Safely in France, and settled at last (for several hours at least). I arrived in Paris around 8:30am local time, after the flight left late from Dulles because of a problem with the plane which caused us to switch planes before takeoff. Annoying, but in light of recent events, I guess I’m glad they were careful.
I got to check out the apartment that I’ll be staying in when I return to Paris and it looks like it will be great. After all the travel and sleepless hours, it was hard to leave a comfortable looking place with a real bed to head out alone again lugging my backpack.
I finally made it out of Paris at 4:16pm, having narrowly missed the original train I wanted, and took the train five hours to Nice. This route practically spans the whole country, so I got to see a lot of beautiful French countryside, and beaches. By the time I got to Nice it was dark though, so all I’ve seen of the city so far are the semi-shady streets around the train station.
For those who don’t know, I’m on my way to Corsica and Sardinia, thanks to a grant from Princeton, to do senior thesis research on the cultural differences between the islands and the mainland (in a nutshell). Of course, when I imagine actually doing this, now that it’s a reality, I’m quite intimidated–approaching strangers for interviews in a foreign language while traveling alone–but I’ll have to overcome that shyness out of necessity. It’s been slightly comforting that so far I haven’t been “Englished” by any Parisians (when I try to speak French to them and they just respond in English instead), which I remember happening a lot in the capital on past trips. So that’s a good sign…of course, hopefully assuming that there won’t be too many signs/menus in the native languages of Corsica and Sardinia, because then I’ll be lost…
Tomorrow I have to hit the ground running, so here’s hoping that this cheap hotel bed is more comfortable than it looks. As the locals would say, bonne nuit.