P.Hill+Expository+Essay+Draft+3

=== I slammed my foot on the clutch, downshifting into second and praying that the car would slow me down enough so that smashing the brakes and rounding the tight curve ahead wasn’t as much of a shock for my three passengers. Although about five new roundabouts had been added to my daily commute back home in the past year or so, encountering them at every intersection still posed a new challenge as I navigated the tiny, unfamiliar rental car around an even less familiar city. ===

==== Honestly, if the city weren’t so much more painfully picturesque than most cities surrounding Detroit, I’d have probably thought I was on a road trip in the US instead of almost 4,000 miles away; the radio dumped out the same generic pop crap that inundated the airwaves in my own small town, and the girls chatted away endlessly in English, despite all of our vows to improve our French that summer. I’d have been terribly disappointed if I wasn’t already so fed up with my immersion classes anyway, and thus far, this was the only actual vacating any of us had gotten to do on our vacation, so I didn’t have too much to complain about. We were on a road trip in //France//, after all! ====

==== So, away we sped, four American girls, in an American car, listening to American music and speaking VERY American English, trying to navigate the most beautiful and confusing city that any of us had ever seen. European beauty notwithstanding, I was spent. Being the only person who knew how to drive a stick shift, I was elected to chauffeur my friends for the four-hour stretch from Brest to Nantes, and after having been lost in the city for about an hour, I started getting pretty edgy and even more restless. ====

== My friend Katy, sitting beside me, took the role of navigator. She was the one who suggested Nantes in the first place and arranged our hotel. The skinniest person I have ever seen, she lowered her long swan neck for a myopic peek at the directions, and directed her gaze with a slender, bony, perfectly polished finger. She would call out directions to me faster than I could keep up with them, so miserably butchering the French names of streets that on several occasions I turned down the wrong road, only to wind up even more lost than we started, and having to maneuver us all back to square one, driving the same part of the //Cours des 50 Otages//, until I was ready to snap. Finally, Lindsay, the only optimistic one of us left, made a suggestion that, considering the number of X chromosomes in the car, probably should have come up earlier; “Why don’t we just stop and ask for directions?” And so, with that sound piece of wisdom we set our sights on finding helpful pedestrians instead of the now mythical and elusive //Hôtel Renova//. ==

== Looking back, I probably should have been more helpful. As the most proficient in French, I should have been the one to actually get out of the car and ask for directions, but I was already too frustrated and stubborn at this point to move from my perch at the driver’s seat until we reached our final destination. So off went Lindsay, platinum blonde hair flowing behind her, and Marin not far after, to ask a lovely middle-aged couple for directions. They were helpful and cordial, and even wrote down for the girls where to go turn-by-turn, sending them off with a wave and a smile back to the still-fuming and now slightly paranoid Katy and me. The directions had us turning around and going back the way we came, leaving us all to think we had missed yet another turn somewhere off the main road. ==

== While we all thought for sure this was our big break, we didn’t realize until after our return that asking for directions was probably the worst possible thing we could have done. Culturally, if a stranger goes out of their way to engage a French person, that person feels obliged to respond, even if they do not know the answer. This bit of information gleaned from a later French class back in the States was certainly true this time. Eventually we would learn that the hotel was within walking distance of that small stretch of road we had been traversing, and that it was on a pedestrian-only street blocked off by pylons, which is why we could not find the road off of the //Cours des 50 Otages// in the first place. We would only have had to continue just a little bit further down that very road they directed us away from to find the parking garage, and not too distantly, the hotel. ==

== Unfortunately, it wasn’t until a chance stop for a bathroom break that I saw the pedestrian streets, and Katy, the hotel, but of course, that would not happen for another hour after the initial stop for directions. So on we continued, now with no music and no chatter, just the occasional angry assertion about the trip, my driving, Katy’s navigating, Lindsey’s people skills, and Marin’s translation abilities, as our spirits headed down an even worse road than the one we had all been stuck on for the past hour and a half. Desperate, I began making random turns, heading in the general direction I believed the hotel to be. Despite my friends’ pleas, I silently continued driving, ready to find a new hotel if need be and pay the difference myself. Hopeless, angry with myself, God, Katy and the entire people of France, I weaved through the narrow, cobbled streets of Nantes until I saw it. ==

== I rounded a deep bend, and for what seemed to be the millionth time, I slammed on the brakes. This time, though, I pulled off of the road and parked instantly. I had never seen anything like it, and later I would come to know why; what we happened upon by complete and utter accident is to this day one of the last Gothic Cathedrals in France. //Le Cathédral St-Pierre-St-Paul//. The massive structure stood at the base of a large square, towering over us like a white stone beacon of hope. The façade stood before us, austere but elegant, completely illuminated by the sun. Having taken 500 years to construct, this leviathan of a building took my breath away. It must have done the same for each of the girls, because their gasps drowned out my own, and Marin was out of the car, snapping photos with a camera that looked bigger than she, before I could even process where I was. I watched her for a moment, comically balancing the camera with one hand as she ran the other pensively through the thick tuft at the front of her cropped hair, trying to get the perfect shot. I joined her as I examined the façade. ==

== It was hard to fit the entire cathedral in one frame. Dwarfing us, the two squared-off turrets stood at just less than 200 feet at their highest point and framed three grand gates and an external pulpit, a rare fixture for cathedrals of its time. A rounded high arch with floral and baroque molding crowned the center gate, which reached up to point at the magnificent stained-glass windows above. The entire building almost vibrated with the tension created between the strong lines of geometric towers and the soft, flower-patterned curves of the sculpted exterior. All of this was emphasized by the vermillion doors, which stood in beautiful contrast to the white stone. The stately doors looked almost like the ruby red lips on the porcelain face of a gorgeous storybook character. ==

== We were there only briefly—I did stop in the middle of traffic, after all, but we remained long enough to be overcome the shock of the beauty before us, take a few photographs, and undergo a complete attitude adjustment to boot. In the flash of the camera and the blink of an eye, we hopped back into the car with a new resolve to find the hotel and eventually return to the glorious cathedral the next chance we got. Although we had been taking classes and living in France for over a month, it finally felt like our vacation had begun. All of our misfortunes and our troubles seemed to melt away after finding that magnificent church. ==

== As we stood there, the four of us very unlikely companions, we joined in complete solidarity and friendship. All of our bickering and begrudging seemed like the distant past. In this moment, though we had all only met on the plane a few short weeks before, we were permanently and irrevocably bonded. Little did we know that there, standing in awe of not only the edifice in front of us, but where we had gotten ourselves, that this very moment would mark the beginning of a lasting friendship. ==

== Whether it was from the cathedral’s proximity to the hotel or our new outlooks, we found our way to the hotel with very little incident. When we finally reached our rooms, abandoned our luggage, and sprawled out on our beds, we took the time to review a map of Nantes and retrace our erratic journey. It was to all of our relief (and a somewhat to our chagrin) that the Nantes Cathedral was less than a stone’s throw away from the hotel. Needless to say, when we finally gained the opportunity to enter //St-Pierre-St-Paul//, it gained an even more sacred stance in our wide, reverent eyes. There, the group of misfits that we were, promised never to forget our time together in the magical city. The rest of that brief weekend trip seemed like a reverie. Though I initially felt like seeing the cathedral wakened me from a nightmare, I now believe that it was not until that very moment that I started dreaming. ==