18 Hours

I have arrived in Geneva safe and sound! This keyboard is ridiculous. Anyhow, I figured Ill blog about my bus ride while i adjust to not-being-on-a-bus.

It was super cool to actually do the ride in daylight. We stopped in Den Haag and Rotterdam to pick up passengers. Rotterdam actually looks really, really cool. Id only seen it at night before.

The bus driver only spoke French. Not even Dutch. And he never said the word "Geneva" the whole trip, which was a bit unsettling.

The bathroom on the bus was truly disgusting. It also didnt lock. I walked right in on some dude peeing. I also got walked in on fully clothed. Super fun. My life rule to never travel without toilet paper totally paid off. I have peed on many trains, planes, and automobiles, but I did learn something new: stop-and-go traffic + bus + urination = no.

We also stopped in Antwerp. Antwerp had a huge, beautiful opera house and other really pretty buildings.

Brussels was totally EPIC! So many cool statues, monuments, fountains, buildings, palaces, pagodas, etc. And there were signs up for the Tour de France.

Belgium has a lot of Decathalon sports and Midas car places. It amuzed me.

Once we finally hit boring highway, i read 100 pages of my book, which i am loving. I wanted to read more, but the lights on Eurolines busses dont work, so you can only read during the daytime.

We stopped in Lille, which appeared to be a place in France. Then we got to Paris at 11PM. It was weird, cuz Ive been at that station before. Im not great at geographz, but isnt Paris kind of out of the way? Anywho, we were joined by a busload of people from London, which was nice in that there were English speakers, but not nice in that every seat was full. Also the driver still didnt speak English, although he added Italian. Italians much better than French for me.

We got stuck in Paris for LITERALLY AN HOUR because some chick didnt check in properly in London. She eventually got booted off. Eventuallz.

We stopped at 2 more anonymous rest stops in France. People thought I was crazy cuz i spent the whole break walking in circles around the parking lot. Whatever.

Then the sun came up just as we were going through amazing mountains! It was so beautiful! I miss mountains! I havent listened to the Dead in a while, but I realized today that Shakedown Street was designed for sunrise. Its the best sunrise music ever. And I got to listen to "France" in France and "Fire on the Mountain" as the sun rose like fire over epic mountains. Pretty sweet!

OK. I have my free map and complimentary transport card. Im ready for the day. I just wish I spoke French.