Day 18

July 14, 2013

Molly and I had a little time this morning to lie out by Lake Geneva before catching our train back to Marseille around 12:45. The train ride was about 4 hours and we got back to our hotel around 4:30.

Not only is July 14^th Bastille Day in France, it’s also our friend Morgan’s birthday. This year she turned 21 and was excited for everyone to help her celebrate. Interact and Euromed had set up a boat ride for us to watch the Bastille Day fireworks, so we were supposed to meet up as a group at Vieuxport at 6:30. We had hoped to go out as a smaller group for dinner with Morgan beforehand, but realized we wouldn’t have enough time. Instead we got a quick bite from a food stand and eventually made our way to the boat with our big group.

There were two kinds of people from our group on Bastille Day – those who had a fabulous time and those who didn’t. Unfortunately, I was one of the ones who didn’t. The concept of getting on a boat to watch fireworks from the water was neat in theory, but was rather boring in reality. I was still quite tired from traveling back from Switzerland, and it didn’t help that many people were drinking way too much while I had decided not to drink at all. There were only 4 options of things to buy on the boat – beer, rosé wine, fruit punch with vodka, and hotdogs. I’m not a big fan of beer or rosé wine; I tried a sip of the punch, but was unfortunately allergic. I’ve also never eaten a hotdog and never plan to. I know I can be difficult at times (all the time) about my food and drinks, but the lack of options left me quite hungry which was not good considering how tired I was too.

The fireworks didn’t started until about 10:30, and our boat was supposed to be back at the dock by 11:00. The fireworks were ok, but I think we do them better in America. Right as the fireworks were finishing up one of the girls on the trip started to have a panic attack at the same time that another girl was having a drunken episode at the other end of the boat. We got back to shore around midnight, and I was starving. Instead of going to the bars with some other people, a very cranky Molly and Sarah went to the McDonald’s and then went home.