Today my time abroad did not go as planned to say the least. I woke up this morning with excitement to be heading to Monte Carlo, Monaco with all the other study abroad students. However, there was some confusion the night before about when exactly the bus there would be leaving. There was never a consensus agreement on the time so we planned to get there a little after 8 am. When me and my two roommates make it there about 8:20 running a little behind, we came to find out the bus had already left. Both buses. And no one told us or tried to contact us about it. So we were pretty surprised at first and feeling down about missing the fun trip we had been looking forward to this weekend, especially knowing everyone else would be going. However, we came to find out three other students missed the bus as well because they thought it was leaving later. We were relieved to find we weren't the only ones who missed it. Our first thought was to go to the bust station and try to find another bus heading there. When we make it there we found out the bus wouldn't arrive to Monaco till about 1pm and that wouldn't give us much time there. So we decided to head to Marseille instead, since it's close by and we can all get a special bus pass for only 2 euros that lasts all day. Even though we were all a little bummed about missing the trip, we were excited to still be doing something and visiting a new place.
Our trip to Marseille ended up being much more fun than we expected. We walked around the beautiful city to the Vieux Port, then hung out at the beach for a few hours as well. Our little group got along really well and it was fun to get to know some new people that day. We definitely bonded trying to figure our way around a new city and figuring out what we wanted to do, and it all worked out in the end. Even though our lunch that day didn't turn out to be very good, and we walked around so much to the point of exhaustion, it was a spontaneous trip that wasn't what we expected but something we all enjoyed. This day didn't turn out quite as planned, but we still made sure to make the most of our time in France one way or another. Although it wasn't Monaco, nothing was about to stop us from that.
