I love France Part Two.

This is going to be even longer than yesterday's. I feel like I should tell you that pretty much all the pictures that have me in them, besides the selfies, were taken by other people and I just stole them from them. I didn't want them to take a picture and then have to give my camera to take the same exact one. So. Let's carry on where we left off, shall we?

Tuesday: We woke up, ate our free breakfast (I had a croissant with butter and plum jam and pain au chocolat with water and orange juice every morning), and then Tom, Alice, Eileen, and I headed out to find the train station to go to Italy. When we finally found the right station, we had to figure out how to get tickets. The ticket machines were only in French, it's lucky we had Tom there or else we probably never would have gotten anywhere. It took awhile, but we finally figured out the tickets but then we had to figure out how to use the compost (I don't know if that's the right word) machine things that punches the time or something. It was seriously confusing. We (and by 'we,' I obviously mean Tom) even asked a French lady and she didn't know how. When we finally got it, we went and sat on the platform, waited, and got on the train for 30-40 minutes. as we got into Ventimiglia, Italy, it looked really really pretty but then we pulled up to the station and it looked pretty dirty and gross. Anyway, we got off, checked the time of the next train to San Remo (which one of the teachers that brought us to Nice told us was better than Ventimiglia), and then went to kill some time. I wanted to find a bookstore to get Harry Potter books in Italian but the first one we found had them all except the ones that I was looking for. So I said I would be fine waiting until we went to the other city. We wandered down the street into a kind of park and then decided to walk across a bridge (that was swarming with birds, it was my own personal hell) and sit on some rocks out by the water. We sat there for awhile, talking, laughing, having a fantastic time, and then decided that we were getting hungry. We started to wander around looking for food, found a restaurant called blo, noticed most places were advertising toast, and then we finally settled on a place that had menus in English and the guy spoke to us in English. We had a great lunch, talking, laughing, being the loudest in the restaurant. I seriously don't remember the last time I laughed that much.

This is where everything went down hill. After lunch, we went back to the train station to see about the train going to San Remo. Eileen and Tom went to ask the guys at the window about the trains while Alice and I went to the bathroom. As we were walking down the long, empty hallway to get to the bathroom, a guys said something to us, we didn't know what he said so we kinda smiled and kept walking, and then we were almost there and he like whistled from the other end of the hallway and was trying to wave us over and we shook our heads no and started to walk into the bathroom but we noticed he was coming back towards us as we walked in. We ran into the stalls and could hear him talking to someone outside. I thought we were pretty safe in there, but moments, later, as I was pulling up my jeans, I see a guys head looking over my stall. Apparently one of his friends had climbed up onto the sinks and thought it would be fun to look over. I yelled and Alice had no idea what was going on. We left our stalls and I quietly explained what happened and then we noticed the guy that tried to talk to us was waiting for us at the door. He tried to ignore him, but he kept talking, we didn't understand anything except that he was Tunisian and he kept asking if we were on vacation (des vacances?) we did our best to ignore him and when we got out of the hallway into the main part of the train station, he pointed to each of us and motioned that we should go with him. We said no and pointed that we were with the other two. So he walked to the other side of the big main room of the train station and was just sitting there watching us. The others were trying to tell us a story but we just did everything we could to get them to leave the station. As we started walking down the street into the busier part of town, away from the station, I turned and saw the guy following us. At that point I really started to panic. I was already seriously freaked out, but the following pushed me into serious panic mode. As soon as we rounded a corner and he couldn't see us anymore, we started to run. We went into the first open store, and hid behind a pillar. After a few minutes, we could see him looking into the window trying to find us, we don't know if he actually saw us or not.

We decided then that we should try to talk to the lady that worked at the store. She didn't speak English very well, so Eileen tried everything she could (haha Spanish, French, English, all mixed together). Tom  ended up saving the day by speaking to her in French. He explained as best he could what was happening and she seemed really concerned. She gave us the number to the police and told us we should go tell them and that they were at the train station (I think this is what she said. I have no idea if that is what she really said. I was just trying not to panic). We waited there for awhile and when we were sure that he was not waiting for us, we left the store and went straight back to the station (which had several police officers in front, which made me feel better). At this point, we didn't care if we went anywhere else, we just wanted to go straight back to Nice, but the next train wasn't for an hour and half. I had noticed that there was a guy standing in the station by himself and he got on the phone the moment we entered and watched us the entire time. When we left, he was at the window, watching us leave the station. He watched until we couldn't see him anymore. I don't know if I was just paranoid at this point, or what, but it was still kinda scary. So we decided to go sit at a cafe and just wait for the next hour and half. As we walked down the main street away from the station, we glanced and saw that the original guy that followed us was sitting at a cafe with his friends, so we quickly turned a corner, started running, turned another corner, and found a cafe that we could hide in. We sat in the back where we couldn't be seen from outside and pretty much just waited. Finally, we headed back to the station, got on the train, and didn't feel any better until we started moving.

I have never been so scared for my life and I am now scared of any guy sitting by himself or group of guys that even glance at me. If they talk to me I start to freak out. So there's that. I am at a point where I don't care if I ever to go Italy again. And I don't ever want to go to Ventimiglia again.

We got back to the hotel, rested for a bit and then went to find dinner. As we were walking, we found some awesome fountains. Then went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in old town. After we had a delicious meal with the best crème brûlée I have ever eaten, we headed back to Wayne's to get a drink. This time we sat up near the bar and not near the tables that turn into a dance floor when the rock-ish band comes on. We had a drink and then headed back to the hotel to turn in.
































Wednesday: Our last day was another free day, so we decided to explore Nice. We (now this 'we' is Tom, Eileen, Alice, and I) went to the sea first thing and hung out for a couple hours. It was the only really sunny day on the trip and so we let ourselves enjoy it. The beach was super rocky, but really nice. We wanted to put our feet in the water, just for fun, and we did. But getting there was difficult because the rocks hurt SO BAD to walk on. A freezing cold wave came in and got our feet and jeans all wet but we couldn't run away because the rocks were so ridiculously hard to walk on. Then we started throwing rocks in the water and a bunch from our group came up and sat with us. We didn't stay with them long because we were hungry and a couple of us had to pee. So we decided to go find food and two other girls decided to join us. We went to a little restaurant and had sandwiches. The sandwiches weren't what I am used to because it was a piece of bread with everything I wanted just on top. And there were like four slices like that. So that was interesting. After lunch we wanted to go shopping. Tom was demanding that we go to Sephora, I wanted to go find the Frozen soundtrack in French (La Reine des Neiges), a couple books in French, and some macarons. We wandered and wandered and we eventually got ice cream (which I ordered in French and the guy gave me a thumbs up :)), a fake macaron (and by fake I mean it was not at all what we were looking for. It was more like a soft cookie), and then started wandering down the big, main shopping street in Nice. We went into Galleries Lafayette and found Macarons and bought a bunch to try. After hours of shopping, we kinda got split up into three groups of two and when Alice and I couldn't find anyone else, we decided to walk to the big grocery store by the hotel and then back to the hotel to nap before we went to dinner with the whole group. I took a tiny nap and it was physically painful to get up and go eat. I'm really glad I did though. We went to a place called Milo's I think and we had pizza and talked and laughed and had a lot of fun. After dinner, we went back to Wayne's for one more night and most of the group showed up, too. I only had one beer but I let myself get pulled up on the table for one song. After that we kept trying to leave because we had to get up early to head back, but good songs kept coming on. We finally got out and went back to the hotel and pretty much passed out.




































The next day was pretty uneventful. We flew back, Bristol was so foggy that we thought we were in a cloud when we suddenly hit the ground. So that was kinda scary. From the moment I got back I had to start work. I had three deadlines and three tests and everything was super busy. I'm all done until May now, though. I am sick for the third time this year, so that sucks. What fun things have I done? Lucy and I went to Build-A-Bear and made some new furry friends, I had dinner with Alice, Tom, and Eileen. I had nutella hot chocolate and a chocolate orange muffin with Stef. Um. I think that's it. I have seriously been working my ass off on school work. I'm still feeling crappy and sad, but I'm doing my best. I helped Lucy carry all of her stuff up to the train station today and now I'm being lazy when I should be studying and packing. Mike and Kelly got an adorable new puppy called Max. I can't wait to meet him. My mom will be here a week from tomorrow. I will be home two weeks from Saturday. I am super excited to go home. I can't wait. I'm trying to talk my mom into going to see Les Mis in London (or I'll go and they can go do something else) because one of my favorite YouTubers plays Eponine. Um. What else? Nothing really. I get to go to France again like next week. So that's fun. I love France. The whole trip just made me want to learn the language sooo much faster. I hope everyone is doing well. I'm going to go watch Iron Man now. Love you guys.











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