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The Great Vacances of the Crazy Itinerary
One of the most amazing parts of being an English teaching assistant in France is that after every six weeks of work, you are rewarded with two weeks of vacation. In which, as fits the stereotype of Americans spending several months abroad in Europe, I try to experience as many of the sights/sounds/smells/tastes/textures of the cities and countries around me as possible.
In February, my brother and sister and brother-in-law decided to visit me during my two-week break. Where would you like to go? I asked. Their response: France, Spain, Switzerland, mountains, castles, Paris….and the list went on. Oh goodness, I thought. How are we going to do all of this in ten days?! So we worked on an itinerary and came up with a plan: meet in Madrid, drive through Spain to the French border, take a train to Bayonne, visit the Pyrenees, drive to Paris stopping at two castles along the way, then head by TGV to the Alps for some skiing before they would leave from Geneva.
The result (after a few minor complications at the beginning, including my siblings’ flight being cancelled due to snow in New York and me missing my train to Madrid by thirty seconds thanks to a suitcase breaking en-route to the station, my phone being a few minutes slow, and the fact I didn’t give myself enough spare time): one fantastic, crazy trip. В More than can fit in a blog entry, so following are each day’s highlights. (Apologies for the lack of accent marks with any French terms; I seem to have forgotten how to use them on this blog since it’s different from normal word processing.)
Day 1:
The train man . Since I missed my train this morning, I technically wasn’t on the trip yet. But the people at the train station were determined to help me get back on schedule. Not only did they refund my ticket (a very nice thing considering it was my fault I missed the train!) but the head of the station looked up every possible route from Alencon to Madrid for three-quarters of an hour, knowing that I was meeting my family there and shortly thereafter moving on to another place. Since the only option really was an expensive night train for that evening, I decided to go check flights before making any decisions. The station manager was trying to save a place on the night train without me having to pay, but it wasn’t going through, so I left the station, promising to hurry back. About a block away, I heard someone calling out for my attention and turned: he had run all the way after me to give me a reservation code for the night train, as he had just been able to secure a place in case I needed it. In the end, I decided to meet my siblings the next night at Hendaye instead, a city on the border between France and Spain, so I returned to the station (by bike and sans the broken suitcase which I lugged slowly and with much difficulty back to the lycee like Atlas with the world on his back) to let the helpful people there know and to buy my new ticket.
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