C'est dix heures dans le matin à dimanche...oui, on va goûter la champagne...pourquoi pas??

This weekend was the weekend trip with the Syracuse group. This semester it was different however--we went around Nancy, Verdun, and Reims (all around the Champagne region). Different trip from the Burgundy trip last semester but still had its own perks.

Friday afternoon we arrived in Nancy and of course got a walking tour of Nancy. My tour was all in french which was not the problem (the problem was my attention span that disappeared after 10-15 minutes). It was a good way to definitely get to see most of Nancy...which is pretty tiny and actually a pretty young town according to european standards. It's funny because on the walking tour I saw styles of houses or just little signs/things on the road that I thought..."only in france would one see this" then we would go to the main roads of Nancy and see a Lacoste store and tons of banks, pieces of Art Nouveau on buildings....it was interesting...but very small. That night we had dinner in our hotel and then I went out in the town to see the main square at night which was really pretty. The main square during the day is just as pretty--plated with gold, les fleurs de lis, fountains, statues, french architecture...very regally french.

Saturday we got up early to go to Verdun, one of the major battles of World War I. We went to the site of an Osuary (french word for "bone" = un os) hence the name osuary. In and under the building are bones of soldiers which they found while they were cleaning up this certain site. The bones are not just from french soldiers, but from everyone who died on that field. It is really quite amazing how the bones just have not decomposed at all. To see the bones you have to go outside and look through a window underneath the main floor to see them, it's not like you walk in and that's the first thing you see...there is parafinalia and of course a theatre for an oh-so-educational war museum film. Around the Osuary were cemeteries for the soldiers, and then we got to walk around the site a bit. It was amazing/scary to see how the land around there is still screwed up from all the shells that blew up during that battle. It was scary because we were told to stay on the path...it was very possible that there were still shells there that had not yet exploded...needless to say not even the goofiest goofs tried to go into those holes. After that we got back onto the bus to and headed over to Reims. Of course, we engaged on another excursion into a cathedral in Europe with an audio guided tour. The best part of that cathedral was the stained glass in all of the windows...very pretty. Whether it was classical colorful stained glass or just white glass artwork, it helped me forget that I could see my breath while breathing in that cathedral.

Of course, being in the Champagne region of France it would be an abolute utter disgrace if we did not get to do a champagne tasting! So our director scheduled the champagne tasting for Sunday morning. We went to the caves of the Taittinger family...very very good champagne and very cool caves. For champagne, it's the chalk in the soil that makes the difference. It was cool because I noted how the walls in the under ground caves (12, 16, and 18 meters underground) would be perfect for wall climbing...and then someone was like, but then your hands would be full of chalk! But that's why it would be perfect...the chalk would dry your hands so you wouldn't need to carry it on your harness! Anyways, I thought it would have been inappropriate if I had tried to scale the chalk walled caves that were actually dug out initially by the ancient Romans, so they're pretty old. We learned the process of making champagne which was acutally what I thought was a really cool process...and of course at the end we got to taste the champagne which was well, french champagne from the champagne region.

All in all a great weekend. The visit to Verdun was very sombering...but interesting to be in a place where the War actually happened. I saw a couple films last semester about the first world war, and learned about it in my history class last semester...so to be there and see physical evidence of shells and craters etc. just made everything more real to me. I had a good weekend though. Learned how champagne was made, got to talk to people who I haven't really gotten to talk to a lot this semester. Saturday I spent a couple minutes in the red wine aisle of a "hyper-marché" (like France's versions of a super target) trying to pick a good bottle for me and my friends to split. I ended up buying a 2004 Côtes du Rhones (my favorite red wine)--I thought that would make my dad proud hahaha.

Anyways, coming up--only 6 more whole weeks left here...exciting but scary at the same time. No french university classes this week due to the NATO summit that is coming here and will be Friday and Saturday. OH COOL! No, not really...the city is going to be chaos and they have blocked off certain regions of Centre Ville to the point where only people who live there and have a special permit can get into those zones...and Strasbourg is going to practically close down later this week. Their goal of shutting down the university is to try and get students away from Strasbourg...in the hopes that they won't protest if they don't have school (a lot of the french are against France being with/cooperating with NATO). Of course, Syracuse courses still go on and as I just made a list of what I have to do for this week, I won't have as much free time as I thought. But that's ok.

Next weekend: Paris, again but this time with my art history class. Naturally, several museums in one weekend...so obviously more to come. Love you and miss you all. Be home soon. Scary.

Paris, je t'aime

Alright...to sum up the last weekend of my vacation...Paris. I stayed with my roommate from freshman year at CU, Maggie Ferguson. Maggie lives with one other girl who is also from Boulder, and I liked her a lot too. They live in a really cute apartment in the Latin Quarter in Paris.

Of course, every time I am in Paris, I forget how much I like it. When I got to Paris on Thursday night, I found Maggie who guided me to her apartment for her "house warming" party. It was nice and chill for the first night being in Paris. Friday we attempted to get tickets for a football game at the Stade de France although unfortunately we did not. It was going to be a good one too--with Lyon, who are in the champions' league. Anyways, after that we did a little shopping in Paris and had a coffee at Les Deux Magots--a cafe that Ernest Hemingway used to frequent. We went back to her apartment and made pasta for dinner then headed over to the Louvre for the night. Every Friday night from 6-10pm the Louvre is free for students, so as long as you have a student ID with you on a Friday night in Paris, I highly suggest that you go.

Saturday we went on a search for Jim Morrison's grave. The cemetery where he is buried holds the graves of tons of famous people. Jim Morrison, Molière, Jean-Paul Sartre, and many other famous ones. Maggie and I got a little lost searching for Jim Morrison's grave, although we finally found it. A little anti-climactic in my opinion, although I am a fan of the Doors. Then we headed over to the Gare Saint-Lazare where Monet did a lot of paintings. After long walks and metro rides, we decided to get lunch, and rest after that. At night we went to a potluck dinner with her orientation group so I met a lot of other international students. I also met some other french students once we went out in Paris.

All in all my break was great. I am very lucky to have been able to travel around Spain and be able to see old friends who I hadn't seen in a while. Although I realized that Strasbourg really has become a home for me and a lot of the week I was homesick for Strasbourg. Anyways, I'm not exactly sure how much more traveling I will be doing, but we'll see. I realized that even though I only have good things to look forward to when I get home, I really just do not want to leave Strasbourg. It really a pierced a hole in my heart. So, I won't be able to really live much for the next three days, due to midterms and papers that are due...however after those, I am going to make sure that I get everything I can out of my remaining weeks in Strasbourg. Maybe the title of this blog should have been Strasbourg, je t'aime. Hope everything is going well on the homefront. More to come :)

Sevilla y Granada

So I left off with the end of Barcelona the last blog. Monday night I flew from Barcelona to Sevilla. The weather in general in Spain was not nearly as nice as I was expecting, and I think that's why my thoughts of my trip in Spain were jaded, because I really did have a great time/ate some GREAT food in Spain.

Sevilla was cute--small but quaint, very charming. I also stayed in a GREAT hostel that was not expensive. The Oasis backpacker's hostel in Sevilla is a great hostel to stay at if you are looking for one. There is also apparently one in Granada. Anyways, I got to Granada airport, took a bus from the airport to the bus station, and then the tram to Placa Nueva and walked about 5 minutes to my hostel in the rain. Was not the ideal way to get to my hostel, although the hostel was so nice when I got there.

My first day there I walked all around Seville with someone who I just met at my hostel who was really nice and funny. It was great to see the city just by the back streets and stuff like that. I did go to the cathedral there, which is not gothic style and I think the 4th largest cathedral in the world. Supposedly Christopher Columbus's tomb is there, although I was too mesmerized by either the organ that traverses the width of the church or the altar of GOLD. It was beautiful. Has a great road for shopping. Small town--I would suggest that you could definitely see Seville, the entirety of what you need to see in two days.

I made my way over to Granada on Wednesday for the day--easy way to get there, either bus or train. Bus by www.alsa.es Anyways, they cost just about the same and take just about the same amount of time. I saw TINA!! It was so fun to see her. As we discussed, she's the only friend who I've had since kindergarten, and even though we're not like the closest friends in the world, we are the oldest friends that each other has. We just get together every once in a while and spill out our lives to each other and then resume at some other point. Anyways, I went up to the highest point in Granada, and we went into the very small cathedral, which has the tombs of the King and Queen of Spain who made Spain catholic. Then we went and got tea--it was raining and cold the whole time I was there, but it was really nice to see Tina.

Some of my favorite spanish food:

gezspacho: cold tomato soup, some of them were very cucumber-y, some very tomato-y but very good cold spanish soup

croquetas: the ones that I had were only filled with cheese and not ham, but basically the tapas version of cheese curds

chocolate con churros: ok picture churros without the cinnamon or sugar, so just the fried dough, and then picture a cup of melted chocolate to dip them in and drink after you are done with the churros. amazing.

bavarias (i think that's the name of what it was): fried fish. granted, not the irish fish n chips, but still pretty good.

spanish tortilla: basically like an omelette with potato

bravas: potato chunks/wedges and a sauce. the sauce can either be the touristy kind (mayonnaise-ish with spicy sauce so it looks pink) or an orange spicy sauce and a mayonnaise-y sauce slapped on there separately, although that is the more authentic version.

cava: spanish version of champagne. ok, i know, not a food.

Vino tinto: sangria mixed with fanta. yes, i know, again, not a food.

Those ones are the ones that I can remember as of now. I'm with my friend Maggie right now at her apartment in Paris. Loving Paris again as usual. Have fallen back in love with it. Will come back often to Paris. Will blog about Paris on Sunday when I get back into Strasbourg. Love and miss you all. See you in like nine and a half weeks! Yikes! More to come :)

Barcelona!

Barcelona. Former home of great artists such as Pablo Picasso and Antonio Gaudi. Current home of the best football team in the world. Party city to the max.

When I landed in Girona, it was beautiful--kind of hot, sunny, you could see the mountains from the runway. I ran into a lot of friends who were on the same flight going to Barcelona, so that was fun. I took a bus about an hour in length to Barcelona and found my hostel. Then I called my friend Coop, (Christen Cooper, girl who i met summer before freshman year at orientation). It was really nice to see her for a good amount of time because as she said i had been MIA for the past couple months.

Friday night we really just wandered around a little, went to the beach and people watched. Then we got tapas and sangria for dinner and met up with a couple of her friends afterwards.

Saturday, we did a lot of walking. We went to Guell Park, the park that Antonio Gaudi designed, and the park that is in the movie L´Auberge Espagnole (one of my recent favorite movies). That park is just filled with mosaics, beautiful works by Gaudi. There is actually a family who lives in a house right above the park--imagine how rich they must be. Then we went to all you can eat sushi, and yea, i ate all you can eat sushi in Barcelona. Anyways, it was amazing. After that we walked to the Hospital of St. Pau which is again just a beautiful hospital still in use today. After seeing the outside of the hospital we walked over to Gaudi´s famous cathedral, and it actually does look like it´s melting at some points. It was cool to see from the outside. Before dinner Coop and I slipped in some shopping which is always a plus. We went to the top of this hill, I forget the name right now but there is a museum/palace at the top and waterfalls galore. There was a light show with the main fountain so my friends and I sat on the steps and watched the fountain show while sipping on some Cava, Spain´s version of champagne. After that we went to a museum very close to that park that was mostly modern art. I remembered how much I´m not a fan of modern art, although I also saw an exhibit of Joaquim Mir, a spanish impressionist which was interesting at least.

Phew. Sunday we didn´t do as much, Coop and I did a lot of walking around little side streets in Barcelona. We discovered many little squares with orange trees and fountains. We also went to the Picasso Museum and had a great dinner at night. Monday day I got up, checked out of my hostel and did more walking, souvenir shopping, and then made my way through the maze of metros and buses to get to the Barcelona airport. Luckily I was successful.

All in all, I like Barcelona. I don´t know if I liked it a lot, but I did like it. It was really nice to see Coop and have sangria and real tapas. Although so far, I´m liking Seville better...but I´ll write about Seville later. Hope all is well on the home front. Love and miss you all. More to come :)