Lessons learned in Northern France (St. Malo)

I'm slowly getting through my whole trip...each post on every country takes so much out of me! I'm glad I wrote in my journal everyday during my trip; there is no way I'd be able to remember everything we did without it.

Paris was a totally different story from the rest of France.
France and Paris needed to be kept separate ---- here's France's lessons:


-Book your train reservations as early as possible. Days, weeks, etc, in advance. We headed to the Paris train station after hitting up our last site: Le Sacre Coeur. I assumed that since it had been so easy to get reservations while I was with my dad in Italy and Germany, that that would also be the case in France. Wrong. wrong, wrong, wrong, WRONG. Everything was already booked up for Eurail Pass Holders getting down to the south of France, where we had reservations in a couple of days. Apparently, they only reserved a certain amount of seats for Pass holders? Hadn't heard of that before? (Why was every country SO different? Couldn't they make something like a TRAIN work the same? Since it went through all the countries?)
          So....my plans completely changed in a matter of 2 minutes. Months and months of hard planning, searching, reserving....all down the drain. I told the lady, Fine, if it's booked to Marseille, just get me somewhere, anywhere, in the South. "Montpelier is nice?" she said. We'll take it!

 But there was two catches: 1) We didn't have any place to stay in Montpelier. 2) We didn't get in until 1am in a creepy city where we didn't have a place to stay. I was out of my mind with worry. For those of you who haven't figured it out yet, I am a planner. And I do not like it when things do not go according to plan. My mantra for the next 5 days as we shifted in and out of planned and unplanned events: I can do hard things.

- So, I learned that things do not always go according to plan. And so that must mean I was where I was supposed to be, when I was supposed to be there.

- I must not have learned the above lesson yet. Don't let spoiled plans spoil anything else. Shrug your shoulders, say "Oh well," and move on. Fast. One plan that was supposedly still in tact was to get up to St. Malo, on the north corner of France. From there we were going to visit Mont St. Michel, a chapel out on an island --- the ONLY reason we wanted to go up north in the first place. We hopped on the train from Paris to Rennes, and then to St. Malo. We stayed the night in a ghetto hotel (not a hostel), with a beautiful ocean view off our balcony. We awoke early, and started looking for the bus to take us to Mont St. Michel. After struggling through several conversations with several different people (and learning that there was somehow no internet access in the entire city? Wha...?), we learned that there was only one bus to Mont St. Michel. And we had already missed it for the day. We would have to try again tomorrow, or pay 80 euros for a taxi - I almost did it. Can you believe that? I was almost that spoiled, determined, stubborn...or stupid. But we could do neither. I was sooooooooo bummed. I wanted to cry; I had specifically made room for this one side trip just to see this chapel and now I wasn't able to -- I felt I had wasted an entire 2 days for nothing. I know, lame. I was in Europe. In France. And I was whining. I made myself sick! So I quickly dropped that poor attitude, remembering how blessed I was to already have seen so much, and how much I had to sacrifice (and Adam too) for me to be out here. Heather and I figured out something cool to do in the city we were in. We learned to take what we were given and enjoy it to its fullest, wasting no time, no bad energy, and no hard feelings. And we learned that St. Malo had some endearing qualities of its own - we just had to seek out the good, and we found it quick. Another lesson? Nutella crepes fix everything.

-Listen to your gut and get out of bad situations fast. This one is important pretty much anytime of life, but especially when you are 2 young girls traveling alone. We got to St. Malo around 8pm, and it was still pretty light out. We were waiting for the bus to take us to our hotel. There was one other kid standing by us and we tried to be friendly without being, you know, conversational (since we don't speak very good French, and all). A chemically, internally altered girl (ie drunk, high, or both) came up to us and started asking for money. I said I didn't speak French, so she gave me a real nice tourist welcome, which ended in some rude gestures and an "eff you" stare. Heather and I were both pretty weirded out, but when we saw her coming back with 2 other boys and a nasty looking dog, we knew we had to get out of there fast. Heather started heading back to the train station, but luckily we spotted some taxis first. They started pestering the boy, and we bee-lined it for the taxis, praying for a nice and safe taxi-driver. He was both, and delivered us at our hotel in one piece. It was worth the extra cost to not get beaten up or into a situation we wouldn't have known how to get out of. As we pulled away in the taxi, the boy's mom had come to pick him up, but the groupies were still bothering them. We hope they all were safe.
Another example: We were at a train station. looking at our maps, and a creepy guy next to us was muttering, "Oh baby...Americans...." we promptly got up and found a seat surrounded by normal-er looking people.

-Churches are sources of comfort, no matter the religion. We always liked to find the churches in whatever Old Town we were in, and just sit for a minute or two, enjoying the peace and quiet and rest. We never felt rushed or in danger or on the defense when we were in a church. It was building dedicated to God, and as such, a sweet spirit was there.

- Genesis 2:18: It is not good for man to be alone. Haha, this scripture kept popping into my head the entire trip, thinking about Adam all alone at home. I missed him so much during my trip. I struggled with the pay phones and making contact with him. At this point in my trip, I had gone 7 days without talking to Adam, and about 4 days without even being able to email him. I thought about him going to work, and I was just so torn up that I wasn't there to support him during the start of his first real job. I thought about what he did with his free time (watched movies, made a desk and bed frame, re-did our kitchen table) and tears would sting my eyes at the thought that it wasn't spent with me. I sent him about 2 postcards a week, and all of them were hanging on the wall when I got home.