I GOT MAH FLIPPY FLOPPIES. In France.

Yesterday our group had its last excursion, only a day trip this time, to Deauville. Deauville (and Troueville, the town it's basically connected to) are in Normandie and have lovely beaches where the water is more or less the same ice-cream-headache-in-your-whole-body inducing temperature as it is in Cape Cod. The only difference is that in Cape Cod in the summer it's hot and gorgeous, whereas in haute-Normandie it's raining one minute and there's weak, watery sunshine the next, and it's never really warm enough to take off your jacket, let alone swim. At least not in May. So despite my promises to go swimming no matter how freezing it was (mostly because I have the most adorable new bathing suit you will ever see), I didn't. Things I did do include wandering through a farmers' market, eating a duck and apple salad, hunting down the perfect pastry (failed attempt this time, must do better in future), coveting expensive chocolates, having skipping contests on the beach, and talking about Harry Potter while watching French people (who may or may not have been mostly naked) run around on the beach.

All in all it was a good day, especially given the weirdo convention that seemed to be going on in Deauville this weekend. The first sign was when we were accosted by a bridal party (complete with a woman wearing, among other strange things, a veil. They asked us for our opinions on what to include in "The Recipe for Eternal Love," but I don't think we were much help. We suggested oysters, chocolate, honesty and some song lyrics. I'm a little dubious on both the effectiveness and the edibleness of that recipe, but whatever. After that we continued to see people in bizarre costumes, prominently angel wings and devil horn headbands, as well as some nuts on odd low bicycles I really hope they had rented and didn't actually own. So basically Deauville is a cute seaside town with plenty of seafood, and evidently plenty of weirdos to boot.

Last week we had our end-of-the-year reception where people dress up, bring their host families, and eat macaroons while showing off their talents. If they have any, that is. Apparently in past years the program has been filled up with people playing instruments, dancing, performing skits, or doing whatever other talenty things they could. This year though, we're a rather talentless group. Hannah played something lovely on the clarinet and Kit brought his dance posse to give us a breakdancing spectacle, and Courtney wrote a hilarious poem (in French; possibly the reason it was hilarious). Xinger also brought a bunch of her artwork to display, and ended up selling a few paintings. But aside from that, I think the host families were probably disappointed in the lack of skills from the rest of us. It was a good fete though, especially meeting all the host families you've heard gossip about all year long--checking to see if this one really is the ideal of Paris-chic or if that one is in fact insane.

I've also been having some fun adventures around Paris. One especially adventurous day was when Hannah and I, for lack of anything better to do, did absolutely nothing but eat all day long. That's not true; we also got lost and saw some prostitutes and pottery, but mostly there was the eating. We walked to St. Michel, stopping on the way at a macaroon place whose name I cannot spell, where I ate the most wonderful pistachio-chocolate croissant in the world. Then we got on a bus to the Passage Brady, a narrow walk lined with Indian restaurants in a cartier full of exotic grocery stores. We bought mangoes for one euro each, had the world's best samosa and ordered mango lassis to go. When we received them, they were in water bottles. Like, water bottles and had been (hopefully) washed out and reused. But the lassis were so good that even I didn't care, and we drank them while wandering down a random street. The street itself was lined with incredibly chic stores full of obscenely expensive things. High class, right? WRONG. After gazing into a window full of painfully beautiful hats, Hannah and I turned around to see, loitering on the other side of the street, some very obvious (and very unattractive) prostitutes. In broad daylight, on a sunday, on an expensive street. There were also some groups of men lingering around and we weren't sure if they were pimps, potential customers, or just the audience. It was bizarre, so we scurried off in a less scary direction with our mango lassis, our innocence only slightly damaged.

We ended up wandering past the bakery with a page from the Figaro in their window which stated that they had the best chocolate eclair in Paris. Obviously, we had to try it. I'm not an eclair person by nature, which is maybe why I thought it was only "pretty good" and not "mindblowingly amazing." After that we found a store with fairly inexpensive ceramics made in the south of France--gorgeous cups and saucers and pitchers in very eatable colors. It was a good, food-filled day, minus the prostitutes.

A few days ago we also attended the bread fair that happens in the big square in front of Notre Dame. It consisted of a huge tent where you could watch all kinds of mouth-watering things being prepared, and smaller tents with free samples that made you want to buy everything. I was a huge fan of the raspberry butter, but I know if I bought it, it would've been consumed way too quickly (and possibly with a spoon). After that there followed an afternoon of gratuitous shopping--I think my problem is that, because most everyone else will be leaving in under a week and a half and they all have the urge to buy buy buy because of that, I have it too. Even though I'm not leaving until July. I guess I can justify it by saying that I'll be losing my shopping buddies (Valerie's not one for watching me try things on for two hours like they are), so I need to take advantage of them while they're still here. Yeah, that makes sense. Right?

The one downside to life right now is the weather, which is doing a disgusting, grey, rainy and way-too-cold-for-May type of thing. It's unpleasant and slightly depressing, and from the way even the French people complain about it, it's not normal either. We're supposed to have a garden party in the jardin du Luxembourg today, but I don't know if this perpetual drizzle is going to let it happen. It's unnerving to think that this garden party, if it happens, is one of our last chances to see everyone, all together, in Paris. And if I think about it for too long, it has the potential to be incredibly upsetting.

Paris, je t'aime

Let me just preface by saying that I have an enormous brioche praline in my kitchen. That's entirely irrelevant, I just like to brag. Anyways.

My spring break started out early--mom, Lauren, and my grandparents arrived the wednesday before my actual break and stayed for about a week in my apartment (Valerie and Edouard had gone to the country house with the rest of the family). We had a good time pretending to be French, doing our shopping at the markets and the cheese store (and the Franprix--less romantic but still good), and navigating the bus and metro like your average, jaded Parisians. Well, not really with the last part, but you know. Actually I think we walked my grandparents' legs right off, not to mention I don't think they ever really recovered from the jetlag. But that didn't stop mom, Lauren and I from doing all the fun touristy things and a lot of the fun non-touristy ones. We saw enough of a service at St. Gervais to realize that easter mass in French would be a horrible mistake, then ended up outside Sacre Coeur where they appeared to be doing the stations of the cross outside on the steps. There were some paramedics there as well--I personally had forgotten about the station where Jesus gets taken away on a stretcher by a bunch of French people, but hey, I haven't been to church in years so can you blame me?

We did a lot of break-taking in cafes and a lot of eating. I somehow managed to go to both Laduree and Angelina's in the same day, which aside from being completely disgusting on my part was also magnificent. I've concluded (very predictably) that Angelina's hot chocolate is far superior to that of Laduree, no matter what you're looking for in your chocolatey beverage. Because quite frankly the hot chocolate Laduree is obviously trying to be the hot chocolate at Angelina's, it's just not doing a very good job. This also means that I had two macaroons and a montblanc (well, I shared the montblanc technically) in the same day. Also simultaneously disgusting and fantastic. We ate some delicious vietnamese food by my house and on Ave. de Choisy, where I almost died of happiness when I found ube (purple sweet potatoes) in one of the many asian grocery stores there. I wouldn't know what to do with it if I had any, but the fact that its there makes me a happy filipino. I made everyone try my new favorite cheese (beaufort), and we bought the most beautiful rocotta at the Edgar Quinet market on Saturday (along with some 10 euro shoes--what else is there in life?) We did Notre Dame and had ice cream on the Ile St. Louis, frolicked in the Montparnasse cemetary, lolled around in the jardin des Plantes, etc. etc.

We also spent a day in Giverny at Monet's garden (his house is there too, all pastel-colored and adorable, but you can't really remember it once you've been through the garden as well). I'm not sure if I was impressed or slightly disappointed to find that the world of Monet really was as hazy and magically wispy as it is in his paintings. He wasn't making it up or suffering from clouded corneas, it really looks like that. Every picture you take, even if you're like me and normally can't take a good picture to save your life, looks like a painting. There aren't really words to describe it--it's more or less a magical fairy land with slow-sweeping little streams and this perfect golden light coming from everywhere, and more kinds of flowers than I knew existed, growing in neat little beds. The day we went was gorgeous without a cloud in the sky, but I think even a nasty day couldn't manage to make the place look any less beautiful. I highly recommend it to everyone.

After my family left last thursday I spent a few days in Paris by myself--host family was still away and friends hadn't yet returned from their respective vacations around Europe. I mostly did homework (read as: I mostly did a very small amount of homework and watched an obscene amount of The Tudors online. That show is awful, but is full of pretty people and fun historical inaccuracy.) But now Valerie and the copines are back in Paris, which is nice except for the fact that we all do actually have a ton of work to do. We have about a month left of school (including exams and everything), and that is fairly terrifying. I don't leave to come home until the beginning of July, but it's still crazy.

Vas ist das?

Last weekend we had an excursion to the city of St. Malo in Bretagne and the Mont Saint Michel, which is technically in Normandie but was at one point in Bretagne, and might still be depending on who you're talking to. We left disgustingly early on Saturday and slept (very uncomfortably) through a three hour train ride to St. Malo. The city is surrouned by huge ramparts that you need to climb stairs to get up to from some parts of the town (some parts are on a higher level though). When we first climbed up them to get a look at the beach on the other side it was low tide and the water was far off with a ton of rocks and tidepools exposed. But later before dinner we came back to find that at high tide the water comes all the way up to the wall. Apparently in storms the waves can clear the top of the wall, which is pretty impressive. Anyway, we ate crepes for lunch as they're traditional Breton cuisine--I had four cheese and then a crepe mont blanc, which was creme de marron (chestnut) with a blob of chantilly the size of my head. We had a surprisingly good guide for our tour of the city; she was equally full of historical facts and ridiculous stories, so I was automatically a fan.

That night our dinner was at a pretty chic restaurant where the waiters were entertaining to say the least. A girl in our program told one of them that, being vegetarian, she wouldn't be able to eat the normal meal. He replied with "Ca va, personne n'est parfait" ("That's fine, nobody's perfect." Good times. The meal was ham cooked in cider, so it was amazingly moist and tasty, with apple sauce (and tons of cinammon) and potato gratin. I'm pretty sure it was the best meal we've had on an excursion, especially the part where you could have seconds. We had baked alaska (which in French is called a Norwegian Omlette...because that makes sense) for dessert, and although it wasn't great the rest of the meal made up for it.

The next day we headed to the Mont Saint Michel which is a little town built vertically upwards from what used to be an island but is now accessible by foot (or car) at low tide. At the top of the mont is the abbey, a gloomy stone structure which seems like it would be unpleasantly refrigerator-like in the winter. Or any time it's not 60 degrees outside. But once you step out onto one of the huge terraces that gives you a view of the ocean and the river that seperates Bretagne and Normandie, it's worth it. The ramparts surrounding the whole thing were fun to wander around, except when the restaurants lining them were super chere. Everything else on the Mont Saint Michel is more or less a tourist trap, some of them more interesting than others. The butter cookies they're famous for were definitely a good investment, even if the cheesy tin featuring the Mont Saint Michel with a giant cookie hovering over it like a UFO wasn't really necessary. All in all the scenery was beautiful, but being there any farther into the tourist season would've been a death wish. As it was the place was packed with people, most of them half-clothed in a very premature attempt to make it seem like summer.

This past friday we found a park in Paris where you can actually sit on the grass. To be fair, one can occasionally sit on the grass in the Jardin du Luxembourg, but after a while they'll usually decide you're not allowed to do it anymore and kick you off because of some mysterious French rule they have about that. Anyway, in the Parc Bercy nobody comes to kick you off the grass, and you can happily picnic there for as long as you want. It's a park build on both sides of a big road, but with bridges that connect the two sides. It also used to be a receiving area for all the wine that was shipped into Paris from other parts of France, so one area, an adorable cobble-stoned street full of shops and restaurants) has little train tracks left over from when they used to transport the wine. There's also a Starbucks, but that's beside the point.

I also realized I've never talked about my writing workshop at Shakespeare & Co., the American bookstore here in Paris. The bookstore, which lodges writers in exchange for working in the store, used to be frequented by Hemingway when it was at its original location. They give writing workshops in the upstairs library, a tiny room with benches and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Every tuesday night Hannah and I spend two hours there with three young Canadians, four English women, an Irish man who I sometimes cannot understand, two French people (the man has the most stereotypically amazing French accent I have ever heard), a German theatre student, and an American librarian. Needless to say reading aloud is always fun because you go through an entire range of completely different accents, some of which are easier to understand than others. But everyone is a young writer, everyone actually talks in class, and the atmosphere has been surprisingly great all along. Throw in the bells of Notre Dame (which you can see from the window of the library all lit up at night) and the sound of somebody pecking away at a typewriter in the other room, and that's my tuesday night in Paris.

I now have one week left until Spring break, which is slightly terrifying because after that I have less than a month left of this semester. After that I'll be staying in France until late June or early July, but that's still not a lot of time. I guess I should probably get fluent, non?

FREE MACAROON DAY

Remember Free Cone Day? That day in early summer which we, the American people, look forward to every year. That magical moment when we are granted a Ben & Jerry's ice cream cone (or, you know, twelve of them) for free. Kids skip school, full-grown and supposedly responsible adults leave work early, traffic is backed up, and general mayhem ensues all because of free ice cream. But they don't have Free Cone Day in France--instead they have Free Macaroon Day.

Every March 20th Pierre Herme, the man who has been called the Picasso of Pastries (among other amusing and usually aliterative names), welcomes you to his boutiques and offers you three macaroons of your choice in return for a small donation, usually of about a euro, which goes towards funding research for rare illnesses. Basically if you can find any problem whatsoever with Free Macaroon Day, you are a horrible person. Eating pastires to help sick children? That's something I could do a lot more frequently than once a year.

Pierre Herme's macaroons are not superior to those of LaDuree, the better known and more traditional provider of French macaroons; they're simply very different. First of all, macaroons in France are not what Americans generally think of as macaroons. They're neither crunchy nor exclusively coconut-flavored. Instead they're a magical concoction, largely butter, with a texture like nothing else in the world, encased in a thin and only slightly hard shell. Macaroons from LaDuree come in flavors like chocolate, coffee, pistachio, rose, raspberry, caramel etc. But macaroons from Pierre Herme are exotic patchworks of flavor that you absolutely have to eat with your eyes closed and one of those embarrassing facial expressions that makes you look as though you've just seen the light of god or something.

My first macaroon contained avocado cream, banana compote and a delicate inner piece of chocolate. It was golden-yellow and coated in subtly sparkling golden dust that got all over my fingertips and lips. It was delicious, not just the flavor but the texture. Pierre Herme macaroons are generally a lot softer than LaDuree's. The next macaroon was an absurdly rich mix of vanilla, fig, and foie gras. Yes, as in liver. This is one of the pastries that normally costs 8 euro (along with the chocolate and foie gras, which I tried a bite of and didn't like as much as mine). That one was fascinating, but I wouldn't necessarily buy a box of just that flavor. One was enough for me. My third one was eglantine, raspberry and lychee cream, and it was delicately fruity with the fresh rose taste I love (and will miss in the US). The creaminess was indescribably perfect; I actually would buy a box of those.

Being fans of the macaroon in general (and being gross fat Americans), we all shared bites of our orders with each other. Other flavors tried included vanilla and olive oil (it had minute pieces of olive in the shell); chestnut and green tea; jasmine; white truffle and hazel nut (very distinctly mushroom-tasting); apricot, pistachio and parline; salty caramel; something involving passion fruit, and a few others that are blurring together in my mind to make a hazy macaroon dream.

All in all it was a great day, the only down-side being that I won't be in Paris next March 20th to get more free macaroons, and I certainly can't go around buying pastries that cost more than my life. But I did keep the menu we received while standing in line (a much more orderly, quiet line than one sees at your average Free Cone Day), so I suppose I can just read it over whistfully whwnever I'm in the mood for something sweet. Which, with me, is always. Damnit.

In less tasty news, yesterday was spent at the flea markets of Clignancourt, where you can find cheap clothes, shoes, scarves, jewelry, and basically everything else you don't need but would still buy very inexpensively just because it's there. That night was a spring roll dinner party at the apartment my friend Ellen and her boyfriend are renting for the week. Thursday night my momma was in Paris so we went to dinner in the Marais and had those huge crepes from the stand on Blvd. Montparnasse that inevitably get all over your face but are so delicious that you don't care. I know more fun things have happened, but I guess none of them spoke to me like Free Macaroon Day did. Now what does that tell us about my personality? I think it tells us I was meant to be a Parisian.

Too. Much. Cheese.

Sometimes I forget that excessive amounts of dairy often make me feel sick. Last night, for example, when Valerie made a gratin with five different kinds of cheese, I probably should have known that eating a portion as big as my FACE was a bad idea. The gratin was nothing like the au gratin potatoes that come from a box (and are orange, for whatever reason) that we have in the US. Don't get me wrong, I love me some boxed orange god-knows-what, but the gratin last night was amazing, despite the fact that we did actually screw it up. Basically it was a bunch of thinly sliced potatoes layered in a huge pan with melted butter, a ton of garlic, and five kinds of cheese--chevre, gorganzola, camombere, and I don't even know what the other ones were. Once everything was nicely spread in the pan Valerie remembered that part where you're supposed to pre-cook the potatoes (uh, oops?). So since we didn't want it to take, you know, four hours for them to cook in the oven, we did something "tres americain!" And by that I mean we dumped the whole lot in a microwave-safe dish and zapped it for...well, probably way too long and we're all going to get cancer, but whatever. Ten minutes in the oven and we had ourselves some fabulous gratin, served with green salad and bread, and a tarte au citron for dessert (it was store-bought, we're not that cool).

But the moral of this story is that today I spent the two hours of my Literature and Cinema class being absolutely convinced that I was going to throw up. I guess five kinds of cheese really is too much. Plus I probably didn't help myself out too much when I opted for cereal and MILK for breakfast either. Ugh. Unfortunately now the thought of cheese is still making me slightly ill, which narrows down my lunch options by about 75%. Can't have cheese sandwiches or cheese paninis or cheesey pasta or cheese pizza or cheese tarts or even bread and cheese. At least not for a few days, anyway.

Aside from my cheese-induced nausea, I have too much homework. Not really. It's just that we go through periods of having almost no work here, so when they finally give us something to do I feel as though I should be shocked and offended. At the moment I'm too queasy to work on my Madame Bovary expose, which is why I'm updating my blog.

Saturday was spent at Fontainebleau, a little town about 40 minutes outside of Paris with a forest, a chateau that was a royal hunting retreat, and a restaurant that looks like a magical dungeon. We spent the morning hiking through the forest, where they apparently have reinactments of the traditional chasse-a-courre with people in tricorned hats on horseback with a pack of bloodhounds and the works. Although they do actually hunt a boar, so maybe that doesn't count as a reinactment...just an inactment? Well anyway the point is they're insane and I love them. Our tree-loving tour grandpa apparently takes place in these hunts as well as all the other crazy costumed things they do there, and you'd be surprised to know how many there are--parades, balls...BALLS! Hello, I'm jealous, I want to wear a gown and do the venetian waltz around the cobblestoned courtyard of a palace where Marie de Medici lived, please.

Anyway, the tree-loving tour grandpa was super enthusiastic (he even told us some tree jokes which probably would've been funny in English; in French they were just funny because they were tree jokes. Tree grandpa also said he would carry me if I had trouble with the paths, but I declined.

After our lunch in a magical dungeon (lunch wasn't great, but the dungeon was fun) we headed over to the chateau de Fontainebleau. We had a tour guide who led us through the rooms with these weird little audio earpiece things. The most entertaining thing (aside from the part where we took a Single Ladies picture in a BALLROOM) was the rooms in which everything (no really, everything) was covered in the same fabric. Walls, carpet, bedspread, chairs and little draperies would all be exactly the same pattern. Even if that pattern was hideous, which it was a little more often than you'd think. I'm pretty sure that would've given me a headache, so I'm fairly glad I don't.

After the tour we met up with tree grandpa again because he wanted to give us a tour of the park and gardens. It ended up being Mwantuali, Madame Stevens, four of my friends and myself. Everyone else saw the ominous looking grey skies (and tree grandpa, possibly) and booked it back to Paris. It was a good tour though, because tree grandpa really knew his stuff. AT one point he said "Now just imagine that you're Marie de Medici--" and I immediately burst out laughing because of my epic La Reine Margot dream. Then we had a fun talk about Things You Get and Things You Are Not Allowed To Do If You Are The King's Mistress. I decided that I would want to be the king's mistress if I could be Diane de Poitiers, but probably not if I had to be someone else. I could live at Chenonceau but come to Fontainebleau to chillax in the garden labyrinth and hunt some boars. Good times.

Saturday night we had dinner at Ellen's and indulged in some SNL celebrity jeopardy. Which is really hard to explain to your host family in French, so take my advice and don't try it. I did, and I failed, and now they think I'm insane.

Ate so much gelato that I got real sick / Shout-out to the pope and my catholics

The subject line of this entry is taken from the theme song (or lyrical ballad, as you please) Leah and I wrote to commemorate our trip to Italy. I will not reproduce the lyrics in full, first of all because their brilliance might make your heads explode, and second because they just aren't as funny when I'm not singing them to the tune of Beyonce's "Single Ladies." And dancing. Which is actually the funniest part.

But, to start from the beginning...

Leah, Ellen, Kristin and I left for our epic Italian adventure last Tuesday. We took the metro, the RER, and then the bus to Beauvais (you know, the airport that is not as serious as CDG or Orly, thus making it the third best Parisian airport. Comforting!). Our flight for Pisa left (sort of) on time and got us there at late o'clock. We walked about 15 minutes to our hotel where we proceeded to get basically no sleep. But there was free breakfast in the morning, and we were able to catch a bus to see the leaning tower. I will admit that it wasn't nearly as leany as I thought it would be, and I actually thought the building next to it was a lot more interesting, but we took the necessary kicking-over-the-tower, holding-up-the-tower, and dancing-to-Single-Ladies (don't judge me) photos in front of it. Then we headed to the train station to hop a train to Venice and, what with our excellent timing, we only had to wait about 10 minutes. It was on this ride that Leah and I, instead of observing the countryside, wrote our traveling song. I'm pretty sure the Italians all around us were sick of our shit by the end of the ride (or rather, fifteen minutes into it), but they never complained. At least not in any language I speak.

We arrived in Venice in the early afternoon, and I'm pretty sure nothing has ever smelled so good to me in my whole life. I've heard Venice smells awful in the summer and, while I have no trouble imagining how unpleasant that must be, in late February it's all salty-fresh and delicious. We boarded a boat bus--way more efficient and just plain AWESOME than I thought it would be--that took us to our hotel, about an hour away on the other side of the city. It was gorgeous and I took crooked pictures of everything (literally) I saw along the way. Venice was something I could never really imagine beforehand, even having seen pictures and heard about it, so being there was kind of like seeing something I never fully believed existed. Like a unicorn...with more gelato. Or a unicorn made of gelato.

Our hotel in Venice was great once we found it. The city will lead you down a miniscule alley way between two buildings only to present you either with a dead end, or several even smaller alleys to choose from, snaking off along buildings that were definitely not built with regard to right angles or any architectural conventions so normal as that. I could have walked in circles for hours and had no idea, but at least it would've been a lovely few hours. We spent the afternoon wandering around canals and bridges, eating gelato and coveting murano glass jewelry and notebooks. We saw Saint Marc's square and heard the church bells, and contemplated the gondola rides (but 80 euro is a bit ridiculous). At one point we ended up in a shop selling beautiful leather-bound notebooks, run by an adorable old woman who had a ball babbling at us in Italian even though we obviously had no idea what she was saying. Kristin bought a notebook and as we were leaving she made us wait, took out four pens (the wooden kind with the metal tips you have to dip in ink), packaged them up all individually and gave them to us. She even took a photo for us and was generally the cutest Italian fairy godmother anyone could ask for. We didn't know how to properly thank her in Italian, so we just smiled really, really wide and hoped she got the message. She probably did, or else thought we were a bunch of crazy people attending some kind of idiot convention in the floating city.

After getting thoroughly lost we ended up having dinner in a little pizzaria near the hotel. Our waiter was this Filipino guy who, I must say, did a superlative job of representing my people. He kept trying to convince us to "go to discotheque!" with him and the cook, who he called "Mr. Olympian, because his muscles are so big from making pizza!" Mr. Olympian apparently had a crush on Leah, and the Filipino apparently just wanted some disco buddies, because he literally asked us every time he came to the table. And by that I mean on every trip to and from the kitchen, whether he was bringing us anything or not. "Yes," he told us, "we go to discotheque weekends! You know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday..." I said, "But it's Wednesday!" And as if that was completely normal and acceptable he said "Of course! Wednesday too!" So if you ever wanted to know what real Venetians do, I can tell you that they go to the discotheque. Every night. Another gem from that conversation was the part where he told us he was Filipino. Obviously I said "Me too!" to which he promptly replied, "Are you sure?" And that was my night in Venice.

The next morning after a breakfast provided by the hotel (consisting of croissant-in-a-bag's, breakfast "cookies" and orange juiceboxes) we headed back to the train station by way of the water bus. We had a slight fiasco in which the woman at the ticket counter informed us that the reason our train wasn't listed was because it was leaving from a different station, and that we wouldn't be able to make it there in time. Luckily she just switched us to the next train leaving from the station we were actually at. Every trip has to have one screw-up, and that was a pretty minor one as far as screw-ups go.

Our hotel in Florence was just 5 minutes from the train station and was in fact an apartment complete with kitchen, balcony and view of the skyline with the Duomo smack in the middle of it. It smelled funny, but we got over it pretty quick. We had lunch at a place Kristin knew which was also really close by--truffle-oil pasta was a good way to start off my Florence experience. Florence as a whole consisted of a lot of walking through cobble-stoned streets, fawning over paper stores (oh, the stationary!) and leather goods, and obviously eating as much gelato as my non-milk-drinking, slightly lactose intolerant body could handle. Luckily Kristin knew all the best gelato places, none of that tacky crap sculpted into the shape of flowers and pumped full of air. My favorite flavor was either cookies or rocotta (which I'm obviously spelling wrong, but whatever), closely followed by peanut butter.

It was also definitely an art overload, not quite (but almost) to the point of Stendhal Syndrome--something that apparently causes people who come to Florence to immediately get overwhelmed by the massive amounts of pretty all over the place, and faint. That would've been fun in a fabulous, melodramatic, period-piece sort of way, but alas.

We went to the Academia on Friday to visit Michelangelo's David. Mostly I remember that his butt was beautiful and I wasn't allowed to take a picture of it, but I'm sure it was also a magnificent work of art. But...the butt! I mean, I've never been one for butts, but (haha, but) you just have to see it to believe it. How many times did I just write butt?

Anyway, we also spent a whole lot of time wandering around the Uffizi, where we saw a ton of Botticelli and Jesus (of him, not by him, obviously), among other things. I swear I appreciate art, I just have a hard time differentiating between the eight hundred and seventy two scenes of Jesus being crucified, washing peoples feet, pulling fish out of who-knows-where, or generally doing Jesus-y things, that I saw in Florence.

We also saw several gorgeous churches, my favorite of which was Santa Croce, where Kristin gave us a fabulous art history lesson (definitely go to Florence with art history people, it'll make you feel very cultured). Then we visited the monestary of Saint Marco where we saw Fra Angelico's fresco of the annunciation (the one where Gabriel has what look like peacock wings) which actually was absolutely beautiful. We saw a ton of tiny monks' rooms with really small windows and really big Jesus frescoes--I think I would've preferred the reverse, but I guess that's why I'm not a monk. Also because I'd just flounce around singing "How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria?" and all the other monks would hate me, but that's irrelevant.

We spent an afternoon in the gardens of the Medici palace (one of them, anyway) where we imitated statues, ran around like the annoying american tourists we were, and took some seriously magnificent jumping-off-of-things pictures. After that (and on several other occasions) we had fun bartering with the leather sellers. They'll tell you they have to get money to buy milk for the bambinos, but we used our super team tactics to get them to lower their prices in time. And by super team tactics what I mean is we stood around and scowled and pointed out everything wrong with the bag until the seller was so annoyed all he really wanted to do was get rid of us. Hey, it's harder than it sounds.

But of everything, I think--actually, I know--that the food was my favorite part. Truffle-oil pasta and pizza, pear and cheese ravioli, spaghetti carbonara (with artichokes!), racotta and spinach ravioli, and sausage that was actually spicy, unlike anything in France. We went to a restaurant on Saturday night which is apparently run by a Hapsburg prince who just really likes to cook. When you come in they give you free champagne and apparatifs (presumably because Hapsburg princes aren't in it for the money). The platter included liver pate, zukini stuffed with something amazing, eggplant, several delicious cheese things, bologna (a fancy kind that people actually want to eat though) and a few mysterious but very tasty vegetables. There was much more, but if I think about it any longer I'll get hungry, and it's a good three hours till dinner time here in Paris.

All in all it was a marvelous vacation, even though come Sunday we all got home (very late) nursing colds. I guess actually getting sleep before having splendid Italian adventures for 15 hours straight every day is probably a good idea, but we didn't think of that at the time. I need a vacation to recuperate from my vacation, but it was definitely worth it.

In other news, Valerie is home from the hospital! I was definitely feeling the lack of crazy French people in my life. Not to say that Edouard isn't crazy enough on his own, but you know. So I'm sick, but life is good.

Ciao bella, until next time.

Vive la greve! Actually, don't.

Hey cyberspace, remember when I used to update like every day? In other words, I apologize for not keeping you up to date on my fabulous Parisian life; I don't really have a good excuse for my slacking other than that I've been very busy watching smart people parades. And by smart people parades, what I mean is la greve (cue dramatic music, as heard in urgent news updates etc.)

Since the beginning of the school year professors all over France have been on greve (strike), because...well, because of a lot of reasons I, not being French, don't understand. What I get out of it is that the government doesn't support research for the sake of research, valueing solid results a little too much and banishing whoever doesn't get enough of said results to teach. Which in itself is a big fat injustice, because teaching is in no way less difficult, necessary or noble than research. Anyway, as the French say, the government fait les betises (does dumb shit), and they've finally had enough. And in France when people have had enough, their first reaction is to manifester. So for several weeks now the professors, students, and pretty much anyone else with a taste for rebellion and nothing better to do has been marching through the streets with signs, chanting, singing, shouting (and disrupting my bus route because apparently Blvd. Montparnasse is the place to greve), and attracting a lot of policemen in full riot gear. I think they're required to put it on whenever anyone is manifesting, even if said manifesters are a bunch of latin and greek specialists from the Sorbonne. The other day Emily and I walked from Reid Hall to my house and the entire route (basically from Boulevard Raspail all the way past Les Gobelins) was lined with grevistes. They had signs which I think were trying to use the word fac (university) in place of fuck. I'm sure someone (from monde anglophone, no doubt) thought it was clever, but I didn't actually get it.

Another thing particular to the French system of greve-ing is that, although a professor might be on greve, that doesn't always stop them from coming to class. When they do come to class, however, they will proceed to teach you not about childhood in literature or whatever their given topic is, but about the greve itself. Judging by the reactions of the students in my Paris III class when the prof walked in on the first day and asked "So have you all been informed about the greve?" it's pretty common occurance, not to mention an annoying one. There are also some professors teaching "alternative classes"--same time, same place, different subject, and somehow even though they're on greve that's okay. Which I totally don't get. I also don't really understand what French students do when, like now, their professors are on greve for more than three weeks into the beginning of the semester. And now it's February vacation. And honestly, the semester's not that long so chances of making it up are fairly slim. Luckily Reid Hall has arranged things (to the best of it's abilities, anyway) so that we can all take most of our classes there.

Speaking of Reid Hall, I watched the most amazing(ly bad), unnecessarily sexual and gratuitously violent film I have EVER seen in my life the other day--La Reine Margot, based on the novel by Dumas which I obviously then had to go and read because it was just too awesomely ridicule to pass it up. I've been reading like crazy lately, which is probably why I've been getting nothing else productive done.

I have, however, been on two walking tours in Paris where I had "les vestiges" of the middle ages pointed out to me by our tour guide/professor Laurent, who is much more comprehensible when he has a time limit and can't blather for hours on end. One of the tours ended on rue Mouffetard right by my house, which was cool. Dumas also mentions rue Mouff in La Reine Margot, proving that it is in fact useful for something other than delicious crepes and wasting all my time on.

What else have I done? Well, I went to Lyon where I rode a huge ferris wheel and pissed off the workers by spinning the cage as fast as possible. We also saw an amazing basilica, some cobble-stoney streets and a huge and magnificent marche on the river banks with everything from fruit and flowers to fish heads. And other things that don't necessarily start with the letter F, but you know, the F ones were the best. Valerie is still in the hospital so this week involved a lot of Molly-cooking-for-herself. Which means I ate nimchows twice, but that wasn't even my idea so I cannot be blamed. We tried to go to the chateau de Vincennes which is apparently really cool, but we watched some really bad movies and were generally idiotic instead.

My life is pretty uneventful, but I'm leaving for Venice and Florence tomorrow, so that's all about to change. Maybe not though, since my objective on this trip is mainly to eat as much as I possibly can. Get ready for myriad horrendous photos and stories of craziness when I get back.

PS - I had the best dream of my LIFE in French the other night--I was Marguerite de Valois (too much Dumas before bed, I know) and Valerie was Catherine de Medicis and she kept trying to get me to call Guise (on my cellphone, because they had those in 1572) so I could seduce him for one of her ambitious political schemes. Just thought I'd share that, since I already told everyone I know in Paris, including Valerie.