Days 93, 94, 95 and 96

Day 93 was another one of my long scheduled train days. With my rail pass, I can do as much travelling in a midnight-midnight period using only one travel day. So this day was to be no exception. First off I was sad to say goodbye to my hosts at the Hotel Patricia. Anik and Jerome were exceptional; Anik even drove me to the train station in Beaulieu! Which helped immensely.

Beaulieu to Nice; short hop. Nice to Paris Gare de Lyon, longer trip, six hours. But it was in first class and I had a lovely chat with some of my seat mates and the couple sitting across the aisle.

I had two choices in Paris; either walk or take the metro. At this point the backpack seemed to be getting heavier and as such I decided to risk the stairs of the metro world. Plus it was raining. To go what seemed to be about a half mile I had to go on two different lines encompassing a MASSIVE three stops.

It is hear that quite possibly the most frustrating and laughter inducing moment happened.

Even moreso than running into the wall in the post office in Italy. I have to get through the rapidly opening and closing gate once I get my ticket out of the slot to get into the metro system. I plan out my trail: push dive bag (one wheel short again!) and continue through.

Except it really didn’t happen that way.

I got the dive bag through.

Not so much the backpack.

It was something out a of a comedy film. My backpack was stuck halfway through the metro door. Goodness me.

It was at this point that I started making a scene. Not so much calling out “please help me”, but, since I was in Paris, using some “choice words”. I can’t of course reveal them to you, and I’m not proud to say that I yelled them out, however they were impeccably French.

Soon I had three people either trying to pull or push me out. Finally, the doors opened. I looked back.

There’s a young lady, who is now stuck herself.

I’ll give the Parisien Metro system one thing, you really have to work to cheat at it.

The gentleman behind her states that “I’ll scan my card, then we’ll both go through at the same time. One, two, THREE!”

They both make it through. I thank everyone profusely, make my connections, and get on the Limoges bound train.

I’m not sure why my day is weird, but it stands gets more bizarre. The train ride to Limoges is uneventful except for the time I go to the washroom. It’s halfway through the four hour ride and the back door is open. I don’t really think much about it, I just go into the washroom.

When I emerge, another passenger is there right as I open the washroom door to pull me back to safety. It was at that point that it occurs to me what COULD have happened. The train stops shortly afterwards to get everything rectified, although we’re not allowed to use that door again during the trip.

I pull into Limoges around 7.30 pm and although I might be able to take the bus system, I haven’t been able to confirm it, so I decide to get a cab. The driver is kind enough chatting with me… although my ride costs me 20 Euros as the hotel is really north of town. Kind of nullified the cost of the room, which was a steal at 28 Euros per night. I really don’t care at this moment as I’ve been travelling since about 8 am that morning.

Day 94 promises to be adventurous, although not without its problems. I wake up for no apparent reason at 4.45 am and can’t get back to sleep. As a result my day does not start until 10 am, as there is little to no motivation to do anything at this point.

I do eventually get downtown and get dropped off at the train station at around 11 am. It is a gorgeous station; no doubt about that.

I also found this sign:

Which translates to mean If you take my spot, take my handicap. I think is very well put.

I stumble onto the tourist office and like every other city I’ve been to, get a map so I have a rough idea of where I’ve been and where I’m going. I start by visiting a covered market to find some lunch. I do love the markets in Europe, they are just so wonderful. I am then thrilled to chance upon two young ladies wearing matching M&M shirts and know exactly what they are doing.

It turns out that my last full day in France is the start of Téléthon – an annual fundraising event all across France to raise money for research for child illnesses. I am pleased as punch to make a small donation and receive a bag of M&M’s as a result.

I continue to explore, this time heading south of the city centre. I find the town’s main cathedral.

It is open later in the day and thus I continue to keep moving, finding the botanical gardens. They are quite beautiful, especially the water fountains.

I take some time to sit down and reflect on the last six weeks. It has been quite a ride. I am extremely fortunate to have had the adventures that I have. And I have tons of pictures – and one really awesome video – that I can always look back on, plus this blog.

It is time for a nap. I hike back to the train station, catch the bus back to the hotel, and crash for a couple of hours.

After dinner and a quick chat to family back home, it is time for some real good old fashioned fun.

While I had been recommended to come to Limoges by someone, I thought it would be nice to see if there was any way that I could get a dive in. As it turns out that wasn’t possible, but in emailing back and forth to the president, Patrice, of the dive club that is affiliated with France 3 in the region (of all things!) he invited me to come join them in the pool on this evening. Some of you might say I’m crazy to have travelled to a different continent and I’m diving in a pool – I say you’re wrong. Part of the fun is meeting new people.

So it was with great pleasure that Patrice came round to my hotel to pick me up to head out to the pool. I introduced myself and off we went. Our first stop was to pick up the tanks and gear for that evening. It turns out that the club owns a small trailer which neatly fits all of their gear in it… within 3 minutes we had arrived, hooked up the trailer, and we were off again! I wonder where I can get one of those for a reasonable price.

We arrived at the pool and I met several other members of the club and was introduced to everyone else on the pool deck. They have a block of time (around 90 minutes) every Friday evening where they share the pool time with two other dive clubs in the area. It does lead to a lot of people underwater at once but surprisingly everyone is very respectable of each other’s space.

Patrice came over to me and said vous êtes un moniteur, oui? (You’re a DM, correct?) to which I responded that yes, I was, and he asked me if I would mind helping out with the basic students! Which I said yes, of course. I pretty much help as much as I can back home.

So it was very interesting to see the same things going on, only slightly different. I spent about half the time with the N1 group (niveau de base) and then popped u/w for some picture and video taking.

It turns out that there was even a high dive board. Now as many of you I am EXTREMELY INTROVERTED so it was with surprise that I got on the board, and went for a dive, literally.

Here's me with Gerard, who I was helping with the basic course.

It was definitely a fun evening at the pool, and we wrapped up around 11 pm. Back in the changeroom all of sudden someone said “Vive le Canada”… at which that point I was flattered… and then they said “Vive Celine Dion” to which I just shook my head. Further conversations included the explanation of poutine.

Stéphane, one of the moniteurs – and ironically only one of two people that actually has a connection with France 3! – gave me lift over to the brasserie (read: brewery). There was a good crowd of about 20 of us that sat down and just shot the breeze.

And happily, flammekuche was ordered! Gotta love it.

You can see I'm laughing in this picture, that was me most of the night, everyone cracked me up well and good.

Here's a pic with me, Patrice, and Valerie. Patrice is the president of the club and an outstanding fellow!

We got pretty much an entire group shot. Thank you to Patrice for these pics!

Olivier was a new recruit to the group, just learning how to dive. Good on ya!

Here's me with Stephane and I think Marilyne... in perspective.

It ended up being quite the perfect night… just a great time with great camaraderie and a great group of new friends. We actually closed down the brasserie (ok, it closed itself down to regulations) and I got back home pretty late. Not going to mention how late, but sufficient to say I got about 4 hours sleep before I had to turn around and get up for the train!

So Day 95 was an early party scene, followed by a “nap” for lack of better terms, and then off to my next destination – and final country on this journey – Spain! I had done some research and found a little pension just outside of the city centre that is Irun – which is the first town past the French/Spanish border, if you’re looking at the northeast corner of the map. There was a specific reason, but I’ll get to that.

I have been doing all of my reservations through booking.com and it has yet to disappoint. I

ended up in a gorgeous little place which had a gorgeous view,

and to boot, because it was the weekend, I was eligible for a discount through the regional travel initiative so one of the nicest places I’ve stayed throughout this adventure ended up being the cheapest – 26 Euros!!!

I just realized that’s a horribly bad run on sentence. Sorry Clive. Later I’ll put in a comma splice (C/s!) just for you.

After a short nap (for real this time) I headed on into town. Irun was a quaint little place, which featured the most interesting traffic crossing signals:

The little guy actually runs when you get down to three seconds! You can see in the time lapse that he realizes that it’s time to get on your horse and go. This makes me laugh intensely.

My mistake, however, was not getting any food in the city centre. The pension was a good 40 minutes walk from the city centre and apparently Saturday night either a) nothing was open in my area or b) it was smoky as all gets out and I just wasn’t in the mood for nicotine-flavoured tapas.

Instead I had the most MARVELLOUS dinner that I got at the grocery store – nacho chips (read: Doritos). Think of all the food groups it has – dairy (cheese dust), breads and cereals (the corn chip), meat poultry and alternatives (umm… the spices) and fruit/veg (umm… the spices?)! Wow! What a healthy meal!

Day 95 promised to be better, I thought, food wise at least. I started my walk into town around 7.30 am to get my train to nearby San Sebastian… which is a surfing town! I had scheduled a lesson for later in the morning.

I am happy that I went early to San Sebastian – I got there around 9.45 am and although I found the surf shop it apparently wasn’t the place where you got the surf lessons. I thought perhaps maybe they could have put that information on the door… so it was with relief that I stumbled upon some surfers (if you can call Seattle “local”) who were happy to lead me to the area – “you need to go to the surf beach, dude” – these guys epitomized the lifestyle. Good for them, it’s not like I epitomize any kind of lifestyle.
Right?

In any case I got into the shop, and was immediately kitted up with a wet suit (yee-haw, a rental) and then was told to just wait.

Here is where my Spanish language skills came into play. Both the shop keep and one of the instructors were asking me if either I could do a lesson tomorrow or do a half/half split today and tomorrow. I stumbled to explain but managed to communicate that I was leaving for Madrid tomorrow for my flight. This apparently posed a problem.

However as it’s become apparent to me on this trip, the karma points kept cashing in. The shopkeep was able to get someone to get out of bed to come do the lesson! When my instructor, Joseba, arrived, I thanked him immediately, but I could tell that he really didn’t mind that much, he seemed instinctively to enjoy his job.

So we headed out to the beach, dude. It was comical as you have to cross a major tourist street with cars zooming either way with your board, but you do it.

We started the lesson by spending about the first half hour getting down the basics. What it boils down to is you have to position your body, on your stomach, flat on the board, PADDLE PADDLE PADDLE when you’re told, then get to the hard part. Start pushing your body up like you’re doing some funky yoga position then kick your secondary foot up and then your primary foot. Seems easy, right?

Well it’s not! I spent about the better part of the next hour laughing because I just couldn’t get it! The closest I got was positioning the second foot, but that was it. I also spent the majority of the hour drinking salt water and trying to avoid getting hit by my board when it was battered in the waves! I just had too much of a fun time though!
It helped that Joseba was patient! He explained that everyone is at different levels in their first day and I was somewhere in the middle. I’ll take it. For a thirty-one-year-old I think I do okay. I remarked to him that it was the same with diving – everyone progresses at a different rate.

It was also pretty neat that about 90% of the lesson was conducted in Spanish. Now while my Spanish is rusty I managed to get through it without much pain in the brain! Joseba explained that it was a great way to practice while doing something physical at the same time.

We got back to the shop around 1.30 pm and we snapped a picture!

It was less than 50 Euros for 1.5 hours of instruction, wetsuit, board and everything else… a great deal and a great experience!

After it was all done I was pretty knackered. I walked around a bit, grabbed a burger and some gelato, and then headed back to the hotel. I love water sports but afterwards I find that I’m a bit delirious at times! Good delirious though!

And you can see that some people feel that a naked traffic guy is inappropriate, so they did something about it!

I flipped on the telly after dinner and found the most intriguing show – Pasapalabra. Its originations are in the UK and one of the creators is Canadian (I believe). They play several rounds – each team has one civilian and two celebs. You build points which then are added to a base time so that you can play in the final round.

The final round is where this good game becomes GREAT. Both players participate with their time banks. They are each given 25 definitions which either start with, or contain, a certain letter (the latter is the case for less common letters such as X, Y, Z and the ever popular Ñ). The one who scores the highest wins and comes back for the next show.

HOWEVER if you get all 25 you win the jackpot which starts at about 100 000 Euros and adds 6 000 Euro per day when it’s not one. This show featured a 330 000 Euro jackpot! And it was a heart breaker when one contestant got 24 out of 25, having missed one earlier in the round.
Pasapalabra does hold some game show infamy – it holds the record for the single highest game show win – over two million Euros. It’s on youtube, go look it up.

Tomorrow – my last full day in Europe!
Cheers,
Vick.