“Dear France, I take back what I said earlier” and other stories from a week with my family

Madrid Square with mommy



Arc de Triomphe in Paris



Me and Sam in the Olite Castle



The family on the bridge to the Louvre in Paris



Me, Grace, and the Eiffel Tower


April 13, 2010:

After spending the entire month of April thus far traveling with my family, I am glad to say that all is well; I’m just super tired! I met up with Grace at the Hotel Voltaire in Paris on Good Friday. Mom, dad, Timmy and John met us there on Saturday morning. We spent the day sightseeing in Paris. We walked around for hours and saw the Eiffel Tower and tried lots of French food. I was just sooo happy to be with my family! I wish Sam could have come with them; he was definitely missed. But we had a cutout of his head, so we took some pictures with him, but for some reason, it wasn’t quite the same…

We spent Saturday and Sunday doing the regular Paris touristy things and having a grand time. We got to go to the Louvre, which was amazing. We also tried to go to a mass at the Notre Dame Cathedral on Easter Sunday, along with the 10,000 other people that had the same idea. Overall, it was a spectacular couple of days in Paris.

Monday was when the problem happened, changing my highly esteemed opinion of France on the whole. I took the train that my ticket indicated, from Paris to Bordeaux. After the train arrived at the last stop and the cleaning people got on the train, I asked if we were in Bordeaux yet, and they looked at me like, “oh you poor thing!” So I went to the desk to inquire as to my whereabouts, and found out that I was in the tiny NORTHERN French town of Saint Malo. The man at the train station didn’t speak very good English, but he just kept saying, “Not possible. Not possible. This is very bad for you, very bad.” Haha, thanks, monsieur! Anyway, to make a long and rather unpleasant story short, it was a French national holiday, and I had to take several small trains to end up in Bordeaux by midnight that night. I had to spend the night there, and then the next day, the same thing happened again. Apparently, the train changes aren’t indicated on the ticket. So I would stay on the train until the line ended, in the wrong city, only to find out that I was supposed to switch trains an hour earlier. A lot of frustration and many hours later, I made it back to Spain—31 hours after leaving Paris. I’m not going to lie, it was really stressful, but luckily my roommate was here in my apartment, so she could let my family in when they arrived and I wasn’t there. All in all, it was a pretty miserable couple of days, but by Tuesday afternoon, we were all reunited in sunny San Sebastian, and all was well. God definitely watched out for me during that long trip.

I showed my family my city Wednesday. They got to see where I go to school, and we went downtown and saw the bull ring and the Castle Square. Thursday we went to a small town called Olite, where there is a huge castle we toured. And as always, we enjoyed trying all sorts of different Spanish foods. We left for Madrid on Friday morning, and my friend Jane got to join us for the weekend. We enjoyed 75 degree sunny weather for the entire weekend. The boys left Saturday morning, but mom and Jane and I spent all day Saturday and Sunday touring Madrid. We went to three different art museums and saw lots of famous paintings and ate delicious tapas and saw the Royal Palace. But my favorite part was probably sitting in the city square eating ice cream, chatting, and taking in the sun. Beautiful weather can make everything all better!

Mom flew out Monday morning, and Jane and I returned to Pamplona on the bus. Less than an hour after we got back, I had to go to class. It was not very much fun to wake up from vacation mode and take notes, and I was super exhausted. But I’m so glad that I got to spend a wonderful week with my family and John, and I can’t wait to see them again when I come home next month! :)