Classes officially ended today, and I can't believe the end of our stay here in Versailles has come. I've gotten so used to all my classes here, seeing everyone in our group every day, as well as our professors. Walking away from the professors was the hardest to do because we won't see them again, and even though I initally had my differences with some of them, they all eventually grew on me, and I'll really miss them a lot. I'll also miss how easy our classes were here--we are really going to dislike being back at Furman in terms of work, but I'll be excited to see everyone again. It's been so long.
Our last week here, we've just been wrapping up with our classes and trying to see everything in Paris that we hadn't found time to visit yet. On Wednesday, I went to the Places de Vosges with Elizabeth and Monika and saw Victor Hugo's house, and then we walked to Hotel de Ville and saw a beautifully decorated Christmas market there. Thankfully, it was a pretty nice day despite it being cold.
Disappointingly, the traditional Thanksgiving lunch we heard we would have here never happened. Dr. Patton did nothing in terms of preparing for it, so to make up for it, he bought us drinks. While we all took advantage of this, it certainly didn't make up for the lack of Thanksgiving joy I usually feel on this particular day. In fact, I kept forgetting it was Thanksgiving because it was just another Thursday for the French, and the fact that no Thanksgiving lunch was planned really disappointed me. While I had fun hanging out with the other people in our group at this bar (and even got to meet another French friend of Michael's whose name was Kome), it just wasn't the same at all and I was very aware of what I was missing. But it's OK, I know Christmas will make up for it.
After taking our final test today with Monsieur Sinniger, Michael, Michele, and I ran into Madame Sinniger and Michael asked her if we could sit in on an English class at St. Jean (the French high school). Madame Sinniger said we could, so we showed up to an afternoon English class. But instead of just sitting and observing, we ended up being the focus of the class. The teacher made us sit in chairs in front of the room and told us to introduce ourselves (in English of course) and then just told the students to ask us questions. It was pretty awkward because since our visit to this class had been decided only 3 hours ago, the kids had had no time to prepare questions for us, so they didn't really know what to ask. Plus we were sitting in a room full of 15 year olds who were more anxious to get out of their Friday class than sit there and think up questions to ask us. So we just ended up asking them a lot of questions, like if they had been to the U.S. and where they had been. We also asked what their stereotypes of Americans were, and basically I've found that in general, all French think this about Americans: We are all fat, the hamburger is an essential part of our diet, we drink Coke all the time (like it's water), and we eat in front of the TV. Basically, all they think we do is eat. So it was funny to hear these stereotypes and just tell them that that's not always the case in America (unfortunately, it can be). Thankfully, the class only lasted an hour so we managed to fill up the time talking about different things like our experiences here in France, the election, and then one guy asked us if we thought the French dressed well (I think they do for the most part). After the class, I hung out with Michael and Katie at his house, playing with his little dog named Cashew, and then I went home and had dinner with my parents.
Tomorrow night, I leave for Barcelona and will not be taking my computer with me because it's heavy and it could possibly be stolen in a hostel. Any internet access I'll be able to get will definitely be limited, so this will probably be my last post while I'm here. Thanks to everyone who followed my blog and I'll be seeing you soon! Three weeks!
Friday, November 28, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
La Defense, Weekend with Kati, and La Fete des Familles
Sorry for the lack of updating; I've been having more troubles with the family computer...I will try not to make this post ridiculously long.
Last Wednesday, we visited La Defense with Dr. Patton. I learned from my French family that this visit is not usually part of the program, instead it was planned on Dr. Patton's own accord because he loves it so much. For those who don't know, La Defense is on the edge of Paris and is known as Mini-Manhatten because it's like its own little city within a city. It's a huge center of commerce as well as a display of architectural art. La Defense houses pretty much the only skyscrapers in Paris, and most of these skyscrapers have interesting and very modern architecture styles. The skyscrapers are also surrounded by different sculptures representing modern art, which is always just weird in my opinion. We spent the day first talking about the huge hollow, cubical building built by von Spreckelson (or something like that) in the 80's. He won an architectural design contest, which resulted in his design being created on the Grand Axis of Paris, meaning it was built directly on the same line as the Arc de Triomphe and other things. And sure enough when you stood on the steps in the middle in front of the cube (which was supposed to represent "the window of Paris"), you could see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. After visiting the cube, we walked around the area looking at the different art sculptures and walking through a couple of buildings. We even saw some models of skyscraper designs that will be built sometime in the future, and a lot were really cool. All in all, it was a pretty short visit, and afterwards, we all spent the rest of the time we had before dinner shopping in the huge mall there, so that was fun.
Friday, I met Kati in Paris. It was so great to see her again, and she looked really great--the same but older. We walked to Starbucks because it was freezing and just sat down and talked. We talked for at least 2 hours, maybe more, just catching up with each other on our lives. It was so nice. Then we walked along the Champs-Elysees at night looking at all the blue lights strung through all the trees lining the street. Some stores even had their own light decorations up in honor of Christmas. There was even a little Christmas market at the end of the street towards Place de la Concorde that was selling food and other Christmas gifts. After walking down the street, we found a cafe to eat dinner at and talked more about our lives. Afterwards, I walked Kati back to her hotel because she was tired since she woke up early to catch the train, so after walking back with her to what she called her "shoebox of a room," I caught a train back to Versailles and planned to meet her the next day.
Saturday, after meeting Kati at the train station, we went to Montmartre behind the Sacre Coeur and walked through the little square where all the local artists were gathered. It was absolutely freezing that day, but we dealt with it. Montmartre is definitely one my favorite places in Paris...it's so cute and just really French. After walking through Montmartre and looking at the old windmalls, we walked through the Sacre Coeur and then went shopping in the streets around the church. Kati and I noticed walking through these streets that there were a bunch of lingerie sales--bras and panties were being sold at a price of either 1 or 2 euros and it was INSANE! So many French woman were crowded around the baskets and barrels full of this lingerie..it was funny to watch. We took pictures.
We shopped around a bit more just walking through random streets and visiting random shops, and then we headed to Notre Dame to see the inside of the church since I hadn't seen it in such a long time. It was really nice to see it again...no matter what, I think I'll always love gothic churches since we don't have any in the U.S. They're just incredible in terms of the beauty, architecture, and history, and all in all, they just amaze me. After walking through Notre Dame, we walked on the Boulevard St. Germain and stopped in a cafe to drink coffee and hot chocolate and to warm up. I had the best hot chocolate ever. The waiter brought me warm milk in a small pitcher and then melted chocolate in another smaller pitcher, and I got to make my own hot chocolate with the two. It was delicious. We hung out there enjoying the warmth and company, and sent my mom a text message wishing her a happy birthday.
After the cafe, we decided we just wanted to be inside as much as possible, so we headed to the Galeries Lafayette to do some indoor shopping. When we arrived, the streets surrounding the Galeries Lafayette were packed. Everyone had to push through each other to get where he needed to go. It was ridiculous. After getting through the crowds, we found our way inside and spent about 2 hours shopping around before meeting up with some of my friends from our group as well as another friend who I met in St. Brieuc during the IU Honors Program who also happened to be on a study abroad in Paris at the same time (her name is Theresa). So after the Galeries Lafayette, we met Roz, Enna, Lubaina, and Theresa in front of the Opera Garnier and found an italian restaurant to eat at. I was a bit worried about how well the group dynamic would go since the group ended up being a lot of random people and I ended up being the common denominator of the group because I was the only person everyone knew. It ended up being a lot of fun though and we all got along really well, and thankfully, nothing was awkward. After dinner, we went to McDonalds for a McFlurry dessert--Kati really wanted one because she heard that the French use oreos in their McFlurrys whereas in Germany, they don't. After eating some McFlurry dessert, Theresa left to meet some of her other friends in Paris and Kati went back to her hotel, so the four of us remaining decided to just head back to Versailles since it was freezing anyway. Ironically, on our way to Saint Lazare to take a train, we met up with Michael who had just come back from Normandy, so he joined us on the train. And then when our train stopped at the La Defense station, Michele and Elizabeth got on, and the really crazy part is that they walked into our car completely by chance and didn't even see us until we called their names. So our group expanded to 7, and we all headed back to Versailles together. Once there, we ended the night early since it was just as cold in Versailles as in Paris.
Last Wednesday, we visited La Defense with Dr. Patton. I learned from my French family that this visit is not usually part of the program, instead it was planned on Dr. Patton's own accord because he loves it so much. For those who don't know, La Defense is on the edge of Paris and is known as Mini-Manhatten because it's like its own little city within a city. It's a huge center of commerce as well as a display of architectural art. La Defense houses pretty much the only skyscrapers in Paris, and most of these skyscrapers have interesting and very modern architecture styles. The skyscrapers are also surrounded by different sculptures representing modern art, which is always just weird in my opinion. We spent the day first talking about the huge hollow, cubical building built by von Spreckelson (or something like that) in the 80's. He won an architectural design contest, which resulted in his design being created on the Grand Axis of Paris, meaning it was built directly on the same line as the Arc de Triomphe and other things. And sure enough when you stood on the steps in the middle in front of the cube (which was supposed to represent "the window of Paris"), you could see the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. After visiting the cube, we walked around the area looking at the different art sculptures and walking through a couple of buildings. We even saw some models of skyscraper designs that will be built sometime in the future, and a lot were really cool. All in all, it was a pretty short visit, and afterwards, we all spent the rest of the time we had before dinner shopping in the huge mall there, so that was fun.
Friday, I met Kati in Paris. It was so great to see her again, and she looked really great--the same but older. We walked to Starbucks because it was freezing and just sat down and talked. We talked for at least 2 hours, maybe more, just catching up with each other on our lives. It was so nice. Then we walked along the Champs-Elysees at night looking at all the blue lights strung through all the trees lining the street. Some stores even had their own light decorations up in honor of Christmas. There was even a little Christmas market at the end of the street towards Place de la Concorde that was selling food and other Christmas gifts. After walking down the street, we found a cafe to eat dinner at and talked more about our lives. Afterwards, I walked Kati back to her hotel because she was tired since she woke up early to catch the train, so after walking back with her to what she called her "shoebox of a room," I caught a train back to Versailles and planned to meet her the next day.
Saturday, after meeting Kati at the train station, we went to Montmartre behind the Sacre Coeur and walked through the little square where all the local artists were gathered. It was absolutely freezing that day, but we dealt with it. Montmartre is definitely one my favorite places in Paris...it's so cute and just really French. After walking through Montmartre and looking at the old windmalls, we walked through the Sacre Coeur and then went shopping in the streets around the church. Kati and I noticed walking through these streets that there were a bunch of lingerie sales--bras and panties were being sold at a price of either 1 or 2 euros and it was INSANE! So many French woman were crowded around the baskets and barrels full of this lingerie..it was funny to watch. We took pictures.
We shopped around a bit more just walking through random streets and visiting random shops, and then we headed to Notre Dame to see the inside of the church since I hadn't seen it in such a long time. It was really nice to see it again...no matter what, I think I'll always love gothic churches since we don't have any in the U.S. They're just incredible in terms of the beauty, architecture, and history, and all in all, they just amaze me. After walking through Notre Dame, we walked on the Boulevard St. Germain and stopped in a cafe to drink coffee and hot chocolate and to warm up. I had the best hot chocolate ever. The waiter brought me warm milk in a small pitcher and then melted chocolate in another smaller pitcher, and I got to make my own hot chocolate with the two. It was delicious. We hung out there enjoying the warmth and company, and sent my mom a text message wishing her a happy birthday.
After the cafe, we decided we just wanted to be inside as much as possible, so we headed to the Galeries Lafayette to do some indoor shopping. When we arrived, the streets surrounding the Galeries Lafayette were packed. Everyone had to push through each other to get where he needed to go. It was ridiculous. After getting through the crowds, we found our way inside and spent about 2 hours shopping around before meeting up with some of my friends from our group as well as another friend who I met in St. Brieuc during the IU Honors Program who also happened to be on a study abroad in Paris at the same time (her name is Theresa). So after the Galeries Lafayette, we met Roz, Enna, Lubaina, and Theresa in front of the Opera Garnier and found an italian restaurant to eat at. I was a bit worried about how well the group dynamic would go since the group ended up being a lot of random people and I ended up being the common denominator of the group because I was the only person everyone knew. It ended up being a lot of fun though and we all got along really well, and thankfully, nothing was awkward. After dinner, we went to McDonalds for a McFlurry dessert--Kati really wanted one because she heard that the French use oreos in their McFlurrys whereas in Germany, they don't. After eating some McFlurry dessert, Theresa left to meet some of her other friends in Paris and Kati went back to her hotel, so the four of us remaining decided to just head back to Versailles since it was freezing anyway. Ironically, on our way to Saint Lazare to take a train, we met up with Michael who had just come back from Normandy, so he joined us on the train. And then when our train stopped at the La Defense station, Michele and Elizabeth got on, and the really crazy part is that they walked into our car completely by chance and didn't even see us until we called their names. So our group expanded to 7, and we all headed back to Versailles together. Once there, we ended the night early since it was just as cold in Versailles as in Paris.
Sunday, I met Kati again to drink coffee and hang out some more before her train left. We spent about an hour at the Starbucks just chatting and drinking our coffee/hot chocolate. Then I had to get back because I had some things I needed to do, so Kati walked with me to Saint Lazare and saw me off. I was glad I made the trip to see her one last time, and we had such a great weekend together. We promised that we would see each other again if either one of us managed to be on the same side of the Atlantic. After getting back to Versailles, I made some cookies for my French family as well as for the Fete des Familles that would be held on Monday night in honor of all our French families, thanking them for hosting us. It was our job to make an American dessert for the occasion. My cookies didn't turn out the best because I used a different kind of brown sugar and didn't have chocolate chips and I had to estimate the oven temperature and cooking time. I didn't burn them, but they were kind of hard after they had cooled. Oh well, I tried. Afterwards, I ate dinner with my family and did the homework due for the next day.
As I said earlier, Monday was the day of the Fete de Familles and not only did we have to make dessert, we also had to entertain our families by putting on some sort of show for them. Over the weekend, people had been working on things to do and we came up with 4 things to do overall: first, we rewrote lyrics in French to the song American Boy that we sang in Michael's honor since he was the only boy in our group. Then we danced the Cupid Shuffle for them and then tried to get our families to join us in learning how to do it, but failed miserably. Then we performed an Indian dance that Lubaina (being the sole person from India in our group) had taught us, and that was a lot of fun. We all had fun learning the steps and dancing to an Indian pop song, and I think our families enjoyed watching us too. We then closed the show with another song that Lubaina had written which essentially thanked our families for all they did for us. Then after the show everyone got to eat. My mom and my sister Clemence were the only people from my family who could make it to the Fete, but I had a great time with the others and I think Clemence and my mom had a lot of fun watching us--seriously, it was the first time I'd seen her have so much fun because she was so happy. I was glad to see that she was enjoying being there so much. The whole evening overall was just so much fun--it literally was a party. I hung out with Clemence a lot and got to meet other people's French family members and my friends got to meet my French mom and sister. It was just so fun conversing with everyone and seeing the French families trying our desserts. Michele made brownies that were a hit, Michael made caramel popcorn, Elizabeth made puppy chow, Monika made banana pudding, Roz made pineapple cake, Enna made a raspberry tort, Lubaina made an Indian dessert of some kind, and Katie made strawberry Jello. I think the French enjoyed Elizabeth's puppy chow (despite it containing peanut butter, which the French are generally not too fond of), Michael's popcorn, and Enna and Roz's desserts. Most of my cookies were eaten too. The French had a tough time appreciating the Jello. I think they were really suspicious of its tendency to jiggle. I did notice that Enna's mom liked it--she was probably the only one. After eating and socializing, we played more American music from our computers and did more dances like the Macarena, the Cha Cha Slide, and Soulja Boy. Some of the French girls from different families danced a "Versailles dance" according to Madame Chauchat. The whole evening was a lot of fun and a great success, much to our relief, since we kind of pulled all of our dances and songs together in such a short period of time.
Now everyone is preparing for the end of our classes in the program and our independent travels. I probably will not update my blog after leaving for Barcelona (which will be the night of November 29) because I probably will have very limited internet access, so I will update in person of all my travels after Versailles. Hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I will try to update once more before leaving.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Dinner with friends and Semi-sleepovers
This Friday, after class I spent my afternoon shopping in the little shops outside the Louvre to look for gifts for the people I needed to get gifts for, and thankfully I found something for everyone, so it was nice to get that done. I also had some pretty intersting encounters with the shopowners. Some of them spoke to me in French, which was nice, but others spoke to me in English after hearing my accent which in some cases was really funny because their English was not as good as my French. This lady saw me looking around and she said in a heavy accent, "Are you looking for something nice for yourself or something for others? Here, we have nice mirrors." And I said, "I'm just looking for gifts for others." Then she asks, "Man or woman?" And I said "Woman." Then she asks, "How old is your woman?" (yeah, my woman). And I said "My age." And then she said "Oh you mean girl." Then I said, "Yeah technically" but I don't think she understood that, so I took that opportunity to leave.
After shopping, I went out to dinner with Michael, Katie, and Erika. We were going to meet up with Michael's French friend, Baptiste, who he had hosted at his house in the US three years ago. Coincidentally, Michael ran into Furman students in the Louvre who were on the Furman Italy and England trips earlier that afternoon. They were traveling that weekend in Paris and Michael just happens to run into them--it was so strange. So Michael invited them to have dinner with us--there were three guys: Josh, Jason, and Will. Josh and Jason were music majors on the music trip in Italy and Will was on the England trip. So we all met up and went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant that Baptiste knew about. The dinner group was so random, but it was so much fun. Baptiste was so funny--he spoke English the entire evening because not everyone could speak French, and it was so cute. His English was pretty good for the most part but sometimes he had trouble conveying certain things and came up with the funniest ways to say it. He told us some funny stories too--he told us about his experience in the U.S. with Michael and his family and how he missed Dr. Peppar and Mountain Dew. Then he told us stories about his drunken escapades in Berlin with his friends and one of his crazy ex girlfriends. He was really entertaining. It was also fun talking to the other guys about their experiences abroad since we've all experienced many of the same things to some extent. It was a really fun evening.
The next day, a group of us met up with Dr. Patton to visit St. Dennis and the catacombs. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the sewers, so we missed out on that. We first went to the St. Dennis basilica. It was a beautiful, gothic church that housed the tombs of many of France's kings and queens. There weren't really bodies there, just the statues of the kings and queens, but it was really cool to see the tombs of the kings and queens we've been learning about. We then went into the crypt of the church, which actually did have some of the bones of the kings and queens housed in the walls. Unfortunately, the bodies of France's kings and queens were dug up and thrown into mass graves by the revolutionaries during the French revolution, so once the bones were recovered, it was impossible to tell who was who. We did see the heart of Louis XVI's and Marie Antoinette's oldest son, which was pretty cool. After visiting all the tombs and walking around the basilica, we ate lunch, and then continued to the catacombs to actually see some bones. This visit was really cool because everything was underground and dimly lit. For a while, we just walked through a bunch of underground pathways before we actually got to the part of the visit where the bones were housed. Once we got to that part, an inscription above the room that had all the bones told us that we were entering "the temple of death." Once we got in, there were just thousands and thousands of bones just piled up all around you. Having skulls and leg and arm bones stacked up all around you in a dark underground cavern created a pretty creepy effect, but at the same time, it was really interesting. A lot of the bones came from victims of epidemics and the majority of the bones were about 200 to 225 years old. It was ridiculous how many bones there were--I feel like I walked a good mile underground surrounded by bones. I was pretty glad to see daylight again, but that was definitely a very interesting visit.
After the catacombs, I went back to Versailles, hung out at my house for a bit, and then met Enna, Roz, and Lubaina at Super U to buy junk food. We decided in the catacombs that we were going to have a movie night (watching Love Actually) and pigging out, so I was really excited for this. We bought pizza, ice cream, and candy and headed over to Enna's house to watch the movie. It was so fun because we just got to hang out and eat crap and watch a good movie. It felt like a sleepover (except without the actual sleeping over), and it was nice to do that since I haven't done that in a long time. Michele also came over and joined us, so it was really fun, and it was good to see Love Actually again since Christmas will be here soon.
Sunday, a group of us met up with Dr. Patton again to visit the domain of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. When she was queen, Marie was given a little summer home outside of the chateau and surrounding this home, Marie wanted little cottages built as well as a small farm surrounding the cottages. She would come here to escape palace life and just play around with her friends. It was such a quaint little area--like a small village. We first toured the summer home and then went outside into the gardens where the little village was. We walked around looking at all the little cottages that were built around a small lake full of swans and ducks with a little lighthouse. All the cottages and little gates and gardens that you could walk through as well--there was even a little pumpkin patch. After looking at the cottages, we walked around the farm area and saw many different types of birds, chickens, and roosters. There was a field where ponies were running around. There were places that housed goats, pigs, donkies, even a cow. There was even an area that housed rabbits--they were so cute! It was such a beautiful little area--a place that would be perfect to be in during spring and summer. After visiting her little village, I went back to my house and just did homework for the rest of the day. All in all, it was a really eventful, interesting, and fun weekend.
After shopping, I went out to dinner with Michael, Katie, and Erika. We were going to meet up with Michael's French friend, Baptiste, who he had hosted at his house in the US three years ago. Coincidentally, Michael ran into Furman students in the Louvre who were on the Furman Italy and England trips earlier that afternoon. They were traveling that weekend in Paris and Michael just happens to run into them--it was so strange. So Michael invited them to have dinner with us--there were three guys: Josh, Jason, and Will. Josh and Jason were music majors on the music trip in Italy and Will was on the England trip. So we all met up and went to dinner at a Japanese restaurant that Baptiste knew about. The dinner group was so random, but it was so much fun. Baptiste was so funny--he spoke English the entire evening because not everyone could speak French, and it was so cute. His English was pretty good for the most part but sometimes he had trouble conveying certain things and came up with the funniest ways to say it. He told us some funny stories too--he told us about his experience in the U.S. with Michael and his family and how he missed Dr. Peppar and Mountain Dew. Then he told us stories about his drunken escapades in Berlin with his friends and one of his crazy ex girlfriends. He was really entertaining. It was also fun talking to the other guys about their experiences abroad since we've all experienced many of the same things to some extent. It was a really fun evening.
The next day, a group of us met up with Dr. Patton to visit St. Dennis and the catacombs. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to visit the sewers, so we missed out on that. We first went to the St. Dennis basilica. It was a beautiful, gothic church that housed the tombs of many of France's kings and queens. There weren't really bodies there, just the statues of the kings and queens, but it was really cool to see the tombs of the kings and queens we've been learning about. We then went into the crypt of the church, which actually did have some of the bones of the kings and queens housed in the walls. Unfortunately, the bodies of France's kings and queens were dug up and thrown into mass graves by the revolutionaries during the French revolution, so once the bones were recovered, it was impossible to tell who was who. We did see the heart of Louis XVI's and Marie Antoinette's oldest son, which was pretty cool. After visiting all the tombs and walking around the basilica, we ate lunch, and then continued to the catacombs to actually see some bones. This visit was really cool because everything was underground and dimly lit. For a while, we just walked through a bunch of underground pathways before we actually got to the part of the visit where the bones were housed. Once we got to that part, an inscription above the room that had all the bones told us that we were entering "the temple of death." Once we got in, there were just thousands and thousands of bones just piled up all around you. Having skulls and leg and arm bones stacked up all around you in a dark underground cavern created a pretty creepy effect, but at the same time, it was really interesting. A lot of the bones came from victims of epidemics and the majority of the bones were about 200 to 225 years old. It was ridiculous how many bones there were--I feel like I walked a good mile underground surrounded by bones. I was pretty glad to see daylight again, but that was definitely a very interesting visit.
After the catacombs, I went back to Versailles, hung out at my house for a bit, and then met Enna, Roz, and Lubaina at Super U to buy junk food. We decided in the catacombs that we were going to have a movie night (watching Love Actually) and pigging out, so I was really excited for this. We bought pizza, ice cream, and candy and headed over to Enna's house to watch the movie. It was so fun because we just got to hang out and eat crap and watch a good movie. It felt like a sleepover (except without the actual sleeping over), and it was nice to do that since I haven't done that in a long time. Michele also came over and joined us, so it was really fun, and it was good to see Love Actually again since Christmas will be here soon.
Sunday, a group of us met up with Dr. Patton again to visit the domain of Marie Antoinette at Versailles. When she was queen, Marie was given a little summer home outside of the chateau and surrounding this home, Marie wanted little cottages built as well as a small farm surrounding the cottages. She would come here to escape palace life and just play around with her friends. It was such a quaint little area--like a small village. We first toured the summer home and then went outside into the gardens where the little village was. We walked around looking at all the little cottages that were built around a small lake full of swans and ducks with a little lighthouse. All the cottages and little gates and gardens that you could walk through as well--there was even a little pumpkin patch. After looking at the cottages, we walked around the farm area and saw many different types of birds, chickens, and roosters. There was a field where ponies were running around. There were places that housed goats, pigs, donkies, even a cow. There was even an area that housed rabbits--they were so cute! It was such a beautiful little area--a place that would be perfect to be in during spring and summer. After visiting her little village, I went back to my house and just did homework for the rest of the day. All in all, it was a really eventful, interesting, and fun weekend.
Thursday, November 13, 2008
EuroDisney and Musee d'Orsay
Since Tuesday was the 11th of November (Armistice Day), it was treated as a holiday in France, so everyone had the day off, including us. So Elizabeth, Katie, Michele, and I spent our free day at Disneyland, which is just a little bit outside of Paris. It was so much fun! Disneyland had already decorated for Christmas, so when we first walked into the park, we saw this big, beautiful Christmas tree and listened to Christmas carols over the speakers. It was so exciting! They even had snow! It was just bubbles but it actually looked like snow, so that was also really cool. In front of us, behind the large Christmas tree, was Sleeping Beauty's pink castle, which was really pretty (Cinderella's is a bit better, but Sleeping Beauty's certainly wasn't bad). We walked inside her castle (which had gothic architecture) where Sleeping Beauty's story was told in about 7 different stages with tapestries displaying different scenes in her story. Then we walked around the park going on different rides. I felt like I was a kid again--it was so happy. They had a lot of the rides that are in Florida, but just are a bit different--and the majority of them are narrated in French. We went on the Haunted Mansion ride, the Indiana Jones roller coaster, the Pirates of the Carribean ride (we even saw Jack Sparrow at the end of the ride who happened to be pretty cute), then we rode Peter Pan's flight, rode in the Teacups, rode the Space Mountain roller coaster, and then finished with the Star Wars virtual reality ride. My favorite ride was definitely Space Mountain. We also saw a parade featuring Mickey, Minnie, and their friends, all the princesses and princes, the villains of their stories, characters from other Disney movies like Mary Poppins and Toy Story, and then the parade ended with Santa Claus and his elves. It was a bit cheesy, but really fun to watch. All in all, it was a really fun day and a great way to spend our time off.
The next day we all visited the Musee d'Orsay. I'm glad we finally got to go here because it is definitely one of my favorite museums in Paris. The building itself is gorgeous because it used to be a huge train station and their are giant roman numeral clocks everywhere. I just really enjoyed being inside the building. I visited my favorite floor containing all the work of the impressionists--Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Renoir, Cezanne, etc. It was nice to look at works that I actually recognized. Another exciting aspect of looking at these paintings, especially some of Monet's, was the fact that Monet painted some of the places and things that we've visited on this trip. He painted my favorite cathedral in Rouen (four different times) and he also painted a couple of scenes from Etretat. It was so cool to recognize that. Then of course we saw some of the paintings he painted in his garden at Giverny, which we also visited. So that was also fun to look at. I also really liked looking at the post-impressionist paintings (the dot-like paintings)--that was really cool too. I even got to drink a little espresso in one of the cafes in the museum which was situated behind one of the big clocks decorating the outside of the museum. That was really fun and I got to taste a bit of the giant ice cream desserts that Elizabeth and Monika ordered. After the cafe, Monika and I looked at a model of Paris that was housed under the floor of the museum with plate glass over it so that when you looked at it, you were walking over this model of Paris. It was really cool, and the Opera was the center point of the model. There was also a cross section of the Opera displayed on a table and that was cool to look at too because we recognized the rooms in the cross section because we had visited that building earlier. We ended the visit with a pastel exhibit that displayed some works by Manet and also Degas. We stayed until the museum closed--all in all very productive and interesting day. Then I walked with Erika, Roz, Enna, and Lubaina along the Seine for about 30 minutes. It was cool walking along the Seine at night. The moon was full and bright and it was so cool seeing the lights of Paris and its bridges lit up by the water. Very romantic. After walking by the Seine, we all went back to Versailles, which for me wasn't easy because the trains were having some major issues, so it took me a lot longer than usual to get back, but I did eventually, and ate a really good dinner with my French dad and Amelie.
This weekend we should be visiting the Catacombs, possibly the cathedral in Saint Dennis, and then the Paris sewers. Yay! Will update after the weekend...
Sunday, November 9, 2008
November Entries and the Weekend
Here are the rest of the entries from my trip to the South of France:
Saturday, November 1
This morning we left early to visit the Pont du Guard, an ancient Roman aqueduct. Unfortunately, the weather today hadn't gotten much better. It wasn't raining, but it was pretty chilly and it looked like it would rain at any time. When we got there, I had déja vu because I had definitely visited the Pont du Guard 3 years ago with my school. The only difference between visiting it then to visiting it now was that our group of 10 (12 if you include Siad and Dr. Patton) was pretty much the only visitors. It was nice having the place to ourselves to just walk around on our own. We had an hour and a half to explore the place, so of course we walked on the bridge (middle tier of the aqueduct) taking pictures and admiring the scenery, which was still beautiful despite the gray weather. The water flowing under the bridge was really pretty, and we were able to go down to the see the lower tier of the aqueduct where there were a bunch of rocks bordering the small river. A group of us hung out on one of the rocks for a while just talking, admiring the scenery, and the ancient roman structure behind us. It rained a bit on us but thankfully we had a giant aqueduct to take shelter under, so we just hung out there until we had to go back to the bus. Despite the bad weather, it was nice to just go somewhere and chill out for a while instead of being herded all over the place with a tour guide.
After returning to the bus, we ate lunch and by that time, the weather had gotten a lot worse. The wind had picked up and it was raining on and off. And then we saw on our itenerary that the next scheduled activity was a 2 hour horseback ride through the farms around the Pont du Guard. Awesome and fun idea...but not in this weather. So on our way to the stables, it was only sprinkling and we hoped the rain would hold off for 2 hours. When we got there, it wasn't raining but the whole place was muddy, which sucked for those of us who didn't wear tennis shoes that day (I did thankfully). We got helmets and then the women taking care of the horses gave us all a horse. My horse was a gray one named Spirit. He was really cute. Some of the horses were tethered under a shelter while some others were tethered outside. Katie and I ended up being assigned to horses that were tethered outside and while everyone was getting situated on their horses, it began to rain torrentially and Katie and I had to sit in it for a good 10 minutes before everyone was ready to go. It's only the beginning of the ride and I'm already soaked. Though I was wet, I thankfully wasn't cold so I was still able to enjoy the horseback ride even though my jeans were soaked. The ride was beautiful too...we rode through a lot of vineyards, lots of farmfields, and we went up a couple of hills and got a beautiful view of the mountains. I managed to take some pictures while riding my horse, which was hard but I managed. It rained for about 65 percent of the trip, but I got used to just being wet. Spirit was a pretty good horse most of the time. He liked to stop and eat at inconvenient times and after awhile I began to figure out that when he started drifting to the sides of the trail, he was probably going to eat, so I learned to keep directing him to the center of the trail so he wouldn't be tempted. But then we'd just be riding along and suddenly he would just completely yank his head to the side and just start eating, holding everyone up. He was really mischievous, but all in all, a pretty good horse. At the end of the ride, I looked like a drowned rat and walked awkwardly due to the combination of stiff wet jeans and the fact that I still felt like I had a horse between my legs even after I'd dismounted. Thank God that was the end of our day. We headed to our new hotel in Avignon after that where we all changed and showered. I roomed with Elizabeth and after we'd gotten cleaned up, we shopped around for a bit because there were a lot of stores on our street and then we joined Michael, Monika, Enna, and Lubaina for dinner at a really cheap Vietnamese restaurant. After dinner, we all just went back to the hotel to relax and go to bed early because we were all pretty tired. Elizabeth and I stayed up watching Gossip Girl on her computer for a couple of hours before finally going to sleep.
Sunday, November 2
This morning, we visited the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, which was where some of the popes in the fourteenth century had relocated their residence from Rome. It was a pretty nice place on the outside, but the interior wasn't the most decorative. Some rooms had displays of nice tapestries and frescoes, but most rooms just contained exhibition material on the popes that had lived there. Not the most interesting of visits in my opinion, but oh well. After looking at the Palace of the Popes, our tour guide took us around the city of Avignon taking us to different churches and markets in the city. She told us about the architecture of certain buildings in the town and talked about different aspects of Avignon's history. She also took us up a hill in Avignon where we could see a nice view of the city. Thankfully, the weather was nicer today in the sole fact that it didn't rain, so we got a really good view of the city and saw the famous bridge sung about in the song "Sur le pont d'Avignon" (On the bridge of Avignon). This was the end of our visit, so we returned to the bus and left for a day visit to the city of Orange.
After eating lunch a great lunch in Orange (which consisted of kirs, lasagna, and chocolate mousse) we met a tour guide who showed us an ancient Roman theatre called the Théatre Antique. At this point, our good luck with the weather ran out, and there was this ridiculously strong wind circulating through the outdoor theatre. I didn't hear a word the guide was saying because of this wind and because I had to bury my face in my hands to avoid being pelted in the face by sand particles which constituted the floor in this theatre. We were probably sitting in that wind for at leat 15 minutes...it seemed like the guide just wouldn't stop talking even though it was pretty useless. Thankfully, we were able to go inside after the tour guide had finally finished her lecture and we watched a movie that I'm pretty sure explained just about everything the guide had already told us, so I did end up learning something about the theatre. After that, we went to a museum across the street that housed a bunch of Roman ruins as well as a modern photography exhibit, which was really cool because the displayed photos were taken in the 60's and 70's and were mostly photos of famous people like Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and different designers like Chanel, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. So that was cool for me.
After the museum, the tour had finished just in time the for the torrential downpour that had just started outside. Thankfully, Siad drove the bus right up to the museum so we didn't have to walk far at all in the rain. We then drove to a wine cave called "Père Anselme" for a wine tasting. We first walked around a small museum that was set up in the building learning about the locations of the different vineyards in France and looking at the different tools used to make the wine. Then we had the tasting. We tasted two different red wines--both were really strong, but I liked it enough to drink it. It was a short wine tasting, but still fun.
We then went back to the hotel and prepared to celebrate Michael's 21st birthday. Erika, Katie, Michele, Elizabeth, Monika, and I all went out with him to a couscous restaurant he had picked out. The couscous was so good and we ordered a bunch of drinks to celebrate. We started off with kirs and then ordered a bottle of wine, of which the majority was drunk by Michael. By the time dessert rolled around, he was pretty drunk and really funny. He told us that we were about to see "the real Michael Bailey." He was really entertaining. We had a great waiter too who made an assortment of small desserts with a lovely pink candle in the middle for Michael's birthday. It was a really fun dinner. After that, Michael decided he wanted to continue the night, so all of us except Erika went out with him to a bar. And at this bar we met two men named Fabrice and Antoine who were both older guys--Antoine looked like he was in his mid thirties and Fabrice looked like he was in his forties. Both of them spoke English and wanted to talk to us when they heard us speaking English with each other. Initially Fabrice was wearing a jacket and at one point he took it off and we all saw that he only half of his right arm. He said he lost it in an accident but he didn't mention how and neither of us really wanted to ask. He had this cane thing with him (it looked like a pimp cane) and he showed us that it was also a sword. That was pretty cool. He bought us all drinks and talked to us about the election and his sex life--yeah no kidding. Once we had finished our drinks and had gathered more information than we really wanted to know, we left the bar and went back to our hotel to get ready for the next day.
Monday, November 3
This morning we left for Aix-en-Provence to meet a tour guide who would give us a tour around the city. And of course, when we arrive, it's raining pretty hard and we have to continue with our scheduled tour. An upside to the day was the fact that the tour guide was pretty cute. He took us around the whole city. He took us to a cathedral that he said was the first gothic cathedral built in France, so that was cool. Then he took us through the city's markets (not everyone was out with their stands due to the rain). Then we visited the judiciary building in the city, which was a pretty important and historical building for the city because Aix-en-Provence was the primary city where judicial hearings were held centuries ago. He also talked about the painter Cézanne who was born in Aix, which is another aspect that the city is proud of. The tour ended in another cathedral in Aix which is the most visited place in the city. It was a really nice gothic cathedral. The part of the cathedral I liked the most was the cloister--definitely the prettiest part in my opinion. When we came out of the church, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. The city was suddenly much prettier than it was at the start. It was too bad we only got to see that at the end of the tour when we were leaving the city, but at least we did get to see it.
So we all got into the bus again and Siad drove us to Nice. Driving into the city was beautiful. It looked like Florida because it was sunny, there were palm trees all around us, and we drove right by the Mediterranean which was a beautiful clear blue. I wished we could've stopped to go onto the beach, but we had lunch reservations we had to meet. Eating lunch was kind of fun because the restaurant's electricity was out so we ate by candlelight. After lunch, we drove deeper into the city away from the sea and stayed at a hotel in the center of the city. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, I went shopping with Elizabeth, Monika, and Michele. It was a lot of fun because the city was very bright and vibrant. After shopping around for a couple of hours, I got some dinner to go at a patisserie and hung out for the rest of the night in my room with Roz uploading my pictures and watching TV.
Tuesday, November 4
Election day! Unfortunately, all we did today was drive because we were heading to Lyon, which was really far away. So that meant we had the whole day to wonder who was going to be the next president. It was really annoying because since we were at least six hours ahead of the U.S., we weren't going to know who the next president was until the next morning.
Once we arrived in Lyon (around 5:00), we had 2 and a half hours before we had to meet for dinner. I roomed with Elizabeth again and since our hotel was surrounded by shops, we went shopping again. We mostly just window shopped and browsed around in a bunch of different stores. We did this for about two hours and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Then our entire group went out to dinner together, which consisted of a really good steak with potatoes and crème brulée for dessert. A French family at a table close to ours heard us speaking English and asked if we were American. When we said yes they asked if we knew anything about how the election was going in the U.S. But of course, we only knew as much as they did. I could tell they were really anxious about it.
After dinner, Michael, Katie, and I went out to a small bar with Dr. Patton and Siad. We just sat down and ordered drinks and just hung out...talking about random stuff. It was interesting and pretty fun. Then we walked back to the hotel and Elizabeth and I watched Grey's Anatomy on her computer before going to sleep.
Wednesday, November 5
The first thing we did this morning was turn on the TV to find out the results of the election, and we discovered that Obama had won, and everyone (in Europe at least) was so excited about it. The news was also covering celebration parties occurring in the U.S. and it made me want to be home so that I could've participated in them.
After breakfast, we toured the city of Lyon with a tour guide. She showed us an ancient Roman theatre first, and then we went to a beautiful basilica in the city. It was incredibly beautiful because the entire basilica (floor, walls, and ceiling) were covered in mosaics. There was also a lot of gold in the mosaics. It was so breathtaking--definitely one of the coolest churches I'd seen so far. After seeing the basilica, we walked around the city, walking along the Rhone River and then through the streets. Our guide showed us some buildings built during the Renaissance as well as a bunch of connected pathways between buildings that were used by the members of the Resistance during World War II against the Germans. That was really cool. And then she showed us a bunch of different puppet and marionnette shops in the city and explained that Lyon was known for its puppet shows (the puppets were called guignols). She also said that Lyon was the food capital of France--you could find just about any type of food there. After walking through the town, the tour ended, and drove to Bourgogne to eat lunch.
After lunch in Bourgogne, we drove through the beautiful countryside to a town called Vézelay to visit the basilica there, which was located on the top of a long steep hill in the city. We met a monk who lived in the basilica who served as our tour guide. He gave us a short tour through the basilica showing us the original entryway that was now inside the building. Then we entered into the church and saw it's Roman architecture. He then showed us the famous sculpted carving of the mill which shows Moses pouring flour or wheat from his bag into the bag of another man, symbolising the alliance between the Christians and the Jews. After showing us that, the monk had to get back to his duties in the church so we were free to walk around for a while before returning. We stayed for another 15 minutes just walking around the basilica before we walked back down the hill to the bus.
Siad then drove us back to Versailles, which took about 3 hours. Thankfully, when we arrived back in Versailles, we got there just in time for me to catch the night bus back to my house. It was really lucky for me because I had a huge duffel bag that I couldn't carry all the way back to my house without having a sore back for a week. I got back around 9:45 PM, unpacked some of my stuff, and spent the night studying for a grammar test I was going to have the next morning--perfect timing.
I spent the rest of this short week checking all the emails and stuff that had accumulated in my account due to me being unable to check it for 10 days. This weekend, I just stayed in Versailles and had a really relaxed weekend. After going going going all the time on our tour, I was pretty OK with just spending the weekend in my warm house watching movies. Plus the weather in Versailles was terrible--cold and rainy, so I wasn't feeling motivated to go out. I did have a really interesting Saturday though. Erika's French mom called my house and invited me to go on a day outing with her, Erika, and her mother (Erika's French grandmother). They were going to Amiens to visit a museum about World War I in honor of the upcoming 90th anniversary of armistice day (Nov 11). So we on Saturday, we drove for an hour and half up to Amiens and visited the museum. It was really interesting and very well put together. There was lots of information, artifacts, pictures, and even some videos depicting the war's history and what the war was like for the men who fought in it as well as for the civilians who were affected by it. After learning about all the horrible things the soldiers had to go through being in the trenches and engaging in trench warfare and how little was accomplished because of it, it just makes you sad that something like that even had to happen.
After visiting that museum, we visited a memorial and graveyard dedicated to the memory of the South Africans that had fought in the war. The memorial was on fields where the battle was fought. It was sad, but also really interesting for me to realize that I was standing in a place where thousands of men had lost their lives. It's scary.
After that, we visited another museum that was built underground. This museum was dedicated to showing what life was like for the soldiers in the trenches, which is why it's underground. This museum was also very interesting because there were a bunch of photographs and even cartoons that were taken or drawn during that time displayed on the walls. They had built replicas of the different trenches for the different sides. German trenches were the most sophisticated--they built bunks into their trenches, had heat, and electricity to work their phones and radios. Basically, living in a German trench wasn't so bad, so it's interesting that they were the ones who lost the war. French and British trenches were horrible--always wet, muddy, and cold. These soldiers suffered the worst from trench foot and other sicknesses. All in all, a very interesting day. I was very glad to have been invited. I also really enjoyed spending time with Erika, her mom, and grandma. Her mom and grandma were so cute--they were constantly talking, sometimes at the same time, arguing a few times. They mostly argued because they got us lost a lot so that was funny to watch. I really enjoyed the day with them, and Erika's mom invited me to eat lunch with them on Monday (tomorrow), so that should be fun.
Today, I stayed in and did my homework and just hung out with my French family. All in all, pretty uneventful day, but oh well. Looking forward to the start of a new week. Until next time...
Saturday, November 1
This morning we left early to visit the Pont du Guard, an ancient Roman aqueduct. Unfortunately, the weather today hadn't gotten much better. It wasn't raining, but it was pretty chilly and it looked like it would rain at any time. When we got there, I had déja vu because I had definitely visited the Pont du Guard 3 years ago with my school. The only difference between visiting it then to visiting it now was that our group of 10 (12 if you include Siad and Dr. Patton) was pretty much the only visitors. It was nice having the place to ourselves to just walk around on our own. We had an hour and a half to explore the place, so of course we walked on the bridge (middle tier of the aqueduct) taking pictures and admiring the scenery, which was still beautiful despite the gray weather. The water flowing under the bridge was really pretty, and we were able to go down to the see the lower tier of the aqueduct where there were a bunch of rocks bordering the small river. A group of us hung out on one of the rocks for a while just talking, admiring the scenery, and the ancient roman structure behind us. It rained a bit on us but thankfully we had a giant aqueduct to take shelter under, so we just hung out there until we had to go back to the bus. Despite the bad weather, it was nice to just go somewhere and chill out for a while instead of being herded all over the place with a tour guide.
After returning to the bus, we ate lunch and by that time, the weather had gotten a lot worse. The wind had picked up and it was raining on and off. And then we saw on our itenerary that the next scheduled activity was a 2 hour horseback ride through the farms around the Pont du Guard. Awesome and fun idea...but not in this weather. So on our way to the stables, it was only sprinkling and we hoped the rain would hold off for 2 hours. When we got there, it wasn't raining but the whole place was muddy, which sucked for those of us who didn't wear tennis shoes that day (I did thankfully). We got helmets and then the women taking care of the horses gave us all a horse. My horse was a gray one named Spirit. He was really cute. Some of the horses were tethered under a shelter while some others were tethered outside. Katie and I ended up being assigned to horses that were tethered outside and while everyone was getting situated on their horses, it began to rain torrentially and Katie and I had to sit in it for a good 10 minutes before everyone was ready to go. It's only the beginning of the ride and I'm already soaked. Though I was wet, I thankfully wasn't cold so I was still able to enjoy the horseback ride even though my jeans were soaked. The ride was beautiful too...we rode through a lot of vineyards, lots of farmfields, and we went up a couple of hills and got a beautiful view of the mountains. I managed to take some pictures while riding my horse, which was hard but I managed. It rained for about 65 percent of the trip, but I got used to just being wet. Spirit was a pretty good horse most of the time. He liked to stop and eat at inconvenient times and after awhile I began to figure out that when he started drifting to the sides of the trail, he was probably going to eat, so I learned to keep directing him to the center of the trail so he wouldn't be tempted. But then we'd just be riding along and suddenly he would just completely yank his head to the side and just start eating, holding everyone up. He was really mischievous, but all in all, a pretty good horse. At the end of the ride, I looked like a drowned rat and walked awkwardly due to the combination of stiff wet jeans and the fact that I still felt like I had a horse between my legs even after I'd dismounted. Thank God that was the end of our day. We headed to our new hotel in Avignon after that where we all changed and showered. I roomed with Elizabeth and after we'd gotten cleaned up, we shopped around for a bit because there were a lot of stores on our street and then we joined Michael, Monika, Enna, and Lubaina for dinner at a really cheap Vietnamese restaurant. After dinner, we all just went back to the hotel to relax and go to bed early because we were all pretty tired. Elizabeth and I stayed up watching Gossip Girl on her computer for a couple of hours before finally going to sleep.
Sunday, November 2
This morning, we visited the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, which was where some of the popes in the fourteenth century had relocated their residence from Rome. It was a pretty nice place on the outside, but the interior wasn't the most decorative. Some rooms had displays of nice tapestries and frescoes, but most rooms just contained exhibition material on the popes that had lived there. Not the most interesting of visits in my opinion, but oh well. After looking at the Palace of the Popes, our tour guide took us around the city of Avignon taking us to different churches and markets in the city. She told us about the architecture of certain buildings in the town and talked about different aspects of Avignon's history. She also took us up a hill in Avignon where we could see a nice view of the city. Thankfully, the weather was nicer today in the sole fact that it didn't rain, so we got a really good view of the city and saw the famous bridge sung about in the song "Sur le pont d'Avignon" (On the bridge of Avignon). This was the end of our visit, so we returned to the bus and left for a day visit to the city of Orange.
After eating lunch a great lunch in Orange (which consisted of kirs, lasagna, and chocolate mousse) we met a tour guide who showed us an ancient Roman theatre called the Théatre Antique. At this point, our good luck with the weather ran out, and there was this ridiculously strong wind circulating through the outdoor theatre. I didn't hear a word the guide was saying because of this wind and because I had to bury my face in my hands to avoid being pelted in the face by sand particles which constituted the floor in this theatre. We were probably sitting in that wind for at leat 15 minutes...it seemed like the guide just wouldn't stop talking even though it was pretty useless. Thankfully, we were able to go inside after the tour guide had finally finished her lecture and we watched a movie that I'm pretty sure explained just about everything the guide had already told us, so I did end up learning something about the theatre. After that, we went to a museum across the street that housed a bunch of Roman ruins as well as a modern photography exhibit, which was really cool because the displayed photos were taken in the 60's and 70's and were mostly photos of famous people like Marilyn Monroe, the Beatles, and different designers like Chanel, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent. So that was cool for me.
After the museum, the tour had finished just in time the for the torrential downpour that had just started outside. Thankfully, Siad drove the bus right up to the museum so we didn't have to walk far at all in the rain. We then drove to a wine cave called "Père Anselme" for a wine tasting. We first walked around a small museum that was set up in the building learning about the locations of the different vineyards in France and looking at the different tools used to make the wine. Then we had the tasting. We tasted two different red wines--both were really strong, but I liked it enough to drink it. It was a short wine tasting, but still fun.
We then went back to the hotel and prepared to celebrate Michael's 21st birthday. Erika, Katie, Michele, Elizabeth, Monika, and I all went out with him to a couscous restaurant he had picked out. The couscous was so good and we ordered a bunch of drinks to celebrate. We started off with kirs and then ordered a bottle of wine, of which the majority was drunk by Michael. By the time dessert rolled around, he was pretty drunk and really funny. He told us that we were about to see "the real Michael Bailey." He was really entertaining. We had a great waiter too who made an assortment of small desserts with a lovely pink candle in the middle for Michael's birthday. It was a really fun dinner. After that, Michael decided he wanted to continue the night, so all of us except Erika went out with him to a bar. And at this bar we met two men named Fabrice and Antoine who were both older guys--Antoine looked like he was in his mid thirties and Fabrice looked like he was in his forties. Both of them spoke English and wanted to talk to us when they heard us speaking English with each other. Initially Fabrice was wearing a jacket and at one point he took it off and we all saw that he only half of his right arm. He said he lost it in an accident but he didn't mention how and neither of us really wanted to ask. He had this cane thing with him (it looked like a pimp cane) and he showed us that it was also a sword. That was pretty cool. He bought us all drinks and talked to us about the election and his sex life--yeah no kidding. Once we had finished our drinks and had gathered more information than we really wanted to know, we left the bar and went back to our hotel to get ready for the next day.
Monday, November 3
This morning we left for Aix-en-Provence to meet a tour guide who would give us a tour around the city. And of course, when we arrive, it's raining pretty hard and we have to continue with our scheduled tour. An upside to the day was the fact that the tour guide was pretty cute. He took us around the whole city. He took us to a cathedral that he said was the first gothic cathedral built in France, so that was cool. Then he took us through the city's markets (not everyone was out with their stands due to the rain). Then we visited the judiciary building in the city, which was a pretty important and historical building for the city because Aix-en-Provence was the primary city where judicial hearings were held centuries ago. He also talked about the painter Cézanne who was born in Aix, which is another aspect that the city is proud of. The tour ended in another cathedral in Aix which is the most visited place in the city. It was a really nice gothic cathedral. The part of the cathedral I liked the most was the cloister--definitely the prettiest part in my opinion. When we came out of the church, the rain had stopped and the sun was shining. The city was suddenly much prettier than it was at the start. It was too bad we only got to see that at the end of the tour when we were leaving the city, but at least we did get to see it.
So we all got into the bus again and Siad drove us to Nice. Driving into the city was beautiful. It looked like Florida because it was sunny, there were palm trees all around us, and we drove right by the Mediterranean which was a beautiful clear blue. I wished we could've stopped to go onto the beach, but we had lunch reservations we had to meet. Eating lunch was kind of fun because the restaurant's electricity was out so we ate by candlelight. After lunch, we drove deeper into the city away from the sea and stayed at a hotel in the center of the city. After dropping our stuff off at the hotel, I went shopping with Elizabeth, Monika, and Michele. It was a lot of fun because the city was very bright and vibrant. After shopping around for a couple of hours, I got some dinner to go at a patisserie and hung out for the rest of the night in my room with Roz uploading my pictures and watching TV.
Tuesday, November 4
Election day! Unfortunately, all we did today was drive because we were heading to Lyon, which was really far away. So that meant we had the whole day to wonder who was going to be the next president. It was really annoying because since we were at least six hours ahead of the U.S., we weren't going to know who the next president was until the next morning.
Once we arrived in Lyon (around 5:00), we had 2 and a half hours before we had to meet for dinner. I roomed with Elizabeth again and since our hotel was surrounded by shops, we went shopping again. We mostly just window shopped and browsed around in a bunch of different stores. We did this for about two hours and then went back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. Then our entire group went out to dinner together, which consisted of a really good steak with potatoes and crème brulée for dessert. A French family at a table close to ours heard us speaking English and asked if we were American. When we said yes they asked if we knew anything about how the election was going in the U.S. But of course, we only knew as much as they did. I could tell they were really anxious about it.
After dinner, Michael, Katie, and I went out to a small bar with Dr. Patton and Siad. We just sat down and ordered drinks and just hung out...talking about random stuff. It was interesting and pretty fun. Then we walked back to the hotel and Elizabeth and I watched Grey's Anatomy on her computer before going to sleep.
Wednesday, November 5
The first thing we did this morning was turn on the TV to find out the results of the election, and we discovered that Obama had won, and everyone (in Europe at least) was so excited about it. The news was also covering celebration parties occurring in the U.S. and it made me want to be home so that I could've participated in them.
After breakfast, we toured the city of Lyon with a tour guide. She showed us an ancient Roman theatre first, and then we went to a beautiful basilica in the city. It was incredibly beautiful because the entire basilica (floor, walls, and ceiling) were covered in mosaics. There was also a lot of gold in the mosaics. It was so breathtaking--definitely one of the coolest churches I'd seen so far. After seeing the basilica, we walked around the city, walking along the Rhone River and then through the streets. Our guide showed us some buildings built during the Renaissance as well as a bunch of connected pathways between buildings that were used by the members of the Resistance during World War II against the Germans. That was really cool. And then she showed us a bunch of different puppet and marionnette shops in the city and explained that Lyon was known for its puppet shows (the puppets were called guignols). She also said that Lyon was the food capital of France--you could find just about any type of food there. After walking through the town, the tour ended, and drove to Bourgogne to eat lunch.
After lunch in Bourgogne, we drove through the beautiful countryside to a town called Vézelay to visit the basilica there, which was located on the top of a long steep hill in the city. We met a monk who lived in the basilica who served as our tour guide. He gave us a short tour through the basilica showing us the original entryway that was now inside the building. Then we entered into the church and saw it's Roman architecture. He then showed us the famous sculpted carving of the mill which shows Moses pouring flour or wheat from his bag into the bag of another man, symbolising the alliance between the Christians and the Jews. After showing us that, the monk had to get back to his duties in the church so we were free to walk around for a while before returning. We stayed for another 15 minutes just walking around the basilica before we walked back down the hill to the bus.
Siad then drove us back to Versailles, which took about 3 hours. Thankfully, when we arrived back in Versailles, we got there just in time for me to catch the night bus back to my house. It was really lucky for me because I had a huge duffel bag that I couldn't carry all the way back to my house without having a sore back for a week. I got back around 9:45 PM, unpacked some of my stuff, and spent the night studying for a grammar test I was going to have the next morning--perfect timing.
I spent the rest of this short week checking all the emails and stuff that had accumulated in my account due to me being unable to check it for 10 days. This weekend, I just stayed in Versailles and had a really relaxed weekend. After going going going all the time on our tour, I was pretty OK with just spending the weekend in my warm house watching movies. Plus the weather in Versailles was terrible--cold and rainy, so I wasn't feeling motivated to go out. I did have a really interesting Saturday though. Erika's French mom called my house and invited me to go on a day outing with her, Erika, and her mother (Erika's French grandmother). They were going to Amiens to visit a museum about World War I in honor of the upcoming 90th anniversary of armistice day (Nov 11). So we on Saturday, we drove for an hour and half up to Amiens and visited the museum. It was really interesting and very well put together. There was lots of information, artifacts, pictures, and even some videos depicting the war's history and what the war was like for the men who fought in it as well as for the civilians who were affected by it. After learning about all the horrible things the soldiers had to go through being in the trenches and engaging in trench warfare and how little was accomplished because of it, it just makes you sad that something like that even had to happen.
After visiting that museum, we visited a memorial and graveyard dedicated to the memory of the South Africans that had fought in the war. The memorial was on fields where the battle was fought. It was sad, but also really interesting for me to realize that I was standing in a place where thousands of men had lost their lives. It's scary.
After that, we visited another museum that was built underground. This museum was dedicated to showing what life was like for the soldiers in the trenches, which is why it's underground. This museum was also very interesting because there were a bunch of photographs and even cartoons that were taken or drawn during that time displayed on the walls. They had built replicas of the different trenches for the different sides. German trenches were the most sophisticated--they built bunks into their trenches, had heat, and electricity to work their phones and radios. Basically, living in a German trench wasn't so bad, so it's interesting that they were the ones who lost the war. French and British trenches were horrible--always wet, muddy, and cold. These soldiers suffered the worst from trench foot and other sicknesses. All in all, a very interesting day. I was very glad to have been invited. I also really enjoyed spending time with Erika, her mom, and grandma. Her mom and grandma were so cute--they were constantly talking, sometimes at the same time, arguing a few times. They mostly argued because they got us lost a lot so that was funny to watch. I really enjoyed the day with them, and Erika's mom invited me to eat lunch with them on Monday (tomorrow), so that should be fun.
Today, I stayed in and did my homework and just hung out with my French family. All in all, pretty uneventful day, but oh well. Looking forward to the start of a new week. Until next time...
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Journal Entries from my Trip
So on my 10 day tour of the South of France, I could only get internet for one day, which is why I haven't posted in a long time. So I wrote some journal entries in Microsoft Word and pasted them into my post. I haven't written about every part of the trip yet--just the entries for October, but November entries will come soon. So here is the October portion of the trip. Enjoy!
Sunday, October 26
Sunday morning, we visited the Chateau d’Azay le Rideau. Despite our good weather yesterday, the weather that morning was cold and foggy. It was a nice castle, but not as nice as some of the castles we had visited earlier. Our tour guide, Annabelle, showed us a lot of cool little things about the castle—like the fact that they had foldable chairs in the Middle Ages as well as this bench that had a movable backrest—this bench was situated in front of the fireplace and the backrest was movable so that the people could easily switch from warming their fronts to warming their backs. Random fact, I know, but that’s kind of what the visit consisted of apart from visiting the typical king’s and queen’s bedrooms and looking at various portraits, sculptures, and tapestries of said king.
After visiting that chateau, our bus driver, Siad, drove us to another one, the Chateau de Langeais. This castle was much prettier than the first one, and thankfully, by the time we got to this castle, the weather had improved and it was sunny. We went inside this castle and saw all its beautiful rooms and portraits of all the kings that had stayed there. Interesting fact I learned at this castle: the high collars that everyone wore in the 1500’s became the fashion trend of that century not because everyone thought it was cool. By the 1500’s, syphilis had infiltrated France (apparently the French believe it was brought in by men who had slept with sketchy Italian women/prostitutes). Syphilis caused large spots to appear on the neck of anyone who was infected by it, so to cover it up, these people started wearing high collars to hide their spots. Eventually enough people who had syphilis started wearing their collars high and subsequently started a fashion trend for the times. Fact.
After visiting that castle, we went to lunch and then visited the Chateau d’Amboise. Again, we had the typical castle tour, looking at all the bedrooms and paintings and other rooms in the castle. There was a church outside this castle and inside was a memorial to Leonardo DaVinci because he had spent the last years of his life in that castle with the French king. So it was cool being in a place where DaVinci once stayed and unfortunately died, but nonetheless, it was still really cool.
After that, we then went to a wine cavern in Vouvray. It was so cool because the caverns were like a small underground city—there were street signs labeling the different pathways through the cavern because it was so big. There were tons of bottles of wine stacked in cases that were in this machine that turned the wine bottles twice a day. Annabelle told us there were 4 million bottles of wine in that cavern. Then after walking through the cavern, we had a small wine tasting with this little French gay guy, which made the whole thing even more enjoyable. We tasted two types of champagne—a drier kind and then a sweeter kind. Then after tasting both, we got to pick our favorite to sip on again. Though it was a bit short-lived, it was fun. Then we went back to our hotel and I walked around the city of Tours with Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, Erika, and Michele. We walked along the Loire River and then walked into the part of town populated by the young university students. We went to dinner outside o
f a pub that was packed with guys watching a French soccer game. It was fun being in the area because it was very lively and every once in a while the whole pub would go crazy after a goal was scored. Based on the cheering, it sounded like France was having a good game. After dinner we headed back to our hotel to sleep.
Monday, October 27
Today, we left Tours early to drive to the city of Perigeux. We spent the majority of our day in the bus because it took about 6 hours to get there including the time we took to stop for lunch. Around 4:00, we arrived at Perigeux and took a tour of the medieval city with a tour guide. We went up inside a tower that served as a fortress for the old city, and then we just walked through the medieval part of the town looking at the architecture and listening to its history. It was so cool to see such old buildings still in place. We saw a house that once belonged to a poor family in the 15th century—it was known that the family was poor based on the building’s architecture and the materials used to build it. We also saw the door to the town’s prison, which was located on an uphill street that prisoners had to hike up with a ball and chain attached to their ankle. After visiting the town, I walked through the city at night with Roz, Enna, Monika, and Lubaina to find some dinner. We ended up eating a
t a little Greek place and then walked around the city for a bit, and then walked back to our hotel to sleep and get ready for the next day.
Tuesday, October 28
Today, we went to les Eyzies and visited the caves of Font de Gaume. It was really cold and wet that morning, but the tour in the caves was so cool—by far the coolest thing I’ve seen so far. The cave itself was really cool, but the best part was looking at all the cave drawings—some weren’t very well preserved, but others were still very much intact, which is pretty impressive considering the cave was over 14,000 years old. Most of the drawings were of bison but there were also other drawings of reindeer and horses. Another impressive thing about the drawings was the fact that the people who drew them created their paints with minerals and they drew these animals from memory—and these paintings were well-drawn. It was just so cool being in a place that had been around for so many years and thinking about the people who had been there before me. I loved it.
After the cave visit, we drove to Sarlat to have lunch and tour the town. We arrived an hour before our lunch reservation, so I walked around the city with Roz, Enna, and Lubaina before lunch. We went into a bunch of stores, but then we found this old bookstore down an alleyway. It was small and there were a couple of older Frenchies in there as well as this adorable, friendly cat. We spent about 15 to 20 minutes in that bookstore playing with the cat. Thankfully, the cat didn’t mind all the attention and the French people were entertained by the fact that we liked the cat so much and didn’t mind us being there. We stayed until we had to leave for lunch. After eating a really nice lunch, we met a tour guide who took us around the city talking about its history, architecture, and church. The tour was kind of boring, but it was fun walking around the city taking in the buildings and scenery. After the tour, we left for Carcassonne in our little bus, which took about four hours. When we arrived,
I went out to eat with Katie, Michael, Monika, and Erika. We went into the area of the city where the castle (the Chateau Comtal) was and found a restaurant to eat at inside the ramparts surrounding the castle’s towers. After eating some good food, we walked back to our hotel in the rain and got ready for the next day.
Wednesday, October 29
Today, after eating a really great breakfast in our hotel, we had an official visit inside the Chateau Comtal with a tour guide. Unfortunately, more than half of our visit consisted of us being outside or in towers that had open windows, and of course, it was windy and cold the whole time we were touring—by far the worst weather we had had so far. On the upside, our tour guide was pretty entertaining, but he was really hard to understand because he spoke really fast, but every once in a while I was able to catch some of the jokes he made. We learned that the Chateau was mainly used as a fortress and the towers housed prisoners and the town was inhabited by Cathars, which were a people who had a different religion from Christianity who were eventually massacred by order of the Pope because of their heretical beliefs. Sad story, but only one of many in French history. We were all pretty happy when the tour ended because the weather was horrible.
After the castle visit, we all got into our bus and drove to the Sinnigers’ home in Durfor, a city known for its copper and copper products. Monsieur Sinniger met us outside the door to their home and right on their medieval style French door was a little Furman University vanity plate. It was so cute. They invited us in and we all drank champagne for an aperitif and met their large Spanish dog named Benny. He was cute, but he whined a lot. Madame Sinniger had to leave 15 minutes after we arrived for a meeting (we were supposed to have arrived at their home earlier, but we ended up coming an hour or more later than what we had originally planned). So Monsieur Sinniger (who is over 80 years old) had to take care of serving us all the lunch and dessert that Madame Sinniger had prepared. We had sausage cassoulet, which consisted of sausage and beans. It was pretty good, and then we had a carmelized applesauce dessert with fromage blanc, which was also really good. Then Monsieur Sinniger offered us
coffee, but he didn’t really know how to make it, so it wasn’t that good, but it was really cute that he tried.
After lunch, we walked around Durfor for awhile looking at all the copper items as well as the many leather shops around the area. Then we hung out at the Sinnigers’ awhile longer, and Monsieur Sinniger gave us a tour of the whole house, and we got to see old pictures of Madame Sinniger when she was younger. She was a very pretty woman and she actually reminded me a bit of my Grandma Porter. It was cool seeing what she was like when she was younger. Eventually, we all returned to our hotel in Carcassonne, and I shopped around a bit inside the ramparts of the chateau with Elizabeth, Monika, Michael, Katie, and Erika. Elizabeth and Erika bought soap and then we found a café to eat at that had really great food as well as really good ice cream. It was so good. After dinner, we all went back to the hotel and hung out a while together in Katie’s room before we finally all went to bed.
Thursday, October 30
Today we were supposed to visit an abbey, but unfortunately, Siad missed the exit to the abbey and ended up driving 45 minutes outside of where we were supposed to go, and by the time we realized we had taken a wrong turn, it was too late to go back. So we ended up arriving in the city of Sete earlier than expected. We had a boat ride scheduled, but we got there three hours before the boat was supposed to depart, so I walked around the town for about an hour with Michele, Elizabeth, and Erika. We just walked around looking at all the shops and the markets and ran into Siad and Dr. Patton. We walked around with them for a bit and found a café to eat lunch at. Since Sete is by the sea, there was plenty of seafood offered, and I had a really great lunch: fish soup, grilled tuna with ratatouille, and an apple tart for dessert. It was so good!
After lunch, we took got on the boat and enjoyed an hour boat ride around the outskirts of the city. I stood at the very front of the boat. The sea was pretty rough that day and the boat kept moving up and down with the waves, and being at the front seeing the boat rise and fall was so fun—like being on a roller coaster. Siad was on the boat with us and he felt sick—he came up to the front with me and some of the other girls for a while, but then couldn’t handle all the motion of the boat. I felt kind of bad for him, but it was also pretty funny. After the boat ride, we went to the Aigue Morte to visit there for an hour. It basically consisted of this small little town surrounded by ramparts and towers that had a bunch of little shops in it. So I spent most of my time walking around the town with Katie just visiting all the different shops. We found a giant candy, cookie, and chocolate store, which was like confectionary heaven with an old fashioned kind of feel. It was so cool—made me feel lik
e I was in a toned down version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. We also browsed through clothing stores and art galleries. It was pretty cool all in all, and I’m glad we only spent an hour there because that was about as long as we needed.
After that, we drove to the city of Arles and stayed in a pretty primitive hotel. There was no TV or wireless, so we had to find other means of entertaining ourselves. We got to Arles early, so we had a dance party in my room using the music from our computers and then I went out to eat with Elizabeth, Katie, and Michael to a fun little place called Coco Bongo where we ordered some really good tapas. Siad saw us in the restaurant when he was walking down the street and joined us for drinks for like 20 minutes before he had to meet up with Dr. Patton for dinner. He was fun to talk to and he ended up paying for our drinks, which was so nice. After a long, but very good dinner, we all went back to the hotel, and I watched some Gossip Girl with Monika and Elizabeth (Elizabeth had episodes on her computer) before finally going to sleep.
Friday, October 31
This morning, we visited the city of Arles with a tour guide. We first started the tour by visiting the ancient ruins of a roman city. These city ruins were so well intact that the city decided to preserve them underneath the city. There were a long series of connected stone arches that we walked through that had column ruins around it, which was really interesting to look at. The extent of the ruins lasted a good while because we walked along a few series of long pathways and one pathway led us into an area that was clearly used for a chapel. Then as we walked past the chapel, we saw large openings in the stone walls and the tour guide told us that those openings were used as shops. The whole tour was very cool.
After visiting the ancient city, we walked around the modern city of Arles, visiting first the gothic church in the city. Unfortunately, it started to rain really hard at that point in the tour, so I missed a lot of what the tour guide was saying because the combination of the noise of the rain as well as my occupation with staying as dry as possible. We learned that Arles was a popular place for hosting bullfights because they had a large arena to host the tournaments in. This arena was also used for watching people be attacked and killed by lions. After visiting the arena, we walked around the city some more and went to a couple of the locations where Vincent Van Gogh painted when he lived in Arles. We went to the café that he painted as well as a courtyard that was the subject of another of his paintings, so that was cool visiting the same places that Van Gogh once sat with his easel and paints. It’s too bad he ended up being really weird.
Once the tour ended, Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, and I went back to the café that Van Gogh had painted called “Café de la Nuit” and had lunch there. It was a pretty good restaurant and Katie and I got to try bull meat. After lunch, we shopped around at the markets and bought some Van Gogh copies. Then we took a taxi to visit the Beaux de Provence, which is basically just the ruins of a fortress. It was incredibly windy up there. We actually saw a middle-aged woman wearing a skirt that was too short for her up there, which was a bad choice of dress because the wind blew her skirt up, and we all saw that she wasn’t wearing any underwear—not a pretty sight. After distancing ourselves from this woman, we climbed up into the fortress, observed the medieval weapons that launched stones towards the enemy, and admired the view from the top of the huge hill it was built on.
After spending 2 hours at the fortress, we all came back to Arles and ate dinner together. It was a lot of fun because a guitar player came in and played some songs for us and sang while we ate. He was a bit awkward at times, but it was entertaining. After dinner, a group of us went back to Coco Bongo because they were having a Brazilian themed party. It was really cool—the place was packed, and there was a live band playing. The music was fast paced and there were some really great dancers there who could really move well. They were a lot of fun to watch and mimic (or try to mimic). We stayed for about an hour and then left to go back to the hotel.
Sunday, October 26
Sunday morning, we visited the Chateau d’Azay le Rideau. Despite our good weather yesterday, the weather that morning was cold and foggy. It was a nice castle, but not as nice as some of the castles we had visited earlier. Our tour guide, Annabelle, showed us a lot of cool little things about the castle—like the fact that they had foldable chairs in the Middle Ages as well as this bench that had a movable backrest—this bench was situated in front of the fireplace and the backrest was movable so that the people could easily switch from warming their fronts to warming their backs. Random fact, I know, but that’s kind of what the visit consisted of apart from visiting the typical king’s and queen’s bedrooms and looking at various portraits, sculptures, and tapestries of said king.
After visiting that chateau, our bus driver, Siad, drove us to another one, the Chateau de Langeais. This castle was much prettier than the first one, and thankfully, by the time we got to this castle, the weather had improved and it was sunny. We went inside this castle and saw all its beautiful rooms and portraits of all the kings that had stayed there. Interesting fact I learned at this castle: the high collars that everyone wore in the 1500’s became the fashion trend of that century not because everyone thought it was cool. By the 1500’s, syphilis had infiltrated France (apparently the French believe it was brought in by men who had slept with sketchy Italian women/prostitutes). Syphilis caused large spots to appear on the neck of anyone who was infected by it, so to cover it up, these people started wearing high collars to hide their spots. Eventually enough people who had syphilis started wearing their collars high and subsequently started a fashion trend for the times. Fact.
After visiting that castle, we went to lunch and then visited the Chateau d’Amboise. Again, we had the typical castle tour, looking at all the bedrooms and paintings and other rooms in the castle. There was a church outside this castle and inside was a memorial to Leonardo DaVinci because he had spent the last years of his life in that castle with the French king. So it was cool being in a place where DaVinci once stayed and unfortunately died, but nonetheless, it was still really cool.
After that, we then went to a wine cavern in Vouvray. It was so cool because the caverns were like a small underground city—there were street signs labeling the different pathways through the cavern because it was so big. There were tons of bottles of wine stacked in cases that were in this machine that turned the wine bottles twice a day. Annabelle told us there were 4 million bottles of wine in that cavern. Then after walking through the cavern, we had a small wine tasting with this little French gay guy, which made the whole thing even more enjoyable. We tasted two types of champagne—a drier kind and then a sweeter kind. Then after tasting both, we got to pick our favorite to sip on again. Though it was a bit short-lived, it was fun. Then we went back to our hotel and I walked around the city of Tours with Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, Erika, and Michele. We walked along the Loire River and then walked into the part of town populated by the young university students. We went to dinner outside o
f a pub that was packed with guys watching a French soccer game. It was fun being in the area because it was very lively and every once in a while the whole pub would go crazy after a goal was scored. Based on the cheering, it sounded like France was having a good game. After dinner we headed back to our hotel to sleep.
Monday, October 27
Today, we left Tours early to drive to the city of Perigeux. We spent the majority of our day in the bus because it took about 6 hours to get there including the time we took to stop for lunch. Around 4:00, we arrived at Perigeux and took a tour of the medieval city with a tour guide. We went up inside a tower that served as a fortress for the old city, and then we just walked through the medieval part of the town looking at the architecture and listening to its history. It was so cool to see such old buildings still in place. We saw a house that once belonged to a poor family in the 15th century—it was known that the family was poor based on the building’s architecture and the materials used to build it. We also saw the door to the town’s prison, which was located on an uphill street that prisoners had to hike up with a ball and chain attached to their ankle. After visiting the town, I walked through the city at night with Roz, Enna, Monika, and Lubaina to find some dinner. We ended up eating a
t a little Greek place and then walked around the city for a bit, and then walked back to our hotel to sleep and get ready for the next day.
Tuesday, October 28
Today, we went to les Eyzies and visited the caves of Font de Gaume. It was really cold and wet that morning, but the tour in the caves was so cool—by far the coolest thing I’ve seen so far. The cave itself was really cool, but the best part was looking at all the cave drawings—some weren’t very well preserved, but others were still very much intact, which is pretty impressive considering the cave was over 14,000 years old. Most of the drawings were of bison but there were also other drawings of reindeer and horses. Another impressive thing about the drawings was the fact that the people who drew them created their paints with minerals and they drew these animals from memory—and these paintings were well-drawn. It was just so cool being in a place that had been around for so many years and thinking about the people who had been there before me. I loved it.
After the cave visit, we drove to Sarlat to have lunch and tour the town. We arrived an hour before our lunch reservation, so I walked around the city with Roz, Enna, and Lubaina before lunch. We went into a bunch of stores, but then we found this old bookstore down an alleyway. It was small and there were a couple of older Frenchies in there as well as this adorable, friendly cat. We spent about 15 to 20 minutes in that bookstore playing with the cat. Thankfully, the cat didn’t mind all the attention and the French people were entertained by the fact that we liked the cat so much and didn’t mind us being there. We stayed until we had to leave for lunch. After eating a really nice lunch, we met a tour guide who took us around the city talking about its history, architecture, and church. The tour was kind of boring, but it was fun walking around the city taking in the buildings and scenery. After the tour, we left for Carcassonne in our little bus, which took about four hours. When we arrived,
I went out to eat with Katie, Michael, Monika, and Erika. We went into the area of the city where the castle (the Chateau Comtal) was and found a restaurant to eat at inside the ramparts surrounding the castle’s towers. After eating some good food, we walked back to our hotel in the rain and got ready for the next day.
Wednesday, October 29
Today, after eating a really great breakfast in our hotel, we had an official visit inside the Chateau Comtal with a tour guide. Unfortunately, more than half of our visit consisted of us being outside or in towers that had open windows, and of course, it was windy and cold the whole time we were touring—by far the worst weather we had had so far. On the upside, our tour guide was pretty entertaining, but he was really hard to understand because he spoke really fast, but every once in a while I was able to catch some of the jokes he made. We learned that the Chateau was mainly used as a fortress and the towers housed prisoners and the town was inhabited by Cathars, which were a people who had a different religion from Christianity who were eventually massacred by order of the Pope because of their heretical beliefs. Sad story, but only one of many in French history. We were all pretty happy when the tour ended because the weather was horrible.
After the castle visit, we all got into our bus and drove to the Sinnigers’ home in Durfor, a city known for its copper and copper products. Monsieur Sinniger met us outside the door to their home and right on their medieval style French door was a little Furman University vanity plate. It was so cute. They invited us in and we all drank champagne for an aperitif and met their large Spanish dog named Benny. He was cute, but he whined a lot. Madame Sinniger had to leave 15 minutes after we arrived for a meeting (we were supposed to have arrived at their home earlier, but we ended up coming an hour or more later than what we had originally planned). So Monsieur Sinniger (who is over 80 years old) had to take care of serving us all the lunch and dessert that Madame Sinniger had prepared. We had sausage cassoulet, which consisted of sausage and beans. It was pretty good, and then we had a carmelized applesauce dessert with fromage blanc, which was also really good. Then Monsieur Sinniger offered us
coffee, but he didn’t really know how to make it, so it wasn’t that good, but it was really cute that he tried.
After lunch, we walked around Durfor for awhile looking at all the copper items as well as the many leather shops around the area. Then we hung out at the Sinnigers’ awhile longer, and Monsieur Sinniger gave us a tour of the whole house, and we got to see old pictures of Madame Sinniger when she was younger. She was a very pretty woman and she actually reminded me a bit of my Grandma Porter. It was cool seeing what she was like when she was younger. Eventually, we all returned to our hotel in Carcassonne, and I shopped around a bit inside the ramparts of the chateau with Elizabeth, Monika, Michael, Katie, and Erika. Elizabeth and Erika bought soap and then we found a café to eat at that had really great food as well as really good ice cream. It was so good. After dinner, we all went back to the hotel and hung out a while together in Katie’s room before we finally all went to bed.
Thursday, October 30
Today we were supposed to visit an abbey, but unfortunately, Siad missed the exit to the abbey and ended up driving 45 minutes outside of where we were supposed to go, and by the time we realized we had taken a wrong turn, it was too late to go back. So we ended up arriving in the city of Sete earlier than expected. We had a boat ride scheduled, but we got there three hours before the boat was supposed to depart, so I walked around the town for about an hour with Michele, Elizabeth, and Erika. We just walked around looking at all the shops and the markets and ran into Siad and Dr. Patton. We walked around with them for a bit and found a café to eat lunch at. Since Sete is by the sea, there was plenty of seafood offered, and I had a really great lunch: fish soup, grilled tuna with ratatouille, and an apple tart for dessert. It was so good!
After lunch, we took got on the boat and enjoyed an hour boat ride around the outskirts of the city. I stood at the very front of the boat. The sea was pretty rough that day and the boat kept moving up and down with the waves, and being at the front seeing the boat rise and fall was so fun—like being on a roller coaster. Siad was on the boat with us and he felt sick—he came up to the front with me and some of the other girls for a while, but then couldn’t handle all the motion of the boat. I felt kind of bad for him, but it was also pretty funny. After the boat ride, we went to the Aigue Morte to visit there for an hour. It basically consisted of this small little town surrounded by ramparts and towers that had a bunch of little shops in it. So I spent most of my time walking around the town with Katie just visiting all the different shops. We found a giant candy, cookie, and chocolate store, which was like confectionary heaven with an old fashioned kind of feel. It was so cool—made me feel lik
e I was in a toned down version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. We also browsed through clothing stores and art galleries. It was pretty cool all in all, and I’m glad we only spent an hour there because that was about as long as we needed.
After that, we drove to the city of Arles and stayed in a pretty primitive hotel. There was no TV or wireless, so we had to find other means of entertaining ourselves. We got to Arles early, so we had a dance party in my room using the music from our computers and then I went out to eat with Elizabeth, Katie, and Michael to a fun little place called Coco Bongo where we ordered some really good tapas. Siad saw us in the restaurant when he was walking down the street and joined us for drinks for like 20 minutes before he had to meet up with Dr. Patton for dinner. He was fun to talk to and he ended up paying for our drinks, which was so nice. After a long, but very good dinner, we all went back to the hotel, and I watched some Gossip Girl with Monika and Elizabeth (Elizabeth had episodes on her computer) before finally going to sleep.
Friday, October 31
This morning, we visited the city of Arles with a tour guide. We first started the tour by visiting the ancient ruins of a roman city. These city ruins were so well intact that the city decided to preserve them underneath the city. There were a long series of connected stone arches that we walked through that had column ruins around it, which was really interesting to look at. The extent of the ruins lasted a good while because we walked along a few series of long pathways and one pathway led us into an area that was clearly used for a chapel. Then as we walked past the chapel, we saw large openings in the stone walls and the tour guide told us that those openings were used as shops. The whole tour was very cool.
After visiting the ancient city, we walked around the modern city of Arles, visiting first the gothic church in the city. Unfortunately, it started to rain really hard at that point in the tour, so I missed a lot of what the tour guide was saying because the combination of the noise of the rain as well as my occupation with staying as dry as possible. We learned that Arles was a popular place for hosting bullfights because they had a large arena to host the tournaments in. This arena was also used for watching people be attacked and killed by lions. After visiting the arena, we walked around the city some more and went to a couple of the locations where Vincent Van Gogh painted when he lived in Arles. We went to the café that he painted as well as a courtyard that was the subject of another of his paintings, so that was cool visiting the same places that Van Gogh once sat with his easel and paints. It’s too bad he ended up being really weird.
Once the tour ended, Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, and I went back to the café that Van Gogh had painted called “Café de la Nuit” and had lunch there. It was a pretty good restaurant and Katie and I got to try bull meat. After lunch, we shopped around at the markets and bought some Van Gogh copies. Then we took a taxi to visit the Beaux de Provence, which is basically just the ruins of a fortress. It was incredibly windy up there. We actually saw a middle-aged woman wearing a skirt that was too short for her up there, which was a bad choice of dress because the wind blew her skirt up, and we all saw that she wasn’t wearing any underwear—not a pretty sight. After distancing ourselves from this woman, we climbed up into the fortress, observed the medieval weapons that launched stones towards the enemy, and admired the view from the top of the huge hill it was built on.
After spending 2 hours at the fortress, we all came back to Arles and ate dinner together. It was a lot of fun because a guitar player came in and played some songs for us and sang while we ate. He was a bit awkward at times, but it was entertaining. After dinner, a group of us went back to Coco Bongo because they were having a Brazilian themed party. It was really cool—the place was packed, and there was a live band playing. The music was fast paced and there were some really great dancers there who could really move well. They were a lot of fun to watch and mimic (or try to mimic). We stayed for about an hour and then left to go back to the hotel.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Birthdays and Castles
Thursday was Elizabeth's 21st birthday, so we all went out to Paris to celebrate. Michael, Katie, Monika, Michele, myself, and obviously Elizabeth got on the train that would take us from Versailles to Paris. And once we had sat down in the first car of the train with some other people, this older man walked by us with a suitcase, and as he walked by, we all smelled the most wretched stench that we had ever smelled on a human. He smelled like a dumpster and old cheese and it was evident based on his clothing and his stench that he probably hadn't showered in at least 2 weeks...possibly more. His smell lingered for a while and we considered switching cars, but thankfully he sat at another end of the train away from us and eventually the smell faded a bit, so we decided to just stay. That guy ended up clearing out the entire section of the train he was sitting in--all the people who had gotten there before him had to leave because they couldn't stand it, and any subsequent passengers who started toward his section of the train to grab one of the many available seats in that section, immediately reacted to his smell, understanding why no one else was sitting over there, and either left the car or headed to the other side of the train. What was most annoying and disgusting about this guy was the fact that he kept moving around a lot so his stench would start circulating through the train every once in a while...it was like he was completely unaware of his stench, which is hard to believe because his smell literally made me gag when I got a good whiff of it. Then when he sat down, he would raise his dirty sweater up to his neck, exposing his pudgy belly, and just start rubbing all over his chest and belly--he probably did that because he was so dirty. That was definitely one of the longest train rides and we were so happy to get off.
We went to a place called Abrakadabar and ordered some drinks and listened to the live music playing. About 15 minutes after we arrived, the band stopped playing and then they just played recorded music. A bunch of people were just standing around while we were drinking, and by the time we finished our drinks, a lot of the people had started to clear out. We all decided to dance, and we were the only ones doing it. Eventually everyone cleared out and we were the only people on the dance floor--all six of us. It was fun though and we didn't care we were the only people out there. Eventually, we inspired some other people to come and join us (or the alcohol inspired them). Either way, it was good to see more people out there. Unfortunately, we encountered a creeper with bad teeth. He started dancing with Elizabeth, but then she escaped him, and then he moved on to Katie, and he seemed to like her a lot. She eventually escaped him too, by just flat out stopping dancing with him. Soon after we all had to go to catch the last train to Versailles, but Creeper tried to talk to Katie and get her number, and even after she said she didn't have a cell phone or number to give him, he continued to stalk her so we all had to run away. Thankfully, we made it back to the train station in time, and while we were running to get on the train, Katie stumbled, lost one of her high heels in the process, and this lost shoe ended up falling onto the train tracks. Katie was pissed she lost her shoe like that and thought she'd have to walk home barefoot, but thankfully, someone helped her retrieve it before the train left. Then we all got home at like 2:00 in the morning. It was a fun night.
Then I spent the next day packing for my 10 day tour around the south of France, and this morning, I woke up at 5:15 AM to get our bus at the train station at 6:45 AM. I had to carry like a 20 pound bag for 20 minutes walking from my house to the train station. That was annoying. Eventually I made it and got to sleep on the bus as we headed to Tours to see the Chateaux de la Loire. We first visited the Chateau de Blois which was inhabited by various French kings during the 15th century. The castle was very colorful on the inside, and the architecture was really beautiful. We then visited the chateau de Chambord, but only saw the outside of it. It was a beautiful castle with lots of towers located in a gorgeous location full of hunting grounds, since that was a popular pastime of many of the French kings. It was a nice day too, so the beauty of the area was more pronounced. We then ate lunch at a little restaurant and ate so much food--pate and meats for an appetizer, salmon for the main dish, cheese, and then dessert. It was really good and really anticipated because we were all starving by the time we got there. After lunch, we visited a third chateau called the chateau de Chenonceaux where King Henri II lived with his wife Catherine de Medecis, as well as his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. I'm sure that wasn't awkward. Despite that strangeness, the castle was really cool. It was built on water and the interior and surrounding gardens were really pretty. We visited the chapel, the various bedrooms, the kitchens, the salons, etc. I'll post pictures to show what they looked like because it would be too hard and boring to describe it here.
After a long day, we all arrived at our hotel and got dinner on our own. And now we have many more long and early days to look forward too. Should be interesting. Until next time...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)