Carlos and I were sitting in Culture Biere on Thursday night and decided that this weekend could not be spent in Paris; it was raining, there wasn’t much going on, and all around it was the best weekend to leave Paris. But Friday morning I told myself we weren’t really going to follow through with the idea of going on a trip- it was too out of the blue and train tickets were expensive.
(Here's a picture a photographer took in Culture Biere, because of course we are very important people and they needed to have us on their website)
Now, here’s the hour-by-hour of the decision to leave:
5ish pm- After a little reading, a little work, and a lot of procrastination, I fell asleep.
7ish pm- I called Carlos and found him in a complete state of euphoria (like a little kid when they’re excited about a trip) and so I started looking for train tickets to not ruin the 2 year old’s dream.
9ish pm- After a very long time of looking for train tickets and only finding absurd prices, I called Avis and made a reservation to rent a car because it was only a fraction of the cost of two train tickets. There’s a catch: Avis only had stickshift and Carlos can’t drive because he’s a wittle, wittle, under-21, baby. That leaves me driving stickshit; I mean stickshift, in Europe, for the first time. I learned to drive in Colombia in a jeep from the Stone Age, and so I convince myself that I still remember how to drive stickshift, even though it has been six years.
A bit after 9pm- “Carlitos… yeaiiiiiiiiii! Pack and come over, we have a car and so we should probably figure out where we are going.”
9:50- After an extremely protracted, exhaustive 3-second discussion of where we wanted to go to, which consisted of me posing the question and Carlos responding very authoritatively, “Normandie,” I start packing and Carlos started looking online how to drive to Normandy from Paris. You might be wandering where in Normandy. Wherever the stickshift car and my ‘France on a Budget’ guide would take us.
Around 10:30pm- Leave my house.
10:57 (exact time- it says so on the contract)– We signed the Avis contract and got the keys from the car rental, which closes at 11pm. Some of you may be thinking that it was cutting it too close. I call that Snappelin’ Austrian-like efficiency.
After scaring Carlos to death about how I couldn’t drive stick shift, almost crashing into the garage door as I took the car out of the Parking place, cruising in our Fiat Panda and having dinner at a place where the Arab pizza man was sure all women were a mix between a goddess and the devil (because he explained this as he made our pizza) we finally left Paris at midnight.
3:20 am (Saturday): We arrive in Honfleur, our first stop. There are a couple of recommended hostels in my guide, but none of them are open.
We wondered around for a while (and had a cat follow us the entire time) and then decided to go back to the Ibis we had seen at the entrance of Honfleur. It was four in the morning by now and Carlos could drive for two minutes, right? We reached the Ibis and had a car behind us. All of a sudden, the seemingly regular car, metamorphosed into a bloodcurdling thing with blue lights on top. My nerves were racking. Three huge, intimidating policemen and a dog (I’m not kidding, they had a dog) got out of the car and asked Carlos why we had stopped, and he explained we were going to the hotel. They asked where we were from, at which point I obviously screamed ‘COLOMBIA!’ (No, I’m kidding- I kept it to myself and avoided getting deported) and upon hearing Carlos’ “Spain” response, said good night. They got back into their car, took the blue lights off, and almost as quickly as they had scared us to fatality, left. I felt the air going into my lungs again, but the trembling lasted about 30 more minutes.
At seven thirty in the morning (after only three hours of sleep) I got a call from Tony, Misuncita, Pablo, OT, and Manue, who were celebrating Misun’s birthday at 3912, to say hello. It was an amazing surprise, and I almost cried. But I was too asleep to cry.
(Honfleur)On Saturday we walked around Honfleur and visited the beaches of Normandy, and ended up finding another Ibis in Caen, the capital of the Basse-Normandie region to spend the night. We went out to ‘El Che Guevara,’ and I promise it has been one of the most incredible places I have found in France. The ambience was great, with sand on the floor and some of the best mojitos I’ve had. The music was all classics, and the people we met at the door were great. So we danced and drank with them, exchanged e-mails and promises of future visits (including an invitation Carlos got to go to Algeria), and of course never heard from them again.
Eighty percent of Caen was destroyed in WWII, and so the city, rebuilt in the 50’s and 60’s, is not exactly an architectural cloud nine. But its college-town feel and the palace of William the Conqueror make up for it.
(Church in Caen)On Sunday we drove to Rouen. You would think that from Caen to Rouen we would find at least one place to have lunch in, but no. Nothing, nada de nada. I’m serious. We stopped at a pizza place along the way that finally had an ‘OPEN’ sign. I wasn’t very happy with the thought of pizza, but my stomach was even unhappier with its growling and the gastric juices. We had had bread for breakfast, and I had had bread for dinner the night before. Which reminds me, I didn’t tell you about dinner. Carlos wanted oysters, and insisted they could be eaten without cooking. I ate three, and my decency ran out. I felt terrible after he had spent an hour opening every shell of the dozen and a half oysters we had bought, but when I saw the thing move when I poured the lemon juice on top, I couldn’t handle it. So much for being educated and eating everything, with the slithering salty oyster every ounce of politeness I had in me died. So I had bread, while I watched poor Carlos eat the rest of the 15 oysters that were left and apologized profusely.
So back to the pizza place- it was 5pm, and it was open. We walked in, and just to make sure, we asked if it was open. ‘Yes, we’re open’. Ok, so we ask for a pizza. But the pizza place, which only made pizzas and was allegedly open, would only make us a pizza after 7pm. So we left the OPEN pizza place and headed for Rouen, hoping we would find something else.
We got to Rouen at about 6pm, and nothing served anything salty to eat. All we found were sweet-crepe places, and ice creams. What is with these people? No one has lunch/dinner on Sundays? So we ended up eating at the very gourmet Quick. I have to confess, the salad wasn’t terrible. I mean- it could have been worse. It could have been open, but only serving two hours later.
Finally we left for Paris, and returned our Fiat Panda right on time, again in the Snappelin efficiency of 10 minutes before the Avis closed.
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