I used the day to try to get caught up on my blog; I'm hoping to be fully caught up by the time I leave Friday, but there is still a lot to do. We had a typical lunch today, but dinner tonight was special: we had a very grand apéritif in the backyard and Christine and Lionel invited their neighbors (an elderly couple whose names I forget). The five adults sat in the backyard and enjoyed very nice conversation, while Guilhem, who apparently was too bored by our talk to stay, went back and forth from the house to the food at least 15 times. Christine completely outdid herself with our snacks today: we had Spanish sausage, marinated vegetables, nuts, tiny quiche-like bakes, and individual crab cocktails. Lionel, meanwhile, treated us to a very nice, very French drink called Pineau des Charentes. I looked it up on the internet and found that Pineau des Charentes is like a mixture of wine and Cognac. It's also very uncommon outside of the Charente region in France and is nearly nonexistent outside of France. I felt very special getting to taste it!
Our gorgeous apéritif, served by passing each dish around at about 3-minute intervals
Christine's crab cocktails
The drink bar
Michat (scarred from being a big bully with another cat a few nights ago) decided to grace us with his presence
Pineau des Charentes
haha he just couldn't hang with us for long :)
The apéritif was so unusually large that I couldn't help but feel like it was part of my send-off. We were so full after munching like this for nearly an hour that after the neighbors left, it was only Chrstine, Lionel, and I who ate dinner and we had nothing more than an endive salad and then yogurts for dessert. After helping with the dishes and setting the table for breakfast, I told Christine and Lionel that I was going out for a couple of hours to meet up with Roshanna. It was already plenty late but I knew that this was probably the only opportunity I had left to go to this bar that probably every other USAC-er had been to at least once. So I shook off being tired, got myself ready, and headed out to the bus stop to get downtown to Le Garage. I was the only other person on the bus besides the driver, and he decided to do the weirdest thing before taking me to my final stop: he pulled over to buy a kabob sandwich. So there I was, trapped on a bus, all alone, waiting for this bus driver to buy himself a late-night snack when I realized that the bar was only a block in front of us; I could have walked from there except that I had no idea how to open the door. And this knowledge would have come in handy when this French family with small children walked up and knocked to be let in from the cold. I felt terrible that all I could do was stand there (inside and warm) looking rather lost as I had no clue how to let them in. I tried gesturing towards where the bus driver had gone, and they seemed to realize that it wasn't my fault they were stuck outside- they all smiled and rolled there eyes at me when the bus driver finally came to let them in; like we had some secret inside joke. It was all a very slow, annoying experience that delayed me unnecessarily (and a first!), but it was also funny in its own right.
Finally, I walked inside the infamous Le Garage. It was like you'd expect: pictures, old-world memorabilia, and the like hanging everywhere; there was a rugby game on tv; and it was crowded with young people. The only unique characteristic was that most of the people there were American or English. Roshanna met up with me after a few minutes and I ended up walking her over to the same kebab shop I had just unwittingly sat in front of for what felt like forever, after she announced that she was starving and the bar was no longer serving food. C'est la vie!
It was fun to hang out at Le Garage for a little while, but it wasn't everything it was cracked up to be. I am happy to say that I did it, though, and that I got to see what the famous "Cobra Shot" is all about. My friend Joe was there tonight and he nearly forced the one person who agreed to take the shot with him (a girl I hadn't met before) up to the bar for this reputable drink. He worked it up to such heights that she nearly changed her mind half-way to the bar. Joe wouldn't tell any of us what the big deal was, but said that if you agreed to take it, you had to follow through with it even after the bartender pulled out the bottle. As you might have guessed, I politely disinclined but did watch.
Ahhh, so THAT'S what all the fuss is about!!
The Cobra Shot at Le Garage:
It made sense instantly: the Cobra Shot has such a reputation because, well... THERE'S A DEAD SNAKE IN IT! I have no clue what it tastes like, and I don't want to know. Just seeing the drink was enough to wet my curiosity.
And that about sums up my first and only Le Garage experience. By the end of the evening there was a good 10 or so USAC kids there and we stayed until they kicked us out to close up. I'll definitely come here again some day.... the next time I visit Pau. :)
It was late enough when I parted ways from everyone that there were no more buses for the night and I had to walk. For the first time, I felt truly skittish walking alone on these streets, and I chalk that up to the fact I was around a lot of various types of smoke outside of the bar and it was making me paranoid (though that probably wasn't the reality of the situation). In any case, I called my mom's cell to hopefully find someone to talk to during my walk. Unfortunately, my whole family was out so no one could get on Skype to call me back without charging my phone. But I think my mom could hear that I was a little anxious, so my wonderful family took those phone fees like taking one for the team and occupied a good 20-minutes of my walk talking to me by cell. They were actually out on our neighbors' boat when I called, and it just so happened that a good majority of our other friends and neighbors were there too. So I got passed around from one familiar voice to the next and I was almost brought to tears by each person: there was not one friend who didn't say something along the lines of being so proud of me, so excited for me to have this opportunity, or how they can't wait to see me in just a couple of weeks. A couple of people praised me non-stop the whole time I was on the phone with them for my decision to embark on this journey and how I've handled it. Those were some of the happiest 20-minutes of this entire trip for me. I talked to almost everyone I love and miss, and received so many compliments and reminders to keep enjoying this experience up to the last seconds. It was the best example of how blessed and how fortunate I have felt every day of the past few months- I went to bed with a lump in my throat but a smile on my face and in my heart.
Sunday: The last day of my last weekend in Pau, France. *sigh* Roshanna and I decided to make the most of this day while not stressing ourselves out with a ton of travel: we chose to spend a day on the beach! I packed my new French bikini and the two of us boarded a train over to Biarritz where we spent the latter half of the day soaking in the sun, walking around the stunning coast, and simply taking in the last glorious moments in our beloved France.
It ironically happened that I had planned to leave the house about the same time Guilhem had to leave to head towards Christine's brothers place. It also just so happened that he was on the exact same train as Roshanna and I. And we hadn't planned that at all! What are the odds? So it worked out quite nicely for me that I did not have to take the bus or walk, but hitched a ride with Christine and Guilhem down to the train station. There, I waited for Roshanna and the three of us found seats together on the train. Guilhem was so hilarious about being shy in front of Roshanna, and he very kindly said that we could sit with him when I told him (once out of earshot of Christine) that we really could just find our own seats. He mostly just played on his Nintendo DS, but it was fun for the first half hour before us girls switched trains to sit by him and watch him play his game as he stealthily tried to decipher what we were saying in English. We said a quick goodbye and then parted ways until Wednesday when he comes back with his family.
Roshanna and I killed the last hour+ on the train with reading, filling out last-minute postcards, and the like. And then, we were finally in beautiful Biarritz! If you remember, Roshanna was sick the day we visited Biarritz with USAC back in March, so this was her first time seeing the place. And she was just as blown away as we had all been on that first day.
Welcome (back) to Biarritz!
Once off the train, we took a local bus to the heart of the city. Once there I was able to point us in the general direction of where we had eaten lunch with USAC. We were actually quite starving at this point, so we just picked the nearest reasonably-priced restaurant for lunch. It turned out to be a great choice: fried calamari with delicious tartar sauce and a view of the French Atlantic Coast seems to be an ideal eating experience for lunchtime in Biarritz. :)
My yummy, yummy lunch
Once good and full, we walked ourselves down to the sand! It was plenty full of people around this time but not nearly as crowded as it would become by the end of the day. We both felt awkward about stripping down to our swimsuits in public- since we had gotten used to thick wool coats and cold weather over the last three months- but we quickly felt less self-conscious after spotting at least 4 topless women within 10ft of us. After all, we were not in America anymore. XD Then it was just a matter of enjoying the sun and the surf for as long as our hearts desired...
Heading down to the beach!
haha I suppose I was a little out of place in my sweatshirt and jeans
In desperate need of a tan, but fully enjoying the beautiful ocean
It was a busy day today in Biarritz: tourists crowd the place all the time, but the French were also out in full force taking advantage of the very very good weather for the day
Surf's up
Once the tide starting moving in, people squished up towards the top of the sand. We realized with a sigh that our personal space had finally shrunk down to too small, so we packed up and went for a little walk around the bay.
As I said, a VERY busy day in Biarritz
Here comes the tide
Exhilarating! I wish you could have heard that water rushing in!
And that was all; we didn't want to make a big production of the day, so we didn't. We laid on the beach for a few hours, walked around in the sun for another hour or so, and then we started trying to find our way back to the train station. Unfortunately, from that point on the day wasn't as simple as it had started out as. We couldn't find a bus stop anywhere, and when we did find one it was for a bus that wouldn't show up for another hour. We kept our eyes peeled for a taxi, but Biarritz is a small town and we had no luck with that plan. Eventually, after walking around for almost a full half hour, we had to face the fact that we were going to miss our evening train and would have to take a later one to get back to Pau. We sat down at the foot of a bus sign and waited there rather than risk walking 30-minutes in the wrong direction. I texted Christine to explain how I would be late for dinner and why, and then did my best on the phone with an operator for the SNCF rail company. She gave me my first piece of good news at that point: there was still a chance that we could make a train home without paying for new tickets. She said that as long as we made it to the train station by the time the next train left for Pau, we could use the same tickets to simply trade for the ones that corresponded to that train. We crossed our fingers and hoped that we could do all of that before the next train pulled out.
Roshanna and I finally made it to the Biarritz train station, ironically only about 10 minutes after our original train had departed. There was no line at the ticket counter and that ended up being about the luckiest coincidence: we were able to trade our tickets but would have missed our new train if we had spent one more minute inside. Yikes! Actually, we got really lucky and were able to trade our tickets for ones that were about half the price; so we were each handed a few euros worth of change with our new tickets. Whoopi!
Eventually, we were on the train home. I had never heard back from Christine when I texted her before and I found out why when we pulled into Pau and there was Lionel waiting for me (as usual). He said that Christine had come to pick me up at the original arrival time because she had left her phone at home and didn't see my text! I felt so bad, but there really wasn't anything I could do about that; Christine told me not to worry about it too. What was done was done, and the three of us sat down to a normal, fantastic meal after Lionel and I arrived home from dropping Roshanna off at the residence halls. I was able to talk to my family on Skype for a little while after dinner.... and that was the end of my last Sunday in beloved Pau. *sniff sniff*
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