One Hell of a Weekend

I thoroughly enjoyed Marseille, France. The trip was absolutely perfect and everything I expected, although we got to a rough start…

We had a girl’s night the night before, which was a bad idea knowing you had a 6:45am train to catch the next morning. I disregarded this because we said we would be back by a decent hour, but, of course, this didn’t happen. We went to La Plage for a bit, and then me and a few girls left and headed to the dance club, Smile. I had a good night full of dancing. I think I got back around 3am and headed straight for bed.

The next morning, while half asleep, I hear my phone ringing, but I didn’t comprehend that it was ringing. On the third call to me, I finally wake up and answer the phone. It was Rebecca asking if I was awake and ready to leave for the station and that she had been banging on Hannah’s door to no avail to wake up. I realize it is 6am, and we had planned to leave then, so I threw on some clothes and got my already (thankfully) packed bag and ran upstairs. I find Rebecca in Hannah’s room, and she is scrambling to pack as well. We leave ten minutes later and start fast walking to the station. It was, of course, drizzling and miserable outside. We half run and walk as fast as possible to the station. We got pretty spread apart, me in the lead, and I was worried we wouldn’t all stay together. At point we are running and these French guys start yelling and encouraging (maybe?) us, and I just ignored them slightly embarrassed. We were pushing the time pretty bad, so when we finally got to the station, I just ran up the escalator leaving Hannah behind with Rebecca close by. I quickly figure out what line our train is on and run towards it to find we have two minutes to get on. I quickly get on and look for Rebecca and Hannah. Rebecca comes down, but she doesn’t know where Hannah is, so we scramble to find her yelling her name, but to no avail. We are freaking out because we don’t want to miss the train, but at the same time we don’t want to leave Hannah. I was worried we would miss the train, so we finally hop on board hoping Hannah made it on somehow. Finally the doors close and the train starts moving, and we sit down at the first seat we can find, and finally everything sets in: Hannah isn’t with us, and we don’t know where she is.

Me and Rebecca were freaking out and gasping for air not knowing what to do. We eventually figure out we need to be in voiture 18, and we were in like voiture 2, so we start heading down the train. I ask a man in some uniform how to get to 18 and he singles and speaks a little English that there are two trains, so we have to get off at the next stop and run ahead to get on the other one because the entire train isn’t connected. At the first stop, we do as we are told and start running for the train ahead, but we didn’t know how long it would be stopped, so we got on the same train we were already on because we didn’t want to stay outside for too long. At the next stop we start running for the next train again, and this conductor guys starts yelling at me, but I ignore him hopping onto the train with Rebecca behind me. He catches Rebecca and I hesitate to turn around, but I do, and he motions for our tickets. He gives is this awful and annoyed look, and I knew he would start yelling in French at us, and I just couldn’t take it. However, he leads us to the snack stand, and I give him all three of our tickets (I had Hannah and Rebecca’s tickets ( Lesson learned to never do that again), and he asks about Hannah. I say she missed the train, and then I tell him we are Loretta and Rebecca. He then gets on his cell phone and starts writing down information about a new train for Hannah, and explains all this to us with the help of a snack stand lady who spoke English.

I am pretty much dumbfounded at this point because this man was pissed at us one minute and then gets a train for Hannah the next minute. We thank him, and finally find our seats utterly exhausted. I call Bryan and Wittney and ask them if they have seen Hannah, and they hadn’t, but I tell them to relay the message about her new train. Hannah calls me on Wittney’s phone a few minutes later an explains her side of the story. She told me that she had got to our train with a few minutes to spare and ran on, but a guy pulled her arm and asked for her ticket. She didn’t have it because I did, and he wouldn’t let her on. She told them her friends had it, but he didn’t believe her. She had to watch the train leave her behind, which must have been completely awful. She said she then threw a huge fit and cried asking for help on what to do, and the guy was a complete asshole and was just laughing and being no help. She said she eventually got help from a man named Philip, who figured everything out for her. She went with him to the train operating room, and they got her a train.

We think the man who found us knew that there were a group of girls who had been split up, and he must have guessed it was me and Rebecca and that’s how he arranged a train so quickly because the train station already knew about the situation. Anyway, Hannah got a train that landed three hours after ours, so we made plans to come get her at the Marseille train station when she got in.

After we had figured everything out, me and Rebecca could finally relax and enjoy the train ride. I just dozed, read, and listened to music the whole way. The ride was very beautiful, and I enjoyed seeing the countryside of France. By 12:30pm, we got to Marseille, and it felt so warm and nice right when we walked out. We walked through the train station, which was pretty and it had trees inside it! I thought that was cool. When we exited the train station, we were up on a hill, so we were above the city. The view was gorgeous. I could see the mountains in the background, some of the city, and this really pretty building up on one of the mountains. We walked down a lot of stairs and were finally in the city. I had written down directions to the hotel, and we figured out how to get there pretty easily. It turns out our hotel was like a 10 minute walk from the station, and I had no idea it would be so close. We stayed at the Hotel Lutetia, which was a nice hotel. Our room had one double bed and a bathroom, and the bed turned out to be extremely comfortable.

After we checked in, our mission was to find food, so we explored the city a little bit and found the main strip to the harbor. We walked up and down it, and eventually found a sandwich place and I got a poulet baguette, which yummy. We then walked to the harbor, and I was trying to find a beach just to look at it. We start walking down this road for probably a mile, and then we turn around because we didn’t really know how long it would take. We decided to head to a tourism office, and I got a free map and directions on how to take the bus to the beach. It was time to go get Hannah at that point, so we headed back to the station and met up with her. We caught up on our crazy mornings and apologized for everything that had happened. We took Hannah to the hotel (which was a little sketch since there were only supposed to be two people in our room), and then head to the beach with the directions we got earlier.

The bus ride was relatively easy. We had done some research on beaches in Marseille and knew la Plage du Prado was the best, so our goal was to find that somehow. We eventually did find it and got off the right bus stop. The beach was in a park, so we crossed over some grassy fields and then found the beach! It didn’t have sand, but instead little, smooth pebbles. I hate sand, so I really liked the pebbles. We got there around 5pm, so we decided to stay until the sun went down. The water was a really pretty aqua greenish color, but it was also a little colder than expected. We didn’t get fully into the ocean until the next day since we weren’t very hot with the setting sun.

We had a few experiences with guys approaching us on the beach. The first guy was dressed up in a Superman costume, wearing bunny ears, and had whiskers painted on his face. He starts talking in French to us kneeling down, and we eventually tell him we speak English. He then tells us he is getting married in three weeks, so he was doing this scavenger hunt type thing , which I guess was a part of his bachelor party. He needed to get a girl to put lipstick on and kiss him on the cheek. We told him we only had chap stick, but he said that was good enough. Rebecca and Hannah volunteered me to do it, so I got to kiss a French guy in a Superman suit! He was cute, so I didn’t mind haha. We then had some awkward guy kneel down to us and start talking in French to himself. I just started laughing because it was so awkward because we weren’t saying anything. Hannah eventually asks what he wants, and we got him to go away. We then had these two French guys approach us and they were excited we spoke English. They were trying to get us to stay in Marseille longer and hang out with them, but we eventually got them to go away too.

At this point we left the beach. I was getting a little sketched out. We saw more beaches and a Ferris wheel in the distance, so we headed over there. We found a cool part of the neighborhood with restaurants and sandy beaches. We decided to ride the Ferris wheel to take some pictures of the beautiful scenery, and I enjoyed that. The area was so pretty. My favorite part were the mountains in the background. I just thought it was cool to have beautiful ocean right next to the mountains. We then took the bus back to Vieux Port (the harbor) and then walked home. We went out again for dinner and got some pizza, and we then called it a night and headed home for bed. I had a good night’s sleep in that bed! It was so comfortable even piling three girls in there!

We headed back to the beach with the Ferris wheel the next morning, and laid out for a while. We got in the water this time, and it was pretty cold, but me and Hannah just dove in. I wanted to say I have swam in the Mediterranean! The water was so cold that my feet went numb, so I took a quick dip and went to lay in the sun again. We had lunch at a Mexican restaurant, and I had a quesadilla with salmon and cream cheese. I have never heard of that before, but I enjoyed it. We went back to the pebble beach, and by the time we got out there it was mid-afternoon, so it was extremely hot. We ended up sitting in the water most of the time, so we could cool down. By the time it was 3:30pm, we had to leave, so we could have enough time to catch the train at 5pm. Our journey back to the station went smoothly. I got some postcards and dinner for later along the way.

Boarding the train went smoothly as well. I was thankful to take my time loading onto the train with Hannah. It was nice not been stressed out and running around! Our train ride went well too. I relaxed, dozed, listened to music, and read again. However, at one point there were these two French guys being very loud and obnoxious and drinking beer behind us. They were making farting noises and laughing hysterically. We went to the snack bar to get dinner with Hannah and were gone for 45 minutes. I headed back to our seats before the other girls to get some sweat pants, and the lady sitting with us starts talking in French to me. I said I spoke English and then she hands me a small piece of paper with phone numbers on it. I first thought the train station was trying to contact me about something because of all that had happened yesterday. I then realize it’s the numbers of those guys behind us. I run back to Rebecca and Hannah and tell them what happened. I didn’t really know what to think, except really? How many guys have bombarded us this trip? We go back to our seats a few minutes later, and we have a broken conversation with the French lady. She asks where we study and what we study, and I managed to say a few things to her! I was proud. At one point, we didn’t understand what she was saying, and one of the guys translated for us. This gave him an excuse to start talking to us, and he said he had been to L.A. and Vegas, and he showed us random videos of it. We had a little conversation, but we eventually go back to talk amongst ourselves. The guys then start being extremely obnoxious and loud again. After a while, we all just leave and find new seats in a new voiture. After that, our ride was uneventful. We get to Lille at 10:40pm, and I expected it to be cold when we got outside, but it was actually pleasant and warm. We took the metro back, which was a nice and easy ride. I wish we had been using the metro more instead of on our last week! We made it home safely, and I pretty much unpacked and went to bed.

Now it is Monday and I am on my lunch break. The weather is gorgeous today, and it is so nice to have this weather in Lille! I absolutely love it, and it puts me in a good mood!

Now back to the previous week. We went out Thursday night to le Network, which was an awesome club! It cost 7 euro to get in, but I really liked going somewhere other than Smile for once. I hope I can go back sometime this weekend. It was bigger than Smile, and had a stage with really steep stairs, so it was scary walking up and down them. I had lost my group for a few hours and was worried I would have to go home alone, but I eventually found Bryan and was so happy to know I didn’t get left behind. We all walked back at some early morning hour. I woke up for my alarm the next day, but decided to skip class. We are allowed to miss two classes, so I just decided screw it, I am sleeping in! I had a relaxing morning of pure nothing and took a nice, long shower. I loved having the morning to myself. I am always so rushed here and busy! We didn’t have an afternoon class, so I pretty much got the whole day off, which was nice. We then went out the night, which really was a bad idea considering what happened with the train. This weekend has been an experience, though! I always knew I would learn a lot about traveling while in France, and this past weekend proves that point.

Another random thing I want to mention. I went to a Modern Art Museum on Thursday afternoon in place of my French Arts class. I really don’t like museums, but I really enjoyed this one. The museum was in the suburbs of Lille, so I loved seeing a different part of town. It also had an outside portion with sculptures, so we just sat on a bench outside along the river some of the time in the nice, warm sun. It was a very pleasant experience overall. We then had a workshop where we made artwork, and I felt like I was in elementary school again. It was a lot of fun actually.

I am so sad this is my last week in Lille. I have three tests and a presentation, but once Thursday afternoon rolls around, I am going to live it up and have an amazing last weekend in Lille!! I then am off to London for the last part of my European adventure!