Les Vacances

A lot of my friends headed off to exciting places (London, Berlin, Copenhagen) today because this weekend is our first of two four-day vacations this semester. Although I'm managing to get away for a startling number of weekends, I decided to stick around Nantes this time to have a laid-back four-day weekend of catching up on sleep, down time and fun time after a week of midterms. I also may get a jump start on my papers for some of my classes due in a few weeks, though that might be a little ambitious of me.

Sunday is Halloween! I'm missing dressing up with school friends and having a super good excuse to buy a lot of candy and eat a lot of candy (although I'm not one to get too hung up on a lack of excuse for eating candy) because most of France doesn't celebrate Halloween. Apparently it has become a more and more popular fad in the past few years, but it is still perceived as very American and not enough people celebrate it that a person could go trick-or-treating; I think the only celebration is mostly a costume party here or there. Needless to say, my friends and I will not be dressing up like cowboys and indians and getting free candy around here. Shame. In lieu of that, we're gonna try to find fixin's for making a Mexican feast (there are no burritos or the like to be found around this place, I swear) and going out on the town for a more subtle observance of the fantastic American holiday we're missing out on.

The strikes persist; this week was pretty crazy with cut tram lines due to manifestations, burning trash, trash piles in general (garbage collection was apparently on strike as well), marching masses through the streets, lots of yelling, and chairs, tables and other objects blockading the entrances to university and other school buildings. Unfair for students, I think, and it was pretty frustrating when our class went to the theater to watch "Elle s'appelait Sarah" (a movie about the Holocaust that I was pretty psyched for) and couldn't get in because protesters were blocking entry to the cinema. The excitement and initial novelty of the strikes has worn off and now I'm used enough to them that it's just kind of a drag. Especially since there's nothing I can do to agree disagree with them; I have no say in what happens as a result of their "perturbations" on the tram and in the centre-ville every other day, but I'm still supposed to put up with them. All part of the experience, I suppose.

My family was out of town this whole week because the kids are on vacation from school and my host parents, whose jobs both have to do with school, were also off the hook. They took off to visit cousins (they invited me, but I wanted to stay,) leaving me to hold down the fort until their return. I love my kids and coming home to a family and a prepared dinner is all well and nice, but hooo boy am I enjoying the single life. I can eat dinner at six o'clock instead of waiting til almost 8, I can walk around the house belting out American songs I'm listening to, I can nap without being made fun of, eat chocolate without being called a fatty, do my homework in the living room without having monkeys children climb all over me, and best of all I can sleep in in the morning and wake up peacefully to the sun shining in my window or my body's subtle "wake up, it's breakfast time!" alarm instead of screaming and yelling children and host mom directly outside my bedroom door. Aaahh, tranquility. That said, it will be nice to have them back on Monday. I must say I am beginning to miss Timothé walking majestically around the house saying in his very strong little french accent, "I love me, I love me I love meee!" and Jeanne's request to french-braid her hair every night.

Dooblin, Oyerlind

Friday morning five friends and I left Nantes on a plane to Dublin. We were really excited but we had no idea how much fun we were in store for! When we first arrived, we took a bus from the airport to downtown and checked in to our globetrotters hostel, which was awesome. It had chandeliers and an Irish breakfast to look forward to in the morning. Then we dropped off our stuff for the weekend and left the hostel to grab some lunch and explore around the city.

View of Dublin from a bridge. I liked the tipsy tower over there.

We went shopping and visited Trinity College and saw a bunch of street performers (painted people, fake statues, musicians, sand artists) which is where we met this lil guy...

Our Irish friend

And walked around some more and saw St. Patrick's Cathedral!

Then we headed over to the Guinness Storehouse. After going through the self-guided tour and learning about the history, making, and serving of Guinness, we got a free pint each to drink at the highest bar in Dublin, Gravity bar. It's at the top of the storehouse and looks out over the city.

Preston and I celebrated our first pint of Guinness until the foam was gone... then it was kind of  chore.

After the storehouse, we all went to Temple Bar, the happenin' street in downtown Dublin with all the pubs and street musicians at night. We had to wait for a while to get into the restaurant, but dinner was yummy and we got to hear some great music while we were wandering around.

Saturday morning we woke up bright and early to eat our hostel's Irish breakfast (yum!) and catch our tour bus that was going to take us on a day-long tour of the Irish countryside, stopping for a bit in Glendalough and Killkenny. We drove right by where the movies P.S. I Love You and Braveheart were filmed! At Glendalough (Irish for "valley of two lakes," yeah, I listened to our bus driver), there was an old Monastic city and graveyard and a trail that went around the little lake there. The fall colors made the Irish countryside even prettier and the walk through the crisp air with our new Australian friend Milly (we met her on the tour bus, she's an au pair in Amsterdam this year) was very nice.

Monastic graveyard

Irish countryside, Irish girly...

The trail went around this pretty lake

Finally we went to Killkenny and had a genuine Irish lunch in a pub there (I had the best beef and potato stew ever) and took a picture of us and Milly at the Killkenny cathedral.

Me, Preston, Kelsei-Kei, Elise and Milly

There was a castle in Killkenny too, but living in France the novelty of castles has worn off a bit; our conversation went something like this: "Do you guys want to go inside the castle?" "Uhh, well I guess if we're right here anyway... or maybe we can just go into that little court area right inside and take some picture. Then we can go GET LUNCH!"

When we got back to Dublin, we ate dinner and went to the pubs again to listen to live music and enjoy each other's company. At about quarter til 11p.m., we headed off to the airport, where we made a fort out of Starbucks lounge chairs and slept in a pile until our earrrly a.m. flight the next morning. I slept all day Sunday.

Now I'm back in Nantes gearing up for midterms and looking forward to Geneva and Rome, not too far off now!

Week-end des châteaux

This weekend IES took the second and last organized trip of the semester to tour the castles of the Loire Valley. There are many, but over the course of Saturday and Sunday we got a chance to visit five:

Château de Montgeoffroy

Château d'Azay-le-Rideau

Château de Villandry

Château d'Amboise

Château de Chenonceau

The pictures don't begin to do justice, but at least it's a taste of a visual for you guys. I can't describe the feeling of fulfillment you get when you stand in the middle of an Italian-style garden, next to a massive fountain, surrounded by beautifully smelling and gorgeously designed gardens, looking at a castle in the not-so-far distance.

Once.

Then try doing it four more times.

Each of them were awesome if their own way; the first (Montgeoffroy), basically a very lavish house, was probably the least impressive because it was more of an incredibly ornate mansion than an actual château. We also weren't allowed to take any pictures (period!) of the interior, which made it less memorable because I can't reflect on the good parts through my pictures. It had a stable, which was cool, and it was still inhabited, also cool but kind of annoying because we had to be quiet throughout the tour. Although it didn't win any prizes in my book, I'm glad we saw it. I'm also glad we saw it first so our expectations were wildly low and then blown out of the water by the four that followed it. I don't even know if that phrase made sense but I'm not worried about revising it because I want to tell you all about the other chateaux we went to.

Second in line was Azay-le-Rideau, which I liked a lot. It was a relatively small, but majestic, castle with grass fields surrounding it and really pretty forest beyond. It had a moat around it and a couple bridges here and there, with a path that circled the perimeter which allowed for pictures from every angle (don't worry, I didn't miss any.)

We stopped on a bridge to admire the fact that you could bend over backwards on the railing and pretend the reflection in the moat was the real thing. Pretty trippy.

It's the little things in life.

The fall colors were really beautiful too, which enhancd the view around us and made the moat very colorful.

After Azay-le-Rideau, we moved on to Château de Villandry, which had absolutely breathtaking gardens.

Jardins à Villandry

Saturday night, we stayed in Tours (a city in the Loire Valley) in a hotel. Three of my friends and I went out on the town and I got my first fancy-pants cocktail (the "Swimming Pool") at an Irish pub. We were proud of ourselves for finding the pocket of night life in the midst of a very quiet, dark city.

The Swimming Pool is the curvy blue one. I got my fruit servings for the day.

Sunday morning, we got up bright and early, had a yummy breakfast at the hotel, and headed out to see what would become the most beautiful memories I will probably have in my head for quite some time.

First up: Château d'Amboise, a castle on the edge of the Loire River with a small chapel in which rest Leonardo Da Vinci's remains (Wait, what? Whoa, I know). The château was breathtaking (I know, I've been having my breath taken away a lot in this blog entry. Okay, it was spectacular, amazing, wonderful, awe-inspiring, astounding, stunning, amazing and incredible. That work?)

Leonardo Da Vinci! Man, that was cool. We just stood around in awe for a while and took a lot of pictures and stood and gazed some more, and then we headed down and got lunch (I ate a croque-monsieur, Orangina and half a sugar crêpe). Then, it was off to our fifth and final château destination: Château de Chenonceau, a castle my friend Abigail knew a lot about because she had written a paper about it for a French class at Bates.




Chenonceau was an amazing château as well. It is a sort of bridge structure than spans across the Cher River, creating an impressive (? I'm running out of adjectives that convey my reaction to these views...) mirror effect when you look at it from the side.

I don't know that you see its reflection too well in this picture, but it's pretty anyway. Those're my friends Abigail and Preston.

So then we wandered around in the gardens and the "labyrinth" (don't worry, it didn't hold a candle to some of the corn mazes I've been in) and then reloaded the bus and headed home to Nantes. All in all, a spectacular weekend with a lot of cool memories and awesome pictures.

Yaay bridge climbing near a french castle among autumn trees!

Picture for Vogue: Château Edition

Les aventures de Mel & Lo en France

J'aime la Tour Eiffel!

I think everything is more romantic in Paris. Chick stuffing ordinary flower in face: delicate fille smelling lovely-scented rose.

 Amelia is here! We met up in Paris and went to the Eiffel Tower and had a picnic of bread, cheese and wine near l'Arc de Triomphe and then met up with our other friend Ria who graduated Grinnell last spring and is traveling through Europe this month. We had complications getting into our hostel (Mel had put her credit card on hold because of suspicious activity, but the hostel had waited to charge our reservation to it so our reservation was nullified when the card didn't scan) which landed us in a hotel down the street where we were charged the same price for a much nicer and more private room, which was just fine by us. We went back out with Ria for La Nuit Blanche (a cultural night festival in Paris) and got dinner food, more wine and some Petit Ecolier cookies to eat as we sat watching the Eiffel Tower light up and glitter ever hour and later listened to live music from a different metro stop that had a breathtaking view of the tower.

It sparkles on every hour:59 for five minutes! Spectacular!

The next morning Mel and I were off to the Musée d'Orsay (free on first Sunday of every month!) to see Imprssionism/Post-Impressionism art by Van Gogh, Manet, Monet, Cezanne and others. So cool.

I'm standing in front of the cool Musée d'Orsay sign (pics not allowed inside)

Afterwards when crossing a bridge to see the Obélisque (below),

Obélisque!

we saw all these padlocks with people's names written on them in Sharpie locked to the railing on the bridge. I had never seen that before but I loved the idea! We decided when we come back we'll have to do that. We're gonna start saving when we get home in December. This was one of my favorites:

Bisous de Paris!

After having lunch with Ria in a café, saying goodbye, riding a two-hour train, arriving in Nantes and meeting my host family, we called it a journée and passed out in our beds. The next day (Monday) we fixed sweet potato turnovers for my family (upon hearing what we were making, my host mom told me she had never eaten sweet potatoes! I can't believe her misfortune.) and my brother and sisters helped us. Timothé was way too smart for the onions he was cutting for me, and he protected his watering eyes from further peril by wearing his swim goggles. What a kid.

Who says I can't cook? Every recipe calls for a little vin in my book.

Amelia and I had a lot of fun fixing our turnovers, drinking wine and playing with Timothé, Thaïs and Jeanne, and it was a dîner to souvenir for sûr.