Friday 9/21 Travel Day
Hi all,
Thursday night I grabbed fish and chips next door while Tawnie slept from about 4-9pm. We were exhausted from all the walking, and jet lag was still hitting us a bit too. The hotel was great except that we didn't have a window, so it made it easy to sleep when we should have been trying to stay up.
Friday morning we woke up way too early, although well rested, at 5am. At 7 we had a fantastic breakfast at our hotel of croissants, other pastries, meat, cheese, hard boiled eggs, tea, etc. all of which was buffet style. By far the best hotel breakfast I've had. After breakfast we went to the train station to figure out how to get to Stansted airport. It was confusing so we went to a help desk and they told us that the bus would be much cheaper and easier. The issue was that the bus takes 2 hours, instead of the train which we believe only takes 1 hour. But, we took the bus anyway, got to the airport about an hour and 15 minutes before our flight and made it comfortably.
The flight to Clermont was only an hour and a half or so. Once we got there we walked outside the airport to a train stop and bought what we thought was a ticket to our destination, but it was only $3.50 which was a huge red flag as our host said the train was expensive. It also looked as though the train wasn't coming for 2 more hours, so Tawnie asked a stranger in French and he told us we were not where we should be. We thanked him, and walked through the rain back to the airport. We found an information desk with 4 people and only 1 of them spoke a little English. Turns out we needed a taxi to the train station in Clermont Ferrand, then a train ticket.
The taxi ride began difficult as the driver was annoyed with our level of the French language, but she got us where we needed to be. The city Clermont Ferrand was a little sketchy. There was lots of graffiti, broken down buildings, and we even witnesed an infamous French cat call. Our train came in about 45 minutes though, then we were stuck amoung a group of loud and obnoxious high schoolers coming home to begin their weekend. Our stop was an hour away and when we got there we walked to the doors but they didn't open. We panicked. People watched. The train began again. Oops.
We saw our host waiting for us as we pulled away from the station, but he did not see us. There was no wifi, so we hoped our host would assume we missed our stop. At the next stop we saw that you had to push a button to open the doors and we followed someone out. We borrowed a cell phone and called our host only to get their voicemail. This station was in the middle of nowhere and cell phone lender man was the only other person there. We sat down and discussed our options if our host didn't show up. We were going to have to walk/hitchhike to the nearest hotel or to our hosts place. We decided we would wait 30 minutes then begin, as we only had a couple more hours of daylight.
A minute after formulating our plan, a car came flying into the large gravel parking lot, drifting then skidding to a stop in front of us. Our host had arrived.
Thursday night I grabbed fish and chips next door while Tawnie slept from about 4-9pm. We were exhausted from all the walking, and jet lag was still hitting us a bit too. The hotel was great except that we didn't have a window, so it made it easy to sleep when we should have been trying to stay up.
Friday morning we woke up way too early, although well rested, at 5am. At 7 we had a fantastic breakfast at our hotel of croissants, other pastries, meat, cheese, hard boiled eggs, tea, etc. all of which was buffet style. By far the best hotel breakfast I've had. After breakfast we went to the train station to figure out how to get to Stansted airport. It was confusing so we went to a help desk and they told us that the bus would be much cheaper and easier. The issue was that the bus takes 2 hours, instead of the train which we believe only takes 1 hour. But, we took the bus anyway, got to the airport about an hour and 15 minutes before our flight and made it comfortably.
The flight to Clermont was only an hour and a half or so. Once we got there we walked outside the airport to a train stop and bought what we thought was a ticket to our destination, but it was only $3.50 which was a huge red flag as our host said the train was expensive. It also looked as though the train wasn't coming for 2 more hours, so Tawnie asked a stranger in French and he told us we were not where we should be. We thanked him, and walked through the rain back to the airport. We found an information desk with 4 people and only 1 of them spoke a little English. Turns out we needed a taxi to the train station in Clermont Ferrand, then a train ticket.
The taxi ride began difficult as the driver was annoyed with our level of the French language, but she got us where we needed to be. The city Clermont Ferrand was a little sketchy. There was lots of graffiti, broken down buildings, and we even witnesed an infamous French cat call. Our train came in about 45 minutes though, then we were stuck amoung a group of loud and obnoxious high schoolers coming home to begin their weekend. Our stop was an hour away and when we got there we walked to the doors but they didn't open. We panicked. People watched. The train began again. Oops.
We saw our host waiting for us as we pulled away from the station, but he did not see us. There was no wifi, so we hoped our host would assume we missed our stop. At the next stop we saw that you had to push a button to open the doors and we followed someone out. We borrowed a cell phone and called our host only to get their voicemail. This station was in the middle of nowhere and cell phone lender man was the only other person there. We sat down and discussed our options if our host didn't show up. We were going to have to walk/hitchhike to the nearest hotel or to our hosts place. We decided we would wait 30 minutes then begin, as we only had a couple more hours of daylight.
A minute after formulating our plan, a car came flying into the large gravel parking lot, drifting then skidding to a stop in front of us. Our host had arrived.
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