PAMGAM Journeys continue
After a night of only 30 minutes sleep (very solid sleep), we fought against the record London heatwave and journeyed from our Hostel to Heathrow once more. A whopping hour long drive at the wee hours of the morning. We arrived and said our fond farewells to Max, not destined to see him for a grueling five days of separation. After we scrounged around, desperately looking for my bags which did not yet exist, we eventually checked in and settled.
Lucy and Kelp, showing off their camera and exhaustion
The flight was uneventful but the day following was.. terribly uneventful for the worst reasons. We arrived into Marseille at 9 am and had to wait on our fellow PAMGAM to show with the rental car. We decided to meet up with Lucy at a small patisserie outside the city. There we fumbled with the little French we knew and managed to get exquisite tuna salad sandwiches with anchovies. Sounds terrible, was delicious. When we thought we’d merely wait an hour or two, all was well. Until we learned some most unfortunate news.
Eric, somehow still smiling
That’s right, the rental car wasn’t able to be picked up until 5:30 PM! We had over 8 hours to kill. Sleep deprived and exhausted, we had hoped to just burrow in at the patisserie. Then, our light was snuffed out as the French close everything after lunch. There we are, in the middle of nowhere, nothing to do, nothing open, and exhausted.
Our miraculous view from the Marseille Airport
We waited four hours in a courtyard, just staring at the trees and talking amongst ourselves. Sleep was an unaffordable luxury. We knew we had to do something, yet what could we? Eventually, it was decided we would taxi into town to go to Decathlon (best store ever) to recoup my supply losses from lost baggage. Only issue, we had a taxi that wasn’t big enough for the bike we already had with us!
Kelp took one for the team and rode the bike 12 miles. My hero.
We stocked up with gear, accidentally almost stole stuff (french people are weird), and shlumped inside the food court, wanting to die. Eventually, by 6 pm, our long wait was over and we successfully surprised the PAMGAM crew with our wayward PAMGAM, CROB
The evening wound away with questionable Arabic food and time swimming/hot tubbing at the bnb. Overall, an eventfully uneventful first day in France. (It would set the tone for the whole trip.)
