Today I arrived in Pau (pronounced poe) at 7am. The trip here was a long one, and it was my first time in the sleeper car of a train. Traveling in France is pretty nerve-wracking if you don't know the language great. All the announcements are impossible to understand and I was even paranoid that I was on the wrong train. There are no security checks to get on a train, just a ticket that does not even have your name on it. As far as I knew, I was going to Prague. I arrived in Pau at 7am and I was met at the station by my new friend Trishia.
I have previously mentioned Trishia in my blog while talking about my London vacation. She is from California as well & going to take some classes in Pau for a few months. When she invited me down to check out the south of France for a few days, I jumped at the chance. Sometimes you meet someone & you just click, well it was just that for me & Trishia. It was very unexpected finding someone while on vacation that I could just talk for hours & hours with. I was not too concerned about missing any famous Paris landmarks because this will certainly not me my last trip to Paris. Something else I discovered is I would prefer to be a lot more comfortable with the language of a country before I go there. I certainly plan on traveling to a lot more foreign countries in the next few years, but I think now I prefer to have company on the legs where I don''t know the language.
Pau is a pretty cool small town with a lot of history itself. We spent several hours just walking around town & sightseeing. While walking around town, we stopped off at the Chateau de Pau. The Chateau de Pau is a historic castle that several former kings of France had lived in.
The tour of the castle was given in French & I understood none of it. Luckily the guide on occasion said a few things in English & Trishia was able to understand the French and told me what was being said. After leaving the Chateau, we walked to a small bakery and had a desert. The night was capped off by hanging out & having few drinks. This was certainly overall the most fun I have had since my arrival in France. Tomorrow my train leaves Pau at 5pm. It will be another day of seeing more Pau & then more fun on the train.
No comments:
Post a Comment