Trip to Cannes with my friends

So as I mentioned in my summer 2013 post, I went to the Cannes, a town in the south of France with NINE of my friends as an end of exam celebration. I had been planning it for almost two years, the idea came to me in September 2011 and the rest was history!

I had planned everything down to the tiniest detail: the travel, the food, the cost, the daily activities, etc. etc. I had foreseen every single thing that could go wrong (kidnapping and losing the keys to the apartment included :P) and prepared for it. I think I had about 15 documents in my ‘Cannes 2013’ by the end of it. Now this planning may seem excessive but I actually really enjoyed it, I just love planning things!

                                          At the airport before we leave

I was sooo excited to go after all the preparation, and it was supposed to be a real end-of-exams fun time. However, it didn’t go exactly as planned…on the first day one friend got her wallet stolen which really put a downer on the whole trip, and from thereon she decided to stay in the apartment, and quite a few others stayed with her. Near the end another friend got her phone stolen (we really didn’t have much luck) which also dampened the atmosphere. I had warned them about the amount of theft in Cannes but I guess they were just used to how safe it is in Geneva where we live.

Nevertheless, the rest of us had a good time mostly, just chilling at the beach (the weather was luckily perfect – warm and sunny but not too hot) and eating lots of ice-cream! One afternoon there were a group of street-dancers who were SO good-looking so we enjoyed the show even though the level of dance and gymnastics was actually terrible (I say that with my experience as a gymnast). We still enjoyed watching them :P

                      Some street dancers (not the ones we saw but they're a regular occurance)

One day which really stood out was when we persuaded everybody to come out, and we all took a boat to a small island not far away. It was only a short boat ride away, and the island was actually beautiful to see from the distance. We didn’t do much once we were, just wandered around, got lost, had a picnic and played lots of games of Mafia but it was really nice all the same to be altogether having fun. I really enjoyed that day and am glad we convinced everybody to come because it really was the highlight of the trip.

                                                     Island Saint Margheurite near Cannes

The other great thing about the trip was that we had organised that each evening two girls would cook a meal for everybody. Because we're such an international group of friends we have a huge range of meals, from Italian pasta to Mexican to British fish and chips. Each meal was delicious and we had a look of fun preparing huge meals for everybody :)

                                                                  Cooking Mexican!

On the last day was the birthday of one of my friends, so we did a day of surprises for her. We took her to a sushi place in town for lunch as she’d been saying how much she wanted to eat sushi, and paid for her meal.

Then in the evening we threw a surprise birthday party for her. We decorated the apartment with balloons and streamers whilst distracting her elsewhere. Most of us had brought presents that we’d got for her beforehand in Geneva, but for those who hadn’t we secretly bought a dress and some bracelets in Cannes she’d tried on and loved. She was so surprised when she opened them and it was such a sweet moment when she started crying as she saw what was in the bag :)

                                             The birthday girl is in the front with the red dress

From there though everything went downhill. In the evening there was a music festival which a few people wanted to go to, so off they went. One of the rules that my parents had given us was that we had to be back by sunset which was 10pm. I’d reminded them before the left, warning them that it meant they wouldn’t have much time down at the festival. Anyways at 10pm we were watching a film, and we look outside and it’s pitch black outside. Long story short, they had no phone so were using someone else’s, didn’t know the address, were out almost an hour late and we were all terrified.  I was so mad at them when they came back, and so were the others, but they acted as if nothing was wrong and it was perfectly within their rights to be out at that time, despite the rules that my parents had asked us to follow in THEIR apartment. So we had a massive fight, screaming and crying it was a disaster. So the mood was pretty awful on the long train journey back to Geneva.

I’m still very mad at two of the girls (of the three who went to the festival, one apologised immediately and I of course forgave her, she didn’t realise before how much she had scared us but she did as soon as she got back and felt terrible). But the other two never actually apologised, which I think is really quite shocking, almost as if they truly don’t realise what they did wrong. If that’s the case then there’s nothing I can do about it. The thing is one of them was my best friend….and the other is her twin sister. So there’s acting now as if everything’s fine between us, and it was two months ago so I’ve let it be to a certain extent. But I don’t think it’ll ever be the same between us, and I don’t really want it to if I’m honest with you. They betrayed me in a way, and ruined what was supposed to be my relaxing fun holiday celebrating the end of exams with my friends.

Also, I got a call from my grandparents a few weeks later saying that the apartment downstairs where some girls had been staying was in a terrible state, there was broken things etc. that nobody had told me about. I was really disappointed that whoever had broken it didn’t come to me and tell me, the least they could have done was own up, so I felt terrible afterwards.

Anyways, the moral of the story is: pick your friends wisely. You may not be able to choose your family but your friends are completely your own decision. So now I want to start over fresh in England and pick my new friends carefully, although of course I still want to stay friends with some of those in Geneva. And the second moral is: no matter how good something seems like it’s going to be, always prepare for the worst; anything could go wrong.

I’m sorry if that was a really pessimistic and negative post, although I didn’t have a very good experience on the trip with my friends, I’m sure many people who have done similar things had a great time and I hope that if you do something like this you will too!

Lili