I’m still working on recapping our whole trip and wedding. I know I’m incredibly slow, and it’s been 100 plus days since our wedding, and it isn’t even relevant anymore, but the wedding portion is coming soon, promise. The other posts of our trip can be found here, here, and here.
Everyone has their bad moments on vacation, right? Everyone eventually breaks down and becomes a sobbing, angry mess; wildly swearing at your future spouse in another language that you previously didn’t know, but all of a sudden can fluently shit-talk in ~in perfect tongue~ at a train station terminal in a country that already has it’s judgments, in the first place, about crazy Americans with their psychiatric disorders and ADHD. [take breath here]
We’ve all been there, right?
Maybe YOU don’t have bad moments. Maybe you are an incredibly mentally sound person and nothing fazes you on vacation. Not even non-smoking rooms that have clearly been smoked in, unexplained rashes, or missing trains. (Not because you were late and it left without you. Missing trains, as in, the train went missing! As in, disappeared! As in, the customer service people can’t explain what happened to the 82,000 pound train. It just didn’t show up at 5:15am as scheduled. For. No. Reason.)
I’ll admit, I’ve had dark days while on vacation, and this portion of the trip happened to highlight all of my worst ones.
DAY 5:
Carl is a big cycling fan, and an even bigger Lance Armstrong lover supporter. Naturally, he really wanted to see a leg of the Tour de France since we’d be around that area. I, being a compassionate and amazingly selfless fiancée, agreed to take two days out of our trip to do just that.
One portion of the Tour was scheduled to be in Martigny, Switzerland and end in Verbier, Switzerland. We would be traveling near there anyway, so we decided to try and fit a stop in Martigny/Verbier to catch the race. When we went to book a hotel, months and months in advance, there were no rooms available in any of those towns. They were all sold-out due to the Tour. So, we were extremely lucky when Carl was able to find and book a hotel in Sion, a town that is about a fifteen minute train ride to Martigny.
The day before the race, we left Lauterbrunnen, Switzerland and traveled to Sion. I was already a little aggravated when we arrived in Sion because of the whole missing train thing (the connecting train that we were supposed to be on didn’t show, totally ruining our well-calculated and time-sensitive travel itinerary. )
As soon as I stepped off the train though, I became extremely worried that we had accidently deboarded a steam-powered locomotive, engineered by a crazy-haired scientist named Doc, and equipped with a giant flux capacitor, that had brought us back from the future (part lll!)* to a time where recycling and legal systems have yet to be invented. Because we just entered a whole new world.
I could’ve been biased, seeing as we had just come from Lauterbrunnen, a beautiful and magical land with cheese wheels the size of small Ferris Wheels, and sparkling mountain water served by striking blonde boys in clogs and lederhosen.
Sion just didn’t compare.
It was dark, dusty, and nobody in town looked like they wanted to perform a folk song and dance in the middle of the street to welcome us.
Basically, if Lauterbrunnen was SuperTarget, then Sion would be the Walmart of the Retail World. Nothing against Walmart per se, but if you’re used to the bright and shiny wonderfulness that is SuperTarget and then one day SuperTarget closes its doors for remodeling, leaving you with no other option than to go to the Walmart down the street where the blue walls, yellow smiley faces, and harsh fluorescent lighting reminds you of a psychiatric wing of a hospital, then it can be extremely unsettling. Especially when you know that the people of Walmart are probably not harmful and that your cross-body handbag probably doesn’t need to be worn underneath your clothing, but you are cautious just in case, because it’s a new world to you, and the lady in the wolf-howling-at-the-moon-t-shirt and water moccasins is staring at you like she wants to braid your hair, then strangle you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was out of my comfort zone for the first time on the trip, and it was quite uncomfortable indeed.
At that point I was tired, hungry, and just wanted to get to the hotel. But, WHERE is our hotel? Oh yeah, someone forgot to research the exact location of this hotel when he booked it. Leaving us walking around Sion, carrying every piece of luggage we owned, burying our heads in maps that we couldn't comprehend, with flashing neon signs above us that read Live Nudes! TOURISTS! WE ARE TOURISTS FROM AMERICA! MUG US!!
When we found the one and only person in Sion who spoke English, (I’m not saying they should have to speak English, it’s their country after all.) the woman informed us that our hotel was not within walking distance. She suggested a cab.
One small problem, we did not have any cash to pay for a cab, because someone forgot to take out money before he left Lauterbrunnen**. As a result, we had to do another few laps around town, with our luggage and our flashing neon "MUG US SOME MORE" signs in tow, to look for an ATM or a bank. Regrettably, we didn’t do the responsible thing before we left the States, which would be to learn some important French terms, for example: “ATM” or “Bank”, putting us in an awkward situation when we tried to withdraw money from the local post office. (true story)
When we finally found a real ATM and a cab driver who could interpret our wild hand gestures, we made it to our hotel that so happened to be in the middle of nowhere, not conveniently located in town or next to the train station at all.
Another hotel fun fact: upon checking in, we found out that we only had reservations for the first night, instead of two nights, like we needed. It seemed that when Carl booked our reservations online, he reserved the first night with no problem, but when he went to reserve the second night he accidently booked the room for exactly a year later and didn’t realize it. This means, if we want to go back to Sion on July 19th, 2010, we can! Because we already have a reservation!
It was an accident, but a very HUGE accident, seeing as it left us without a place to stay the next night, due to NO OTHER ROOMS BEING AVAILABLE! Every room within a fifty mile radius was booked because of the Tour de France. We were hoteless in a strange place. [Enter excessive profanity here]
To be continued…………
* I think this is the second time in this blog that I have referenced the Back to the Future trilogy. In case you’re wondering, this is a good thing.
** My husband doesn’t read this blog, so I can place blame on him for all things that go wrong and there is nothing he can do about it. Really, it is his fault; he should take more of an interest in what I’m putting out to the public.