I've moved on to C!

So this past weekend was our third and last excursion through The Institute. We went to the small village of Carpentras for a day full of delicious "desgustations" (tastings!). Our first stop was to a candy store that makes their own Berlingots, the candy born in Carpentras that all French know and love. They are just little peices of hard candy, but they have a distinct shape and are quite delicious. We got to watch them make a batch and it was like being in an episode of Good Eats on the food network! They pour boiling hot sugar goo onto a marble slab and toss it around until its cooled off a bit. Then they take a little piece out and stretch it over a hook until it turns white. Then they take the stretched piece and create a little pattern on the still hot sugar blob, roll up the blob and put it through a machine that stretches it into a long rope. It's when they cut this rope that they get their unique shape. Needless to say, we got to eat many a free Berlingots, fresh from the blob stretcher. Delicious.

Warm goo

Making the pattern

Through the stretcher

Warm candies for us!

They gave us some time to explore Carpentras and dropped us off at a little open air market. It was a normal French market, full of delicious foods and fun things to buy. A bunch of us took the opportunity to nap in the grass after lunch because it was so warm.

Olives galore!

The view of the market from across the bridge

We then headed over to a very odd museum about the production of bird calls since the 19th century. It was really weird at first but then when the owner started demonstrating the bird calls it was kind of amazing. He was really good!

The next stop was the Nougat manufacturers. Nougat in France is not the unknown crunchy substance in your snickers. Here it is a gourmet candy and it is DELICIOUS. We ate so much freaking Nougat at that place. Basically its almonds mixed with honey and caramel spread over a flat surface to cool until its a crunchy treat. They also let us taste their Nougat made with egg whites witch is more similar to nougat in candy bars at home. There was a huge plate of Nougat in front of us and we all just kept eating and eating. So good.

Last in our tasting adventure was a visit to "la cave". I don't know the exact translation, but its the French word for where wine is distilled and sold. We got to go deep into la cave and see the giant barrels of grape juice turning into wine. It was pretty awesome actually to see all the machinery that squishes the grapes and transports the juice to all the different parts of the cave. Naturally we got a wine tasting afterwards. They lets us taste their white, rose and two red wines. The white was too sweet for me, but the rose was a dry rose so it wasn't too sweet. The first red was almost spicy and really dark, so it was too much for me to handle and I didn't like it at all, but the last was the best by far.

Giant tubs of wine

in the depths of la Cave

wine tasting! yum!

So as of today, Tuesday, I have exactly two weeks left in France. I can't believe its over already, I feel like I just got here. On the other hand, I've made some really great friends, and I can't believe it only took us a few months to get to know each other. We are all sad we have to go back to nasty American bread, expensive organic food and restaurants that hurry you away after you're done eating. We are also, obviously, going to miss living in an ancient town surrounded by ancient ramparts with an ancient palace right in the middle of it. This city is so gorgeous, and the pedestrian streets are so cute, I'm really going to feel uncomfortable in the loud SUV filled streets of America.

Of course on the other hand, I am SOOOO excited to go home and see everyone! I also miss my kitty and my guitar so badly. I'm probably not even going to be able to sleep on the seven hour plane ride home because I'll just be too excited thinking about all the people I get to see finally! So in a nutshell, I wish I didn't have to leave, but I can't wait to be back. My friend recently said "I don't know if I'm leaving home or going home" and thats exactly how I feel. Basically I just hope I can come back here sooner than later, because I love France. I love the people, I love the food, I love their way of life. Vive la France!!!

Place d'Horloge on a busy spring afternoon

I only go to cites that start with A or B

Antwerp, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin. Also I live in Avignon. And Bloomington.

Spring break is over and I am entirely disappointed to have to return to classes. The week began with a train ride to Nimes, a missed shuttle to the airport which turned into a taxi ride to the airport, a shuttle from the Brussels airport to the train station and then another train to the other Brussels airport to meet Leigh and her mom, which actually worked out with me getting to their gate and them walking out of it at the exact same time. When we finally met up it felt great to see someone from home finally. Leigh's mom, Kathy, is friends with a women that went to Kathy's highschool for a year through an exchange program. She was very nice and let Leigh and I stay in her son's flat while he was away. We had an amazingly decorated, huge and well stocked apartment to ourselves. It was amazing. Not to mention that she took us out to dinner and showed us around both Brussels and Antwerp and was the nicest person I've ever met. It was very interesting to be in Antwerp though, because I thought all of Belgium spoke French, but in Antwerp its either Flemish Dutch or English.

We went to a huge flea market in Brussels where Leigh and I both bought these lovely cameras from the 1930's that actually work! Well, Leigh's works for sure, but mine is still in question. We also found a table stacked with adorable aprons, so we bought like 10 of them for 5 euro or something. We mutually decided to force our friends to wear Belgian aprons whenever we cook together from now on. I'm excited.

Grand Places

We pretty much got a tour of Brussels and downtown Antwerp by Kathy's friend. Brussels is a gorgeous city. Antwerp is also a gorgeous city. Belgium is just gorgeous. The famous palace in Brussels is famous for a reason. Everything in that square is so ornate and monumental, its breathtaking.

Downtown Antwerp

Leigh and I spent some time in Brussels on our own and basically just wandered around. We went to a park for a bit to rest our feet and fed pigeons our leftover lunch bread, and then decided to walk all the way over to the EU Parliament. It was cool for me because I'm obviously interested in that stuff, but also it was weird to see this gigantic modern building jutting out from the rest of Brussels. We had coffee in Grand Places during just before sunset and then headed home to catch a train to Amsterdam.

When we got to Amsterdam it was a short walk to our hostel, in which we were sharing a room with 30 other people. It wasn't terrible, but it was never exactly easy to sleep when people are talking or packing or brushing their teeth or whatever. Still, it was the world famous "Flying Pig" hostel of downtown Amsterdam, so it was worth it. The place is quite nice, actually, and the location is the best part for sure. I had SO much fun in Amsterdam the second time around, and it was probably because I was with Leigh and we had both already been there, so we weren't worried about "seeing everything" and what have you. We rented bikes for the three days we were there and it was the best decisions ever. It was beautiful weather the whole time we were there, and we just rode our bikes wherever we wanted to get around. I was mostly excited about riding a bike in a city thats actually built for bikes, as opposed to at school when I just run over 20 people a day trying to get around. We went to all kinds of markets, including the floating flower market, and the first day we bought some film for our new old cameras. It was just 35mm, completely the wrong size, but we made it work. We took pictures with them all over Amsterdam and decided to have them developed when we got to Germany.

flower market!

There's this huge park in Amsterdam called Vondelpark, and Leigh and I had lunch there one of the days and rode around it for probably a few hours. It is literally the best park I've ever been to in my life. First of all, it gigantic, and the paths go every which-way and you can make big circles around the pond or take a bunch of little circles and hop around the different islands. There are dogs everywhere, bikes everywhere, people everywhere. It was also the perfect temperature, so we just never wanted to leave. In fact, we came back the next day just to ride around some more.

We left Amsterdam in the morning to catch a train allllll the way over to Berlin, which turned into kind of an ordeal when we actuallyl boarded the wrong train. Luckily we managed to catch up to one of the only 6 trains to Berlin that day and got there only a few hours later than planned.

When we finally got to Berlin, we took the metro to a friend of Leigh's dad's that we were to stay with for the end of our trip. He was super nice, and it was sooo helpful to have him give us directions and info about how to even begin to see the huge city that is Berlin. Our first day was spent trying to buy these metro and museum passes, which only happened after being yelled at in German by a lady who "spoke English". I mean, I don't expect people to speak English to me all the time, but if you are selling TOURIST passes, you need to be able to speak the language of the tourists. Anyways, after a nice gentleman helped us out with translating we were finally on our way. We went to the "New National Gallery" first and I got to see a Dada collage that I fell in love with in an art history class, and it was really exciting. I didn't even know it would be there! There was also a ton of late 19th and 20th century art that I'd never seen but really really liked. We also walked around "Potsdamer Platz" which is a square that used to be intersected by the wall and was pretty much barren until the wall came down. Now the huge Sony Center sits on it along with a bunch of other huge buildings.

Cut with the Kitchen Knife through the last Weimar Beer-Belly Cultural Epoch in Germany, 1920, Hannah Hoch

The next day we went to the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Its a gigantic piece of art that is thousands of cement blocks that span a huge open area. There's a small museum/memorial underground that pretty much had me crying the whole time. I don't know why I'm so interested in the holocaust when it just makes me cry all the time. I guess I'm just fascinated by the strength of people? Or something. Nevertheless, it was an amazing experience.

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The most of that day we spent walking down the famous "Unter den Linden" (under the Lindens) street. This street was the place to "see and be seen" in Bourgeosie Berlin, but was turned into a Nazi alley of terror in the 30's when Hitler tore out all the Lidens and replaced them with flags from the Third Reich. Later the trees were put back in and its once again a beautiful street, although I'm sure not a grand as it would have been with hundred year old trees instead of 50 year old trees. We saw a tiny but moving memorial to the Nazi book burnings which happened on this street. It's just a clear piece of plastic on the ground that lets you see a bunch of empty bookshelves under your feet. It sits on the exact spot where they burned "degenerate books" not approved by the Third Reich.

We also took a quick walk down to the East Side Gallery. This is just what it sounds like, paintings on the resurrected wall. There are some really amazing ones, and it stretched on forever. Quite beautiful.

East Side Gallery

We later went to the Old National Gallery and saw a trillion paintings and sculptures from every century ever. It was a lot of museum-ing but definitely worth it. We stayed until it closed and still didn't see everything! We then headed over to the Reichstag building, which is the current location of the German parliament. The building was almost completely destroyed during the war, but now it looks great, and there's this ultra-modern addition on the top. It's a glass dome that people can walk up in a spiral and see the city from up high. The coolest part, though, is the extremely sustainable design. Down the middle is a huge pillar of mirrors that reflect sunlight into the parliament chambers during the day, so they use almost not electricity for lighting during meetings. It also sucks out heat and acts as a natural air conditioner. Finally, the top is open to the sky, so any rain or snow that falls is collected and added to their water supply. Genius. There are so many buildings and places in Berlin that use sustainable design, because a lot of it wasn't built until the beginning of the 90's or later.

In the dome of the Reichstag Building, thats the chamber below

The last day we headed over to "Museum Island", a literal island created by the Spree (pronounced "shprey") River. It houses 5 of the oldest museums in the city. We had already seen the Old National Gallery, so we headed over to Pergamon Museum which holds the famous Pergamon Alter, a HUGE piece of an ancient altar thats been set up inside the museum. I liked sitting on the steps of it thinking about how 1000's of years ago Greek citizens were sitting in the very same place.

Pergamon Altar

After that we went over to the Jewish Museum. The architect of this museum had a very radical and symbolic plan for the building, and it really is amazing. The building itself is a zig-zag, but there are straight lines that run through it and create what he called "voids". These empty concrete rooms symbolize the absence of Jews from German society. In one of the voids there is a work of art called "Falling Leaves". It was very scary but really made you think. The Holocaust is something that is really unexplainable; those who were affected by it don't want to remember it, but don't want to forget it. Obviously, its very emotional.

Fallen Leaves by Menashe Kadishmen. The over 10,000 faces are dedicated to innocent victims of war and violence.

Another part of is called the "Holocaust Tower". It's just an unheated, unlit tower extending off one of the sides of building. You walk in and you can hear sounds, but they are muffled. Theres a bit of light, but mostly dark. It's cold and scary. Leigh and I stood in it for only a minute or so, but thought about how this terrible place is only a millionth of what it would be like to have endured the Holocaust. It was a very strange feeling.

We stayed at the Jewish Museum until close and then walked over to Checkpoint Charlie just to say we've been there. It's not very exciting anymore haha.

Overall, I LOVED Berlin. I think it is mostly due to my unexplained obsession with 20th century history? Mostly I think I love it because everything so is symbolic. Terrible things happened there, and terrible people lived there. The second world war and the 40 years of the Berlin Wall affected the city deeply, but its now a thriving metropolis and a gorgeous place to visit. The people of Berlin really recognize the importance of remembering history, and this idea is recognized in everything they build. The places where the most evil plans in world history were plotted will remain in ruins forever to signify the terror that they brought, and the memories of the millions murdered in Germany and surrounding countries is dealt with in a way thats both emotional and moving. Mostly the I think its a symbol of progress from almost an entire century of a divided city towards a united, democratic, amazing place to live. I never really knew anything about German culture, but I think Berlin will be one of my favorite cities of all time.

Brandenbourg Tor and Parisian Platz

And now I have less than three weeks left here in Avignon. I'm excited and sad at the same time. More on that later. :)

Amsterdam, Ik hou van jou

I feel like I've been running all over the continent! This past weekend, me and a bunch of my friends took a weekend trip to Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was amazing, to say the least.

My friend Danielle and I headed out early on Friday morning to catch a train to catch a flight to catch another flight and a short train ride to Amsterdam Centraal Station. It was the first trip I've taken here that I didn't have a major breakdown! haha, but seriously everything went perfectly. Our flight connected in Zurich, so we got a little taste of Switzerland and their silly non-euro money which prevented me from buying a simple muffin at the airport. Wtf is 3.00 CHF?? who knows. Anyways, we had AMAZING views of the Alps on the way over, and got delicious Swiss chocolate on every flight. (4 in total! score!)

Alps!

We got into the city at around 3pm and took the short walk to our hostel to check in. We then went to meet our other friend, Mirel and her friend from home, Serena, who had been there since wednesday. We took one look at the tram system and got a little overwhelmed, but just hopped on the first one that looked right and managed to get a free ride to where we wanted to be. After a quick lunch, we headed over to the Van Gogh museum.

This museum was so cool, and I saw soooo many Van Gogh paintings! They had them organized chronologically and had info about his life in every section. Every once in a while they had other artists, too. I loved the Paris section, because he has some great pieces created in Paris, and he was friends with all my fave French artists like Toulouse-Lautrec and Caillebotte! The other floors had all kinds of other art forms and artists, so it was great to see something a little different than what I usually head for in musuems. I really liked the size of the Van Gogh musuem because there wasn't so much that I felt like I had to rush around, but there was still plenty to look at.

After Van Gogh we hung out for a bit before taking a walk through the red light district. Obviously that sounds kind of ridiculous and unsafe, but the area is so full of tourists nowadays that its actually one of the safest places in the city. The whole city is actually really safe haha. But even though its full of tourists, the red light district is still very much a red light district. The girls stand in front of glass doors wearing pretty much nothing and wait for creepy men to approach them. Also they are all like 15 years old or something, except for the super dirty old women. haha overall a really hilarious and slightly disconcerting situation.

Red Light District and Swans everywhere!

We also made sure to walk around and see all the lit up canals. If you aren't familiar with the layout of Amsterdam, the center city is made up of a semi circle of canals that were built in the 1700's, and many people travel around by boat or even live in boathouses. Think Venice, but with cute little Dutch houses everywhere. ALSO there are bikes EVERYWHERE and every road has an equivalent bike lane. And I love love love it. And everyone's bike is super adorable, and kids ride on the back of bikes and everyone has a little basket for their things and women ride with high heels on and I love everything about it. Anyways, we walked around to see all the lights on the canals. When my other friends, Chelsea and Delee, finally got to the city (they had a few travel issues) we met them at the train station and walked them to our hostel.

Bike only parking garage. love it.

Saturday morning we woke up (a little too) early and headed out to the Anne Frank House. In 1942 the Frank family began hiding in a secret annex in this apartment until they were betrayed and captured by the Nazis in 1944. Her father, Otto Frank, was the only surviver after the war ended, and he helped create the house into an exhibit. To me, it was very emotional. You enter into the main house and there is information of the business that Otto and his friends ran from the house and information about the Frank's whereabouts before they went into hiding. There is no furniture in the entire house because Otto preferred to keep it unfurnished as a memory of the loss of life and the people who lived there and died during the war. The most emotional part for me was when you walk through the hidden doorway behind the swinging bookcase that the Frank family had to hide behind for two years. They have the windows covered just as they were while the family lived there, and its so dark and solemn. The pictures from magazines and postcards that Anne glued to her wall still remain, and it was almost surreal to think that I was standing in the tiny room that she sat in and wrote her diary for two years. The last part of the exhibit contains videos and information about the residents of the house after they were captured. I almost started crying when I was reading about how each member of the household died, but I guess the Holocaust is a legit thing to be sad about. After taking a break by myself in the cafe, I met back up with my friends and we headed out for some lunch. We found a neato flea market on the way over and I bought the cccuuuuuutest vintage leather purse for 15 euro! Seriously, its totes adorbs. hahaha

After eating a delicious tomato, mozzarella and basil sandwich at a pub, we went over to Rijksmuseum (pronounced rikes - museum). This is the museum that holds most of the "genre" art of the Dutch golden age. Think Vermeer's The Milkmaid - scenes of everyday life. Unfortunately Girl with the Pearl Earring is over at the Hague, but there was still sooooo much there to look at. I don't know a lot of Dutch artists, but I did see my lovely Vermeer's, Rembrant's, and found a new painting to add to my favorites, The Threatened Swan by Jan Asselijn.

The Threatened Swan

After a short stop at the I Amsterdam sculpture, we met back up with Mirel and Serena (they got to stay in a nice hotel as a present, lucky ducks) and hung out for a bit before taking Chelsea and Delee over to the red light district because they hadn't seen it yet, and then got dinner.

I AMsterdam

Unfortunetly Danielle and I had to leave at like 8am the next morning to catch our flight home, but I wasn't too upset because I'm going back over spring break with Leigh! (my friend from home that is studying in Denmark this semester) So yes, I was definitely not there long enough, but I'm returning and I cannot wait. I love love love loved Amsterdam. Not only because its so pretty and has all the bikes, but also because you can just feel how relaxed the lifestyle is there. I always think about how laid back France is, and Amsterdam is even more laid back. I love it. When I get back to America I'm just going to be so stressed out about how fast paced everything has to be all the time. Simple things like waiting in lines here is just like, "whatever, its a line, we have time" when in the states its like "WTF A LINE I CAN'T DEAL WITH THIS". haha but seriously, I can totally picture myself living in the Netherlands. Also, everyone speaks English so it was a nice break from thinking about speaking all the time, although it was hard to stop saying "merci" to waiters and "pardon" (par- doh) when bumping into people haha.

It's suuuuper warm out here every day (60s-70s) and I'm super excited! This weekend I'm going to be freindless because all of my friends are in this class that is taking a trip to Nice, and since I'm not in the class I can't go. It's actually really disappointing because I would love to go to Nice, but I'm going to spend this weekend exploring all the places that I've never been in my own home city! There's a whole island in between the two branches of the Rhone that I've never been too! Not to mention like 50000 museums. Hopefully I can get some present shopping done too! ;)

Goodbye for now, my love!

Part Deux

Last Saturday, my program took us on our second excursion to St. Remy and Les Baux. We hopped on a bus at 10am and headed for the mountains! kind of. Anyways, our first stop was to the ancient Roman ruins that used to be the entrance to the city back in the Roman days. Those were pretty neat, but we quickly walked over to the tiny, tiny, village of St. Remy. Besides being the cutest place on earth, its famous because Van Gogh stayed at the mental institution there for a period of time when he was on his way to crazy town. It had all kinds of information about Van Gogh and what modern psychologists believe he was suffering from, and how those things affected his work. If you are not familiar with the life of Van Gogh, he painted Starry, Starry Night in 1889 while living in St. Remy. So the answer is yes, I've been in Starry Starry Night. ummmmm YEAH.

The Ruins

St. Remy Hopital

After touring the hospital and seeing the room Van Gogh stayed in, we got back on the bus and drove over to Les Baux. This place is amazing. It's a tiny village literally carved out of a mountain, which an ancient Medieval castle perched on top. We drove so high up that our ears were popping, and then still had to walk up the steepest hills ever to get to the village. We got some free time to explore and find lunch, which was great because pretty much every corner of this place has an amazing view across the south of France.

The view....

When we met back up, we headed up to Le Chateau des Baux. Its obviously in ruins because its so old, but I loved being able to climb all over everything and go to the highest spot we could find to get some awesome pictures. It was SOOOOO windy up there. You have no idea what wind is until you go to the south of France and then climb to the top of a castle on the top of a mountain. It was so windy that I couldn't even open my eyes sometimes! Of course it was hilarious trying to take pictures and not have everything we own blown off the mountain, and I had so much fun climbing on everything. I was sad to leave this gorgeous little village, its just so unique.

amazing

looking down onto the village

That night, because my host was gone, I invited over some of my friends to make dinner. One of my friends, Alyssa, is a vegan, so we found some vegan recipes and got all the ingredients we needed at the store. It felt so good to be cooking for myself again. I didn't realized how much I miss being able to make whatever I want for dinner and spending a lot of time to prepare really delicious food. We made samosas, vegan pesto pasta, and a vegan chocolate tart. It was more than enough food, and we stuffed ourselves to the brim. And it was awesome! Next stop: Amsterdam!!

Updates galore! Part 1

Alright so I realize its been over a month since I last blogged, but things started to get serious over at the Institute in the last few weeks!

In the middle of February, we had a "winter break" and me and my two friends, Abbey and Danielle, took a little tour of France via the amazing French railways. We went to Toulouse, Bordeaux, Blois, Paris and then Caen and the beaches of D-Day.

Toulouse is one of my favorite places so far because it has such soul. Its got the typical French class, some Spanish spice, and students everywhere. Its called La Ville Rose because many of the buildings are built with red bricks, and some really are RED. Its gorgeous. We saw the amazing Basilique St. Sernin and about a million museums; one of which contained works of are by one of my favorites, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. (He was born and raised in Toulouse but did most of his most famous works after he moved to Paris.) We ate at this cute cute cute little restaurant tucked in a corner of the city the second night, and got some delicious sorbet for dessert, and left early the next morning for Bordeaux.

We got to Bordeaux during the day and hopped on the tram into town. We passed all through the city and I was just in awe of the beauty. I know Bordeaux has a reputation for being pretty stuck up, and I totally understand why (and agree, haha) because this place is the definition of royalty. It stretches around the Garonne river and is just overwhelmingly grand everywhere you go. The hotel we stayed at was the cheapest thing ever and it was just the cutest thing ever, and every buidling looks like a palace. Unfortunately we definitely ran into many-a stuck up and rude Bordeaux residents that weren't helping the reputation of the city, but what can ya do. My favorite part was this massive bell tower that you can climb up to the top and see all of Bordeaux. It technically is part of the Cathedrale St. Andre (!) but the builders were afraid the vibrations of the bell would damage the church, so its not even connected! Amazing views, to say the least. Our second day we grabbed lunch and ate it along the boardwalk and people watched. I'd love to return sometime in the summer and go on a vineyard tour, or walk along the boardwalk without a coat and scarf on, but it was still amazing to visit either way.

We didn't get to Blois until late at night, but this tiny little place is dead at night and we felt perfectly fine strolling along the streets to find our hotel. Which, by the way, was empty when we got there. The best thing ever was when we called the number listed on the door and ten minutes later a man came jogging down the street to show us to our room. He was super nice and our room was the custest ever. We were sad we could only stay for one night because it was super comfy. We got up early the next morning to see what we had come for, the Chateaux de Blois! TALK about a chateaux. This place was massive, gorgeous, and full of history. It was built in three different time periods, and you could tour it and see all the amazing decorations and rooms in the royal apartments. It was the first real Chateau I've ever seen in my life, and it was amazing. They are just so massive! And I felt like I was on a movie set, if that makes sense, because it almost didn't feel real. Like that something so old and huge could still be around today.

Now, Paris was just......................amazing. I mean, obviously. We did SO much in 2 1/2 days. The first thing we did after checking into our hostel (which, by the way, was awesome. Village Hostel, Monmartre, I'd gladly suggest it) was walk down to the Moulin Rouge!! Obviously we can't afford to actually see a show there, but it was awesome nonetheless to see the place that inspired so many artists (Like Toulouse-Lautrec!!!) and had such an impact on France in the 20th century. I mean it was awesome enough that we stayed in Montmartre (where all the coolest artists lived in the turn of the century), but to actually SEE the Moulin Rouge.....ahhhhh life dream! Anyways right after that we got on the metro to see the Arc de Triomphe and Eiffel Tower at night. First of all, the Arc is sooooooooo much bigger in real life that pictures can convey. I mean....wow. The Eiffel Tower of course was magnificent, and we were there during its little crazy light show on that it does on the hour ever hour. The whole thing was just amazing. I couldn't even believe where I was. Paris is the one place I've dreamed about pretty much my entire life. Looking up at the Eiffel Tower, seeing the Seine, the lights of the City.....unbelievable. The next morning we got our free breakfast of unlimited bread, croissants and coffee (SO GOOD) and headed the two minutes over to Sacre Coeur. It was a foggy day, but not so foggy that we couldn't stand on the top of the hill and see Paris spread out before us. We spent some time inside the Basilica and lots of time out, and then headed over to Ile de Cite to see Notre Dame. (Two world famous churches on Ash Wednesday, ftw) Ile de Cite is maybe one of my favorite parts of the City because its basically untouched by the modern world (obviously, haha). But wow, Notre Dame is.......massive. I kept taking pictures and wishing I could really capture the immensity of it. We went over to Ile de St. Louis also, and then headed over to the Latin Quarter. We spent a lot of time in the Pantheon, saw the final resting spot of Victor Hugo and Voltaire, and then walked over to the Luxembourg Gardens until it closed. (Saw the Sorbonne on the way. Breathless anyone??) We ended the night with a lengthy walk to the Louvre to see the pyramids at night, and then decided to walk the Champs Elysees. It seemed intimidating at first, but it was SO worth it. That part of Paris is so alive and bustling, I just soak it up. We then proceeded to go on top of Arc de Triomphe and see the glorious views of Paris at night. Ah...just...breathtaking. Our last day was spent entirely at the Louvre, which was obviously not enough time at all. I did get to see the Beautiful Mona Lisa and one of my favorite paintings, Liberty Leading the People by Delacroix. We were cutting it close after we left the Louvre, because we literally had to RUN to catch our train to Caen.

We got to Caen in plenty of time, but we actually stayed in THE CUTEST hotel in Hermanville-sur-mer, about 45 minutes north of Caen. We hopped on a bus and couldn't believe how adorable these little towns were, but it the landscape reminded me a lot of Illinois and made me really homesick. (who knew I'd ever miss the cornfields of the midwest?) Anyways, our hotel was right on the D-Day beaches (we were on Sword, to be exact...if you know anything about WW2) Unfortunately a tiny town on the off season didn't seem to have any restaurants open past 7, but we were directed to a pizza parlor by some nice locals, and it was the best advice ever. This place had the greatest pizza ever, the greatest ice cream ever, and the nicest/cutest waiter ever. He barely knew any english, and it was such a breath of fresh air to be in a place where everyone doesn't automatically know english fluently and therefore only speak it to you. The next morning we walked on the beach for a bit before taking the bus into Caen, where we went to some neato museums, and saw an exhibit about the reconstruction of Caen following the 1944 bombings. Not a lot of people know this about me, but I love 20th century history, especially WW2, so I was just utterly engrossed in this exhibit. We got dinner at another cute little restaurant in Hermanville, and then went back to our little pizza place for dessert. We talked to the waiter and owners some more this time, and ended up taking pictures with them! We also drew them a picture of us (and by we, I mean Abbey) for them to hang up in the restaurant forever! They were super nice and cute, and it was lovely to be able to actually use our French. We also taught them a little english!

The next day we went to the amazing war museum of Caen. I mean, they had artifacts from resistors in France to actual Nazi flags from Germany and amazing photographs of anything you could imagine from Europe during the second world war. We spent forever there just looking at everything. They also had a temporary cold war exhibit, and I saw a piece of the Berlin Wall!! I spent a lot of time learning about Berlin during the Cold war because I knew I'd be going there during spring break. It was actually way more interesting than I thought haha. Everything about that museum made me freaking pumped to go to Germany. They even had a freaking nuclear warhead from one of France's Cold War reserve. I think my favorite part was just looking at all the little things that some person somewhere had thought to save, like books and pictures and letters that meant nothing at the time but are now worthy of being displayed in a museum.

Besides a minor crisis (and by minor I mean extremely stressful and horrible) of me losing a train ticket five seconds before getting on the train home that I'd rather not relive on here, we got home on the last day of break. It was a whirlwind trip, but I am SOOOO glad we did it because we got to see all different kinds of places, met all kinds of people, drank all kinds of wine, and saw soooo much history. France is an amazing place, obviously. But seriously, I hope to God I can come back soon after I leave, because I want to travel every corner of this country. I'll most likely fly home from Paris, so I'm hoping I get to spend more time there before I leave for the States, because seriously.....Paris is the best. It's like no other.

Sorry about the novel!

Un moment, sil vous plait!

Just so everyone is aware, I'll be posting pictures and blogs as soon as this week is over. I came back from break with a mountain of work to handle, AND we have midterms next week. Luckily I have free time this weekend and I'll try to gather my thoughts and try to give an accurate and not ridiculously long recount of my adventures last week. For now, here's a little taste!