Don’t you guys just love my titles? I’m so original and cool.
Well for those of you who are traveling I've got some big news. I am currently in the process of purchasing a flight from Prague to Moscow, Russia from which I plan on traveling to St. Petersburg. This wasn't in the original plan but after a visa issue with traveling in Europe for longer than 90 days, it seemed like the perfect solution. Jay Payne is going to Moscow!
Monday (July 16th):
Well after an all-night bus to Axe-en-Provence, I got to “Arc Hotel” at 6:30am
where I entered my single hotel room, checked my email, and fell asleep. I woke up around 11:30am to the sun shining
and after an exhausting, non-stop 3 weeks of travel up to that point, I decided
to relax and chill for the day. I
changed into my bathing suit, brought my book (Pride and Prejudice), and
went to the hotel’s sunny poolside where I read, sun bathed, jumped into the pool,
and slept. I came back to my hotel room
quite relaxed and decided to take a bath (perhaps only the 2nd bath
I’ve ever taken since I started kindergarten, just for the record) and also
fell asleep in the bathtub. I woke up
~30 minutes later, a little cold and pruney, and decided to drain the tub and
go back to sleep (~7:00pm) in my bed.
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| Arc Hotel (my hotel in Axe-en-Provence) |
Not much of a day, sorry to bore you all, but it was a much
needed “holiday” on a “holiday.”
Tuesday(July 17th):
I awoke at 4:30am and well, was wide awake after my relaxing Monday. I was a little stressed because my train to
Vienna was leaving from Montpellier at 10:21pm and I didn’t know how I was
going to get there, hadn’t seen any of the Axe-en-Provence sights, and didn’t
really eat anything on Monday because I was too tired to even notice.
So I ate a few snacks I had in my bag, read a bit of my
book, and at 7:00am, I checked out of the hotel. I asked the hostess if they checked bags at
the train station but she spoke little English and didn’t understand. My hotel was about a 25minute walk to the
city center, and I decided to bring everything had with me and hope the train
station had a locker. I hiked up the
hill with my backpack and my daypack and was off to the train station.
After waiting in line at the train station, I found out that
there were no lockers for my bags (which was a problem) however that there were
lockers at the Montpellier station. So I
booked a train ticket from Axe-en-Provence to Marseille St. Charles, and then
to Montpellier leaving me about 1.5 hours to go see the city of Axe-en-Provence. Well, I knew I would regret not at least
walking around the city for a bit, and I could just imagine Tom yelling at me
for not seeing the city, so I put both of my bags on and walked around. There are just some things you just gota do,
and this was one of them.
I started at the “Cours Mirabeau” where there was a street
market and of course the famous “Rotonde” and moved on to Saint-Jean-de-Malte ,
the Roman bath house, the statue of le Roi René, the “palais de Justice” (2nd
most powerful appeals court in France), the “Thermes Sextius” (message center
for the Romans) and was on my way back down the Cours Mirqbeau, I saw a GE
Money Bank and had a husband/wife couple from southern Illinois take my picture.
My GE friends would understand this.
 | ||||
Le
Cours Mirabeau
|
Montpellier: Well after an exhausting walk around the city with ~50
pounds of stuff, I made my way back to the train station and off to Marseille
St. Charles/Montpellier. When I arrived
at 1:55pm, I had roughly 8 hours to kill so I decided to try and find a locker
for my bags but again, was forced with the same decision, lay around with my
bags or walk it. I walked it.
 |
| Place de la Comedie |
I went down the street to a café where I ordered the special
of the day, and read my book. After
relaxing for about an hour, I walked around the “Place de la Comedie” but didn’t
go on much further as I was afraid of getting lost and was becoming very tired/exhausted
from carrying the bags all day. And I
had to put up with the weird looks as I looked like a fool. So I made my way back to the train station
where I grabbed a sandwich, some fruit, and fell asleep in a random corner on
the second floor for about three hours.
Soon enough, my train was here and I boarded my sleeper car for the night.
I’ve never been in a sleeper train car before, so this whole
experience was quite new to me. Luckily,
there were only two others in my compartment (holds up to six) and were both
roughly my age and were giving me the low down of how to use my Eurail pass and
get around on the European train system (it is quite confusing I must admit).
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| My bed on the sleeper train |
I got about 5 hours of sleep (enough for me to function) and
caught my connection at Mulhouse (France), then again in Zurich (Switzerland),
and then finally Vienna at 6:44pm (almost 24 hours later). I was greeted by my parents and my good
friends: Mury and Oliver. We went out to
dinner where Oliver’s fiancé Marlene joined us and we all enjoyed catching up
with eachother. After we dropped my
parents off at Mury’s apartment, Oliver, Mury, and myself went to the Museum
Quad (a popular hangout area past 8pm) and had a few drinks and talked. I called this: “Oliver’s Bachelor Party Part
II” as his wedding was only two days away!
Stay tuned for my next blog where you can watch me read a
poem from E.E. Cummings at Oliver’s wedding!
Au revoir Southern France,
Jay
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