A Journey through France

A Story by AnAS

A story about a trip through France where my companion and i get into unexpected troubles.

Doug and I are friends from the oldest memory I have. We shared our lives together, we even had the same dream, that dream was to travel to the most beautiful country in our eyes, France was the name of that glories country. And now after all these years, our dream came true. We were sitting in a rented Volvo car, in the middle of traffic, in middle of Lyon in middle of France.

Our journey has just started, and we were stuck in a car with nothing to do except looking at the roads of Lyon. It was a completely different sight from what we were used to, the roads were perfectly made to fit that large group of people on it, and all of that crowd was here for this day is Bastille Day, the day that marked the beginning of the French Revolution. at that exact moment, when we finally adapted to live in a car without

any movement, the traffic started to move.

“We are finally moving!!” said Doug with a relief sound. I replied saying: “ we can finally start our trip to Cannes”. After 5 to 10 minutes of driving we were completely away from the crowd and the noise, actually we couldn’t even see the city

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After couple of hours on the road, we were in Mougins, a village surrounded by forests from every direction. We saw Old houses, old Vehicles, and old roads. we felt like we had returned in time, where no cars nor buildings existed, only silence and tranquility. I wouldn’t mind living there for the rest of my life, but it will never happen, for all the

reasons that made me travel to France in the first place.

We hided to the south of France, to that beautiful city on the French Riviera, we were hided to Cannes. We heard so much about it, and now we can finally see what we’ve been hearing all these years, and while I was thinking about these wonderful dreams , a car drove right in to us, that made the windshield shatter all over the place. I was so shocked and so was my friend, my body was wavering, and even my hair stood. After couple of minutes Doug decided to get out of the car and see what happened, and at the same moment the other car’s door opened, and a beautiful blond woman came out. She talked in English with a Heavy accent, she told us that her name is Lara, and she is very sorry for the car crash, she also told us that she’s ready to pay for all the damages that she did , and she will call a guy right now to fix our car, after several minutes, a guy took our cars, and said that he’ll need about 2 days to fix the damages and return the cars as new. We didn’t have a choice, so we agreed.

Lara looked at us and from the look on her face, you can see that she knew that we’re only tourists with no place to stay, so she offered to guide us to a marvels hotel she always loved, and for that we couldn’t be more thankful to her. We started following her in the middle of the crowd, who was crying, laughing, dancing and drinking to express their freedom that they’ve got because of this day, they were thankful.

Renoir was the name of the hotel Lara guided us to, it was a simple, classic type of hotels with nothing fancy on it, just a small billboard on the top that said “Hotel Renoir”. Lara spoke in Franch to the old man behind the desk, his name was Mathéo, he looked as any other old man will look like, he had a nice smile on his face, that smile showed patience and wisdom. Lara said goodbye and gave us her phone number to contact her, and she told us that she said to Mathéo to give a nice, cheap room with a beautiful view, and then she left

We were so tired from traveling that we couldn’t even speak to each other, we only lied on the beds to get into a nice 8 hours of sleep.

When I woke up, I saw Doug in a deep sleep, and I also felt that there’s something strange about the room, and then I finally noticed that our bags were gone, and so were our wallets! I woke Doug from his sleep, and I told him about the bags and the wallets, and he was shocked just like me, so we rushed down to talk to Mathéo , and we told him that our belongs got stolen in the night. He replied with anger saying that he told that blonde woman yesterday that our room isn’t available, but she consisted. We wondered why, and he said because of the broken window, and right at that moment everything clicked together. Lara lied on us from the first place, she stole our car in front of us, and she put us in that room to get to our belongs, everything was planned, even the

slightest detail.

We sat on the nearest chair stunned, from everything that happened,

our journey is ruined because of a beautiful woman that decided we’re her next victim. Mathéo asked us about the gloominess, so Doug told him everything, and after he finished, Mathéo looked at us and handed us some money and told us that there’s a train station couple of blocks away, and then he said words I’ll never forget, he said: “we look at our past in remorse, we look at our present in fair, and we look at our future in despair”. These words moved something inside me, I needed to take action. I will not regret this journey in the future, so I grabbed Doug, and we ran to the train station.

We’re able to catch a train to Cannes directly, and now it’s only a three hours trip of waiting. We thought about everything we heard about Cannes, and thought about everything we experienced to reach it,

beginning from the nice trip in the Volvo car to Lara and Mathéo.

The exit door to the train station was in front of us. We walked slowly thinking about it, not as the exit door, but as the gate to Cannes.