Ordinary Gente

There are kind people in the world. We have met these friends along the way, some whose names we learned and others whose names are not know to us.

First, there was Julia. She reminds us of our niece Sara. Friendly, honest, and with a style of her own. Julia was the receptionist at the Hostal Goya in Barcelona. She was refreshing in her helpfulness and so darling in warning us about which metro tunnels to avoid because, well, “older tourists” could be mugged there. I wish we had a picture of her for this post but it is in our memories.

Next came an Algerian taxi driver who picked us up at the Marseilles train station. We were DESPERATE to get out of there because our apartment was cancelled. There was literally no available bed in any hotel, hostel, apartment, residence. We had spent 2 focused hours burning up the phone batteries and data plan looking for a room. Turns out the pilots’ strike stranded thousands of people in Marseille. Lucky for us Miguel helped us locate a place . . . the Chateau Fonscolombe 50km from Marseille. In the dead of night this taxi driver, whose name we will never know agreed to take us there. We put ourselves in his hands. (It was that, or we would’ve been on the streets of Marseille with our luggage and a lot of sketchy people.) The driver kept going and going and going. Luis and I held hands thinking it could be the end of us if he were an axe murderer. We got to this renovated castle in the middle of the country to find out he only charged us what he quoted us back in Marseilles, not the exorbitant fare on the meter. Turns out he was probably just as scared of us as we were of the situation! He drove away only after finding out that we really did have a room at this secluded place. We tipped him well.

Then there was today’s taxi driver, Frederic, who picked us up at the chateau. He took us to the address in Aix en Provence we gave him. But it sure didn’t look like any bus or transit station. He took us to the downtown for the afternoon while he researched Flixbus. We trusted him with our luggage while we ate and walked around the open air stalls. Sure enough, Frederic met us at the appointed time and place with our luggage safe and sound, and made sure we got on the bus. Another good tip for another conscientious driver.

Most recently, a 20-something year old guy helped us buy tickets to get from the bus station to Nîmes, and walked us almost to the front door of the hotel in the center of Nîmes. He was delightful company and told us about his mom and dad and his studies at the university. His patience with us proved, once again, that not all people are like the guy in Marseille who would not wait half hour to check us in. These other people understood our Spanish and our English and were willing to model for us key words in French.

Given our time of need, there was no time for pictures. Too bad.