HI! Hope you’re great! Listen, this column is so LUDICROUSLY LONG that I am not doing an intro. A refresher: I kept a diary during my recent two-week trip to Europe, which I am now publishing in three sections. Part One, the Paris section, is here if you missed it. At the end of that column, I’d just departed Paris on a four-hour train trip down to a region of the South of France called the Aude department. That’s where this column picks up.
Remember, diary entries are always written the morning after day after I’m describing. Oh, and at the end I plug one of my favorite skincare products. These are beauty columns again, babe!
Enjoy!
The train from Paris to Narbonne yesterday was a straight shot and it was totally fine but I didn’t have a window seat, which is insane for a four-hour train ride in France. There were sunflowers out the window, not that I could really see them. The free WiFi was good so I was on my phone most of the time, not reading my strange Hemingway novel, THE GARDEN OF EDEN. The train pulled into Narbonne over an hour late, which I just knew was totally going to screw up my plan to go into nature—via public bus—after dropping my luggage off at my hotel.
It was a 94 degree Fahrenheit Sunday afternoon in France, which meant things were dead as hell.
I’d booked a 6 PM ticket for a tour of the pink Gruissan Salt Flats, only a 23 minute bus ride away. Of course, the bus never showed. Ubers were $70 and I should have done that, but I know the sleepy side of Europe too well to count on transport like that, especially on a Sunday evening. Like, even if you get your expensive ride one way, then you can’t get home. I’ve been stuck in places so many times, not able to get a car back. I gave up and just walked around Narbonne instead. Absolutely nothing was going on. People come here for the beautiful beach, Narbonne Plage, as well as the aforementioned Gruissan. Narbonne the town kinda isn’t the greatest. The lights weren’t even on in the grocery store; I was shining my phone at everything to see it.
The hotel I’m staying in is super nice; it’s an old convent and my room was huge and ornate.
I was so tired but I couldn’t sleep until late, like 3 AM. Honestly it was not distress at all; it was feeling just really happy and full of love and interest in so many things. My brain was racing. I watched Nancy Grace on YouTube and she’s pissed that Casey Anderson is writing a memoir (which she kept pronouncing so funny—mem-wah).
It’s 10 AM. In an hour, I have a short train ride to my next hotel, in Collioure. Oh, and I left my travel-sized Justin’s Peanut Butter Squeeze Packets in Paris and I’m livid.
I’m typing this on the bed in Collioure; I just ate my usual breakfast of two rice cakes and peanut butter—I bought some—with a Pink Lady apple, plus three shots of espresso from the café downstairs diluted with some delicious EU-grade tap water, LOL. I took French melatonin last night and slept so hard when I woke up I couldn’t remember where in France I was. I really, really couldn’t remember. I stared at the ceiling and wouldn’t let myself look around the hotel room for a second, like a game. Then I finally cheated and looked and remembered I was in Collioure.
This was a place I was quite excited to visit on this trip. I saw a big show at the Met a year or two ago, COLLIOURE IN COLOR, about Matisse and Derain posting in this fishing village together for a single summer in 1905, playing with color and cranking out paintings. Anyway, it’s very nice. It reminds me of Brittany, France a little, or an English beach. Last night the sun didn’t set until 10 PM and I was out walking on the ramparts and walls, filming things in the harbor. Kids were skipping stones and it was really cute; I used to do that. It’s both very tourist-centric and pleasantly low-key; there’s no supermarket in the village; you’re meant to eat at the restaurants. We’re 15 kilometers from the Spanish border.
I have two nights here, and the plan was always to use Collioure as a base to explore Perpignan, the city next door. So I arrived here yesterday from Narbonne—the short train ride was so beautiful; it’s all nature—and dropped my luggage at the lovely Hotel des Templiers, then immediately got on the train again. Perpignan is France’s southernmost city and known for it’s Catalan heritage; it was the capital of the Kingdom of Majorca in the 13th century; I read in this book how Spaniard Picasso used to hang there. It has just always sounded so interesting.
It was a 20 minute train ride, with nice views of the Pyrenees mountains. I exited the Perpignan station, consulted Google Maps, and then took this very unpleasant walk that gave me the willies. The area was really depressed and not fully seedy, but the energy was so bad. I was like, whoa, thank God I didn’t actually book a night here. I kept walking and it was dark and cloudy and the vibe felt so dark. Even touring the Palace of the Kings of Mallorca was kind of weird; I was zipping around nervously, listening to Howard Stern. Out on the street, I still kinda felt creeped out, even though the city was getting prettier.
I walked and walked. Suddenly, I hit the good touristy part, and the sun came out again, and it was like a completely different place. It was bizarre. I think I was just walking in a bad neighborhood initially. (UPDATE: I have since come to learn the Perpignan train station is horrifying 1990s French serial killer territory and now believe that I was feeling ‘DALI KILLINGS’ ENERGY. Jesus Christ!) I bought a bunch of groceries, including the aforementioned peanut butter, to take back to Collioure.
Anyway. It’s 9 AM. Today, I’m impulsively popping over to Spain real quick. I gotta pack a lunch for the train and guess what, it’s gonna be rice cakes, apples, and peanut butter.
Someone DM’d just me to tell me that Mercury is in retrograde. I wouldn’t believe in astrology, but yesterday was such fucking mess that I kinda do (also, Camille Paglia believes in astrology, and she’s a genius). I popped over to Spain on the train to Figueres yesterday as planned. It’s where Salvador Dali was born; the museum he designed and entombed himself in is there now.
I went to the Dali Museum in high school on the teen trip with my then-boyfriend…whose name I changed in MURDER. To what? I can’t remember.
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