hullo all! did you miss me? i'll assume you responded in the affirmative, and shall continue.
after Florence (you may remember when i blogged about Florence. if not, don't worry. you won't need to know about it to keep up.), i went to Venice. took the train, about 3 hours or so, and holy crap Venice is beautiful! canals and boats and tourists and i still can't read Italian! i got lost every time i left the hostel, and that was good. i could've bought a Vaporetto (water bus) pass, and take that when i want to go places, but i figured naw forget, yo holmes to Bel Aire! so i didn't. walking is clearly the superior method of transport.
there was this tiny little dock that another hosteler gave me directions to. it opened out onto the main canal, but it was sort of hidden, so it was peaceful. i watched boats go buy and some french kid drawing a nearby building. would've stayed longer, but he tried to talk to me. there are bridges and restaurants and many buildings just open out into the water. just, front door, MAYBE a step, then BAM! water. sure, there are sidewalks, but sometimes there aren't.
the hostel where i stayed may or may not have been a museum before. very laid-back staff, free wifi, friendly hostelers. met people, laughed with them, made an ass of myself. Israelis, Mormons, Aussies, British, Canadians, Germans, Americans, and me. went out both nights, did not, in point of fact, almost fall in the canals, and i'm proud to say i was laughed at quite a bit.
then! to Paris! took a plane cuz i can't be arsed to plan far enough in advance to get a train. booked a hostel the day i arrived, got rather lost in the airport, then the train station where i transferred, then thankfully the directions to the hostel were clear enough. checked in, went out for dinner and a bit of wine with two British girls and an Israeli girl, all of whom i had just met randomly. quite fun. i had some pasta dish, we walked to Notre Dame, found a tex-mex restaurant, and had chips & salsa with our wine. salsa wasn't good, but perhaps i have high standards. then stayed up until 4am talking.
next day, i missed my planned train to Gorron (i was two minutes late). the couple who are currently hosting me contacted me to tell me that there was another person joining me to be hosted, he's also in Paris, and here's his phone number. so Michael (that's his name) and I collaborated on a train time and meeting place. with that planned, i had a bagel-sandwich-thing. not bad, i guess. spent three hours in the train station, determined not to miss the next train. about an hour before the train arrived/departed, i bought a sandwich and chips and water from a store in the station and this isn't really interesting, is it? i'll skip ahead a bit. met Michael on the train, we talked, arrived in Flers, got picked up and taken to Grappay Charpentier by Graham, the male half of the couple hosting us. it was cool, blah blah blah.
Graham and Ailsa are freakin' awesome! ridiculously interesting and storied couple. they've got facebooks, so i'll not go into detail. the work Michael and I do is basic stuff: raking, feeding trees, building a chicken house, playing with a scythe, wanting to learn to play the banjo. we talk a lot with G&A, and most of the food we eat is apparently grown in the garden out back, and it's delicious. i'm enjoying very much this helpx experience.
yesterday afternoon/evening Michael took G&A's bike, rode to Flers (about 4 hours away), then took a train to Paris for the weekend. he's going to some sort of retreat or something, should be back tomorrow. so today i was all alone with G&A. we worked on the chicken coop, Graham took me into town and we had a coffee in the town square. (i'm trying really hard to not devolve into "y'all, it's freakin' GREAT here!")
i should be planning my return to and stay in Paris, choose my hostel, all that. but i'll do it tomorrow. tonight, after getting groceries, Graham and I discovered one of the neighbor's rabbits had escaped into Graham's barn. so we got Ailsa and spent maybe an hour chasing the rabbit around, trying to catch it so we could return it. eventually we named him Brian and got him pinned in a corner. we built a very very temporary pen for him and tomorrow we'll try to return him. i'll go talk to him make sure he's okay, see if he needs anything, in a bit. after this. now.
goodnight folks! remember to spay or neuter your relatives!
No comments:
Post a Comment