Eventually, we had to leave Rome. Another city was calling
our names. Montpellier, France.
At CULS, we were lucky enough to meet many different
exchange students. Some of our greatest friends had been from France. While
they all appreciated Paris, they said the South was where it’s at. (If you want
a giggle imagine a combination of a pompous French accent and a Southern
drawl.) Because we believed our friends and wanted to see a city in France
other than Paris, we took their advice.
The bus from Rome to Montpellier left at 5:30 in the evening
and arrived at 9:00 the next morning. The college kid in me was thrilled: yay!
I don’t have to pay for a hostel for the night! The hoity toity sophisticated
woman in me worried what my hair would look like after a night of restless,
vertical sleep. The trip really wasn’t bad until we arrived in Firenze
(Florence, Italy) and some ill-behaved children got on. The mom was trying to
breastfeed her baby while her three kids (two ornery boys and a very sweet and
spoiled girls) argued about who sat where. The dad of course was too busy
chatting with one of his friends to be of much help. But, around midnight they
calmed down and I drifted in and out of sleep until we got to Montpellier.
The bus stop was simply that: a bus stop. There weren’t any
offices around, only a metro stop. Feeling unceremoniously dumped off, we
bought our tickets and attempted to find our hotel. The sun was shining, and it
seemed like it would be a good day. The metro took us as close to our hotel as
we could get (about a mile and a half away) and we walked in the hopes of
finding a bus stop. Which we did! We waited by the signpost for the bus that
was supposed to come at 10:15. The bus came… and then drove away. If I could
have seen the bus driver I would have sang “achy breaky heart” to him so he
could understand how I felt. Since that wasn’t an option, I shelved my
hypothetical Billy Ray mullet, and Ty and I walked the mile and a half.
Ty’s parents and his Venture Scout sponsor, Mark, should be
proud; only five minutes into the walk and Ty was suggesting I serenade him
with hiking songs. But I think I didn’t have the right idea because he scoffed
when I started singing “One step at a time, duh duh duh da duh duh da daaaaaa.”
After
proving I should only sing in the shower, we made it to the hotel. The manager
spoke very little English, but he was helpful and sent us out to the beach. To
get to the beach we had to ride a bus about an
hour to a small seaside town named “Sete.” It’s probably named that because all
anyone wants to do there is “Sete” by the beach and drink margaritas.
The first thing we saw when we stepped off the bus in Sete.
If I was going to sit by a
beach and drink margaritas, this would definitely be the place to do it. The
whole lazy beach town looks like something from a movie. Small amounts of people strolled through the
streets browsing the small shops along the sidewalks. Motor boats drifted along
the canal that parted the city, and the sandy beach was littered with families
laying out in the sun or playing typical beach games. Our time In Sete was
literally and figuratively a breath of fresh air.
There's my breath of fresh air.
That night at the Sun hotel
Ty and I got to talking about our trip and what traveling is all about. This
may seem like a spoiled thing for me to say, but I’m tired of seeing pretty
building after pretty building. Don’t get me wrong, I’m extremely impressed by
the skill and effort it must have taken to build such wonderful bits of
architecture. However, in the short case of wanderlust I’ve acquired, my least
favorite thing about the trips are the man made heaps of stone.
So what are our favorite
parts of our travels? Ty’s best times were spent on the beach listening to the
water lap against the sand, bent over looking for shells. It’s really
unfortunate Ty’s name isn’t Sally because then he could just sell shells down
by the sea shore! (Ha!) Most of the memorable bits of the trip to me aren’t
man-made, they’re God-made. I can’t help but marvel at the land as we make our
long bus rides between locations. How the land can be so beautiful and useful
at the same time continually amazes me. I also really like the times where we
do strange things… like taking a suggested drink from a server in Hungary that
turned out to be 75% alcohol. Or accidentally wandering into a classic rock
concert. Things like that really stick out in my memory, and I want more things
like that to happen.
This train of thought got us
rolling onto how we wanted to spend the rest of our trip. We were scheduled to
go to Barcelona next, and I asked Ty, “What do you want to do in Barcelona?” He
pursed those cute lips of his and was lost in thought for a second, and then
said… wait for it… “I don’t know.” “Me either,” I agreed.
With that, we hopped online—have
I mentioned how much I love wifi?—and changed our tickets from Montpellier to
Barcelona to Montpellier to Brussels. (Can you say waffles?!) The next day we
walked around Montpellier, sat in a park, talked, and really took in our surroundings
before we set off for our next adventure in Belgium.
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