At first she called me and I was somewhere completely different from her. But eventually I figured out where she was and we met up at the rotonde for a much needed hug! I took her back to my apartment and went to class. I have no idea what we did. I think I was budgeting out trips in my notebook instead of listening. Oh well. I got back home and Chen, Marley, and I grabbed some lunch and then went back to the apartment to hang out.
Nathan got into Aix around 4:45pm. At first we didn't see him anywhere which was odd because there are very few over 6 feet tall blonde guys strolling around the Mediterranean. Just as we were convinced that he took the wrong train, we saw his hair! A shining beacon of light! Chen and I ran up to him and hugged him. Then it was time for crepes!! For those that do not know, Chen is studying in Paris and Nathan is studying in Switzerland. Chen speaks French, Nathan does not. So we went to get our crepes and I had to order for Nathan which was fun. He got this "African" crepe which was just chocolate with a massive amount of whipped cream on the top. The same whipped cream fell out into my hands as Chen took a bite out of it. Awesome... Actually it was because then I used it on my crepe! Ha!
We went back to my apartment for a little bit and then it was time to eat again. I feel like that was a common theme this weekend... We finally decided on this restaurant on the Cours Mirabeau. Chen and I had rosotto and Nathan... cheese pizza. It was really funny because he wanted to order himself so we taught him how to saw 4 cheese pizza and a coke in French. It went well until he forgot how to say the second part. We may or may not have laughed at him :) We went back home and decided to plan out our Saturday. The original plan was Monaco but then all the spaces on the tour were full. After going through several options on the train website and a very strange phone call to a not so friendly guy in Cassis, we picked Cannes. Then we decided it would be a great idea to go out with friends. Aside from the fact that we had to get up at 5am and we went to bed at 2am, it was a great idea! We, not Nathan, got a free bottle of champagne. Apparently this bar we go to has a "Desperate Girls" special where if 5 or more girls show up together before midnight on a Friday they give you a bottle of free crappy champagne! We went to another bar after that to go dancing a bit and then finally we knew it was time to get at least some sleep.
5am. Shower time! We made it to the train station (after running through Aix) about 10 minutes before our scheduled departure time. That's when it all began. Despite the fact that we had purchased our tickets with an American card, the machines at the train station would not recognize the American card and therefore would not give us our tickets! And, to top it all off, because the train left at 6am the tellers we not there yet. Too early. We decided that best we could do was to run outside to the platforms and find the train and try to explain using Nathan's handy iPhone which had our confirmation email on it. We thought we found the platform but then Nathan realized we were on the wrong one and it was running time again! We found the train and I explained our situation to the train guy who told us to get on. Whew! The train rides were pretty uneventful and we all tried to sleep a little on the way to Cannes.
9:45am Cannes! We stepped outside the train station and boom! Brad Pitt.
Haha jk but we did spend the rest of the day making Brad Pitt Comments. We went to the office of tourism and got some quick advice on what to do for the day and head out on our first mission: Bathrooms! But that turned into food as soon as we found this incredible pastry shop. Chen got a delicious eclair. We walked down the cool older part of town with narrow streets- a lot like my side of Aix- that had a lot of smaller, less expensive shops. They had France version of the dollar store... everything for 2 euro! Then we found a place to get food. Nathan and I had croque madames and Chen had this seafood dish of some kind. The food was really good and surprisingly not expensive, especially considering the location. After we ate we were sitting there chatting and they put the empty plates on the little elevator they used to transport food from the kitchen to the dining room, and we heard this really loud clanging and the sound of glass breaking. The elevator thing had broken and sent all of our stuff crashing down. Luckily it was after we ate and not before!! Unfortunate for the restaurant, but really funny to us.
To the castle! We walked up this giant incline/hill to an old castle that overlooks the city. It was really neat, but as soon as we got up to the castle, hurricane force winds began! The museum was closed, but the view was awesome! All of the pictures of us are funny because our hair was going everywhere. I got some good shots of Nathan jumping off of this wall. Then there was this really random old wall fragment of the castle that we walked up on. Even windier! We survived the winds and walked down to the port where big money was everywhere. Totally full of yachts. You can pretty much walk up and touch any of them... security was minimal, or at least visible security. It was madness. Speaking of madness.. as we were walking back from the last row of yachts this guy approached us. Now, for those of you who have seen the movie Aladdin, there is the part where Aladdin is chained up in jail and Jafar, disguised as an old man, tricks Aladdin into going into the cave. In this scene Jafar is super thin, has a really long tangly beard, and crazy teeth. The man that approached us, looked just. like. that! He was wearing a long green trench coat, had the Jafar look, and a rainbow umbrella. That was all weird enough and then he told us how the day before there had been a rainbow and that it was a bad sign. Them something about great sailing weather (despite the rain and crazy wind...). Then in mid sentence he just left and started down the street towards another guy who had been walking along the coast... Odd.
Next stop: Croisette Casino! Playground of the rich and famous, Chen, Nathan, and Olivia. We were a little nervous to walk in because, hey, it is really nice in there! We went in and it was super nice, but all the tables and vip rooms were closed. The slots were open so we proceeded to delight ourselves by gambling away 10 Euro each! Yes. Perfect! Actually it was really fun and my only regret was that I let the voucher get down to 0 instead of 1 centime because then I could've kept the voucher as a souvenir! But after a while we left the casino and it had started to pour outside. We ran around for a bit, but I was the only one with an umbrella so we ducked into a tabac/cafe and had crepes and ice cream. Actually Nathan had 4 crepes lol! Then we went on an adventure to find umbrellas and new shoes for Nathan. All he had were canvass ones that were completely soaked at this point. So we did some shopping and some more chocolate eating before we all decided it was time to go down to the water. I mean, we are already soaked! We went down to the water and touched the Mediterranean. We kind of gave up on trying to find the celebrity hand prints because we were so cold but then Nathan looked down where we were walking and there they were!! Woo!
We took some pictures of those and then when we had decided it was time to go and buy dry socks we found it- the Cannes Red Carpet. We had a nice photo shoot there before we went on the sock quest. Success! So we took our new socks and went to the train station. Once we got on the train we all took off our nasty wet socks and changed into new socks. It felt really, really nice! The train ride was uneventful but when we got to Marseille we decided to take the 5 euro bus back home instead of waiting 2 hours for the train. Seemed like a brilliant idea. It was, actually, until the bus driver, in typical French fashion, just decided to drop us off at some stop that wasn't actually the REAL stop. He pulled up to this stop in Aix and nobody moved (there were like 8 people left on the bus) and then he yelled and said we had to get off. So, we all got off and as soon as the bus pulled away I realized I had no idea where we were. At all. Long story short, we had to ask directions and then we walked about 30 minutes in the rain to my apartment. So much for the nice dry socks...
But all in all it was a wonderful weekend and it was great to see two of my best friends from home! I can't wait to see them both again very soon :)
Love you and miss you!
--Olivia
It was nice to see Chen in pictures where the "asian" peace sign wasn't being used :) Glad to hear you had a good time!
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