F words...France...Fromage...F**k.

As some may know, my beloved parents are visiting Europe this week...and god bless them, they decided to stop by Barcelona on their EuroTrip and spend a week with me.

I picked my parents up at the Barcelona airport on Friday morning and the festivities began. We picked up the car, turned on the GPS, which was a blessing, and headed towards my house to pick up my things for the weekend. As I have never been in a car in Barcelona, nor have I taken any taxis in Barcelona sober I couldn't give any directions. We arrived at my house, safe and sound, and introduce my parents to Resu, who greets them with two kisses...a custom in Spain that most Americans aren't aware of, i.e. my parents. My mom spoke English with Resu and Resu spoke Spanish with my mom. This should have been a sign for the weekend. My host mom understands three words in English, jellow (hello), jess (yes) and shank uw (thank you). And as you probably guessed my mom also knows three words in spanish como se dice (how do you say...), taco con queso (taco with cheese) and bambino (baby) but only in the male form; which confused Resu when my mom tried to tell Resu thank you for taking care of her male baby. A little bit of a surprise to Resu.

After Resu tried to get my parents drunk, we started our weekend trip to Aix-en-Provence to spend the weekend with some friends from St. Sebastian's. In 1998 and 2004, the prime of my years as we saw from the home movies, Les Petits Chanteurs came to California on a singing tour and stayed in our house for a couple days. So my parents wanted to go visit the people who stayed with us in Southern France. We made it to the Spanish/Franch border a-okay and eventually to Jacques and Helen's house. So far so good. We spent the night speaking Engl-rench (English and French) and eating Ratatouille and cheese. Check and check, eating ratatouille and cheese in France.

We began the next day heading to the city center of Aix-en-Provence for some sightseeing. We started off with some cathedrals/churches, number fourteen and fifteen. Yes, I have been inside fifteen cathedral/churches in the short two months in Europe. I consider myself a cathedral/church conosseiur of Europe.

We wandered through the streets of Aix passing through the open markets and taking in the sights. (Now for a little background information...for Christmas I gave my mom a Vera Bradley wallet that zipped around, trying to encourage her to close her wallet all the way to avoid pick-pocketing.) So while wandering around I had repeatedly zipped close my mom's purse, aka the treasure box for pick-pocketers. While walking down the street, I turn around and see a short, toothless French lady yelling in French, waving around a Vera Bradley wallet. And in a span of .5 seconds I think to myself, "that's a nice wallet, I got my mom one like that for Christmas this year. F**k, that IS my mom's wallet." Our new tooth fairy/French lady friend had seen the pick-pocketer snatch my mom's wallet and had grabbed it out of his hands. So all in all, we recovered the wallet and my mom dropped to her knees and said a Hail Mary...well maybe only the first part happed, but still.

After lunch we headed to San Victoire, a famous mountain close to Aix. We took our touristy pictures and hopped back in the car to Jacques and Helene's house for more delicious dinner.

Sunday morning we started off with 10:30am mass at the cathedral in Aix. There were 57 priests at the alter and mass was in French...saying I was lost was an understatement.

After lunch we headed to Arles, the city of Van Gough. And the minute we got out of the car it started snowing. So obviously we continued touring and down to the ampitheater where it started hailing. We should have known what the rest of the weekend had in store for us. We saw cathedral number sixteen and made the decision to head back to Aix and spent the night eating leftovers.

Monday started at 10am when we hopped in the car and headed back towards Barcelona...or so we thought. We made it three hours away from Aix, after batteling the snow and European drivers who don't know how to drive in the snow, and ended in Perpignan, France. Due to the three plows and salters that exist in all of France the roads were closed. Trucks were stopped for kilometers and kilometers. So we decided that it was literally impossible to get to Barcelona that night...after trying for four hours. And so we searched for a hotel in bum-f**k-nowhere France. We tried one hotel, but they were all booked and gave us an address of another hotel, just two kilometers away. Which took an hour to get there because the car got stuck not only once, but twice.

We finally got to the hotel, freezing cold and headed out for dinner because it was almost 7pm. It had taken three times longer and we hadn't even made it to Barcelona. So we searched the town for dinner. Literally nothing was open. It hadn't snowed in over 20 years and we were the lucky americans to witness the snow. And our restaurant of choice for the evening, the ONLY restaurant open, Indian. And I had curry chicken for the first time. It was delicious to say the least and I probably ate it in ten minutes, my mom can testify.

So we started off the following morning at 7am with big hopes of making it to Barcelona. So we made it seventeen kilometers outside of Perpignan and the roads were STILL CLOSED. So back to bum-f**k-nowhere France and look for a hotel room. Only after calling travelocity and having them book us a hotel in Northen Spain. But, that is a whole-nother story in itself.
We landed at a Kyraid Hotel, a chain in France. We booked a room, they had free wi-fi...and check-in wasn't for another four hours. Great. It was literally impossible to get back to Spain and now we are trapped in a hotel for the next four hours. The front desk was less than helpful and decide to turn the air conditioning on while we sat in the hotel for the remainder of the day. We finally made it into our room where we spent the next four hours doing Sudoku, watching the news in French and using the wi-fi.

Did I mention that it wad also mid-term week. I had missed my Monday class, a review session for my Tuesday mid-term, the mid-term itself, as well as the review session for another mid-term and it wad only Tuesday. We headed out for dinner, battleing the icey streets, and went to bed with full stomachs.

So we started out Wednesday morning at 8am and had our sights set on Barcelona. After battleing the one-lane-nothing-but-trucks traffic we made it to Barcelona by 11 am. We dropped the suitcases off at the hotel and headed to drop the car off.

(i was never so happy to see the border to Spain)

Five straight days with my parents...stranded in France and literally nothing to do. Womp womp womp.

My parents spent their only full day in Barcelona on a tourist bus and saw all ofthe major sites of the city. Unfortunately we did not make our Segway tour reservation. Next time...

To see all of the photos, check out the Flickr album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chasecarrie/sets/72157623643464235/