the morning obsessing (as always) over Marie Antoinette, my most favorite French person ever. It's a beautiful day, it's hot, the castle is PACKED and then all of the sudden it's time to go to Giverney where Monet lived.
It's a cute short little bus ride to the most beautiful place I've ever seen. Monet saw the house from a train and decided he had to buy it, so he went back as soon as he could and bought the house. He started to design the gardens and laid them out however he wanted with all sorts of foreign plants. There are two sections; a water section and a flower section and I can't even begin to describe how gorgeous it was. You could also go inside his house, which I didn't have enough time to do but absolutely plan on doing when I go back. His house was partially destroyed during the 2nd World War so friends of Monet who were living helped the government redecorate and rebuild the house just as it was when he lived there. Which I think is soooo neat.
We go home and hang out for the next few days. I take them places around Paris that they wanted to see, I babysit the girls so the adults could have a nice night out, and then they left. I then spent the next 5-7 days doing absolutely nothing besides eating pasta, watching a ridiculous amount of Arrested Development, and waiting for the new girls to get here so I could make friends.
STEVE HOLT!!!
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