My Accidental Tour de France

Before I get into the adventurous aspects of my weekend... A quick educational update:

I finished breads class last week! Here was my final buffet:

Today I started Entremets class, and I am halfway through my french classes.

Now to the fun stuff!

For this weekend, I guess you could say I went on the Tour de France... with the initial plan to go from Yssingeaux to Retournac to Lyon to Toulouse I felt confident that my weekend travels would go perfectly and peacefully according to plan... In reality, here's what happened.

SATURDAY:

Unfortunately my day of 4 hours of travel to Toulouse suddenly changed to 10 hours when I arrived at my train in Lyon to discover it was COMPETELY packed. Thus, the official adventure began when my friend Mallory and I were given very broken English instructions to sprint to a train that was leaving in 2 minutes. This is not an over-exaggeration. It was not until we dove head-first through the already closing train door that we decided to read the piece of paper the woman at the Lyon station gave us... It gave the transfer trains we would need to catch. There were 4. With 2 hour layovers between each. We were quite taken aback... But, excited to visit the Sugar Museum that inspired the entire trip. We stayed on the train to our first connection: Avignon.

It ended up being a GORGEOUS train ride and we had 2 hours to explore the city before getting on our next train. We went to a few shops, ate a quick lunch in a nearby park and headed back to the Avignon Station to continue our travels to Montpellier- Narbonne- and finally Toulouse!

When we arrived in Toulouse it was about 8pm and pouring and the elegant "Garden Hotel" we had booked for a very cheap price suddenly seemed like less of a nice idea. Thinking we'd arrive at 1:30pm by a fast train, a 45 minute walk through Toulouse to our hotel from the station seemed like a great way to scope out the city... As we trekked through rainy sketchville exhausted from travel and weighed down by backpacks we continued with fortitude (checking our map every few steps) and over an hour later... we successfully found our hotel! We got our room and were very pleased to see it was quite nice! We immediately tested the wi-fi which of course was not connecting... so we began to unpack. Suddenly, the fire alarm started blaring (which for a pair of American girls with little French-Speaking abilities is quite frightening) we ran downstairs where the man at the desk announced that everything would be fine once the alarm was turned off (all of which I picked up through hand gestures since he was speaking French). Mallory and I decided to escape the crazy and headed to a nearby McDonalds to snack on (French) French-Fries and use the free wi-fi. There we planned our Sunday (Easter) Journey for the next day to visit the Sugar Museum! We fell asleep to American Movies dubbed in French... which is how most of the movies and shows are here... I find it to be hilarious. And thus, Saturday is over. Yes. I've only written about one day so far. 

SUNDAY:

We wake up and head to a different, closer-to-the-hotel Train Station. Our phones read 8am but we questioned their accuracy because France's "Daylight Savings" occurs at 2am on Easter and we didn't know if they changed automatically. Luckily, they were correct. Unluckily, we got a little turned around on the walk over and arrived 2 minutes late. Only two. But that was just long enough to miss our train. So, we cancelled our next night hotel reservation, and walked to the far train station to catch a train. After this, our day started to look brighter! The sun came out and on our walk over we found a great market where I finally found some affordable walking shoes! We stopped at a nearby cafe for tea and internet, and then we hopped on a train to Cordes-Vindrac. Upon arrival we were offered a ride by a French man transporting 2 other students who happened to be Venezuelan. They spoke a very small amount of English a didn't ask for any cab fare. They helped explain to the VERY French man where we needed to go, and as we pulled closer to Cordes-sur-Ciel I realized that through all the struggles to get there... It was worth it. I was Mindblown.

This beautiful historic town was built on the top of a steep mountain. It was like walking into a real-life renaissance fair. There were gorgeous land marks, artsy shops, and smiley people that were all quite eager to talk to us about America. I walked through town with my mouth WIDE open in awe and was greeted by a local artist who spoke to me in French and gave me a postcard of some of his art. We reached the top of town to be taken aback- AGAIN- by the town's beauty. At the top was a large panoramic view of the nearby cities below us. 

It was so pretty I could've cried. It was so breathtaking and with the brilliant view and adorable town, I felt happily surrounded by French culture. Since the reason for the trip was to go to the Yves Thuries sugar museum... We continued on. The man at the ticket counter was so nice to us! We got discounts for being students at ENSP! It was fantastic! 

All these sculptures are made of 100% Sugar

I think you can see for yourself that it was AWESOME! And this is only a few of the many sculptures I saw.  After the museum we spent a whole day in the town. We got the sweetest taxi driver to return us to the station where we played with cats until our train arrived. There are cats everywhere in France. I named the train station cat Fluffycat. 

We got back to Toulouse and found a much closer hotel to the station to avoid another long walk. Which leads to...

MONDAY:

I woke up at 7am, jumped into my clothes, threw everything into my backpack and went to the train station to catch a train. Unfortunately the only way to be back in time for class was to get on a reservation-only train that was already booked with reservations. We made the terrible decision to get on without a reservation... Really we had no other choice, but it resulted in a fine and a TON of embarrassment. Luckily, It got us home in 4 hours instead of 12! Still... never going to do that again! Lesson learned! 

This trip was quite an adventure and I learned a lot about traveling, culture, and myself. Saturday may have been a bit of a trainwreck, but Sunday made it all worthwhile. The sugar sculptures were better than I thought possible. The skies were legitimately bluer than I've ever seen, and the trip ended with a feeling of success, not defeat. These memories will remain engraved in my head for a lifetime.