It had to happen

Everyone tells you that there are parts of traveling you cannot control. They say there are days when everything goes wrong. They tell you that on occasion you’ll have a day that was so expensive you just want to go back home. I really didn’t believe them (ha!)… but it had to happen.

Erik and I left Salamanca early. We had set up a hostel in Bordeaux and were set. We boarded the train and sat there for 9 long hours. When we reached Bordeaux we were both really excited. Not only were we in a new city, but a new country.

Once we had all of our luggage and had stepped off the train, we realized it was raining. Okay, great. Well, we had navigated around the rain once before, so it wasn’t anything new. It was around 8 p.m. when we started our walk toward our hostel. This was going to be our longest walk.. a little over TWO miles. The rain isn’t stopping, and neither are we. We’re walking, and walking, and walking… we aren’t lost, but because everything is in Kilometers, it is a lot harder to gage. Especially when you’ve already had an hour worth of backpacking in the morning. We were quite clearly in the bad part of town (to begin with), and both knew it. It’s always bad news when I can sense that Erik has a heightened awareness, because then I know that, indeed my anxiety has just cause.

Bordeaux has the weirdest and scariest type of homeless people. They all dress in army gear- lots of camouflage, huge hiking boots, and military style jackets. Both the men and women have long thick dread locks, and most have really painful (and infected) looking piercings. Here is the kicker. No it’s not that a lot of them have made can drug apparatuses, but that they all have DOGS. I am a dog lover, but these.. I don’t even know if you can call them dogs. They’re like rotwilers on steroids. Pit bulls.. hyenas. They stand in large groups and try and persuade you to give them money. Erik and I know very little French, and this was probably a blessing. “ Sorry, we don’t speak French” and kept quickly moving. It felt like this trek was taking forever. EVERYTHING on me ached. WHY, WHY did we do this?!

We walked through two plazas and found out street. YES YES YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was so excited if my tired body could’ve ran with our packs, I think I would’ve. After seeing our hostel a wave of relief hit me like a stone. Once it was in full view, something was immediately wrong. EVERYTHING was dark. The door was locked.

You. Are. Kidding. Me. My eyes welled up with angry tears. The kind that blur your vision. I was SO angry. I had just walked through a g.i. joe on crack humane society to get to a hostel that is NOT open when I paid MONEY for a reservation so this WOULDN’T HAPPEN?!!?!?!?! NO. NO.NO. So, I banged on the door, I buzzed the door a million times. I typically make a conscientious effort not to be the ‘ugly American’. At this moment I did NOT care. We were phoneless, internetless, and entirely hopeless.

Again my eyes welled up with tears. Where will we go? We can’t walk back that way. We cannot. I refuse. Okay, well what’s our other option? Shatter our budget on a 100 euro (150.00) a night hotel? I guess that’s it. So we saw the nearest hotel, and immediately chose it. Yup, this will do fine. Luckily the man was kind, and we received no hassle. We got our keys and our room was actually only 50 euro, so we were pleased with that. Of course, to top the night off, it was on the third floor, which used winding staircases with about 30 stairs per floor.

Our room was really nice. We had long windows, a small double bed and a shower. I chugged some water and slowly walked over to my pack. I pulled out my pillow and my traveling sleeping back and laid it out. I mechanically crawled into my space and did not move. I could hardly turn my neck, and I was so relieved, exhausted, and overwhelmed I don’t think there was enough space in my head for more than a a few thoughts. Well we’re safe, but this had to happen.