Off too Hyeres

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  Hyères, Provence, France
Wednesday, September 10, 2008

So, Sophie has a friend named Line. That would be pronounced like Lyne, not line. Line has a husband named Romain. That would be pronounced Romon, not romain. Last year in August Sophie and I came to France to attend their wedding. It was my first time in the South of France and the whole thing was quite nice. Anyways, here we are a little over a year later going to the south of France again to attend their daughters christening. Their Daughter's name is Lily-Rose. No secret pronunciation there. We would be staying in Hyeres, pronounced "yare", with Line's family during the christening but Sophie and I decided to head down a few days early to catch some sun on the beaches. We stayed in a hotel called Formule 1. Since we wanted to save money the Formule 1 was a fine choice. I unfortunately neglected to take photos but there are some here. The place works like this: You get a room with one of those bunk beds with the double bed on the bottom and a single bed on top. There is a TV and table in one corner and a sink in the other. Toilets and showers are shared. When you leave the bathroom or shower the entire thing (or maybe just the floor) is washed before someone else can use it. The shower is on a timer and, I counted, turns off after 30 seconds. This seems more annoying than functional as you can turn it on as many times as you want you just have to do it again every 30 seconds. For the price I would say the place was fine. Could use a fan or AC or something but for the price you can hardly complain.

Hyeres is a pretty old city. It was originally founded by the Phoenicians and was later used by both the Greeks (who called it Olbia) and Romans (who called it Eyras). Since the 1600's it has been a resort town. During World War II a team of US/Canadian special forces landed in Hyeres and from there took a series of local islands.

Sophie and I left early on the 10th. We got there around noon and, after getting lost for a bit and checking into the formule 1, we went to the beach. It was cloudy so we didn't stay too long. We took a walk around the board walk and checked out some restaurants for later. We found a good deal: Mussels, fries, scallops and dessert for 12 euros.

We headed back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. The name of this place was the Lond-on. It was horrible. It was one of these restaurants that haunt popular tourist destinations. Unlike your average small town restaurant that relies on return customers for business, these places will always have new customers. Even if they serve awful food and neglect their patrons there will always be new people tomorrow. We arrived and sat down. The waitress gave us a menu and left. We already knew what we wanted: The meal being advertised on the sign by the door but we killed time looking at the menu anyways. A million years later the waitress returned and asked what we wanted. We told her we wanted the deal on the sign. She told us that they were out of mussels. Now it's not like this is a permanent sign. It's written in chalk. It's portable. I was baffled why they would leave it there when they don't even have the necessary ingredients to make the meal. In retrospect, I realize that it was a classic bait and switch. "No we don't have any mussels. But now that your here why don't you have a horrible pizza instead?". So I had the horrible Pizza instead. Of course Sophie and I now had to think about what we wanted. So the waitress had to leave. I will say that I hate when they only give you 3 minutes to think about this and I hate sounding like I am hard to please but the place was totally empty and it took the waitress another 15 minutes before she came back. Then, she had to check to make sure they had pizza. At this point I really regretted not leaving when they said they had no mussels. Sophie, in what turned out to be a terrible mistake, got the 15 euro menu. This was a salad, some beef, and dessert. Sounds fine right? except for the fact that between each of these stages there was an excruciatingly long wait. When Sophie asked for some mayonnaise for her fries the waitress said sure and then went and had a smoke. She had completly forgotten.

The next day was basically the same. We went to the beach in the morning (cloudy again) and too a bird park in the afternoon. Birds are pretty cool. I can totally understand though why someone may want to shout or poke a stick into the cage. As we were walking down the path we could hear the exotic calls of all differant birds. But as soon as you approach the cage they retreat to the back and stay quiet. I don't blame them. Living in a zoo would suck. But I long for the day when we can just implant microchips in their little brains and watch them perform for us. Sorry PETA.

We had a better dinner that night. We got our mussels. After that we went for a walk and got some gelato. I got Ferrero, Toblerone, Strawberry, and Mango. Sophie got Toblerone, Pecan, Stracciatela, and Nutella. It was very good. Sophie was wearing white pants and of course dropped some chocolate on them.

The next day we, again, went to the beach. It was, again, cloudy. But the waves were huge and I had a very fun time being knocked all over the place by them. In the Afternoon we headed over to Line's parents house. We ended up going into town with Line, Romain, and Lily-Rose.

We hung around on Saturday. There was some crazy wind and nobody wanted to go to the beach. Really, nothing happened. Sophie and I drove into town to go see a movie but we couldn't find the theatre. Later in the evening some more of Line's family showed up and we had some drinks and dinner.

Sunday was the baptism. We all went down to the church and listened to whats his face talking about God in French. The priest/minister/chief was apparently doing some type of rhyming, slam poetry type sermon but I couldn't tell.

We were having a dual baptism. Line and Romain's baby along with Line's brother's baby. Line's brothers baby is 2 and a half. He really didn't seem to pleased when they tried to dunk him into the water.

After the baptism we all went back to Line's parent's house and had a big lunch. after that I went down to the beach with Romain to watch line's sister kite surf. It was all pretty nice, though soured slightly by the fact that I had been shitting blood consistently all day.

At about 5 in the morning after my 4th such experience Sophie and I decided a trip to the hospital may be a good idea. Once there I underwent a series of humbling bum related examinations. I was sent home with instructions to schedule a colonoscopy. Fun.

So that was Hyeres.

Oh, it was hemorrhoids. Internal. And they were getting better by the time I went to see the doctor. The cause: Too much exercise bike. Lesson: Attempting to attain better health will make you shit blood.

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