*Disclaimer: these are notes I wrote to myself on my iPhone while I was in Nice and Bordeaux for the week. They’re un-edited, so I apologize for the complete randomness that will ensue.
Saturday- So many uncircumcised penises on the beach today. Cool, Nice.
I forgot to buy a postcard from Nice. It was great though. Antoine was a great host and I was feeling very lonely on my first day there. I walked around when I arrived, extremely tired, lugging my large bag with me since he couldn’t meet me until later. Nice looks fake. Everything about it looks like it has come straight from a movie set. It can’t possibly be real.
I walked up to the panorama: completely exhausting! But the view is spectacular and everything you could dream of. I had ice cream two separate times and each time was fabulous. I forgot how great the ice cream is in France. I met Antoine in front of the church Rossetti and he took me to his place where he had the most comfortable couch! He left after introductions to go to a friends party that I declined to go to since I was so tired.
The next day we slept in a bit and went to the Matisse museum. It was a bit disappointing, but the building is incredibly beautiful and the grounds are ancient. There were the old baths that Nice is trying to restore next to the house which was incredible to see. We went back into town where Antoine went to take a nap and I visited the beach once again, walked along the pier, and took the lifts to the chateau. The views from the chateau were unreal. Everything about Nice was unreal.
That night Antoine and I met his friends at their apartment and had a Syrian dinner. It was fantastic. There were three French men, two Germans, and one Syrian and me. They had so many interesting stories to tell and one of the Germans, Patrick, has family from where I am from. Such a small world. After dinner and lots of wine, we went to a directors party in the city where one of the French boys had directed a film. The party was held in a place called La Station which was originally a slaughterhouse for animals. It was an interesting space and quite a lame party at first. Until we started to drink more wine and beer, and didn’t care that no one was dancing and started dancing ourselves which caused others to join us on the floor. The French take drunk white girl dancing to the extreme. There’s no stopping their movements. It’s hilarious and makes me seem like a halfway decent dancer, which I am not.
We decided to leave around 2 and had to take the city bikes back to town. I haven’t ridden a bike in years and it was so amazing and fun to ride in the streets at night with these boys who I hardly knew, but felt like I knew for a long time. Today I woke up late and showered. I was hungover and didn’t want to move. Antoine woke up around 1 and made us lunch while we watched Psycho by Hitchcock. He then left while I stayed indoors watching TV and generally being lazy on my last day in Nice.
I then rushed to the train station to catch my train to Bordeaux and got on the wrong train, and then had to rush to my correct train with only five minutes to spare. The overnight train was awful. Cold, loud. However, a nice man gave me a pillow to rest my head upon until his stop. And then at 8 in the morning, I arrived in Bordeaux. I was supposed to couchsurf here as well, but there was a lot of miscommunication with my host, so I ended up paying for a hotel which meant I spent a lot more money than I intended to.
Monday: I’m sitting in a movie theater in Bordeaux about to watch Insidious 2. As if the first one wasn’t bad enough, I’m going to watch the second one in French. I don’t like Bordeaux only because there is so much construction and I’m struggling with my French and don’t feel confident in myself to speak. I feel terribly lonely here and out of sorts a bit. I wish I could understand myself but right now I feel trapped in a bubble of longing for London. I can’t wait to leave Wednesday. I know I’m only making this trip worse by staying in my hotel room and moping, but it’s also nice to just have peace and quiet and no one around. Travel makes you realize things about yourself, well, traveling alone. And I realized that I’m scared a lot of the time and I need to work on that. I also like sharing experiences with people because reiterating what you’ve done with people who haven’t experienced it is difficult. It’s been nice getting away from London for a week, but I’m ready to be back in my city.
Things I noticed while in Bordeaux: there is dog shit everywhere. You always have to watch your feet and where you place them when you’re stepping because it might land in a big pile. The buildings and architecture remind me of Paris a lot and being here made me miss Paris because Paris is better. Obviously. I love Paris and the haughty tourists and workers at the restaurants because they didn’t ask questions that you didn’t know how to answer. I spent the majority of my time inside my hotel room watching shitty YouTube videos to pass the time and sleeping in the heat.
I met four nice boys from Texas on a mission trip here. They wore nice suits and had a bible in their hands when they were trying to help me find the correct bus to take back to the airport. I miss people. The thing I’ve learned the most while traveling by myself is that I’m more conscious of where I place myself and my belongings. I’m more aware and more cautious. I’ve learned that I need to be more in control and take charge because I skipped eating since I feared embarrassing myself with my broken French. I can speak it and I can understand it, but I get so uncomfortable when I don’t know how to say something. I hate that, so I chose the vending machine in my hotel room over getting a nice sandwich from the place across the street.
I did buy some great face washes and other cleansers from the pharmacy that I’m really excited to try out. The beauty bloggers rave about it, and now it’s my turn to have nice skin. Hopefully. It’s been bad since I landed in Nice on Friday. Bordeaux was full on construction and I couldn’t go into places because of it which was aggravating and defeated the purpose of my trip. Paris made me fall in love with France, so did Nice. Bordeaux took that away from me. If only for a moment. But, now I’m seeing it from a bus. All the little parts that I missed because my feet were too tired to walk. I’m seeing the people rush around and friends kissing each other on the cheeks (so much kissing!) and I realized its beautiful in a way, because let’s all admit France is a beaut, but it’s beautiful in a way that I couldn’t see because I was blinded by the construction and fatigue. I’m sorry I judged you too quickly, Bordeaux.
I missed London desperately. I missed being able to communicate freely and walk quickly and generally be around the one place that felt like home in a long time. I speak French but not well. I can understand it a lot more than I can speak it, so whenever someone who speak with me, I would stand there aloofly trying to figure out the correct way to say something and end up sprouting out English words at them much to their and my dismay. And now I’m back in London, in the tube where everyone avoids eye contact and people talk in hushed whispers and I can finally breathe a sigh of relief. How much I’ve missed this place.
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