Homeward Bound

Thursday, June 25, 11:10am. 4:14am Houston.
We're finally on our way home. Well, not home for me, but home for everybody else. After Camargue, we went to St. Tropez. We had to cut Marseille out of our trip, so St. Tropez was the one place were supposed to get dressed up and go out and enjoy the nightlife. But of course, that didn't happen. We found a campsite and decided to stay there for 3 nights, but it was on the other side of the bay! So it definitely wasnt close enough to St. Tropez to walk, and you had to either drive or take a ferry to get there. I really wanted to go out the first night, but Emma wouldn't quit bitching about her UTI and how tired she was, so we just stayed at the campsite. I mean, I was sympathetic the first few days, but 3 days of listening to her bitching and moaning to me, as if I'm a doctor and I'm holding out on her or something, starts to get old after a while. ((Sigh!))
So the next morning, we were forced to get up early because it was about 800 degrees in our tent. So we showered, and headed into the city, via ferry, to do some shopping. All the stores there were couture, and obviously very expensive, so neither of us ended up buying anything. But we got huge icecream cones, and that was the best icecream I've ever had. We walked around, window shopped, ate lunch, and looked at all the fancy yahts. Then we headed back to camp around 3. Emma wanted to take a nap, so I went to lay on the beach. I stayed there for a couple hours, and then around 6, I went back to the campsite. Emma was laying halfway in the tent, and halfway out. There was a man loudly trimming bushes with a chainsaw nearby. Emma made a comment about it being a "great" sleeping environment.
"Yea..." I agreed, "Well if we're gonna go out tonight we should probably start getting ready."
"Do whatever you want Peyton!" She snapped at me.
"G's, I was just saying!" I said back, then I walked off in disgust.
When I got back, she was still lying there. I started to gather my things for the shower.
"So...how are we gonna get there? And, even more importantly, how are we gonna get back?" Emma asked in a negative voice.
It's a voice I know all too well.
"Ok. If you dont wanna go out tonight, tell me now, cuz I'm about to get in the shower." I said.
"I do! Its just...we have no way of getting there! I mean, do YOU know how we're gonna get back??"
"I'm going to stop by the office and ask." I stated matter of factly.
Emma sighed in annoyance. "I just dont know what you want me to do!"
"Nothing! I just told you, I'm gonna stop by the office and see if there's a bus we can take."
Before she could respond, I left.
But, just my luck, the last bus was at 8. So there would be no way for us to get back to camp unless the boys could drive us. I asked the clerk about taxis, but she said they were ridiculously expensive. I sighed and walked back to camp in defeat. When I got back with all my stuff Emma asked me why I wasn't in the shower.
"Well we cant go out, so whats the point? I'll just take a shower in the morning."
"Why not?" She asked.
"Because we dont have a way to get back. The last bus is at 8."
"Well what about a taxi?"
"It costs like 30 euros. One way. Thats way too expensive."
"Well...you dont think it's worth it?" She whined.
"No. And what made you suddenly change your tune?" I asked, annoyed.
"I never said I didnt wanna go out!" She argued.
"Yea..." I decided to let that one go. "Well I'm gonna go get a bottle of wine or something." I set my things down.
Emma decided to come with me, and somehow we came to the agreement that we'd go to St. Tropez anyway, and figure out how to get back when the time came. So, an hour after I suggested we start getting ready, we went to the showers. By the time we were ready, we discovered that the last bus INTO St. Tropez had left an hour ago. How ironic. We asked the boys if they would take us, but of course they said no. Because they were "drinking and the traffic was bad". Of course that didn't stop them from driving out there at 12am in a drunken stupor the night before. Bastards.
But by this time, we were pretty determined to to something, so I changed into something more comfortable and we decided to walk over to Port Grimauld. We went and sat on a dock, with a bottle of wine and talked and watched the sunset with our feet dangling in the water. Then Emma had to go to the bathroom, so we had to run back to the campsite to pee. As we were walking, 2 boys shouted at us from their window. Luckily, they spoke English. They asked if we wanted to come up and have a drink with them. We said sure, we'd be right back. Cuz Emma was talking about how bad she had to go. Then, of course, she chastised me for telling them that.
"Well you should have said something! All you've been talking about is how bad you need a toilet!" I said.
"Well yea, but I could have waited." She said.
I sighed, exasperated, and we kept walking. We had to stop by the tent to get toilet paper first, cuz there wasnt any in the bathroom. And as soon as we walk up, what do we see, but Stajno trying to get into our tent, which I had cleverly combination locked!!! As soon as he saw us, he tried to play it off like he just wanted to borrow a beach mat. But we weren't buying it. When we got back to the dock, the boys were gone; go figure. So we walked around for a while, drinking wine all the while, and then headed back. There was a crappy cover band playing so we went to watch. We sat down at a table next to a couple cute Frenchies and ordered 2 lemoncellos.
After a while, we got tired and bored and decided to call it a night. As we were walking back to the tent, I heard a "Madamoiselle!"
I paused and turned. It was the tall dark haired boy from the table next to us. I could tell he was much younger than I originally had thought. He began speaking to me in rapid French.
"Whoa whoa...par le vous Engles??" I asked.
He made a confused, frustrated face and shook his head.
I looked at Emma, she shrugged. Then, using the best body language he could, while speaking slowly, he asked us if we'd like to go back and have a drink with him and his friends. Lucky Emma took a couple French classes in high school. We accepted his invitation, and followed him back to where we'd just come from. His friends included the not so cute guy he'd been sitting with, and our waiter from earlier, who, thankfully, spoke English. He translated to us that when he got off work, they were going back to his place to have drinks. I asked how old they were. The waiter responded with 19, 20 and 22. Ouch! And of course, the cute one was the 19 year old. We definitely needed an out. So we asked how long it would be till he got off work. He said an hour. So we said we'd meet them back there in an hour. Then we went to bed. I did feel a little guilty standing them up, but...not THAT guilty. Best not to put myself in those kinds of situations. As we were getting into bed, Emma felt something prickly in her sleeping bag. It was my necklace! Could that have been what Stajno was up to trying to get into our tent?? Hmmm...
The next morning, we left. We all decided 3 days was just too long. On our drive out of town, we stopped twice to swim. We were driving right along the coastline and there were several beautiful blue beaches. St. Rafael was my favorite, with its huge red rocks, and it's turquise waters. It was awesome! There was coral, and fish, and beautiful rocks. I even swam with a school of fish! I felt like a mermaid! Haha. We spent so much time swimming, that we didn't make it as far driving as we'd planned. So we picked another campsite in Italy for the night. Now we have about 10 hours left, and we've been having to stop like every half our so Emma can pee, so its looking like we'll be back by tomorrow. ((Sigh)) I'm so sick of being in the car. The stupid boys keep eating our food and its pissing me off. I mean, they insist on buying nasty canned food, literally EVERYTHING they buy is canned. Then they give us shit for our huge bag of groceries, but of course, when they run out of canned meat surprise, they wanna eat our food. And Emma just lets them, otherwise we'll have to go out of our way, wasting time finding and shopping at a grocery store, since they refuse to eat at a restaurant. Ugh...