Sur le Pont d'Avignon...

Today’s been a long day. I woke up at 6:30 so I could go do the last of my laundry right when the Laundromat opened. I spent the rest of my morning finishing up the housecleaning, which has me pretty freaking pissed off right now. After everything—I even got on my hands and knees to scrub the floor with a towel because I don’t have a mop—they’re saying that the room’s not clean enough and they’re going to have to charge me for it. I did absolutely everything they said to do, as best as I could anyway (they refused to provide the promised cleaning supplies). I think they just had it out for me. Which is ridiculous, because I’m not even in one of the cockroach infested rooms (yes, about half the building’s having cockroach problems). So, I think the only thing I can really do is say: C’est dingue ça!

I headed down to the train station a little early to see off Emily and Alejandra to Paris, which is hilarious because I ended up hauling so much baggage. At one point I had my 50lb duffel bag on my back, my 20lb backpack on my chest, and Alejandra’s two 50lb suitcases (one in each hand) as I tried to leap over a puddle. Emily took a picture or two, hopefully I’ll be able to get my hands on them. They almost didn’t make it onto their train. More accurately, Emily and all of their luggage almost didn’t make it onto the train. They conductors closed all of the doors immediately after Alejandra climbed on board. It took a little work, but we got them to open them again.

So, they were gone. I’m probably never going to be seeing Alejandra again, or Jennifer, probably not Elizabeth either. Stephanie I will see again, at least briefly. She has my other suitcase so that I don’t have to drag it all over the place with me. Speaking of dragging stuff all over the place, how the hell did I carry this duffle bag around for 2 weeks in Normandy? I know it’s heavier now than it was then, but seriously, this is freaking ridiculous.

Some weird church (at least I think it's a church) in Beziers.

 So, after a six hour train ride, I arrived in Avignon. I walked into town at around 8pm, looking for some breakfast (yep, that was my first meal today, hopefully USAC will find out that I was so busy cleaning my room I nearly starved to death). I told myself that I’d skip heading out to the two main sites to see in Avignon and leave them for tomorrow. Well, I lied to myself. Dear god, the papal palace is amazing. The bridge, is much less so, but hey, it’s famous too.

Much more fortress looking than palatial.

 I got a kebab for dinner, which is probably something I’m going to miss when I get back to the States. Kebab stands are really quite helpful here in France, and they’re pretty good eats despite how un-hygienic they seem. Get ready for a history-leaden post whenever I actually manage to get the next (and past two) blog posts up, it’s going to be a fun one: I’m in Avignon!