Kind of Held Semi-Hostage in the South of France, A True Story
Bras on the beach, grooved sea squirts and lessons learned along the way!
“Bonjour, good morning, packing up,” I text my French friend who I was meeting up with later in the day. “I booked a spot on Booking.com in Narbonne but it’s not showing up in my email, only on PayPal as pending.”
Not thinking anything about it I melted into my beach chair at L'Hospitalet Beach Club and rosé’d it up while enjoying the Mediterranean sea and all of its glory. This was the start of my endless European summer, hugging the coast for as long as possible, until the first sign of sweater weather appears.
In Narbonne, I booked a personality-filled b&b on Booking.com with promises of Da Vinci-era architecture exposed in the living area. Goal: get lots of personal writing accomplished in this said idyllic courtyard with vines dripping down historic walls—with a coupe of Champagne, filled to the rim, as my only companion. Still no sign of a confirmed booking, and unsure of actual directions, my friend called the city’s tourism board and found directions. We show up and an older French woman appears, acting slightly surprised to see us.
In hindsight, it all makes sense now. I bamboozled a scammer in her own tracks. I still don’t know how this happened but….
After my friend left I felt the hair stand up on my neck. For the first few hours, I was without keys but the mysterious woman, from the French-German border, pops open a bottle of Champagne, situates canapes on a tray, and whisks me away down the spiral staircase to her private backyard oasis. I’d long forgotten about the four very French doors that required unlocking from the inside to get out—that I still didn’t have keys for.
“This is an old graveyard,” she says, pointing in her yard, as I frantically text my friend with multiple SOS messages. “Wonder what she’ll say at my funeral,” I kind of jokingly think to myself. Her laugh alone, when I think about it, still sends chills down my back. “I hope you get lots of writing done here but first there’s someone I want you to meet; my Romani friend who has never seen an American woman before. He’s quite successful and sells bras and flip-flops on the beach.”
“How awkward,” I murmur under my breath. First order of business, I ask, “Who is buying bras on the beach on a hot summer day? Are we talking about padded pushup bras? Sports bras? sexy lace bras? What kind of bras….?” She translates, “All kinds of bras.” I can’t imagine basking under the hot sun, on a hot summer day in July, on a sandy beach, contemplating needing a bra of any sort. My mind paints a picture of this man loitering along the beach with a sack full of brightly colored bras in all shapes and sizes. I guess this isn’t too weird stacked against the man selling Michael Jackson temporary tattoos and pigeons in a cage on Sant Sebastià Beach in Barcelona a few years back….
“I’ve got to get back to work now,” I say, in an effort to save myself from being this man’s unsolicited mistress. “Let me show you around the house first, “ she says. “Here’s my room, you can come in anytime and hang out.” Apparently, this was her house and I was just staying in it like I was family. There was no b&b. In fact, there was no surface for any additional things, anywhere in the house. It was so lived in. “Sometimes I sleep in your room like I did last night, it’s quite comfortable with the window open at night,” she says. I sit in silence, texting my friend, “What I won’t be doing tonight is sleeping naked.” If there’s anything I wasn’t at this time, it was turned on, sexually. It wasn’t dirty, per se, but as if you’d told your friend you’d cleaned all day when you didn’t…and so, therefore, feels slightly unkempt.
“Don’t worry, I can’t hear down the hall if you bring a French man back with you,” she smirkingly says. #Awkward. She finally hands over the set of keys…..four color-coated keys. I try so hard to grill into my head which key went to which door so there was no horror film act of frantically running with shakey hands to unlock myself to GET THE FUCK OUTTA THERE. Getting out of a French door is like getting into a chastity belt.
“About to leave if I can get out of this place and its multiple locked doors, I text my friend. Good news: La Petit Péche is a 3-minute walk from here!” Situated directly in front of Cathédrale Saint-Just-et-Saint-Pasteur, I found escapism through delicious food, including an aubergine and tuna dish my waiter assured me was pure bliss. I do love French eggplant (!). The eggplant is so creamy, perfectly salted, and texturally pleasing like mashed potatoes, with just the right amount of savory to matchmake alongside the tuna. Chef Gabriel notes the technique came about by way of messing up a recipe. Perfection isn’t always in the form of preciseness.
My phone dies and an unforeseen rain storm prompts me to merge tables with a group of French women, including a singer and a TV producer, and we bond over Champagne. I may not know fluent French but I didn’t need to at this moment. It was just one of those unplanned evenings in the form of a daydream.
Four unlocked doors later, I’m back in a scene of a horror film, tiptoeing around to the bathroom, whispering to my bladder, “This is your last time until morning, bitch, you better get it all out now.” At this moment I’m thankful for the chastity belt doors, safely locked….inside. In the early morning, I can hear her singing from across the way, in the kitchen. I tip-toe to the shower but accidentally bump into a hallway table like a bull in a China shop. “Jennnnnnnnifer, is that you?” “Fuck, fuck, fuck. Who the fuck else would it be?” When I get back to my room, she’s sitting on the edge of my bed, as if we were college girlfriends discussing the events from the night before.
I was forced to sit at breakfast with her, just us two, at a 10-person dining table in….her dining room, with her shit everywhere. “Here, I put something special in your juice this morning, drink it up.” At this point, I was certain I was playing Rosemary Woodhouse in Rosemary’s Baby in the morning shake scene, where she finds out there are satanic ingredients in her daily concoctions.
Spoiler alert: I did not drink the juice. I did not eat anything from our giant spread for a party of two. Enough Flowers in the Attic vibes for the day, I decided to go eat local delights at Les Halles de Narbonne. My friend and I sucked down a few grooved sea squirts, an unattractive-looking delicacy from the area that was all kinds of salty, briny, bitter, and not like anything I’d ever had. Not for everyone but I went in for seconds and thirds and washed it down with Gerard Bertrand’s Gris Blanc rosé (a perfect pairing for any briny sea creature IMO).
On my last night, I packed up my carry-on and was prepared to flee in the morning, only I’d need this insane woman to escort me out because of the key situation. She was very upset with me for “not spending more time” with her throughout my visit. As I hand over the keys and walk down the cobblestone sidewalk, she evilly laughs and says, “See you soon!”
I was so perplexed. Was I held hostage? Was this Franco-German woman in desperate need of a companion? Was I ever supposed to be there? Who knows but what I do know is that I’ll still never see the purpose of buying a bra on the beach.
Lessons learned: This was my second time with a major issue with Booking.com. This time, more cringe-worthy than the last, and have scratched it off of my travel tools completely after the Booking.com internal team and the external PR team both were unable to find any trace of this booking—and both dismissed the sense of urgency on this issue. My friend and I laugh about this now but, imagine if she hadn’t dropped me off? Or would I have ever found the historical hell house in the first place? Chase ended up helping me and identified the transaction as fraudulent/a scam two months later.
As for booking more trusted lodging, I use HotelTonight a lot, as well as Airbnb. If you’re looking for a “deal,” the big mega sites like Booking.com and Hotels.com do zero vetting and the properties are often misleading. I’ve often called a hotel after seeing it on one of these said deal sites and 9/10 it will be the same price or slightly less—and all funds go directly to the business.
BITCHEN ABOUT:
NEW THINGS: Lots of new things on the docket with BITCHEN. I am scrambling to rebrand, add new features (both here and on social media) and anxiously packing up for a few months in Europe. I’ll be writing about what I pack in my carry-on for T+L soon.
WINE: Next week the first Wine Libs is going live and I cannot wait.
ICYMI: The first Dispatches From Asheville shareable guide is on Instagram. These will eventually live on here in some capacity.
A PRODUCT: Just back from Maui and I cannot stop obsessing over makeup artist Kymberly Marr’s Liquid Sunshine in O'o Glow. I slathered it on my cheeks at the Fairmont Kea Lani spa and immediately texted her saying it jumped in line in front of NARS Orgasm for me. It’s one of the only beauty products that’s going with me to Europe.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED:
The Local Palate: New Restaurants in North Carolina (digital version of the print feature)
Washington Post: Why Tinder is My Favorite Travel App
Thrillist: Follow a Decadent Steakhouse Lunch with a Siesta in Madrid
Domino: Yes, I’m 40 and Stay at Hostels—These Are the Design-Forward Ones I’ve Loved
xxJenn
Omg, I adore cringe content, especially interspersed with insights on delicious food! This is amazing. So glad you made it out alive🤣