Je suis ici!

The hell of getting my visa and rescheduling my flight twice was worth it for how smoothly my two-lay-over voyage to France went. Tony and I woke up at 3:45 a.m. and were on the road by 4:30 a.m. to New York City. It rained, but we got there right when I wanted to, at 10 a.m. Tony walked me to Terminal 2, and I said my last goodbye. The sad feeling was quickly replaced with travel adrenaline.

                                                       (Louis est mon nouveau petit ami)

I always forget how much fun even the tedious parts of travelling are. I feel on my game when I travel. Even the tedious task of navigating airports pumps excited endorphins through my veins, and each step is like a little challenge – check in, check my baggage, go through customs, find my gate … With each task’s completion I feel a small sense of accomplishment. Lucky me, I got to experience four airports in one trip.

The only annoyance, other than not being able to sleep on any of my flights, was before my flight to Montreal from JFK while waiting for the boarding call. A middle-aged man wearing an expensive suit and a band-aid on his nose sat down next to me, blabbing away on his cell phone without pause. “The press needs to stop printing this bullshit about Israel ‘killing children.’ I’m very pro-Israel on this one. The Palestinians need to give it a rest.” Usually, I make an effort not to let people’s differing political views affect my opinion of them, but when someone blatantly declares that people should stop “bitching” about genocide and murder of children, it tends to make my blood boil. Also, I couldn’t help wondering who on Earth he could be talking to who would sit on the phone listening to him blab about politics for 20 minutes straight without stopping.

Then a robust black guy sat in the seat across from me, sprawled out his legs, and started rubbing his balls and looking at me. But honestly, if all I have to complain about in 24 hours of nonstop travel is annoying middle-aged guys I didn’t even talk to, and not missed flights or lost luggage, I’d say it was a success.

A 30-year-old Queens guy named Dan sat next to me on the flight to Montreal. His black hair was slicked back with gel and he was with a posse of other bruhs who had this same hair and his same accent. Turns out it was his bachelor party. Naturally, we started talking about marriage. We came to the conclusion that it’s nice and all, but the whole “’til death do us part’” segment is a little daunting.

“It’s like, what if I get sick of you? I don’t know what I’m going to like in 10 or 20 years. I’m not going to promise something for that far away,” I said.

“Yeah, or like, what if she turns out to be a psycho?” he said. “Like, what if I wake up in the middle of the night and she’s holding a knife over my head? Do my vows still count?”

We came to the conclusion that the two of them would be fine, since they’d been together for six years already. She most likely isn’t a serial killer.

 It was strange sitting in the airport in Montreal. For whatever reason it was cheaper to go from JFK to Montreal to Paris to Marseille, so we drove five hours south just for me to land 45 minutes away from Plattsburgh. After 12 hours of travel, I was actually closer to home. They were also playing sped-up American pop songs, which added to the weirdness, I think. And I was starving, but I wasn’t going to pay $10 for a piece of brie and five grapes.

It was 5:30 a.m. and still pitch-black in Paris when I saw my new city for the first time. The lights twinkled into forever, and it was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. The people in this airport screamed francaises. I didn’t see a single person wearing sweatpants or a track suit. They wore cashmere sweaters. Nobody was fat. A girl of maybe 17 was holding a compact mirror and fixing her lipstick, a Chanel makeup bag overflowing with mascara and cover-up and whatever else.

The sun had risen by the time my flight left the Paris airport for Marseille, but I had an aisle seat, so I didn’t get to see anything. It’s ok, though. In two weeks, when our road trip is over, I’ll be seeing plenty of Paris.

Maia walked through the door from outside just as I was headed toward the gate with my two suitcases. The light was behind her, so I could only see her silhouette, but I recognized her outline and her long-legged saunter. There’s nothing like reunions with people you love.

It slipped my mind that Marseille is right on the Mediterranean until I finally stepped out of the airport on French soil and inhaled warm sea air. Najma, one of her oldest friends, drove us into town in her tiny car on a two-lane highway. I could see the crystal water from the back seat.

The first place I ate was called Le Fournil de la Place. Salad, bread, and un café. Jesus Christ, the coffee is amazing. My jetlagged brain perked up immediately after polishing off the tiny cup. That didn’t last long, though. Twenty-six hours without sleep or shower, after only sleeping 3 hours previously, made me a zombie. But we had nowhere to sleep while Najma was gone running errands; her dad lives in Marseille, so she was visiting him, even though she lives in Paris; so, Maia and I took the bus to a little beach, and I swam in the Mediterranean Sea for the first time. It was divine. Even bare saggy old lady boobies couldn’t make me feel less incandescent. My face is pink from the sun.

When we were leaving the beach, I heard someone call my name. It wasn’t Maia. “Flea. Felicia Bonanno!” I knew I was tired, but I didn’t think I was that tired. I looked up, and standing in front of me was Chris and Dorian. I really thought I was hallucinating. I knew they were backpacking through Europe, but I thought they’d already stopped in France, and I had only just arrived, so I hadn’t even thought to hit them up. But there they were, in the flesh. Of all the beaches in all of France, we were at the same tiny beach in Marseilles.

We got seafood together before parting ways. Their crew is on their way to Spain, and we are headed to Italy. In fact, it was only a matter of hours before Matthieu showed up with the van to pick up Maia and me and be on the road. And I still hadn’t showered or slept.

Showering at Najma’s was the third best shower of my life – the first being at a gas station in Arizona during Kelsey and my road trip to California after not having showered since New York, and the second being after I had rubbed clay from the salt flats in Utah all over my body before realizing it smelled like rotten eggs. Najma’s dad insisted in French that I have ice cream with him, but I was too tired at that point to even pick up a fork. It didn’t take much insisting for me to lie on his couch, though. I fell asleep almost immediately, staring out of his enormous window at La Bonne Mere.

Right now, I’m sitting in the back seat of our Euro trip van. Matthieu and Maia are sitting in the front. It’s dark out, and we’ll be in Italy soon. We’re going to stop in a couple hours to get beer and sleep somewhere. This van is luxurious. It’s the biggest yet most intelligently compact vehicle I’ve ever seen. There’s a tiny refrigerator, a stove-top, multiple cupboards, pockets in the back for things, the back seats slide out into a bed, underneath the seats is a cubby, which also holds a tabletop that clips into the backseat bed tracks; the two front seats swivel around, too, creating a little dining area. The roof pops up into a loft, where I’ll probably sleep tonight. I just straightened my legs and I couldn’t even reach the back of Matt’s seat. It’s so roomy. Even so, Matthieu told me how five people apparently road tripped in this van together. Then I reminded him that we road tripped from San Francisco to San Diego with five people in a car less than half this size, and suddenly the previous van owner’s story was less impressive.

We don’t have solid travel plans for the next two weeks. We just know we’re driving around Italy and Croatia, wherever we want to go. We probably won’t go inland to Rome or Florence for time’s sake, but we’ll do that later in the year when there are fewer tourists and more locals. Maia mentioned Venice, though. 

All I’m thinking about right now is how happy I am that I just saw a sign that said “Nice – centre.” I’m driving through Nice. And how excited I am to wake up and get punched in the face by another deceivingly cute French coffee.