A Ski-Day in the Alps (February 10)

A fantastic day! At 5:30 in the morning, Philippe, Rachael and I headed downtown to get on the bus. The little ski-town of Vars is about a three-hour drive from Aix in the direction of Italy. I definitely used that extra bus time to try to catch up on a little sleep. I had only gotten four hours of sleep that night, and only one hour the night before (I was up late studying for my last exam—which, interesting fact, in the middle of writing it, the prof supervising the exam picked up his cell and stood at the front of the amphitheatre making a personal phone call and chatting for about 10 minutes!)


It was a beautiful day in Vars, and we couldn’t have asked for more gorgeous weather! The slopes were covered in pretty nice snow, for the most part. It got icy on some of the runs, especially near the end of the day, but you could still find powder if you wanted to. It wasn’t very busy at all, and with a total of 51 chairlifts, you had a lot of options. There were six of us in our group: moi, Phil, Rachael, Gabriel (Luxembourgeois), Lukas (Austrian), and Franz (German). Gabriel and Lukas are amazing skiers; of course they live in the Alps with their families most winters.





I was quite sore the next day, but strangely enough, not from the actual skiing part. My shins hurt because the boots didn’t fit me properly and my lower back and neck are even still in a little pain because of the whiplash I got on their version of a t-bar. Rachael is suffering from the same thing, and now we both look like goofs cringing every time we turn our necks! Despite that, I’m so happy I went. It was a fun day, I got a little skiing in this winter, a nice little sunburn on my cheeks, and I can check “skiing in the Alps” off my to-do list!

Roma, Italia (Jan 26-31)

Saturday, January 26

After writing my German exam in the morning (my first of five exams to follow in the next two weeks), I went back to my residence, woke up a sleeping sister and hopped on a two-hour bus to the port of Toulon. Our final destination: Rome, Italy.


We got to Toulon much earlier than we needed to be and wandered around the huge palm trees in the beautiful sunshine. After a while, we headed to the port only to discover that we had to weave our way around and in between the commercial 18-wheelers in the parking lot to get to the check-in. The check-in area for the passengers was a tiny little one-room building in the middle of a parking lot with a couple benches out front. We checked in and were told that there would be a “bus” to pick up the foot-passengers and bring them to the ship. The “bus” was a van, and it appeared that Vanessa and I were the only foot-passengers to go aboard the ship—or at least the only ones in the van.


In the area that Ness and I had reserved Pullman seats, we were the only ones there! So we could sprawl out over a few seats to sleep. At least, we could have slept if this creepy old man truck driver who didn’t speak a lick of English or French kept passing by to hit on my 16-year old sister. He wanted to buy her a drink, and take her for a walk around the boat, etc. It was kind of weird. Another truck driver came to her rescue, and shooed away the creepy one. He sat and started talking to us about his two daughters at home. He left when he made sure the creepy man wasn’t coming back, and then later on in the night, he actually brought us the extra pillows and blankets from his cabin.

In the morning, the nice truck driver and his colleague treated us to a croissant for breakfast—their “company pays for it anyway” was their argument when we attempted to politely turn down the offer. The nice trucker even hitched us a ride from the port of Civita Vecchia to the outskirts of Rome (18-wheelers aren’t allowed in the city centre)! We would have been fine from there, but he insisted on calling a friend of his who lived in Rome to pick us up and take us to where we needed to go. This was successful because he told his friend that we were his colleague’s nieces from Canada!

After taking the metro to our hostel, we dropped our stuff and walked around Rome for five hours. Walking is by far the best way to explore the city. Rome is a lot smaller than I had imagined. And the Vatican is even smaller, of course! The rest of the trip was filled with frequent fountains, remarkable ruins, plenty of pizza and pasta, and generous amounts of gelato! Even in “low season”, there were lots of tourist traps, and tons of people at every place trying to sell you unnecessary things (like a duck-shaped, sand-filled balloon—who the heck needs one of those?!?)








We decided we’d take the train from Rome to the port this time, to save us the hassle of pretending an old Italian man was our uncle. And the boat ride home was much less eventful, except for meeting an old couple on vacation who offered to drive us back from Toulon to Aix. All in all, it was a great trip, and so much fun to hang out with my sister. The 4-year age difference has been pretty significant all our lives, and it really seems to be closing in now. The comfort of traveling with my sister made the trip one of the most enjoyable and memorable yet!