Cannes- A Day to Forget...

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Sorry it has taken so long for me to update! French keyboards have the letters all out of place and it is rather frustrating.

Anyway, Cannes: playground of the stars, home of the biggest film festival, learning experience for Greg and Nat.

We arrived in Cannes with a plan, go straight from the train station to the hostel we read about in Lonely Planet to drop off our backpacks. Then we were going to hit the beach and see where the film festival takes place.

We make our way to the hostel, and lo and behold no one is there! Lonely Planet said that check in was all day. The sign on the door said check-in was something like 8-10 and 7-9 or something like that. So we head back down to the train station to Tourist Information.

The lady at Tourist Information suggested a different hostel that we didn't know anything about. We asked her if we should call and make a reservation and she said no, you won't have any problem getting a room. So we walk like a thousand miles to this hostel and on the door it said it opened at 6. It was about 3 at the time. We weren't walking back to the train station and the phone booths don't take change you need a France specific phone card. We looked at our map and decided to grab something to eat and do some planning in a park. So we went to the park and planned, and planned, and planned. It was finally 6. We walk back to the 2nd hostel and there is still nobody there! The door said to check at the restaurant next door for information. The restaurant was closed too! We waited about 15 minutes and nobody showed up.

We then tried to go back to the original hostel and waited until 7. Nobody showed up. Finally a woman noticed that we were looking lost, scared, and confused. She called the number on the door for us and the owner said he'd be there in half an hour. Apparently he only opens if there is a reservation...

He arrives and shows us the room. It is ok, it had 5 beds (bunks) and a bathroom. Lonely Planet listed the cost as 15€, which is pretty good. The owner asked for 30€ each. He claimed that he was the new owner and has raised the prices. Whether he was being honest (which he seemed like a good guy) or screwing a couple of Americans we'll never know, but we had no other choice at this point. We left our bags and went to town to scare up some dinner.

We wanted to eat cheap since we were paying way too much for our room. We went to the Monoprix (think Kroger that sells clothes on the lower level) and bought bread, cheese, yogurt, cheap wine, and Coca Cola Lite. Everything was delicious, except for the wine which resembled cough syrup. Oh well.

We ate this ensemble picnic style on the floor of our hostel (we had the place to ourselves). Then we had a long conversation about love, politics, and various other topics.

We decided to get out of Cannes as quick as we could the next morning and headed for Nice. We had reservations there 😊

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