Ah! I am so late writing this but I went to France!

Hi... sorry faithful followers I have abandoned you in times of strife. But I did go on more fun adventures :)

Over halloweekend Hanna and some of our friends and I went to the south of France!

We left on Thursday night (27/10) which was an insane amount of packing and prepping for me because I'd already had a crazy week. I made some snackies for the road and we got ready to go on an overnight bus from Alicante to Montpellier.

Bus:

• Oh my god it was such an insane experience

• We got a little bit high before we left because why not it's a long bus and we wanted to sleep.

• The bus was really empty for the first few pickups but then we had to consolidate and I sat with Han

• We left at like 19:15 and around 21:30 I decided to take melatonin and conk out

• BUT THEN about 30 min later the bus stopped?? and it was mandatory to get off at this rest station in the middle of nowhere somewhere between Valencia and Barcelona

  • the hotel where we stopped at the cafe was called "Hotel Hotel" it seemed

  • there was one man playing slot machines incessantly, like no stopping at all

  • there were chains on the door like a beaded curtain except made out of shint bike chains ?

  • possibly a butcher shop?

  • I was now high, and sleepy-drugged, AND just rudely awoken from a nap so it was all a fever dream

• eventually we got back on and I just snacked and stayed on the bus for the rest of the ride because I really did conk out

• We arrived in Montpellier around 09:30 at a station then took the tram to the first open coffee shop we could find

  • France was also not great about having oat milk, so I've really adjusted to drinking black coffee lately

• We went and dropped off our bags at the hotel because we couldn't check in yet

Hotel:

• super cute, Hanna and I had a double bed in one room and the other girls shared another room with a big bed and a double pull out couch

  • European pull out couches are infinitely better than American ones. Cousins: consider the ones at Capri Village... oof

• I refused to go back to the hotel until after 5pm because I knew I would struggle to leave and we all headed out to explore Montpellier

Montpellier:

• adorable!! Lovely city!! such cute little streets and shops. lots of colors and pretty ribbons like fairy lights hung up everywhere

• We saw the Arc de Triumph which was cool

  • I'll be honest I thought there was only one of those and it was in Paris but apparently France loves arches

• beautiful fountains and trees that were starting to look a bit like fall which was nice because we don't really get fall in Alicante

• My fellow travelers loved the french pastries, and I found a vegan cookie shop!! these adorable children were learning to make them with their mom

  • I think I have baby fever ya'll... there's a couple of my students I would steal in a heartbeat

• Harper and I wanted to wander down to the water feature which was this river

• really pretty, saw a kayaking obstacle course and some HUGE ducks I swear they were giant but Harper remained unconvinced

• A bird shat on me and my favorite bag

• We wandered through a botanical garden, my favorite, but there were mosquitos and they definitely got a good snack out of me.

  • it did have a little observatory though, which I obviously looked at for a while.

• Hanna forgot her SIM pin so her phone stopped working so she had a time with that all weekend

• We wandered through a church that actually ended up being the medical school library somehow, that was interesting

• Had a big dinner together which was yummy for everyone but I had hummus and falafel which was also yummy just not super exciting

Nimes:

• we took a cheap train to Nimes to do a little day trip on the way to Marseille

• Nimes had FANTASTIC water features

• beautiful fountains, little ponds, archways over the water-- awesome

• saw a colosseum and learned about gladiators-- so gory

  • apparently though, the goal was not to mortally wound your opponent, it just happened sometimes

  • the person who put on the event served as a kind of judge, and at the end of a fight, decided whether or not the loser deserved to die-- usually they were spared because it cost them less money

  • if they weren't spared, the victor would have to stab the loser or cut his throat or something

  • they also had executions at halftime of criminals who had been put to death, but they didn't hang them, they had them get torn apart by wild animals

    • I know.

• Also saw the best preserved Roman temple-- that was cool

  • the south of france has a lot of roman architecture

  • lots of columns

• saw some less preserved ruins, including this one up a big ole hill which I forget what it was called but it was neato

  • all were super beautiful and mossy

  • 10/10 moss in France

• I really liked Nimes, it was smaller and more chill than the other two cities we went to

Marseille:

• Our hostel was actually very cute and the breakfast I had there was six euros and very yummy. And they had great cappuccinos with a little bit of coco powder on top

• We went out one night and our hostel bartender who was definitely coked up told us to go to this one place where "the best female DJ in Marseille" would be playing.

  • I actually really liked the music, it was very techno, but Hanna was not into it. She's more of a reggaeton girl

  • also there were many queer folks there, which was nice

  • I was dancing with this lady but just like super casually and then for some reason her male friend felt it was necessary to be like "my friend thinks you have a nice butt" and then he was like "she's not a lesbian though" and then me and this beautiful lady felt really awkward and then did not dance anymore

    • french men in general: 3/10

    • was very predatory vibes in Marseille clubs. Like being the fish in the barrel and the gun is just grabby men with bad personalities

• saw big beautiful fountains!! so many good fountains

• Where Alicante smells like dog poo and pee, Marseille smells like human poo and pee

• When up to a big important church on a hill which was super beautiful.

• Very hard to find anywhere to eat, especially anywhere vegan, on Sunday. Hanna and I walked around for a really long time trying to find something I could eat

• I did not love Marseille. It was too city for me. if you can't tell.

• To be honest, by the time we made it to the end of our stay in Marseille, I was getting tired of French people. They were continually so rude in their customer service. Harper speaks french, so they were nicer to her and we had her do a lot of our communication, but I was missing all the friendly Spaniards in Alicante.

• flew home on Monday and had Tuesday off to readjust back to Alicante <3

Photo Dump!

Fun surprise end treat: one of the reasons I haven't been writing as much on the blog is because all my extra time is going to writing PhD applications! I'm applying to only a couple of schools this year, but they are in LA, Seattle, and Hawaii-- so I guess there's a chance I'm back in the US by a year from now :P