Don't say it. I know, I know. It's been almost a month since my last blog post! Awful. Traveling, school-work, and midterms tend to get in the way of updating my blog. Anyways, here's what I have been up to since my last update:
Weekend of March 13: Efram came to visit!
Met up with the boyfriend in Paris. To make a long story short, it was fantastic. For more details, read on. D'abord, I had to meet Efram at Charles de Gaulle Airport. I woke up super early to take the Navette to the Aix TGV station, and then took the TGV to Paris in 3 hours. Not awful, but then I had to figure out the Parisian metro system, which was a lot larger and more complicated than I had originally thought. Lets just say that the average 30 or 45-minute trip to the airport took me about... an hour? Whoops? But, because I was late, the craziest coincidence happened! I ran into one of the guys Eszter and I had met in Naples during our Italian Vacation. The only reason we ran into each other was because I took forever getting to the airport, and his girlfriend's plane was late getting into the airport. Talk about a coincidence! We are now facebook friends.
After meeting Efram at CDG, we took the RER (suburban train) and the metropolitain (metro) to our hotel in the 15th arrondissement. Cute little hotel. Small by American standards, but that doesn't bother me anymore after all of the traveling I've been doing in Europe. It took us FOREVER to find our way to the hotel, so by the time we actually got to the hotel, it was pretty useless to go and see museums. Instead, we went shopping/sight-seeing down les Champs d'Elysées. We visited l'Arc de Triomphe, and the flagship Sephora store. We walked along the Seine, toward the Nôtre Dame cathedral, past the Louvre. Overall, it was a success. For dinner, we met up with an old friend of mine from CAA camp: Allison! It was such a great time. It's funny how you don't see someone in 6 years and it seems like nothing has really changed. I find it hilarious how we could never meet up back in the US, but we both happened to be in Paris at the same time. Again, quel coincidence! We all ate dinner in the Latin Quarter (the happenin' quarter where most students live/sleep), and had a good time.
Sunday morning, we woke up late (Efram's jet-lag + me loving to sleep in lately), grabbed breakfast at a nearby café, and took the metro over to the Louvre. Spent a good 2 hours in the Louvre, saw the Mona Lisa (they must have moved it since the last time I was there 10 or so years ago, because I don't remember it being behind a rope...), saw some other great paintings that I have studied, and meandered through the Ancient Egypt collection. After being cultured, we took a walk to Centre Pompidou, which is the modern art museum. We both decided that we did not feel attached enough to modern art to go inside the building, so instead we took a picture of the outside (which is still neat looking), and did some souvenir shopping. Afterward, we walked to the Nôtre Dame cathedral. It was beautiful from the outside. The line to get in was about an hour long, and a) I have already seen the Notre Dame, and b) I have seen so many churches/cathedrals/christian monuments over the past couple of weeks. Overall, we decided to stay on the outside of the cathedral. We walked around some more, and then had a snack at a café, and caught our train back to Aix.
Arc de Triomphe!
Arc de Triomphe!
Meeting up with old friends :)Week of March 15: Efram comes to Aix
For me, coming back to Aix is just a normal, daily ritual. This time, Efram came back to Aix, too, so it was much better! To sum up this week, I had class and homework, so Efram explored Aix on his own for the most part, met my roommates/collocs, my friends, and we ate a lot of great meals. Successful week? I think so!
Weekend of March 20th: Efram and I travel to Bruxelles!
The next weekend, Efram and I traveled to the lovely city of Brussels, Belgium. It was my first time flying RyanAir, and I was relatively impressed. I didn't feel like I was going to die, so that's always a plus. The only negative thing is that I decided to check in my bag. Online it said that they would only charge me 15 euros. Not too awful. However, once at the Marseille MP2 airport, they told me it would cost 35 euros. It was painful, but my bag got to Brussels safe and sound. The ironic thing is that I basically paid the entire amount of my actual plane ticket to Brussels. Oh well.
In Brussels, I did everything that one is supposed to do there: I ate Belgian waffles, drank Belgian beer (and cherry beer), ate and bought Belgian chocolates, and saw the little statue of Mannekin Pis (literally a statue/fountain of a little boy peeing...there were such crowds around it!). Brussels was a success. We also lucked out, because it was supposed to rain, but we just had clouds. Aside from that, unfortunately, there isn't much to do in Brussels. We walked around the city for a long time, saw some pretty buildings, did some touristy-shopping, and sampled a lot of different chocolates.
After Brussels, took the Thialys train (which was delayed for 2 hours...) back to Paris, spent the night in a lovely hotel, and said good-bye to Efram the next morning at CDG. Headed back to Aix, and had a great week of midterms and projects.
Waffles!
Mannekin Pis
BruxellesWeekend of March 26th: Toulon and A Wine Tasting
Friday March 26th, our program decided that we should go to Toulon to do an ecology project with French students. Good idea, but it was pretty boring and useless. Met some nice people, gave a good presentation, ate some non-filling BIO food, sun-bathed on the campus, listened to some good and some boring presentations, said good-bye to Toulon, and ate a delicious dinner back in Aix. Originally the project was supposed to be optional, but they made it mandatory. I would have preferred a trip to Cassis, personally.
Saturday was much more eventful. We went on a little trip to Château VigneLaure, a vineyard! We were given a tour of the wine-production facilities, which specialize in red wines and rosé, and then afterward we tasted some rosé and some red wine. The rosé was 2008, and the reds were 2005 and 2003. Apparently 2005 was a good year. I'm not really the biggest fan of red wine, but it grew on me. And the location was absolutely beautiful. After the tasting, we went to lunch in a nearby town. The restaurant we ate at was Michelin rated, and it was delicious! For appetizers, we had a salad with a warm goat-cheese croustillant, our main plate was fish, and for dessert we had hazelnut ice-cream with raspberry sauce. Delish! And, not to mention, we also were given wine to drink. Afterward lunch we traveled back to the vineyard to learn about grape production, stroke the vines, and buy bottles of wine if our little hearts desired.
Bienvenue à Château Vigne-Laure!
The wine barracks
Mmm ChateauMarch 30: Bellegarde puts on a Passover Seder
For the second night of Passover, our auberge hosted a Passover Seder with about 15 people total. We had so much food, and everything went so well. I only wish that I had taken pictures!
Weekend of April 2: Lyon and Easter
This past weekend, Eszter and I TGVed ourselves to the city of Lyon, the 2nd-largest tourist city in France (after Paris, of course). The city was a lot of fun to walk around. We got there Friday afternoon, and walked EVERYWHERE. We went to this one church/basilica on the top of this GIANT hill/mountain. It was intense. So many stairs, and so many hills to climb. Once we got to the top, my feet were crying. Luckily, the church itself is quite beautiful: Nôtre Dame de Fourvière. Unfortunately, they were having mass at the time we visited, so we didn't get to take pictures/wander around inside (but no worries, we went inside Saturday and got some great pictures!!). After climbing the hill, we discovered that there is actually a funicular that takes you up and down the mountain. We decided to take the funicular down and make more use of the Lyon metro system after that expedition. In Lyon we also saw l'église Saint-Jean, walked down rue de Boeuf to see the passageways where the Lyonnais would hang their silk to dry, visited the Museum of Textiles and Fine Arts, ate at 2 awesome bouchons (typical Lyonnais restaurants), and went shopping. Overall, another fun and successful weekend. We also lucked out, because we didn't get rain, like the forecast predicted. And Lyon was actually warmer than we expected. It was windy, though, because it is the origin of the famous mistral. Saturday night we took the TGV back to Aix, and voila.
In front of Cathedral Saint-Jean
In front of the Grand Synagogue of Lyon
Neat statue of horses with mist coming out of their noses
View of Cathedral Nôtre Dame de FourvièreToday is Easter Monday, so we didn't have any class. I got to wake up late, and I also made some Matzah Brei for my collocs. There was also a cute little marché down Cours Mirabeau for Easter, and I bought some neat salts and a delicious garlic-tomato-basil sauce. Yum. Now, it's time for dinner, and hopefully later we will get to paint our Easter eggs!
Sorry about the long post. I promise in the future I will update more often!
~Dani
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