Adventure à Amiens

I am so happy I came to Amiens for my vacation! My friend Juliette and her family (brother Julien and mother Anne Avronsart) live here and are kind enough to host me for my week of vacances d’hiver.

I met Juliette four years ago, after pleading my family to host a French student for three weeks during the summer. I gave up my bed for a futon on the floor in exchange for the best decision ever – Juliette quickly became one of my best friends, practically a sister! She came back the next summer, and my family dragged her all the way across the US on our road-trip to Kansas, she and I slept in a tent every night, while Mom, Dad, and Katie slept in the trailer. There were many nights we stayed up, giggling like little girls, sometimes until we were told to be quiet; other people were trying to sleep.

That was three years ago. Mom and Dad celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary this last summer by taking their first trip to Europe. Half of their trip they spent with the Avronsart family in northern France. Now it’s my turn, though I only get to spent one week, they got two!

Getting here was interesting though! I woke up at 6 in the morning to get to the train station in Grenoble on time – the train was to leave at 7:37. Little did I know that there were two trains, back-to-back, both bound for Paris. In other words, I got on the wrong train! It was 7:30ish when I discovered this, as the man I thought was in my seat actually belonged there, and told me that I needed to be on the other train. So I scooped up all of my things, somehow not leaving anything behind, and ran for the next train. Luckily, the conductors saw me, and kept one of the doors of the correct train open – once the doors close, they don’t open until the next station! I climbed aboard, the door shut, and we pulled away from the station. Close call!

That was the TGV to Paris, which took about three hours. After getting off the train at la Gare de Lyon, I used the metro (thanks for the billets Mom and Dad!) to get to la Gare du Nord; two stops away on the green RER line. After wandering around for 20 minutes trying to get out of the metro, and into the train station, I finally found my way. I checked at to make sure I didn’t need an assigned seat, figured out which platform, and got on that train. After a couple of minutes, we pulled away from Paris, headed north. This was a slower train, which stopped probably eight times before reaching the terminus at Amiens. It took me and Juliette about a half an hour to find each other at the station. It’s not very big, but there are two exits and somehow we passed each other the first time without seeing each other. I thought to myself as the train was leaving Grenoble that I should have given the Avronsart family my phone number, for exactly this reason, but it was too late by then! We eventually found each other; everything turned out fine in the end, and in this case, that’s all that really matters.

I was exhausted when we got to their apartment, so I ended up taking a nap for about 45 minutes, but felt much better after that – the combination of stress from the actual traveling, the early morning, and the inability to sleep the night before due to pre-travel nerves had wiped me out.

I’m not sure how often I’ll have time to post during this vacation – I have the feeling that the Avronsart family will keep be very busy. They have already sat me down so I could finish all of my homework, after taking me on a walking tour of the city center. There has been talk of gaufres (waffles) for Mardi Gras (we decided that we’d had enough crêpes), and a trip to Versailles in the near future! But no worries – I’ll take good notes, and report back as soon as possible!