Part I:
The past week has been chockfull of transitions. Traveling
makes the days feel very long, so it feels like I haven’t blogged in a long
time. Tuesday was my last day of classes. As I walked to Czech class in the
morning, I was reminded of my first day of classes when I walked a similar
route and marveled at the beauty of the same things. In my last Czech class, we
watched a documentary on the Velvet Revolution (the Czech’s peaceful overthrow
of communism in 1989). That evening, I had my last Literature of Prague class,
in which we went to a play as a class. The play was put on by a Shakespeare
group and it was an English translation of Kafka’s unfinished play “Amerika.”
It was put on in the attic of a small building in between Old Town and
Wenceslas Square. Because it was a play by Kafka, I was expecting absurdity,
and it lived up to that criteria. It was a great experience, especially because
I really liked my classmates and teacher in that class. It was a really fun way
to end my AAU classes.
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| View on the way to school on my last day |
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| Walking across Charles Bridge to my last Czech language class |
My last day in Prague was Wednesday, and I basically spent
the whole day saying goodbye to the city. David and I walked around the
touristy areas for one last time. We stopped by Wenceslas Square and Old Town
Square, and we finally put the lock that I gave David (on his second day in
Prague) on the lock bridge, and we noted the changes we’d seen on the Lennon
Wall. I got a coffee at Costa Coffee (kind of like Czech Starbucks, except they
also have Starbucks), which I’d been meaning to do for that past four months. Then
David had to go to class, so I walked through Petrin to Kampa. When I got
there, I realized I had a notebook but no pen to write with and no book to
read. It dawned on me that I didn’t need anything to
do, so I just sat and watched the park affect people. During my
time in Prague, Kampa has become a sanctuary for me. There is something magical
about it, and I don’t mean “magical” as a synonym for “beautiful.” I mean there
is something mystically stirring about that place, which I cannot explain.
Something about being in the middle of the Vltava river, surrounded by green
grass and huge trees allows my soul to rest in a way that few places can. I
knew it would be a difficult goodbye, to leave a place that had been so
comforting to me. I went with hours to spare, just in case I felt the need to
stay. I laid on a bench in the shade and watched the wind move the leaves
across the blue sky. I got up to leave but then settled down in sunny spot in
the grass and took a nap. I stood up to leave again, but then moseyed around
the island a bit more before standing by the elevator and soaking up feeling of
the place one more time. I asked the P/power that I felt manifested in Kampa,
and especially in the trees, to let me take its peace with me. I stood by an
especially P/powerful tree and put my hands on it, and I felt peaceful and
strong. That reserve of peaceful strength has been very helpful over the past
week when I’ve felt overwhelmed.
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| Kampa Island |
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| Selfie at Kampa |
On Wednesday, I also took up another activity that may have made
me look a little crazy. Saying goodbye to things has always been a helpful
practice for me. I was feeling very tense about the transitions that lay ahead,
so, under my breath, I started saying things like, “Goodbye apartment, goodbye
metro, goodbye Karlovo Namesti, goodbye Albert grocery store, goodbye bus stop,
goodbye trams…” I felt like I was narrating “Good Night Moon,” but it was
helpful nonetheless. I said goodbye to my roommates, and we all wished each
other safe travels and good summers and such. The next morning, David and I
made the early morning trek to the train station and headed to Paris, the first
of eight stops we’d make over the next two weeks.
Our train trip to Paris, the longest leg of our trip, took
all of Thursday. We boarded a train somewhere around 5:30am and arrived in
Paris at 11pm. Our first train was late, so we missed our connection in Munich,
Germany. After making a reservation and catching another train, we had a long
layover in Mannheim, Germany. While there, we decided to explore the town a
bit. Upon leaving the station, we found a tourist information office right
outside and decided to stop in and ask for advice. We basically walked in and
said, “We have an hour here and no mode of transport. What should we do?” The
woman at the counter was totally up for the challenge and quickly designed us a
walking route that led us by the biggest Baroque palace in Europe (it’s also a
school now), a supermarket (because we needed food), and a huge water tower
(which I didn’t expect to be pretty but was). We made it back to the train
station to try and get on a train to Paris that was technically full, only to
find out that there were empty seats but they would cost us an extra 60 euros
or so. We decided to wait the two hours for the next train, so we had a bonus
two hours in Mannheim. We went to a Starbucks we had passed on our walk because
we needed to rest and refuel, and we needed wifi so we could figure out how to
get to our Paris hotel from the train station.
Once we finally arrived in Paris, we set out in the dark
towards our hotel. We saw the city lights reflected in a tributary of the
Seine, before walking through a sketchy neighborhood and finding our place. We
had booked the cheapest place we could find in Paris that didn’t have reviews
blaming them for bed bugs, so we didn’t have high expectations. This place fell
short even of those expectations though. The receptionist was exceptionally
slow, and the walls were basically cardboard. We slept, but not well, and
checked out the next morning. Because our hotel, unsurprisingly, had no place
to store luggage, we had to find a place to leave our luggage for the day
before we could explore Paris. We took a metro to the train station that we
would be leaving from later that day, and (after a long search for the luggage
storage) locked up our stuff there.
Free to explore, we set out towards the Seine River. Pretty
much every time we saw the Eiffel Tower, we pointed it out to remind ourselves
it wasn’t fake (and wasn’t the Observatory Tower on Petrin Hill modeled after
the Eiffel Tower). By the time we made it across the river, it was about lunch
time so we found a cute café and got some food. I had roasted chicken and
French beans and David had French onion soup and pate with bread.
At this point, I have a confession to make. I had kind of
believed the stereotypes about French people that said they were stuck-up. I
thought the wait staff at restaurants would be rude, or at least a little
unaccommodating. False. The waitress at this place was one of the most helpful
waitresses we’ve had this whole trip. She helped explain the menu, and let me
mix and match what I wanted off the menu. And that wasn’t abnormal for Paris,
based on our experiences. Everyone we asked was more than happy to help us, and
we asked for help a lot. It was nice to see a stereotype so dramatically torn
down in my head.
After lunch, we walked to the Louvre and then to the Triumph
Arch.
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| The Louvre |
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| Triumph Arch |
Then, on our way to the Eiffel Tower, we stopped in this little park with
a great view of the tower and ate some oranges.
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| View of the Eiffel Tower from a park |
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| David making funny faces by the Eiffel Tower |
After our rest, we strolled
under and around the tower, debated whether to go up and quickly decided not to
(the line was quite long and the price was quite high). We wandered around the
park at the base instead, and there we ran into a bit of a conundrum. There
were these men who were making a show of moving a ball between three cups and
having people guess which cup the ball was under. People were betting large
amounts of money (most often 100 euros, with 50 euros being a bare minimum)
when they’d guess. I thought it would be fun to watch, just to see if I could
guess which cup it would be under, but David felt it was wrong to support the
activity by watching it. He felt that the men running the game were taking
advantage of the players, and didn’t feel morally comfortable standing to
watch. We figured this all out over about an hour of walking and talking,
trying to understand why David had tensed up when I’d stopped to watch the
game. Once we understood it to that extent, we had to talk about whether we
needed to agree about moral questions like that. Was it okay for me to feel at
ease watching those games, while he felt it was morally wrong? Or, as a couple,
did we need to agree on the finer details of morality? It was odd to run up
against something where we had strong moral opinions that differed from each
other. Eventually, we realized that Notre Dame Cathedral was about to close,
and we let this question rest while we rushed to the church. We figured we’d
try to walk, but we severely underestimated the distance and didn’t even get
close making it to Notre Dame before closing. Once we realized we wouldn’t make
it, I collapsed on a bench at a bus stop and realized that I had pushed myself
way too hard. It hit me that my ankle was killing me and my knee was tired and
I was really not sure if I could walk anymore. As it sunk in, I started to cry.
I was so frustrated that I couldn’t even walk around the city where we had one
single day, and I was in a lot of pain, and I was just so frustrated. After
sitting on that bench and crying for about twenty minutes, I had few false
starts with trying to walk. I’d get up and take four steps and I’d be in too
much pain to go any further, so I’d just lean up against a wall. Something
about the way my knee is messed up is apparently making my ankle unhappy. It’s
fairly swollen and painful even now, two days after I stressed it a lot in
Paris. Eventually, I rested another to be able to mosey, so we walked very
slowly with lots of breaks around the island were Notre Dame stands. On the
way, David got a crepe and realized that crepes are not actually just really
thin pancakes. It was perfect for him: dough covered in butter and sugar. It
was funny to watch how surprised he was that he liked it. We walked around the
outside of Notre Dame and the cute streets surrounding it before heading back
to the train station, getting our luggage, and boarding an overnight train to
Barcelona. We had a reservation for beds on that train, so we actually got to
sleep. Yay.
Saturday morning, we woke up to see Port Bou, Spain out the
window. It was unbelievably gorgeous, with rocky seaside villages jutting out
of the cliffs. As we switched trains in Port Bou, I realized, to my dismay,
that I still could not walk. Pain shot through my ankle in every step, and I
simply had no hope of carrying my luggage (thank goodness for David). On the
train to Barcelona, I massaged my leg and held out hope that I’d be able to
walk when we got there, but as soon as we stepped off the train, I knew we’d
have to find another solution. We had to give in and pay for a taxi to our
hostel. After checking in and getting a little settled, we decided that we’d
have to buy tickets for a hop-on-hop-off bus tour of the city. The price was
steep, but our other option was to explore the three blocks around our
apartment for two days. We ended up using the buses for everything they were
worth. It was helpful because it forced me to not walk as much as I wanted to,
and it gave us information about the sites we were seeing. We also got
discounts on two restaurants that we ate at, so that made us feel better about
spending the money on the passes. After walking to the nearest bus stop and
buying tickets, we rode to coast and disembarked. We wandered through a market
on La Rambla (the shopping street that descends towards the port) and stopped
for lunch in a touristy restaurant where we had paella. After lunch, we each
bought a shirt at the market and then we to sit on the dock. We walked across a
long bridge to reach our bus stop, and then we rode to a cathedral that turned
out to be closed, but we watched some cool street performers do some crazy
dancing out front before hopping back on the bus and riding to the city center,
where David found an Apple store so he could replace his lost phone charger. We
explored the area around the city center for awhile before stopping for dinner
in a salad buffet that we got a discount on. After dinner, we caught the last
bus of the day back to our stop. On our leisurely walk back to our hostel, we
stopped to watch the Font Magica (magical fountain), which was only a few
blocks away. The fountain is lit with colored lights and the water arrangements
are choreographed to music. It was stunning. On our slow walk back to our hotel,
we passed a bar that was showing the soccer match between two Madrid teams (we
later learned that it was an important match and got to hear people screaming
through our window whenever anything happened). Back at our hostel, we
researched for the rest of the trip.
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| Magical Fountain |
The next morning, we caught one of the first tour buses out
to Montejuic, a big park used for the 1929 World Exhibition and the 1992 Olympics.
It’s now a large public park, where we took a cable car up to the castle on top
of the hill. We walked around the grounds and forested areas that surround the
castle. During our walk, we spotted a man walking his dog. I pointed out the
dog to David and started telling him about how that’s the kind of dog I want
most, a Bernese Mountain dog. David and I have laughed about how we’ve begun to
think that other people around us cannot understand us, because we cannot
understand them, which is almost always a false assumption. So I suppose I
should not have been surprised when the dog’s owner turned around and said,
“That’s right! Most people think she’s a St. Bernard.” I was taken aback and
stuttered for a moment before he said again, “You’re right. She’s a Bernese
Mountain dog.” We chatted for a moment before he moved on (he was walking much
faster than us).
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| Cable car in Montejuic |
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| Castle in Montejuic |
After we’d walked around the castle grounds for a while, we
took the cable car down halfway and explored the Jardins Costa I Llobera,
gardens with cacti and palm trees. The cactus blossoms reminded us of home. We
were starting to get hungry at this point, so we took the cable car back down
to our bus stop and rode the bus to the fishing district. We walked through a
market there, and I got some tea leaves for Grace. Then we walked to the beach
and found our restaurant for lunch: Tapa Tapa. We had yummy tapas: patatas
braves (fried potatoes covered spicy sauce), fried and salted peppers, spicy
pork skewers, Spanish omelet/tortilla, and cheese croquettes. They reminded me
of the tapas we had in NYC over Christmas with the Nelsons, except much less
expensive and we were eating by the beach in Barcelona. (Even better, we had a
discount because of our passes.) After lunch, we walked along the beach, which
was unbelievably beautiful. The sand felt so good between our toes and the
water felt like Barton Springs.
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| Barcelona Beach |
It was hard to tear ourselves away, but we wanted to see
more of Barcelona, so we took a bus towards the middle of town. We stopped at
Sagrada Familia, an enormous cathedral. Now, take the image you have in your
head of an enormous cathedral and double that. I mean, this place was huge,
taller than the skyscrapers around it. It has been under construction for the
past 100 years and, amazingly enough, it isn’t even close to finished. It was
the life’s work of Gaudi, who is apparently a famous architect whose buildings
are everywhere in Barcelona. Outside the cathedral, I bought a key chain and
realized that I had lost my water bottle (whoops!).
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| La Sagrada Familia |
Afterwards, we took the bus
to an area of town that was formerly a village standing outside of Barcelona.
It was supposed to have a cute village atmosphere, with some “important cake shops”
according to our bus tour, but it was Sunday and pretty much everything we
closed, so we walked to a nearby monastery, hoping to find a supermarket on the
way. We asked someone where we’d find a supermarket and they looked at us like
we’d gone a little crazy, and told us that all the markets were closed because
it was Sunday. We (well, I) panicked a little because I was planning on getting
that night’s dinner and the next day’s breakfast and lunch at the supermarket.
We’d eaten out the past three meals and my veggie-meter was running really low,
so we ditched the monastery and went on an earnest search for a supermarket.
Our search took us back to the bus, which drove by the Futbol Club Barcelona
stadium, which was cool. They played the team’s anthem over the bus’s audio and
a little boy in front of put his hands in the air and sang along. The whole
thing reminded me of UT football, which made me a teensy bit homesick. When we
finally found a market, I was so excited that I think I scared the man behind
the counter a little. Once I had my veggies, everything was okay again
(although it took David a bit to get over the secondary stress). We sat on a
bench overlooking a park by the train station, and watched the dogs and kids
playing there. Then we walked back to our hostel, made dinner, and booked a
hotel in Cannes, the beach town in southern France where we’ll be heading after
Avignon. Once it was dark, we walked to the Font Magica again and sat among the
crowds watching it for about half an hour before heading back to our hostel and
going to sleep.
~~~ This is a really long post. This is probably a good break point for those of you who don't have all day to read about my life. ~~~
Part II:
The next morning, my alarm went off at 4am for a 6:16am
train to Cerbere, on our way to Avignon. When we got to Cerbere, however, we
discovered that about a third of the trains were cancelled because of strikes,
including every train to Avignon. The staff told us to “go out the door, turn
left, through the channel, take a bus.” We quickly realized that was all the
help we’d get so we followed the small crowds heading out the door. After
walking down a lot of stairs through a tunnel covered in graffiti, we found the
bus and realized it only cost 2 euros. However, we subsequently realized that
it could not take us to Avignon, but only to Perpignan. The bus ride was
beautiful at first, but then both of us got very motion sick from all the sharp
turns. By the time we made it Perpignan, neither of us much cared if we made to
Avignon as long as we didn’t have to take any more buses. We learned that all
the trains from Perpignan to Avignon were also on strike, so we’d have to take
a roundabout route, which would require a reservation. We stood in line about
half and hour debating how much the reservation was worth to us and decided on
$70 each. When we got to the front and discovered that it would cost us only 9
euros each, we were ecstatic. Of course, we lost about 5 hours of our
day-and-a-half in Avignon, but as far as train strikes go, we got off fairly
easily this time. We had to wait three hours in a mostly deserted Perpignan
train station, but we ended up arriving in Avignon around 6pm. Our hostel was
very cool. It was on the main road through the old part of Avignon, which leads
to the Palais des Papes (the Papal Palace), where the nine Avignon popes
resided and worked. We ate a grocery store dinner in the lobby of the hostel,
where there was a little restaurant and we even braved being social and met
knew people. Afterwards, we walked around town, found David some gelato, and
sat by the Palais des Papes.
The next morning we walked down by the Rhone River and saw some
cruises disembarking, then we headed back to town and bought some croissants
before heading to the Palais des Papes. We got audioguides and spent almost 3
hours exploring the palace, which was amazing. It was fascinating to learn
about all nine of the Avignon popes and the various palace renovations they
oversaw. I had heard of the Avignon papacy, but I had no idea there was an
Avignon pope for so long! The palace itself was enormous, and had served as a
prison between the time of the papacy and 20
th century restoration
projects. Apparently, they have an annual rose festival, for which they were
decorating the palace. (The next morning at the train station, there was a man
handing out free roses in conjunction with the festival.)
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| Palais des Papes getting all dressed up |
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| View from the top of the palace |
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| Window where the popes used to give indulgences |
After we’d exhausted our interest in the Avignon papacy, we
left the palace and went to a flea market we’d heard about, where I bought a
children’s French vocabulary book to add to my collection of foreign language
kids’ books. We bought a tasty baguette, meat, cheese, and veggies and walked
to the palace gardens to eat lunch. Then we explored the gardens before walking
to Saint Benezet’s bridge, the name of which misleads one into thinking that it
crosses the river. In reality, this bridge was built to cross the Rhone River in
the 12
th century (says David; I don’t actually remember) when a
shepherd named Benezet was called by God to build a bridge in Avignon. However,
apparently God changed God’s mind because the Rhone wrecked the bridge each
time it was rebuilt, eventually leading the city to stop funding it. Now it’s a
bridge that extends out into the water and abruptly ends. Most cities, I think,
would tear such a bridge down but, in Avignon, it’s a museum. The coolest part
of the visit to me was the inclusion of a chapel and hospital in the bridge
(Religious Studies/Health Sciences major happy place). The chapel is along the
way across the bridge (there are actually two), while the hospital was housed
at the base of bridge. Funded by the church, the hospital cared for weary travellers
and the poor. Apparently it was standard practice at the time for a great
industrial work to be accompanied by charitable giving. What I don’t know is
why that practice stopped.
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| Saint Benezet Bridge |
After all the walking, we were both pretty tired, so we
found some gelato for Katie and a crepe (and a swimsuit) for David and we sat
on the main road for about an hour just watching people. (David found 42 cents
in a pile on the ground and failed at picking them up nonchalantly, but ended
up 42 cents richer. It was funny to watch.) We walked around the south part of
town, which we hadn’t explored, and then went to dinner at a little restaurant
that I had found online. It was absolutely fantastic. The atmosphere was so
homey, with people easily sharing tiny tables and a single waitress serving the
entire room. The menus were handwritten in French, even though almost all the
customers spoke English, so the waitress patiently did a lot of translating.
David had a Caesar salad, roasted duck, mashed potatoes, and veggies, and I had
a salad with sliced duck breast and marinated peppers, and tortellini and
asparagus in marinara sauce. Everything was delicious. More importantly,
though, it was very easy to relax there. When we left the restaurant, we
realized we had been there for two and a half hours! After dinner, my
ankle/knee was very done with me walking so we went straight back to the hostel
and packed up.
The next morning we got warm croissants fresh out of the
oven on our walk to the train station. We took a train to Marseilles, stored
our luggage, and went exploring, First, we walked up a huge, huge hill to Notre Dame De La Garde, a
chapel overlooking the port. By the time we got to the top, I was very
displeased with our decision to walk up there, but once we realized we could
take a bus down I was able to enjoy the view and the church itself. We ended up
buying a 1 euro informational booklet and I became our tour guide. The church,
originally built in 1214, is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, who apparently looks
over the sea. The church is decorated with mosaics depicting prophesies
concerning Mary and important events from her life, as well as offerings from
various groups, including sailors who were saved from a great storm, the sick,
and military officials. It was later enclosed in a military fortress, but was
still open to the public and was accessible by a drawbridge that is still
lifted and lowered each day.
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| View from the church on the hill in Marseilles |
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| Listening to Hey Marseilles in Marseilles |
Once we had completed our tour of the church, we
took a bus town the hill and got some meat, cheese, veggies, and two baguettes
for lunch. We tried to eat outside the bread shop, but the lady came out and
kicked us out, for which she is now immortalized in our heads as “the evil
baguette lady.” After being exiled, we headed for the port and ate by the water
instead.
After lunch, we explored the center of town some more and
ended up at a large palace that was built as a monument to water, at the
arrival of running water in Marseilles in the 19th century. Behind
it, there was a large park that used to be a zoo, but that was up a hill and my
knee/ankle was completely done with hills for the day, so we laid in the grass
by the large fountain until a lady came and kicked us out (we aren’t sure why
because we don’t speak French). Apparently, it was the day of being asked to
leave places.
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| Monument to water in Marseilles |
We wandered towards the train station, where we caught a train to
Cannes, the beach town where we’ve spent the last two days. The beaches are
beautiful and very relaxing. The water is cold, about like Barton Springs, and
the waves are nice and small. We have pretty much spent our entire time here on
the beach or buying bread, though I did actually spend a couple hours shopping
(and actually buying) clothes. It was pretty out of character, but fun.
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| Cannes public beach |
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| A brass band played right by the beach! |
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| New swimsuit and stealing David's hat |
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| Beach selfie |
We have
pretty much been subsisting on baguettes and croissants while here but tonight
we ate out on this cute street near the beach. I ate a whole fish, like one with
the eyes in it and stuff! Tomorrow morning we head to a small town in Tuscany,
where we’ll be staying for five nights and travelling to different cities each
day (probably Florence, Pisa, Viareggio, Bologna, or Livorno). Then I head to
Milan and catch a flight to Athens and meet my family. It’s going to be a crazy
and very exciting few weeks!
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