Update #2 - The French Road Trip

Whoa, two posts, two days in a row? Is the sky falling?

I know, it's crazy. But BELIEVE IT. Cause this is happening.

So now it's time to give a little update on what happened after Thanksgiving. We'll title it "The French Road Trip," just for kicks.

On the very first weekend of December, all of us working at schools in Madrid struck the jackpot and were rewarded with a 5 day weekend. Don't ask me why...I just chalked it up to one of the many random Spanish holidays and didn't ask any more questions. So a few friends and I decided to seize the opportunity once again and rented a car that comfortably seated 4 people and then the 5 of us loaded up and left Madrid driving due North.

Our plan? To have no plan. We were going to wing it. No hostal reservations. No strict map routes. Just go into northern Spain/southern France and go wherever the wind directed us. While this sounded good in theory, there were a few of us in the car who are...let's just say "type A personalities" that weren't so okay with that. But that's neither here nor there.

So the first night, we decided in the car that we should just go as far as possible and work our way back. So we thought about maybe going to Marseille on the southern French coast and driving back from there, stopping in cities along the way. However, the traffic leaving Madrid on a holiday weekend is HORRENDOUS, so we had been in the car a solid two hours and still hadn't really left the city. So we made a snap decision and decided to spend our first night in.......

Barcelona!

Not too bad for a backup plan, eh? I drove for most of the time that first day and now I can say I've driven in the two biggest cities in Spain. I'm kinda proud of that.

Once we all made it to Barcelona, we were pretty exhausted so we didn't end up doing much more than walking around, eating, and enjoying the Christmas lights. So here is our little group posing in front of one of said light displays: me, Lupe, Amanda, Lizzie, and Rachel. All very, very cool girls.

And yes, I was the only testosterone in the group. Made for an interesting trip.

So the next day we got up fairly early, left our hostal (which was an experience in itself) and went on in to France. Rachel had friends who were in France teaching English, pretty much exactly like we are doing here in Madrid, and we made plans to meet up with them in a little town called Nimes, which was a couple of hours past the Spain/France border.

Although it was a quaint little French town, the weather most definitely did not cooperate with us. The cold wasn't unbearable, but the rain made it kinda rough. As you can see with Lupe, Amanda, and Lizzie here, we stayed bundled up most of the time and kept the umbrellas ready.

Rachel hadn't seen her friends in a pretty long time, so she decided to spend the night with them while Lupe, Amanda, Lizzie and I went further into France.

So we continued on into the French Riviera area to a town called Aix-en-Provence. It was a beautiful little town with some really great Christmas markets and beautifully decorated for the holiday season, as you can see above. Another great little French town and much, much different from my experiences in Paris.

"Joyeux Noel" = "Merry Christmas" in French. We saw this all over Aix-en-Provence, so I had to snap a shot of it.

The next day, after taking a nice, long rest the night before, we went out and explored the town and it's Christmas markets. It was just as cool in the daytime as it was at night.

And even cooler, they had a park named after me! And all along I thought the French were so lame...who knew?

After milling around Aix for a good part of the day, we loaded up once again and left for Montpellier, back towards the Spanish coast. We were going to meet back up with Rachel and her friends there and check out yet another French city. While Aix was a great little town, Montpellier was a little bigger and, therefore, a little fancier to behold. Here is a shot of the main central plaza which also had a Christmas market going at the time. I was thoroughly impressed.

The French Christmas markets are full of all kinds of goodies, from chocolates to meats to handmade artisan crafts, but one of my favorite things that we found was hot spiced wine. It tasted a lot like Spanish sangria, but warmed up like coffee so it warmed you up from the inside. Which was perfect for the cold French weather. Here are the 5 of us reunited enjoying a "vin chaude," or hot wine in French.

That night we originally had planned to get back into Spain, spend the night, and then wake up early to continue on to Madrid the next day. However, after a dinner of crepes, we decided to save some money on a hostal and just drive straight through the night to get back to Madrid early the next morning.

Once again...sounded great in theory....not so great in practice. I drove for several hours until we got back to Barcelona, but at that point I was completely spent. And let me tell you, between Montpellier, France and Barcelona, Spain, there's a whole lot of nothing. Especially at night when you don't get any of the great mountain views. So I was dead at the wheel and we still had about 6 to 7 hours to go. So I let the girls take over to get us home and crashed in the back for a good portion of the time.

We got back to Madrid around 6 in the morning, went home and slept off the tiredness from all the driving, and prepared to go back to work the next day, although it was about the last thing that any of us wanted to do.

But, just like all the other trips I take here, this one was amazing. Such good company and such amazing sights to see. I constantly feel so incredibly lucky. It really was a great time and it easily rivals most other road trips I've taken in my lifetime.