An American Girl in Avignon

April 30

Wow. This was probably the longest, most stressful day in my nineteen year lifespan. Today I left for London, and since Kristina, Kyle, and I had waited to the last minute to change our money from Euros to pounds, we were rushing to get to places on time and to get things done today. I felt like I didn’t stop for breath today. I was constantly running from one place to another, quickly throwing together an overnight bag before dashing off to the train station – which happens to be a 20 minute walk from my house. I walked the whole way carrying my bag “baby style” (grasped in my arms and propped on my hip), making sure to take frequent pauses during our brisk walk. I am never doing that again. My first purchase when I go to London is without a doubt going to be a luggage strap. I feel that I am going to have serious back problems when I get home.

Since we decided to go out again last night (yes, the night after Sakinah’s birthday, bad idea), I was exhausted when I woke up for class this morning. Thankfully our writing teacher suggested a walking tour in town with frequent pauses in parks and other nice, peaceful, sunny places to write our postcards and three assigned poems during our four hour long class. Sitting in the sun while writing a few postcards to my friends and family back home was relaxing until I realized how much I needed to use the restroom. We were writing at the park near the Palais de Papes with no restroom in sight. After class, Sakinah and I dashed to find a bathroom, which as I have mentioned before, is difficult to do unless you are going to sit down and eat at a café.

We decided since it was the last day we would see each other all weekend (she was going to Barcelona and I was going to London. Barcelona next week pour moi), we splurged a little on lunch and went to a conjoined movie theatre/restaurant. We both nibbled off of each other’s plates, so our lunch consisted of: pizza, salad, tarte Provencal, bread, and fries. Hey, we were hungry.

I then realized what time it was and feeling like an idiot, ran to meet Kyle and Kristina at the post office to exchange out money. What a rip off. The English pound (called livre in France) is almost worth double the US dollar and of course is more than the Euro. After the commission that the bank took, I was hardly given any pounds for my cinchy thirty euros. Jenny, our student assistant, was right. London was going to be pricier than we had previously thought. The English money system is really quite strange. The two pence piece is huge, the 20 pence piece is tiny, the octagon-shaped fifty pence piece is large and thin, the golden pound is small and thick, and the bills are different colors and sizes, much like the Euro. Of course, the Queen’s face is engraved on every piece except the 1 and two pence pieces.

After doing the fastest and most inefficient packing job of my life, I toted my ridiculously heavy bag across town; I’m sure looking really silly, before arriving at the gare, drenched in sweat and ready to pass out. Kyle, always fifteen minutes early to everything, was there waiting, ready to catch that train. Of course, when we made the reservation, we didn’t realize the distances from the train station, to the bus station, to the airport, then to the hostel. Funny how one can neglect such important details when they try to throw plans together at the last minute. You live, you learn….We were going to have to run.

The board with the train arrivals said “Surprime” in green next to our and several other trains. After almost four years of French for me, seven for Kristina, and five for Kyle, one would think that we would know what this meant. It had been years since any of us had French one vocabulary, so we just assumed that it meant that we had an upgraded train, or it was the company. How stupid and incompetent we felt when we found out it meant our train had been cancelled and we would have to wait another hour for the next one, pressing us more for time.

Thankfully, we boarded the next train to Marseille just in time. Why does it seem that when one has somewhere to be in a short amount of time, those needs like having to go to the bathroom, suddenly become so pressing that you can’t think about anything else? I don’t think I have ever had to go to the bathroom more in my life than when we ran off the train to catch the forty-minute long ride on the Navette to the airport. Of course, there was no restroom on the bus, and I was about to burst by this time.

Arriving at the airport, with minimal time to spare, I made quite possibly a record-breaking fast bathroom stop before boarding the flight to London. While waiting in line, our flight had even more of a delay, about an hour to be exact, so we would be arriving in London even later than out previously thought midnight. While standing in line, it was easy to pick out who was from England and who wasn’t. The British, much like the French, have a certain look about them. Pale skin, and long features. I saw some of the first redheads I had seen in about a month. You sure don’t see any of those in France.
After a long flight on which I was charged a ridiculous three euros for cappuccino, (I didn’t know there was a charge, otherwise I wouldn’t have ordered anything) we arrived at the airport and were met with a long line for customs.

Tired, hungry, and grumpy, we meandered our way through the line. The border lines were split in two: one for the European Union and UK, one for the United States and everywhere else. We stuck out like sore thumbs. I think that Kyle, Kristina, and I were the only white people in our lines. Everyone else was Chinese. Thankfully, this meant that our line was a lot shorter, but oddly enough, we made it through the line at the same time as our fellow EU passengers. Probably because there was a language barrier in our line.

This was just the beginning of our Griswold-vacation-like night. After we waited for what seemed like hours to get our baggage, we ran to the other side of the airport to catch a bus to a station near our hostel in Russell Square. The bus ride cost an arm and a leg and was completely full at 1 something in the morning. Feeling disgusting from a long day full of travel, I made my way to a window seat in the back of the bus and leaned my head against the chilly window in an attempt to sleep. It took us about twenty minutes to even get moving, and I drifted in and out of consciousness throughout the long ride. I was now at the point of exhaustion. I could have slept on that bus or collapsed on the floor if able. I would have liked nothing more than a warm bed.

When we arrived at the station, I stumbled of the bus in my half-awake, half-asleep state, feeling horrible. My head was pounding from inadequate sleep from the night before, and it was looking like I wasn’t going to get to bed anytime soon. We grabbed our luggage and then just stopped and stared at one anther, eyes red and glazed, wondering what on earth to do next. Great planning, right? The tube would be open for another twenty or thirty minutes, but not wanting to mess with that in such a poor metal state, we said screw it, and took a ride with the first cab driver that approached us. Bad decision. We should have waited and asked around, but at this early hour in the morning, the last thing I was thinking about was how much money a cab would cost. I just wanted to go to bed.

Of course, we were ripped off. The very short cab ride cost us 75 USD, and smart us, we had no idea what the address of our hostel was. What a mess we were! We knew two things: the street name and what it looked like from the outside. The Indian driver kept asking us, “What’s the address?” Panicked,I just said, “I think it’s farther down.” He asked, “What? Have you been here before?” Of course I hadn’t, but I wanted to at least act like we knew where we were going. Thankfully, I recognized it from the picture on the internet, and we hopped out, eager to get out before having to pay a centime more.

The line at the front desk was so long – yes, even at 2:30 in the morning. When it was finally our turn, the check-in guy informed us that not only would our hotel be close to twice as much as we had agreed to pay, but we would have to pay in cash. Shady, right? I will not be coming back here. None of us had much cash on us. He told us that there were ATMS around the corner. Pissed and luggage in hand, Kyle got short with the man and stormed off, determined to find somewhere else to stay. An interesting thing to try to do at this ungodly hour in the morning. We walked to the hotel across the street, and of course, it and everywhere else the nice man with the cockney accent behind the front desk called, was out of our price range. Welcome to London. It’s not cheap.

Wandering Russell Square in the dark, we tried three different ATMS, funny enough called cash machines and “holes in the wall,” here, before finally finding one that worked. What a disaster.
Frustrated and very, very angry by this point, we practically threw our money at the front desk before getting the keys to the room we would be sharing with seven people we did not know. I’m sure we made a great first impression stumbling in the dark at three am and waking everyone up.

Not wanting to make anyone angrier than they probably already were, we found our beds in the dark, which resembled hospital or morgue beads with the closing blue curtains before settling in for a restless night. We found out the next day that our room had no outlets, the showers in the basement were frightening, the internet was slower than Christmas, so it wasn’t even worth paying the money to get on. The people in our room were from: Canada, Poland, and France (we go to England, and French follows us). They were thankfully all really cool – at least after I apologized for our grand, noisy, late-night entrance.

This was my first impression of London. But don’t worry, things get better. Once you’ve hit rock bottom, the only place you can go is up!