18 Days

18 days left until I head back on that nine hour flight to the States. I realized that it was only 18 days after visiting my friend Whit in Aix-en-Provence this weekend and getting really homesick for the first time. Being with her reminded me of all the good things going on right now in Madison, all the people I haven't seen for three or more months. However, after counting the days and seeing that surprisingly small number, I refuse to give in any longer to homesickness. I only have 18 days left in France! I still have museums to visit and cafés to test out and neighborhoods to explore. Thanks to my amazingly light courseload, I will be able to accomplish many of those things. I better get started!

Aix-en-Provence

At the beach in Les Calanques

Me and Whittles

The weather is HOT...and then rainy

Sunday and Monday in Paris were HOT. In a way that la Sconita does not enjoy. Thank goodness its now back to 60's and rain :) However, the wandering that I was enjoying over the weekend has been put to an end, to be replaced by museums. After the Orangerie today, where the huge waterlily paintings by Monet are glued to the wall and joined by some rather second rate paintings from a previously private collection I went to the Musée de la vie romantique. As in Romantic writers. And I have to say that it was possibly one of the strangest museums I've ever been to. I think I needed more background information on people like George Sand and Any Scheffer to really enjoy all the paintings OF them, BY them...and their rings and hair clippings. Anyways. Seeing as I was already in the Montmartre neighborhood I headed over to this restaurant I knew by the Abesses metro stop and got a steak juste poêlé before I vanished from being so famished. A step above steak tartare (completely rare), this meat was slightly brown (sauteed I believe) and I ordered it on a very large and dangerous whim. But it was actually pretty decent. Strangely spicy? Anyway I ate most of it and haven't dropped dead yet (which I think most Americans would have done by now).

In a very exciting news update, I'm heading to Aix en Provence in the south of France this weekend to visit my long lost friend Whittles! I also encourage everyone to check out the newest blog on Wisconsin politics...http://thesconz.wordpress.com/

Rue Rambuteau, by the Centre Pompidou, in the heat

Weekend Recap

Friday was mostly nul except for a visit to the Louvre to see the painting I'm writing about for my art history final.

Saturday was much better as it included three of my favorite things- a museum, a park and books. I went first to the Bourdelle Museum, which is not so far at all from Montparnasse. The museum used to be Antoine Bourdelle's atelier (studio) and now lots of his sculptures are kept there. I was a little bit distracted during the visit (meeting the bf's dad for the first time), so I'd like to go back and go through it again. After some lunch I wandered deeper into the 15th, down to Parc George Brassens and the USED BOOK MARKET they have there every weekend. They have hundreds of novels for 1.50 or 2 euros and a lot of antique books as well. Needless to say I got two books and a birthday present for someone, then headed home to enjoy said books. The one I started, Fort comme la mort, by Maupassant is going excellently.

Sunday started with me being very lazy and sleeping till 11:30 (I was tired!) and then heading to the movies to see Good Morning England (very funny, I recommend it). I wandered for a bit and eventually found my way over to Bastille and the cafe I always go to, Chez Oscar.

I started out today by taking the bus to the Jardin des Plantes, the botanical gardens. I had been really excited to see it, but now would say its definitely not one of my favorite parks (although I did see some toads). This is possibly due to the fact that it seems to be field trip season for French elementary schools and there were noisy kids running around everywhere. And it just wasn't as pretty as the Botanical Gardens in Belfast. The one part I really liked however, was the Iris Garden. Then I crossed the river, walked to Sully-Morland and took the metro to rue Sainte-Anne (full of Asian restaurants) and got some Japanese food (which I've been craving for ages. It seems as soon as I eat it, a new craving begins). After eating the most impossibly large bowl of vegetarian Lamen soup I slowly made my way over to the Pompidou Center. I really wanted to see the Kandinsky exhibit, but wasn't in the mood to pay 9 euros for it, so I just went to the Contemporary Art Museum, which I got into for free. Favorites- Chagall and Matisse. Once it moves into squares and lines I'm lost.

Je suis nulle cette semaine

I'm happy to say that this school week has finally come to an end. It was not going so well. For example, yesterday I go to my art history class at the Musée de l'Orangerie. Nope, I didn't get to class because it was at the Musée d'Orsay and I didn't find that out until a few hours later. En tout cas it is over and next Thursday is a holiday, letting me avoid two 3-hour classes!

Not much else to report. I'm off to read my book on the EU, my beautiful new acquisition that is teaching me all about the EU in 2009.

Les trente-six vues de la Tour Eiffel

So at the Gustav Eiffel exposition yesterday I saw these really cool pictures, 36 different views of the Eiffel Tower, done by Henri Riviere. The more I look at them, the more I like them :)

Weekend Review

I have to admit that I have not been the best of bloggers the last week or two. So sorry!

The first weekend in May found me visiting the bf in Rennes again. We took a day trip to the city of Nantes on Sunday, where we visited the castle of the Dukes of Brittany (below) and the nice history museum they have there. Being the first Sunday of the month all the museums were free, so we went to the Beaux Arts museum as well.


This past weekend was pretty busy. On Friday my friends Jenn, Rachael and I had a picnic at the Place des Vosges, followed by some wandering in the Marais, a trip to the Picasso museum and watching Roman Holiday on the big screen at a movie theatre right by the Arc de Triomphe. Saturday and Sunday I spent with my host mom and her family (that's me with the little cousins in the picture and with the family below) at their country house up by the Normandy region. The house is gorgeous with lilacs blooming everywhere at this time of year. As much as I love Paris, I am always happy to go somewhere a little more peaceful and this definitely did the trick. Today I've started to get back into the swing of things, going grocery shopping and doing homework (if anyone has read Le Paysan de Paris and would like to summarize it for me that would be wonderful), but I also visited the Gustav Eiffel exhibit at the Hôtel de Ville. I didn't think the exhibit was very well put together, but there was some interesting information there and some great paintings of the Eiffel Tower by Marc Chagall and Raoul Dufy (two of my favorite painters).


Things on the agenda for this week: an exposition at the Louvre on the museum during WWII and visiting Buttes-Chaumont and Andre Citroen parks (if the weather is good). For now I'm off to do some homework and then watch the news. Ciao :)

(The goat comes from the Picasso museum, where I didn't find many things that I liked. I actually only went because I wanted to give Picasso a chance before I confirmed once and for all that I'm not a fan of his. However, the goat I liked because he reminds me of Chagall.)

Springtime Bums

Paris made me happy once again by taking the time to turn green and flowery while I was on spring break. What was a beautiful city is now a Gorgeous City. And I've started taking pictures of the bums. You can only take so many pictures of buildings before you realize that the people surrounding them are often twice as interesting.

Sunny day at Place des Vosges. The homeless guys were basking in the sun like everyone else in the park. A garbarge collector guy later removed all their empty wine bottles that were laying around.
On the steps of the Bastille Opera where the goth kids also like to hang out. For some reason most of the homeless people have dogs with them at all times. I think its their schtick. And some of the ever present pigeons at a market by the Bastille. I saw a book on pigeons and their place in history the other day. I don't know if it would be more or less interesting than the book I saw on the history of the cat. I love cats, but I once played a pigeon in a ballet...tough choice.

Financial Times Article

Just wanted to share a link to a news article in the Financial Times about why Croatia hasn't joined the EU yet (something I learned about while in Zagreb from a Slovenian lady), the Lisbon Treaty, and the effect of its ratification for Iceland...http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ec13eb60-328d-11de-8116-00144feabdc0.html

Belfast

To be honest, Belfast and I didn't not start out on a good foot. I had booked a hostel for the four nights I was there a few weeks in advance through Lonely Planet. Given that this is a well known series of travel guides, I wasn't expecting any problems. But...I arrive at the hostel to find that it is closed, not open for business, mattresses piled in the windows and curtains in disarray. Luckily it wasn't too late I was able to find another hostel, but still, I was wary.

However, after that things went much more smoothly. Friday morning I went on one of those goofy double decker bus tours all around the city. After lunch I went to explore the Linen Hall Library (Belfast used to be the linen capital of the world, however, like the huge shipbuilding industry they used to have, this no longer exists) and the city center. That night I saw a movie theater on the Queen's University campus (seen above in the rain), about 3 minutes from the hostel I was staying at, so I finally got to see a movie in English, after two months of going without.

The next morning I also had something I'd been missing in France- a big, American style breakfast complete with cheesy eggs, bacon and a bagel. I walked around the university grounds (causing me to miss the UW- actually being back in the anglo-saxon sphere, as opposed to the francosphere, made me quite homesick) and the Botanic Gardens for awhile, happy that the sun was shining, as opposed to the rainy weather on Friday. Walking back up to the city center, shopping seemed to be the thing to do on a Saturday afternoon- it looked like a mall two weeks before the new school year starts. I did some browsing, but with the pound already giving my bank account a workout, refrained from buying.

Sunday was definitely the best day of the three. I took a bus around the County Antrim coastline, seeing some incredibly green countryside and watching the rain fall on the Irish Sea. (I tried to make my pictures do it justice, but am pretty sure that I failed miserably).

Bumming Around

The last few days I've been taking it easy in Paris. Traveling tired me out more than I expected and I needed to be ready for this weekend! Anyways, here are a few photos from my wanderings, and I'll talk to you again on Monday when I get back from Belfast.

Place des Vosges
Sacre Coeur church
Wandering around my neighborhood, with the Eiffel Tower in the background

I return from the land of pizza and gelato

Saturday night I got back to Paris after nine days spent traveling in Italy, Croatia, Slovenia. The bf and I started out in Trieste, Italy and stayed there for two days. Trieste is on the coast of the Adriatic sea, northeast of Venice and about 20 minutes from Slovenia. Its been controlled over the years by a number of peeps, such as the Romans and the Austro-Hungarian empire. My favorite part of the city was the Piazza dell Unita d'Italia (sp?) which opened up onto the sea and was surrounded by cafes and yummy gelato places.

After Trieste we a took a bus to Rijeka, Croatia. We decided to go there because it was the only bus running to Croatia on a Saturday (we didn't have any specific plan of what we were going to do), and it turned out to be a really good decision. Rijeka is a port town on the Golf of Kvarner and it doesn't get many tourists. Mostly it gets businessmen, so all the hotels were really expensive and we had to stay in a hostel- me for the first time. I'm not overly impressed with the hostel as a type of lodging. Lets just say that once I am actually making money I won't be staying in them anymore. However, it sufficed this time for my student budget. We stayed in Riejka for the weekend, but on Easter we took a 20 minute bus ride to the town of Opatija. Opatija has been a well known seaside town since the 18th century, when the rulers of the Austr0-Hungarian empire started going there to take in the sea air. Jack and I cared more about getting a tan, a goal which we successfully accomplished.

The next day we took another bus (2 hours) to the Croatian capital of Zagreb. Their public transportation system consists of buses and trams, so I got to take a tram for the first time. We couldn't figure out if you had to pay for the tram or not because we couldn't see anyone punching their tickets or anything. So for two days we didn't buy tickets, then right before we left I read that it was indeed necessary to buy tickets, at little kiosks around town and that you would get slammed with a heavy fine if you didn't have a stamped ticket. Oops! So we bought tickets for our last tram ride and felt very happy that there didn't seem to have been many controllers out while we were there. While we were there we went to a museum on the history of Zagreb, which was really interesting, but only half the signs were in English so I was glad the entry price was only 2 dollars.

After being informed that there was "no bus to Slovenia, only train" (said with a heavy accent), we took a train to the capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana (loob-lee-ana) and on the way encountered the most ridiculous border crossing I've ever had. Ok, so I haven't had to deal with crossing borders all the much in my life. Nobody cares when you cross the border to Canada, and the EU has handily removed border crossings within the Schengen zone, making my life infinitely easier. However, Croatia isn't in the EU and Slovenia apparently likes making its life even more difficult. So the border crossing- the train stops and we see a guy in the hallway next to our train compartment removing the ceciling panels and looking in them with a flashlight and mirror. We sit there for about 20 minutes before four or five guards reach our compartment of four people. Everyone hands over their passport and is questioned on why and where they are going in Slovenia. The guy with the Serbian passport has his bag searched by one of the guards (he later comments to us that Slovenians think Serbs are criminals) and one of the guards asks Jack in a very scary way why he is laughing after he chuckles quietly at something.

Uck. Finally the scary border police leave and we arrive in Ljubljana, which quickly becomes my favorite place of the trip. Our hostel was right on the river, on a pedestrian street full of cafes and restaurants. The city is a little bit bigger than Madison, and also has a large student population. The atmosphere in the city was also much more relaxed than any of the other places we had visited. It was really a charming city. We visited two museums- the National Art Gallery and a museum on contemporary history (world war one to present).

The only drawback to Ljubljana was that the only bus back to Trieste, where we had to fly home from, was at 6:25 AM. Not my favorite time of day, but we did it and then instead of wasting half the day traveling, we got more time to spend in Trieste. That last night that we were there the sky was absolutely gorgeous. The pictures I have of it looked photoshopped its so unreal.

It was incredibly how many people we encountered while traveling that spoke English. People have said to me before how lucky I am to speak English because it is everywhere, and I always kind of blew that off before, but not anymore. The realization first took place when we were taking the train to the airport, and some foreign guy hadn't bought the right ticket. The controller was trying to make him pay a fine for it- in English. In hostels people from all over Europe would be using English to communicate with each other. I have mixed feelings about this and kind of understand how people could resent English as a dominating force.

Currently I am being a bum as I am on spring break for another week. Today I went to my favorite cafe by Bastille and then to the Place des Vosges to read in the sun. No grand plans until Thursday when I leave to spend the weekend in Belfast.

A Brief Repose

I'll be gone and unable to post for the next nine days, due to VACATION! Yes, I'm taking a vacation from my vacation, and will update you all when I get back! Ciao :)

Touristing

The bf has been visiting this weekend, and will be until we leave for spring break on Thursday. In between numerous coffee and newspaper breaks we've been walking around Paris and seeing a lot of different things. On Saturday we also went with the group from Madison to Versailles.

Visiting Versailles...

Going to the Rodin museum...

And seeing the Mosque of Paris...

Tuesday

Today was Tuesday and I had a bunch of class. But fun things happened too. For example, I took the bus two times and the metro only once! +2 points. At lunch I went to the Franprix (tiny grocery store) across the street from my school to get something to drink with my lunch. Ok, and dessert. And the Franprix is really small and there's always this one woman working the checkout. I know because I go there at least three times a week for my drink and dessert combo. So today I get up to the checkout and the lady sees me and starts laughing! Admittedly I am a bit silz, but no where else can you get a drink and dessert for under 2 euro. So +2 points for making the lady laugh instead of making her cranky and +2 points for getting mini éclair balls dipped covered in chocolate pudding for 1 euro 40 centimes. Then I watched the news to prepare myself for my oral comprehension test next week and was treated to a long section on all the international politicking going on (ie, the G20 summit). +2 points. The French news and the NY Times also told me about French workers detaining their bosses in their offices for like 24 hours to pressure them into keeping workers on through the recession, or at least giving them better severance packages. I have to say that I wouldn't want to be the boss- the news showed like 20 Joes crammed into an office, putting their faces right up by the poor guy's face and not really saying the nicest things. He is not going anywhere- and what happens when lunch rolls around or you need the bathroom? It's happened in three companies so far. I'm not sure which way the points go on this one. However, today was a win.

Walking towards tall things usually produces good results

Today I didn't have any class or any plans (other than picking up the easter package from my mom-thank you!), so I decided to do two things- take the bus and walk towards tall things.

After picking up the package I went to the Viaduc des Arts near my school. This is tall. Its an old viaduc that now has art stores under it and a path with lots of plants and greenery planted above it (like that pretty white fleur). I want to take a longer walk along it someday because I think it goes quite a ways, but I needed lunch.

Then I got on the bus and headed towards Place d'Italie, an area on the left bank that I haven't explored yet. When I get there the tallest thing I see is a mall. For the sake of my bank account and my culture conscience I avoid it and strike off down one of the large avenues leading away from the place until I get to a cute little street called La Butte aux Cailles (a butte, those are tall). And its so cuuute! There were smaller buildings than elsewhere in Paris and it felt like a little town rather than a big city. And then I saw another tall thing and it was a church. So I went there and was the only person in there, which was kind of creepy as emtpy churches tend to be. However, I learned that it served as one of many charitable institutions for the 13th arrondissment during the 19th century, when the neighborhood was one of the poorest in the city. Chouette.

I took the bus half way home, getting off at Sevres-Babylone because I saw a papeterie and I needed to get a card. And I saw a tall thing that turned out to be the Église St-Sulpice! The church was so huge, it felt even bigger than Notre Dame. They're renovating one of the towers so I couldn't quite get the effect of the whole place, but it was great all the same. One of my top five cathedrals fo sho.

After coming home (lamely, on the metro) I read at a café for awhile and gorged on easter candy, then went out to eat more food with my two amigas. We ate grecs, which are basically the French version of gyros. They kind of make my stomach hurt, so I got a vegetarian one, and my stomach still hurts. They're kind of McDonald's quality food, but quite popular.

So that's all I know for now. I'm going to bonbon detox and you keep walking towards tall things.

Sainte-Sulpice and fountain.
Rar! Lion on the foutain.

La Défense

Today, at the request of my host-mom's little nieces, we ate lunch at McDo. Read- Mcdonald's. I've kind of been wanting to eat there because I've heard its different from chez moi. However, Mickey D's was still Mickey D's. The hamburgers tasted the same as the ones I ate when I was five years old (kind of disgustingly delicious). I once read in the Economist that the price of a BigMac was a better indicator of a currency's value than the exchange rate. For example- it would be way more expensive in England than in the US, but somewhere in between these two in the Eurozone. Sadly, I forgot to note the price, so I might have to go back for a McFlurry once it gets a little warmer out.

After lunch we had to drop the girls off at their grandparents house out by La Défense. This area isn't actually in Paris, but it basically still is Paris. There are tons of high rise apartments and even taller office buildings- think downtown Chicago. Even though I wouldn't necessarily want to work or live out there, the sun shining on the reflective sides of all the buildings made the neighborhood look pretty sharp. However, there were no cafes or stores around the huge office buildings, just impenetrable looking towers, which would be pretty depressing on a cloudy day.

Bagels and the Bois de Boulogne

La Sconita ate a lot of food today. And it was all delicious. Really, if I could eat like this every day...well I'd probably weigh a lot more than I do now. But wow, would I be happy.

I started out the morning by going to le marché Edgar Quinet (read farmer's market) and buying some raspberries to munch on as I walked around the Montparnasse cemetery trying to find Baudelaire's grave (I failed, the maps they give you are no good and its creepy walking around a cemetery for too long by yourself).

Next I go to meet a friend by the metro Notre Dame des Champs. We have to go to the Louvre and look at some paintings for our art history papers and decide to eat lunch at some point. This point came sooner than we expected when we walked past a little place selling...brownies and bagels!! Oh gods, they do have bagels in France. I'm never leaving now- the delicious tomato and herb bagel with cream cheese, tomatos and cucumbers has me convinced. Really, really missed the bagel. I ate them what, twice a day, at home? Needless to say, I will be indulging in this delicious lunch option quite often.

So we make it to the Louvre and then back to our respective homes to work on our papers. Thankfully, my host mom provided me a distraction in the form of a journey to the Bois de Boulogne to pick up her two nieces who were there horseback riding. The bois- totally legit. Its a HUGE park/woods on the edge of Paris where one can do pretty much everything you would think of to do in a park- including camping (if only I had my tent). However, she told me not to go there alone and not to go there at night since that is where the prostitutes hang out. Ok, no camping for me in the bois. When we picked up the nieces we had to wait for one to finish her lesson and had some coffee that actually wasn't super, super strong for once. Yay!

And finally, dinner, where we had my newest favorite dessert- raspberries and strawberries. It reminds me of Grandpa sconnie's ice cream smothered with strawberries from his garden :)

Also, a point of pride, I rode the bus for the first time! Buses are somehow much scarier than the metro, but so much more enjoyable to take, and I have vowed to become a busrider by the time I leave this country. Progess reports to follow.

Another thing I love about Paris is that they always put a little explanation on their street signs as to where the name comes from. Personally I think they're really interesting and pretty educational as well. At home once I looked up the history behind all the street names in downtown Madison- equally fascinating (ok or maybe only to me, but still).

Rue Stanislas- first name of Louis 18th given to the neighboring middle school

Rue de l'Armée d'Orient- Street of the Eastern Army- the army in the Balkans during the first World War

Thanks Montmartre.

So the last few days the weather has been crappy and I've kind been of sloth like. Attempting to do something worthwhile every day is tiring. Today, however, it was extremely delicious. A friend and I decided that we hadn't gone out for a really good French meal yet, so we found a restaurant and headed off to the Montmartre neighborhood. Typically, the place was closed, but we found an extremely good alternative called Le Sancerre. I got this dish of shredded duck covered by potatoes and a salad and hot chocolate. YUM.

The Church Saint Jean de Montmartre. Built around 1900, it was scandalous for being built out of reinforced concrete.

Moulin de la Galette

I wander, get tired and recuperate with hot chocolate

After braving the post office (the lines are just as bad as at home) to mail a job application to the States yesterday, I decided I needed an adventure. I started out by going to the Maison de l'Amérique Latine (House of Latin America) where they had an exposition on this writer André Pieyre de Mandiargues who went to Mexico and bummed about with the Mexican literary elite. Then I wandered over to Invalides (see photo), which was built as a hospital for the army and now, among other things, houses Napoleon's tomb. However, since I didn't want to pay 6 dollars and had already seen it in high school, I didn't go in. (All the art history cards I have that let me into museums for free are making me very spoiled- I never want to pay to get into places). However, his tomb is pretty legit. There are like seven layers to it, all made of different materials like wood and stone. Its also below ground level, and when you enter the building theres an opening so that you can see it (while having to bow your head to him, aha). That same neighborhood also houses a bunch of government buildings, like the ministry of defense and the ministry of education and all that fun stuff. Then I saw the Eiffel Tower and knew it wasn't extremely far away, so I walked towards it (tall things, like the tower and church spires, are very useful- you just walk towards them and evertually you get there and get to see something interesting). After about 20 minutes I got there, took some pictures and decided I was tired.

Today after class I was planning on wandering again, this time to a canal that is supposed to be really pretty, but I decided that I was still tired. So me and my Molière biography headed to my favorite cafe by the Place de la Bastille (where the coffee is only 1.20 and a small hot chocolate 2.00- the cheapest by FAR that I have seen in this city) and recuperated with some chocolate. Yum.

Here you go Mom...

Le Weekend

Jack came to visit me in Paris this weekend and it was super super bon. Friday we walked around the area by Montmartre, where he lived for a summer. Later that night I got to meet his friend Mathieu who lives basically across the street from the Georges Pompidou Center(the building in the picture there). Mathieu's gf Jeanne and his coworker Pablo were also there. Pablo was great- he's from Avignon in the south and has an accent that Mathieu mocks endlessly. We also ended up hanging out with this gang on Saturday night, sharing the most terrible music that has come from each of our countries (Americans- the boys bands of the 90's, Frenchies- some catastrophically bad singer named Claude François).

Jack and I also hit up three really good musuems this weekend- much more enjoyable than the tourist death trap known as the Louvre. We went to the Monet musuem by his old house, the Cognacq-Jay Museum (art from the 18th century in France-- my favorite) and the Museum of Jewish Art and History in the Marais neighborhood (where the Jewish community has been established since apparently the 13th century).

However, most importantly, we went to see a MOLIÈRE play!! Yay!! We saw Le Médicin Malgré Lui in a tiny little theatre that was really just a room with a bunch of chairs for the audience and a table and some glasses as props. And it was AWESOME. With Molière (in my humble opinion) its really the words that count. Anyways it was super bootleg and I loved it and I want to go again. The theater is doing like 25 Molière plays right now, about four a day, until the end of March. Also (to my extreme happiness) as me, Jack, Mathieu and Pablo were walking to go get dinner on Saturday night we walked past a huge statue of Molière and the house where he died. Yay Paris!

Me and a statue of Victor Hugo...Jack apparently didn't like Hugo's head so much, but you get the idea.

Molière is the bestest.

BALLET!

Tonight I went to the ballet at the extremely gorgeous Palais Garnier. The ballet was called Le Parc, and it takes place in one day in a French style garden in the 1700's. A man and women meet and fall in love- is basically the theme of the ballet. The choreography was really good with some great funny moments. For example, at one point the women wants the man to back off, but instead of pushing him with her hands, she bops him in the chest with her head! Anyways, pictures are better than words for this one.

Palais Garnier and its ceiling painted by my very favoritest CHAGALL.
A close up of the ceiling-- the eiffel tower!

However, on a very disturbing side note, I saw the most painful tattoo of my life. Some girl had, along the whole upper length of her arm, tattooed Marie-Antoinette saying "Let them eat cake". That is a french major gone bad. (ok and i just hate tattoos).