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| Traveling Journal |
| My Adventures around France February 16th - 24th, 2002 |
| *Feb. 17, 2002 "My vacation in Bordeaux, France" im in bordeax right now in a cyber caf�, i've been here now for 2 days and will be heading to marseille tomorrow morning at 8am. the town is extremely dirty, but i believe that a large part of that is due to the extent of contruction that this town is undergoing!!! there are barriercades, fences, etc. blocking or shrinking sidewalks all over the place!! oh, we're stayin a youth hostel, a very nice one i believe!!! it has a laundry mat, lounge room w/ tv, a kitchen are where we can cook, and each room is very clean with only four beds (2bunk beds) and 4 little closets or armoirs! each room is locked and key turned in before we walk outside, and our curfew isnt until 3am!! oh and they provide us all with breakfast in the morning, but they lock us out (for cleaning reasons i'm sure) from noon to 4pm, which is no problem anyways cuz we go shopping!!!! hehehe we've checked out the centre ville (town's center), a huge flea market, a historical museum; went to a huge cathedral and sat thru a catholic mass (in french, of course) because today is sunday, we've eaten our meals at pizza hut and mcdonalds (only because nothing else is open on sundays!!!hehehe) oh and glad we came this weekend cuz on saturday night all of the streets were thickly lined with all of these clothing, purse, jewelery, poster, underwear, etc vendors! it was like endless streets of yardsales, but with decent things in them!! way cool!! and today, we checked out another cathedral, but when we got around the corner there was a flood of people, almost like a riot, but there was also a BIG screen tv and speakers set up right in front of the church. finally some people came up to us with these program pamphlet things and we realized that some really important person was coming and performing a service!!! whewwww, safe, huh! but the streets were all blocked by people and cops were everywhere, yep, i got this stuff all on tape too!!! so i guess we just keep ending up at the right places at the right times!!! this ususally isnt my luck, but im definitely not complaining!!! oh last night we met a canadian boy, 2 austrailians, and a guy from new york, we all hung out and played cards at the youth hostel last night and had a really good time, what were the chances of finding more english speaking travelers just like us in the middle of february!!?? what a small world huh!!! *Feb. 19, 2002 "My vacation in Marseille, France" the metro people are still on strike, along with some of the bus workers, so we had to hike like 20 - 25 miles today to get from place to place, we went to 2 museums, the port, the town center, ritzy shops, and the ghetto all in one trip!!!! and who said that girls have no sense of direction, heck, we took an upclose and personal tour of the entire city today!!!!! today was better than yesterday, but we are still looking forward to going to Nice and Monaco tomorrow....so our voyage tales are to be continued.... *Feb. 22, 2002 "My vacation in Nice & Lyon, France" Right now me, erin, & heather are in a city called Lyon, its on the eastern side of france, about half-way down the country, this town is very different than all of the other towns that we've been to!!! its very modern, much of this is because this city is known for its commercial purposes, several businessmen running around in suits!! but this city is also the home of the largest shopping center in europe!!!! so much for our budget, huh!! three girls + large shopping mall = nothing but trouble!! even though the city is very modern; there are also old and beautiful cathedrals and i think even a castle!! we just got here late last night and its just now noon our time, so we have all day today, tonite, and all day tomorrow to explore (and shop). before this city we were in nice (pronounced niece) its a beautiful city in the southeastern tip of france. its wrapped around the sea so there is an awesome beach. we took a large tour of this city, all on foot, cuz we're too poor to pay for guided tours, so we saw ports, castle remains, the contemporary art museum, and of course several shopping places.....side note: we spent way too much money there, so we're thinking about taking a side job when we return to angers and start begging on the street (strategically in front of a bank) with a small cup and wearing our most raggedy clothes, it seems to be rather lucrative for some of the people we've seen in france! hehehe we decided not to go to strausbourg now, since the fact that we've bought too much and have had to start carrying even more bags and heather even bought an additional suit case, yep our luggage has officially doubled....and mainly because we've had soo many delays on trains because of high wind speeds, etc. and our original itenerary has been altered a bit. so we're only losing our prepaid nights stay at youth hostel there (only out $13). so for the time being, we're enjoying our time in lyon and will catch strausbourg when we go to germany in april! but oh, we've been stayin in youth hostels, which are more like ymca's or dorm rooms for traveling younsters like our selves, they tend to be cheaper, but not always to neat and tidy, if ya know what i mean, but we broke down when we got to nice and rented a hotel for a night at a relatively cheap price and got to watch part of the olympics for the very first time, and the best part was we found a british channel so it was all in english!!! now here in lyon, we found this really nice hotel, just a hop, skip, and a jump away from the train station and this hotel is even cheaper than the youth hostels; and our second gift from our trip was the discovery of MTV in this hotel!!!!!! im in heaven!!! its actually in german, but of course all of the music videos and even some of the commericals are in english! while being here i've fallen out of touch with all of the newest music trends, so im taking notes at night when i watch mtv and will have one of my french friends with a laptop, download some new songs and burn them onto a cd for me, cuz there's no way i can fall behind on music, thats like a sin to me! i've been taping all of our adventures with my video camera and having the girls do like a nightly journal for the camera, so you all will have to watch because its definitely entertaining!!!!! if all goes well, (which hasn't been our luck so far with traveling arrangements) then we'll depart from lyon on a night train saturday and arrive in angers on sunday morning, for a long, long day of rest!! we've been waking up at 7am (or earlier) every stinking morning to try to get out and see every thing we can during the day before all closes, so all this early rising stuff is catching up with me!!! well im at an internet cafe in lyon; a really cool one too with 3 floors of people reading books in a modern library, drinking coffee and eating lunch; and nerds like us using the computer |
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| This was a picture taken of Heather, Erin & I, while in a youth hostel in Marseille. It was soo cool because there was a little computer there with the internet and this little tiny webcam, which we used to take this picture! |