[UNC Summer in Grenoble] To Grenoble, France!

Allow me to backtrack about 4 months in time and start talking about my summer study abroad in France.

May 30th, 2015

This was the day that I had to leave for France.

Before heading to the airport, I had to check out of my Maymester dorm, and leave the rest of my stuff that I won't be taking with me to France at one of my friends' place.

I also got a ride to the airport from this good friend!

and here I was at Raleigh-Durham International Airport!

Thanks to the dorm check-out taking longer than it should have, I arrived at the gate right at the boarding time. I wasn't even able to get lunch...

First flight was Philadelphia-bound.
It was such a small plane with 2 and 2 seating arrangement.

Approximately an hour and a half later...

I arrived at Philadelphia International Airport.
It was a pretty big airport.
There were parts that were a bit older.

and there were also this part of the airport that seemed to be built recently.
Most of the international flights seemed to be at the newer terminal.

Well, thanks to the first flight getting delayed, my transfer flight started boarding immediately when I got to the gate.
Yup, I had no time to get some lunch. I was dying(?) of hunger.

I boarded the Paris-bound aircraft, and approximately 7 hours later...

I was able to see some French landmass(?) through the window!

Before I knew it, my feet were already touching the French ground.
I was really at Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport!!

One of the things that was the most shocking when I arrived at France was the Language Barrier.
Everything was written in alphabet, but in French, which I know nothing of!

Another thing I was shocked about was how quick the immigration was.
I've been to mostly Korea, Japan, and the U.S., and their airports have immigration that take quite a while. (Especially the U.S.)
It was also unnecessary to fill out a customs form!

I was starting to like Europe already.
Go EU!

Then I walked over to the CDG airport train station.
Now I had a lot of time.
My flight landed around 8 AM, and I even had enough time to take the 8:30 AM train instead of the 9:58 AM one, all thanks to the super-short immigration process!

Well, since I had the extra time, I used it to explore the train station.

This was one of the things that grabbed my attention!
It was a cellphone battery charging station, where you generate electricity by turning the bike pedals!

Very eco-friendly, I see.

This is what the outside(?) of the train station looked like.

It was a bit chilly outside.
Yeah, I got excited about anticipating a nice and cool summer in France back then.

After taking a couple of pictures, it was about time to take the train.

I headed for the platform.

This screen displayed the information on the incoming train.
If you look closely, you can see that the incoming train is actually 2 trains connected together.
Apparently, the train would separate at Lyon, then the front half would go to Marseille and the rear half would go to Montpellier.

and Here comes the train!!

Here it is!!
The TGV!

I think I took these TGVs 3-4 more times.
The train was not shining new or anything, but it did seem like a veteran train that had been doing the job for quite a while.

and what do you know?
The interior seemed like it had been renovated! It was pretty clean, unlike the exterior.

This was actually my first time riding a high-speed train, and somehow, TGV got to be the first!

I had a lot of trouble sleeping on the airplane, so I barely got any sleep during the flight.
I was so tired when I was on the TGV, that I couldn't help but doze off throughout the entire train ride.

but there were some times when I was awake, and when I was....

I took these pictures of the rural France!
It was nice, because I was expecting Europe to be densely populated pretty much everywhere, and these sceneries were against that expectations.

I was too unconscious to actually take note of how fast the train was moving.
However, by the looks of the slightly motion-blurred pictures, which were taken at shutter speed 1/600 ~1/1000 second, the train seemed to have been moving very fast.

After a moment of unconsciousness...

I started to see a cityscape.

and I got off the TGV at Lyon Part Dieu station.

This is the only picture I have of the Lyon train station, because I had to run as fast as I could to catch the transfer train to Grenoble.

I made it,

but almost missed it...
thank goodness that I didn't!

About an hour later, I started to see a lot of mountains as the train was approaching Grenoble.

I finally arrived at the Grenoble train station!

Ohh Boy!!
Is this what France looks like??
I awed at the scenery.
but shortly after that, I was starting to get annoyed by the heat.
It was kind of warm there, since it were a warmer part of France.

and I was lost because my phone had no access to the internet....

Fortunately, one of the passerby couple helped me out using Google Maps,

and kindly led me all the way to Hotel Trianon, where I spent the first night in France!!
That lovely couple was a life-saver!!
Merci Beaucoup!

I chose this hotel because it was cheap, close to the train station, and was close to the city center!

Anyway, I checked in at the front desk, and holy Wow...
It was impossible to communicate through English!
Luckily, I booked through Booking.com and the printed out confirmation was just enough to get me checked in!
(The lady did say some other things, but I couldn't understand any of them...;;)

Then I went to my room.

What a tiny room.
I think this room was as small as, if not smaller than, the typical hotel rooms in Japan.

I was supposed to wait for a classmate of mine, but I fell unconscious in bed because I had barely gotten any sleep on the train or on the airplane.
Good thing that I set an alarm before helplessly falling asleep, I would not have been able to let him in if it weren't for that alarm!

When I got up, I ran to the train station, but couldn't find him there. When I was waiting back at the hotel, he came knocking on the door of my hotel room.


Both of us were extremely tired.
We just got some kebabs and tacos, took a shower, and then went straight to bed.


Stay tuned for my adventures in France!!