Ludivine had told me that the movie was in English with French subtitles. But, of course, I forgot to ask her which theater had it in English. So I just bought tickets at the theater near my bus stop. So upon arriving to the movie and sitting through the previews (in French), I began to worry that I had screwed up and that the movie was actually going to be in French. Alas, ‘twas so. So I watched the new Harry Potter movie that I was so excited to see in French. Which means I missed all the jokes and much of the sentiment. I understood the movie overall since I’ve read the book (twice I think). But I missed a dialogue. Generally, since I can’t actually think in French yet, I would try to translate a sentence, then I’d miss a sentence, and back and forth it went. And I wasn’t able to translate all of the sentences that I attempted to translate. Hence, my Harry Potter movie experience was not nearly as fulfilling as it should have been. So I plan on seeing it again when I get home.So I left Friday morning not too long after my French family left for a two week vacation. That’s right. I’m living by myself in France for the last week. I was sad that they were leaving, though, because I was finally getting better at being able to carry on a conversation. Anyways, they left for Spain Friday morning a little bit before I left for Cannes. I took my 6 hour train to Cannes, keeping my backpack at my feet. Since I’m generally paranoid about getting my stuff stolen, I never put it on the luggage racks. On this particular trip, my paranoia earned me some dirty looks from the lady sitting across from me, since my bag was at her feet as well as mine. But I chose not having my stuff stolen over being polite to the random French lady. I eventually got to Cannes, where I promptly found my hotel and checked in (and pleased to find that I had internet in my room). Being that it was about 8:00, I set out in search for a restaurant for dinner.
I eventually found a little open porch type place next to the beach and decided that would be a nice place to eat. I walked up to a waitress and told her one person (as that is what you usually do in French restaurants, and they usually just point to the tables and tell you to pick something). Well, in response, the waitress asked me a question in French. I thought she asked me if I wanted to sit down inside, so I said yes. She indicated the tables as they often do in French restaurants. I picked a table, and the waitress promptly brought me a beer and no menu. I was pretty confused at this point considering I had never ordered a beer, don’t remember hearing the waitress ask if I wanted one, and I was hungry and wanted to eat. I decided to politely drink my beer (even though I don’t really like beer), and wait for her to bring me the menu. Instead, she brought me the check for the beer I never ordered. I began thinking that I may have accidentally walked into a beach bar that didn’t even serve food until I saw the couple at the next table receive their food order. Finally, I asked the waitress for a menu. She gave me a funny look, as if this was a weird request, but brought me a menu anyways. From this point on, some other guy became my waiter (which is common in France; since there is no tipping, somebody just serves you, nobody specific).
He kept speaking to me in English even though I kept trying to speak to him in French. I guess we both just wanted to practice, but the other was not cooperating. Anyways, I ordered something that sounded good (and it was in English, so I did recognize what I was ordering). But what I was served was not what I had been expecting. There were very thin pieces of steak that looked as though they had not been cooked at all. On the steak were mushrooms, olive oil, and parmesan cheese. Raw meat, mushrooms, and olive oil don’t have much flavor on their own, so all the flavor was in the cheese. It was strange. Plus, I was still trying to finish this beer that I didn’t want and only drank because I was getting charged for it and I knew they would bring me water when I finished. Overall, not a successful dining experience. But oh well.Anyways, I got up the next day, Bastille Day, and took my time getting ready. Eventually I got myself out the door. I got some food and went shopping but didn’t buy anything as I often was drawn to the kind of stores that I definitely could not afford. Later, I made use of the internet in my room and read my book for a little while. Mostly passing time until Lexi got into town. Eventually, early in the evening, she called to let me know that she had reached Cannes. We made plans to meet on a corner near my hotel so that we could go to dinner together. Unfortunately, nobody anticipated the traffic horror that was Bastille Day (it was probably only as bad as normal Connector traffic in Atlanta, but this is Europe, so that’s a little unusual). So I was waiting on the corner for almost an hour (finding myself silently thanking cell phone companies for the ingenious idea of putting games on your cell phone) when Lexi’s mom finally called me from a phone booth a few blocks away. So after a little confusion that eventually involved me running after their car, I caught up with them so that we could finally eat. Since Lexi and her family go to this part of Europe often, they have favorite dives where they like to eat and hang out. So Mrs. Nichols had a place in mind where she wanted to go to eat moules-frites, mussels with fries. But apparently the place had disappeared (which is fairly uncommon for Europe). So we picked some other place that said they had moules-frites, and we sat and ate and watched fireworks going off over the sea. It was nice, but afterwards, we had to battle the traffic again, putting us at home pretty late.
The next day I met up with Lexi and her family again. We drove to Èze, a little city close to both Cannes and Nice. Like many little cities, Èze had a little medieval castle and village on a hill overlooking the sea. We ate lunch there and walked around the village looking in the little shops and stuff. Afterwards, we drove down toward the water.
Everybody (except Lexi’s dad) went for a run (along the coast of the sea; it was pretty amazing), and we met up again afterwards so that we could go swimming in the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. We went to a little area that Lexi and I had seen during our run that looked to have nice water and not a lot of people. The Nichols had brought their snorkeling gear with them (and apparently go snorkeling everyday while they are here; I’m so jealous). So we went in the water with the masks and flippers to explore stuff. Unfortunately, we had picked a bad spot to explore. There were hardly any fish, a lot of sea grass, and not much to look at in general. But it was still really cool and I would love to go snorkeling sometime in really clear waters again. Anyways, we went back in with the intention of going to a special place in Nice that they like to go to where we could see lots of fish and cool stuff. But at this point, it was starting to get late and I had a train to catch. So all we had time to do was go back to Cannes and eat dinner. Afterwards, I caught my train back to Toulouse, arriving just after five in the morning. Thankfully, the buses get started early, and I was able to get a bus back home. At home, I slept for about an hour and a half before having to get up to get ready for class. Needless to say, I was exhausted all day on Monday.
