Nantes and beyond

The adventure of a lifetime.

Alright, alright it has been ages since I wrote anything, even in my journal, but here’s the deal:

I am in La Roche sur Yon, which is western France, and I’m going to be writing about learning French. The twist? The people I’m staying with don’t speak English, so I HAVE to learn.  I’m here for a month and well, I hope you guys are buckled in cause its gonna be an interesting ride. (P.S I don’t know anyone here besides Jean Luc and Ginette, the people I’m staying with. I am on my own and its exciting!)

This is going to be a day by day thing, but I might not always post on the day so bear with me.

Saturday, 21^st October,

Today I finally arrived in France, which I’m happy about. Lets go back to Thursday when I tried to fly out.  We arrived at the airport and as soon as I saw the line I realized we weren’t going anywhere. There were at least 20 people standing, waiting. The PA came on and said the flight was delayed, and there was this collective groan from the people standing. Apparently there were people waiting to fly from Wednesday, but the flight was canceled due to weather. Also there was a couple who had been trying to leave for 3 days. Let me let you in on a secret about Flores. If the weather is bad, the one plane a day isn’t coming in. If there aren’t enough people, the plane isn’t coming in. Its irritating, but the airport is so small that there is only one carrier that flies through there and if they decide they aren’t coming, well you’re pretty much screwed. So eventually, after delaying the flight 3 times, they had to cancel, and reschedule for the next day. I was also mad because now I would miss my connection to Nantes so we had to cancel that flight and rebook. Ah well. After we left the airport, we went down to the little café by the ocean, and had lunch. Let me just tell you that I can understand why the pilot said no. The wind was blowing on the water, making a line of white, and then suddenly it would just go wooooofff and a little wind tornado would descend on the water and whip it into a frenzy so that all you could see was white caps. I drove us back, and went into full spaz mode back home, putting on my pajamas at 3 in the afternoon. I was done with responsibilities for the day. At least the cats were happy to see me. Oh wait no. They’re cats, they only view me as a food source and a rubbing station. Oh well.

The next day, we went again, and as I was finally able to book, the lady said under her breath to me that today was the day to fly out because she was pretty sure none of the flights were leaving Saturday or Sunday. I kissed Mom and Dad goodbye and hefted my anvil heavy handbag up onto my shoulder. Really now. I try to travel light but when you’ve got a computer and a camera, and food, and god knows what else, you’re just holding on for dear life hoping the straps wont break. My flight to Faiaal was uneventful and lasted all of 35 minutes. The lady and her husband who I would be staying with took me out to lunch, and we had a passagiata, which is Italian for afternoon stroll, down to the seaside with plenty of time to spare before our flight.

The flight to Lisbon was nice but I was unable to sleep. The view though was killer, the sky was turning pink and purple and it was ethereal out the window. Upon arrival in Lisbon we collected our baggage and stepped out into the warm night. Virginia (the lady who I would stay with) called her son to pick us up and we drove to their house in Estoril, a suburb of Lisbon. I repacked my bags a bit and headed straight for that nice soft pillow. Zzzzz

On Saturday morning we ate breakfast and got in the car to the airport. I arrived at 11.30 and Virginia said goodbye and left. Once inside the terminal, I looked for my flight and surprise, surprise, I was in the wrong terminal. Ha, I should have known it wasn’t going to be that easy. I found the bus and waited to get to Terminal 2. I was traveling with my backpack and a handbag, and hoping to get away with that as my hand luggage. Well, I found out you are only allowed one bag and of course started worrying about baggage fees and that nonsense, but the lady at the desk was the kindest airline check in person I can remember working with. She allowed me to check my 7 kg backpack for free! I guess they are right, what goes around comes around, so I must have done something right.

I caught my plane with no trouble, arrived in Nantes after being asleep for most of the flight, breezed through passport control, claimed my bag and went to join Jean Luc and Ginette. The rest as they say, is history.

Sunday, 22^nd October

Can you believe I slept till 10 am? Lazy indeed. Of course when you consider that its 8 am in Flores, its not so outrageous.

I had some toast and cheese for breakfast and Jean Luc invited me to come buy bread with him. We drove to the boulangerie and I was given the honor of asking for the bread. "Un baguette sil’ vous plait e un pain de bourgadin, merci". They had this thing where they don’t swipe the card they just wave it above the card reader which was cool. The farmer's market though was pure France. Cheese, wine tasting, honey, jam, fresh stuff, even a little pen full of animals, complete with 2 gorgeous looking reddish brown sheep, your obligatory bunnies, fabulous chickens with feather pom poms on their heads and a small thing that resembled a tiny piglet but it was black, and kind of like a hippo armadillo mix. It is really cold, as in 11 degrees Celsius. I don’t know what that is in Fahrenheit but suffice to say it is quite cold.

Autumn leaves

Later in the afternoon we took a stroll down and around to the park, which was beautiful, full of old trees and tons of acorns on the floor.

Haven't seen any squirrels yet.

There was even an old manor castle in the park which looked over their own private pond.

I wonder who lived here. Probably people with white wigs and poofy skirts.

They have it all to themselves

Its abandoned but still majestic.

I love these old places with the vines growing up the walls, its so beautiful.

We visited Jean Luc’s mother, who at 84, is still going strong. By the time we got home I was well and truly frozen, but it was a wonderful day. Tomorrow we are going shopping, I think. I of course bloody well hope so, otherwise there wont be more blog posts, only icicles.

So many trees.

I literally have one pair of jeans, because the other pair is 'distressed' which was a terrible idea, but I had no idea it was going to be THIS cold. Really, next week its going to be 3! degrees! during the night. It freezes at 0 degrees just so you know.