First few days of life in Cannes

Sorry for the slowdown in posts. Somehow it is harder to find time to sit down and write when we are finally settled in here than it was when we were on the go all the time in our vacation trip. So far, everything has been going very well here. We have spent tons of time laying on the beach and swimming in the Mediterranean (the beach is just about visible from my room) and trying not to topple in this strange heat. But we've kind of been doing more than just beaching. On Saturday we took a group trip out to a villa near Nice, which overlooked the sea. The place was huge, and a demonstration of wealth. We walked through the mansion, checking out all of the different parlors (there was even a room called a Monkey salon, where the lady who owned the place kept her pet chimps) and out into the gardens. This was probably the most spectacular part, as the villa hosted about 4 acres of gardens, split up into 9 different sections representing different areas of the world. There were Spanish gardens, Chinese gardens, Provencal gardens, a beautiful rose garden, etc. In front of it all was a giant set of fountains, which performed a water show in time to the favorite music of the villa's owners.

Yesterday, we took a ferry to a place called Ile St. Marguerite. This was an island that was originally founded as a monastery for a group of nuns, but eventually turned into a sort of fort. The real claim to fame was that the island supposedly housed the famous prisoner The Man in the Iron Mask, who's cell we spent some time in. After having explored the fort, Hayley, our friend Taylor, and I decided to explore the island a bit more. We went to its rocky southern shore and climbed the rocks and watched the sea for a while. After a while, we started to miss our own stretch of sand and came back home to hit the beach.

This morning was a little bit more hectic. While classes have yet to start, this morning we took a placement test, which was what would decide which 3-hour per day grammar class we would start in. The system is designed so that you take this test, get placed in a class appropriate for your level, then each month you get a chance to be re-evaluated and bumped up a level. The test went pretty well for both of us, despite the fact that neither of us studied (as our professor advised us not to). The placement scale looks something like this:

A1  - beginner (lowest)  B1- Low intermediate  C1- University level (For native French people)
A2  - semi- beginner      B2- High intermediate  C2- Expert native French

The test was comprised of three main parts- reading comprehension, grammar/writing, and a short oral exam. When I had finished, the lady  who did my oral exam (who also had by then graded my other work) said that I was kind of hard to place. On the one had, she said that my spoken French was outstanding and that I should be somewhere around C1, which is like intro-university level, but that she thought that my writing could use some work. In the end, she decided to place me in between and put me in the B2 level, which I am happy with. It will be nice to be able to review some of the things I know, but don't know well, and to be able to test up to the C1 level with a bit more confidence. Hayley did much better than she had expected. She thought that the grammar part was especially much easier than she had thought, although the reading comprehension and the oral exam were still a little rough. She thinks that after a week or so of having to speak French all the time, she should be doing much better. She was surprised to be placed in the B1 class, along with some of the other lower-level students who had taken a semester or two more than she had. Our grammar courses start tomorrow at 9 a.m. and we begin our course with our CSB|SJU professor (which meets on Tues/Thurs in the afternoon) which covers French cultural history or something like that.

The food at the college has been pretty good. It is kind of frustrating because on the weekends, you eat brunch at 10 a.m. and dinner at 7 p.m. which is such a frustrating distance to go without eating anything. The French don't snack as much as we do back in the U.S. We've had some really good food and some kinda iffy food. We've had really good stuff like a kind of steak steeped in a really good beefy-sauce (kinda like a much better version of Hamburger Helper), some lamb in a different nummy sauce, really good breakfast stuff with bacon, French omelets, and bread of all sorts. One night, the main dish was Kalamari. It isn't something that Hayley particularly enjoys, and Taylor and I both doubted that we would be able to choke it down, so we went into town and had dinner at this really delicious and incredibly cheap restaurant. Don't worry, though. This isn't likely to become a regular thing whenever fish is on the menu. I've been really good at eating whatever food is available, regardless of how weird it is. I even forced myself to choke down a salad today, even though I have always found them distasteful.

Regretfully, I still don't really have any pictures to put up. We forgot to bring the camera along on our day trips over the weekend and every time we've gone to the beach, we have left it behind. Soon, though, I promise I will put some up on here. If you guys have any questions about how things are going or if I didn't cover something you were curious about, feel free to leave a comment on this post. I know some people who have wanted to do so have been confused about the process, so I'll try to explain it again.

About an inch below this chunk of text, there should be a small thing in gold-ish letters saying "No comments" or "2 comments" or whatever. This is a link. click on it. It should open up a little text box for you to write a message in. Type out what you want to say, choose the "Anonymous" option in the little drop down bar, and then click "post." You may have to do one of those weird word fill in things, but that is all there is to it!

First day in Cannes!

This one will be short and sweet. We arrived in Cannes this morning after a train ride as long and uncomfortable as any plane that I've ever been on. With a little bit of effort, we made it to the College by bus (the bus station names do not correspond to anything nearby) and found out we were the first ones here. After dropping our stuff in our rooms, we caught up with our trip leader/French professor Chuck Villette, who asked us all about our trip. He brought us down to the little campus coffee shop and treated us to some Cokes while we talked about our adventures. We moved on from talking about the trip to the meaning life, the universe, and everything. In the warm sunshine of Cannes, time flew by. It has been really very hot, even now at night, especially compared to the mild Minnesota-like weather we were experiencing up north in Normandy. We didn't do a whole lot today, admittedly. It took a long time for the other students to get here, so we just took our time unpacking. When the group arrived, we went into town to pick up a few things like beach towels and such. Hayley decided to take the least expensive one there, with a picture of some WWE wrestler on the front, much to the amusement of everyone else in our group. We came back for a dinner at our school, which was actually quite good. It was like a breaded ham and cheese yummy thing. We took a quite tour of the campus before calling it a night. I will admit that I didn't take any pictures today, but I promise I will have some for my next post. The campus is really pretty, with palm trees everywhere. Hopefully tomorrow we will have time to relax on the beach, which is visible from my window, more or less. More deets later.

End part of our Pre-Cannes trip!

Final scene of the Bayeux Tapestry

Yesterday ended up being a little more eventful than I had at first imagined. We woke up semi-early in the morning so that we would have time to do some sightseeing in Bayeux before leaving that afteroon. Our train was set to leave at 2:26, but annoyingly enough, the hotel wouldn't let us keep our luggage there while we went and did stuff around the town. So we carried it with us. Bayeux, unlike the other towns we've been to, isn't exactly baggage friendly. It is too small to warrant a metro system, and the buses don't run incredibly frequently. So we walked around all morning/early afternoon bogged down by our heavy backpacks and toting our bags. We felt like a bunch of tourists when we went to see the Bayeux Tapestry, a tapestry of one single chunk of cloth running for 70 feet or so, telling the story of William the Conqueror. The craftsmanship was remarkable, and the audioguides were very helpful at seeing how the story unfolds, but we felt rather conspicuous with our big bags. It didn't help that we also had to tote these up the stairs. After we left the tapestry museum we went to take a look at the town's impressive church, but the doors were closed so we decided to head to the train station a little early.

We got there with no problem at all. Since we were early, Hayley whipped out her new kindle and I tried to find my book in my bags. Unable to find it anywhere, I could only assume that I had left it in our hotel room. Our train was set to depart in about 35 minutes. The walk to the hotel took about 13 minutes one way, so if I went back I would be cutting it close, especially since the reception would be closed and I would have to find somebody at the hotel still working to get me into the room we had already checked out of. I hate leaving things behind. Although Hayley looked a bit exasperated, I decided to run for it. I made it to the hotel in surprising time (I guess I am a better runner than I give myself credit it for) and had my book in hand a couple minutes later. On the way out however, I somehow managed to take a fall. On the way down I wrenched my ankle pretty badly. At first I didn't think it was a big deal, but when I put my weight on it, it smarted pretty badly. Not wanting to miss our train, I started slowly hobbling back. I made it back in time, thankfully, and looked down at my ankle. It was a bit swollen up and hurt to walk on, but I didn't think it was broken or sprained. It feels really stiff today, and I have a wicked nasty bruise, but I'm otherwise fine. I felt like an ass after it happened yesterday, though. The bitter irony of it, however, was that we missed our train anyway. We watched it come right up in our faces, too. The clock on the wall was about 5 minutes off however, and we thought it was the train before ours. A little belatedly, I noticed that the sign on the train said "Rennes." Our destination. By the time I realized what was happening, it was too late. The ship had sailed. I went over to the ticket counter to find out when we could get on another train out to Le Mont St. Michel. Sadly, it wouldn't be for another 3.5 hours, so we were pretty bummed out about that. At least I had my book now to pass the time!

We arrived at the Pontorson train station about an hour after we finally got on the train, both of us starving. We had planned on arriving at this train station and taking a bus over to the village outside of the mountain where we were going to be staying for the night. We got a big of luck here, as we made it about 5 minutes before the last bus for the night left the train station. We found our hotel just a minute later (God gave us the gift of a hotel in plain sight of the bus stop) and dropped our stuff and ran out to dinner. We ate at a nice outdoor restaurant, with decent prices but absolutely amazing food. Hayley ordered what definitely placed in my top ten of all time- Norman cider baked ham. It was incredible. So much so that we ended up coming there for dinner again tonight, ordering the same meal. It was to die for. We also enjoyed a nice crème brûlée,  which somehow, I had never tried before, but really liked.

View from the walk up to Le Mont St. Michel

View from one of MSM's many terraces

So today was one of the most mixed feeling days we have had so far. We were both really excited to see Le Mont St. Michel. For me, it was pretty much the main reason for going to Normandy. For those of you who have never heard of it, MSM is a very incredible place. Essentially, it is a giant abbey perched on top of a mountain, with a village built in around it. What makes it special, however, is the fact that it is only accessible for a certain number of hours per day. MSM is surrounded by water, but when the tide recedes, a land bridge is formed (although made of somewhat treacherous sand) that connects the mainland to this beautiful island mountain. Then, when the tide returns, it rushes back in to form a moving moat around the town. Tons of people have lost their lives during this exchange. What makes it more impressive is that there is almost nothing to see for miles and miles around MSM. It is just a vast stretch of grassland, where sheep were brought to graze. The view from far away was extremely impressive, and walking up to this monument to man's ingenuity was a very humbling experience. What left us a little dismayed, however, was that on the eye level, Le Mont St. Michel is a giant island tourist trap. Hundreds of people were crammed into its small streets, over-priced restaurants, and dozens and dozens of gift shops all selling the same over-priced garbage. It was really sad to see. We bought a pass to see the four museums on the island. Some of them were interesting, such as a tour through the prisons or the house of one of the rich Norman nobles who lived on the island. The others though, were rather strange, and one of them our guide spoke so fast (just to get through the tour faster, I imagine) that neither of us could even tell if he was speaking French or just gobbledy-gook). Not surprisingly, each of the museums ended shamelessly in a tour of one of the gift shops. Hayley pointed out on a few occasions that if you look above the first level of the buildings, the place was actually very beautiful. At beautiful it was. If you looked past the stink of human flesh and the greedy shopkeepers, the place was absolutely stunning. It was quite easy for us to get lost among the winding paths, beautiful gardens, and walls overlooking different parts of the city. 

St. Michael, being a G

We slowly made out way up to the Abbey at the very top of the mountain. It was a climb, no doubt. The line to get in was a bit more than I had expected, but well worth the wait. We got in for free, thanks to our 6-month visa's. The place is absolutely huge. It isn't just a chapel. It is a whole monastery. It is pretty much St. John's condensed into a smaller surface area and put on top of a freakin' mountain. There were dining halls, dormitories, small chapels, a tomb, and the big, impressive church that serves as the focal point for Le Mont St. Michel. I wish I could have taken a decent picture of my own, but for lack of one, I'll put a picture from the interwebs to show you the statute on top of the top tower. It is a golden St. Michael, being a total badass, as is his wont. 




 

Where did the water go?

Outside of the big church is a large courtyard overlooking everything. You can see for miles and miles around, and the streets below looked really rather small. Although we were too late to catch one of the guided tours, we still really enjoyed strolling around (even if it meant not knowing what a lot of the stuff was) and I did overhear one interesting factoid when we finally got up with the end of the earlier tour. About four million people visit this incredible place every year. The shocking thing is that 3/4 of them check out the gift shops, over-priced restaurants, and rather crappy museums and say that that is all there is to this place. Most of them don't make it up to see what makes the sight a true wonder. That just shocked me. But standing on the very top of the tower, looking out over what was now just a vast swath of sand on the horizion (the mountain was surrounded by water when we arrived, but now there was almost nothing left of it to see, except for a few puddles) I was truly glad that we had made it here. It was a great way to end our trip. 

From here, we have some serious trainage to do. It is actually going to be a headache. In the morning, we take a bus from MSM back to the Pontorson train station, take a train to Rennes, then to Paris, switch from one Paris station to another via the metro, take an overnight train from Paris to Toulon (about 9 hours), then take a semi-short train from Toulon to Cannes, where our school is. Then we have to take a taxi or bus or something from the train station to the College, since we are the only ones arriving by train. Bleh. What a headache. On the bright side, we're almost done with our hectic traveling and can enjoy some solid beach time in Cannes. And hopefully some warmer weather. I don't expect that I will have the time nor the internet connection with which to blog until Friday night, so I suppose it is goodbye until then. Sorry for the monster-sized post for today. As I mentioned in my first post, this is as much for me to be able to look back on later to jog my memory as it is for you guys to keep up with us, so I didn't want to leave out anything! I should also be available for skype at some point on Friday night as well, so if you are interested, we can set something up then!

Caen, Bayeux, and the D-Day beaches

Sorry for not posting yesterday. We were both exhausted and faced the daunting prospect of a 4:30 a.m. wakeup, so I deigned not to blog.

One of the battlements of William the Conqueror's castle

Yesterday was spent in the town of Caen, one of the biggest cities in Normandy, and the favorite town of William the Conqueror, who's influence was everywhere. We had no troubles getting to the city, but finding our hotel was a nightmare. The city was laid out very strangely and none of the maps listed the name of the side-street our hotel was on. On top of that, since it was Sunday, both sides of the main street through the city were occupied by a morning market. Wading our way through the crowds with our bags was a chore. Eventually, after stopping at the tourism office to get a map, we found our way to the hotel. The late train departure time combined with our walk around the wrong side of the city kind of robbed us of our time in Caen. By the time we hit the streets to see the sights, it was already 3 p.m. After taking another little train tour (like what we did a few days ago in Rouen, albeit much less interesting/helpful), we made our way into the Abbaye aux Hommes, one of three major Gothic churches in the city. As always, the chapel was beautiful and we enjoyed walking around and enjoying the stained glass and such. The highlight of our day was to be found in William the Conqueror's castle, however. We began by walking around the outer-ramparts, discussing various forms of medieval fortification and siege tactics, which was really fun and took a while. We tried to pretend we were an attacking force, and laid out our plans for attack. We felt rather nerdy, to be sure. We then walked up into the castle proper and onto the upper battlements to see a better view of the city. While there were a lot of interesting buildings and churches to see, we were both a little sad to see how many buildings had been reconstructed post 1944, in much less interesting architecture. The castle had a really interesting museum on Norman history, which we visited. It traced the arrival of the first humanoids in Normandy in the Neolithic period, through the Bronze age (detailing the creation of various tools, jewelery, pottery, etc.), the influence of the Gauls and the Romans, the arrival of Rollo the Viking, etc. It also had a good display of Norman life, which has always been, and still is today, primarily based around agriculture. Sadly, we did not have time to visit Caen's WWII "Peace Museum" which was supposed to be really good. Our train was to leave the next morning very early, so as I mentioned earlier, we decided to call it an early night after a dinner in one of the only open restaurants in the town. Such is the downside to being a tourist in France on a Sunday. Nothing is open.

Inside a Nazi bunker

The cliffs of Point du Hoc, scaled by American troops

So then this morning we took a train to the city of Bayeux, which is known for being the first town liberated from Nazi oppression after D-Day. As you might be able to guess, this town's focus is primarily based on WWII stories. A few months ago, we booked a tour with a company called Viator to tour Les Plages du Débarquement (the French term for the D-Day invasion). Although we were both wary of taking a nine hour guided tour, it is really the only way we could have seen anything of the beaches, as they are not accessible by train and we are too young to rent a car. As it turned out, we were both extremely impressed with the tour today. We got picked up at our hotel by our guide, Julian, and proceeded to pick up the other 3 people who were on our tour. I am not going to attempt to put into this post everything that we talked about today, as I would have to be writing for hours. Julian was extremely knowledgeable. I was shocked by the sheer amount of detailed information that he had on everything related to the invasion. He began the tour by saying that he was going to explain the invasion as if the tour were the invasion itself, and explained much of the logisitics of the war, battle plans, what went wrong, and stories of individuals in each place we visited. There were no questions that he did not have an answer for. The best part was that the tour was not just a glorification of American intervention. There was no "AMERICA, FUCK YEAH!" attitude at any point. We examined the success and failures of various parts of the invasion. For example, we stopped at Utah beach, where American forces salvaged a terrible botched landing and strategical failure and turned it into a total success, while evaluating the utter failure of American forces on the dreaded landing on Omaha beach. It was really rather humbling to see how daunting of a task was put before these young men, most of whom were younger than I am now. Our favorite part of the trip was a visit to a place called Point du Hoc. This was a place where U.S troops were tasked with taking out 6 long distance artillery guns and AA guns. Over the course of a month, over 2000 bombs were dropped on the site, all of which missed the targets (waste of tax dollars, eh?). As the site posed a huge threat to the invasion on Utah beach, a small corps of soldiers were dispatched to take them out in a secret invasion. Of 150 total, only a handful remained alive, although victorious. We saw the remains of a building that the Americans had destroyed in the fighting. It had been a warehouse, storing 88 mm explosives for the artillery. Our soldiers light a match, tossed it in, and ran. The explosion was so violent, it blew a 30 ton chunk of roof about 40 feet away. It was at this site that we got a chance to explore the German bunkers, check out their massive guns, and see the sight of one of the most heroic ventures in military history. Truly incredible. There are tons of other bits of information that we got today that I might make another post soon to discuss, as it was simply astounding. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comments below and I can give you more details.

Oh one thing I forgot to mention above. Our last stop was the American Cemetery near Omaha beach. I cannot begin to describe to you what this stop was like for me. There were 9200+ graves in this site alone. All guys between 18-22. Guys like me. It struck a chord. We walked through the neat rows of white crosses for a while. At one point, I came across something that hit me really hard. I don't know why it did, but I was overcome. It was a cross just like all the others, but instead of a name, rank, and date of death, it read:

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY
A COMRADE IN ARMS

KNOWN BUT TO GOD

I stopped and stared at it for a long time. After everything that I had heard today, and everything that I knew about the events of D-Day, and my own reflections, it just really hit me. I can't really explain it very well, and I'm sure that from your perspective reading this it would be easy to say "Yeah, that happened all the time. It's part of war and it's sad." That is probably what I would have said. But I stood there until Hayley came over to me, gave me a hug, and made me go on.  

The tour was the big part of today. Afterwards, we simply got dinner and came back to the hotel. We were both tired and decided to save our Bayeux sightseeing for tomorrow morning. We leave in the early afternoon towards our last destination, Le Mont Saint-Michel. This is the destination that I have been most looking forward to, so I am very excited to get out there. I don't think I will be writing a post for tomorrow, as most of our day will be spent with just small things (visiting the Bayeux Tapestry) and travel. Thanks for keeping up with us!

Rouen!

This morning we woke up super early to get on the TGV out of Paris. We allotted ourselves plenty of extra time (about 45 minutes more than we thought we would ever need) and were at the Saint Lazare station 14 stops of the metro later, although we had to wait longer than anticipated to get on the metro line, as they apparently don't run as many trains on Saturday mornings as they do during the busy work-week. Go figure. When we got to the TGV station, we struggled to figure out where we were actually supposed to go. The first board that we found that listed the trains and their arrival stations did not list our stop of Rouen Rive-Droit, nor did two others that we looked at. By this point we were starting to get a little nervous and put a little extra skip in our steps, as our departure time was getting ominously close. We stopped and asked a guy at the information desk for help, and he was able to at least point us to the correct half of the 35 different train platforms. In the end, we found our train just as it pulled into the station, composted our tickets, and climbed aboard. The last few experiences I had had with the TGVs indicated that about twenty seconds after you board, the train leaves, so we frantically climbed on. This was a bit different however, as we ended up sitting around for about ten minutes before actually leaving. We couldn't help but note that we could have stopped for some breakfast on the go, after all.

The train ride was about an hour long or so. When we got off the train we realized that we had forgotten to look up how to get from the train station to our hotel. Thankfully, I had made an itinerary where I listed all the addresses. We didn't have a map, so we had to improvise at finding our hotel's street by cross-referencing different metro bus maps, but in the end we found our street. We took Rouen's mini-metro, although we later realized that it was probably unnecessary, as the distance actually wasn't all that far. When we got onto the street for our hotel, we stopped an looked around, unable to figure out where to go to find the place. Hayley suggested that we go down the opposite street to keep looking. I shook my head at our sillyness as I looked up. We were standing almost right under it. This hotel isn't great. No A/C (and it is rather toasty in here) and a weird shower, but I guess you get what you pay for.

The city of Rouen itself was an unexpected surprise. We expected to find a quaint little Norman town with not much but pretty sights. What we found instead was a quaint little Norman town that was the site of Joan of Arc's trial and burning. Quite a number of things in the town actually revolve around the event. We saw the actual spot where she was burned alive for heresy, a giant medieval tower (the remnants of what had once been a small castle), the Joan of Arc museum with a really informative life and death wax scenes, and a church that has been built in her honor. All of the surprise history was really cool and made our trip here much more fun. The town itself was absolutely gorgeous. While Rouen took a heavy beating during bomb runs in WWII, destroying a lot of the historical buildings, many houses still remained that had been constructed between 1400-1700 A.D. It kind of felt like stepping back in time. This was further aided by the cobbled streets and giant golden clocktower (Le Gros Horlage) which were very interesting. We took a little train tour around town to get off of our feet, which gave us a good historical account of all the streets. We also paid a visit to an incredibly beautiful Gothic cathedral, one of a few dozen named Notre-Dame. This was by far the tallest church I have ever seen in my life. They had a few gorgeous stained glass windows, but unfortunately WWII had wreaked a lot of destruction upon the church, blowing out windows and destroying or breaking many of the Biblical statures therein. These events are totally our of order, by the way. I was really dizzy all day and forget which order we did things in xD

In the streets of Rouen, there were tons and tons of food shops and boutiques that were really cute. We stopped a yellow-walled Macaroon shop, where we sampled a few different flavors of the hundred or so they had. At some point we had some delicious ice cream. In the evening, we decided on a nice-looking outdoor restaurant in the center of all of the medieval buildings. We were in no rush, so we decided to wait around until they opened up for dinner. We sat at the table for roughly an hour and a half just talking and enjoying the scenery before they chased us out to set up for dinner. When we came back just a few minutes later, all of the tables were almost completely taken up and we got the last two that I saw. In the typical French style, the staff were in no hurry. The pace of life is a lot slower here, and dinner was an interesting experience for us antsy Americans. We waited for quite some time before we were given a menu, then longer still as we waited for our order to be taken. Our food arrived quickly, however. I ordered a phenomenal Lasagna à la Bolognaise and Hayley got Speghetti a la Napolitien. We finished eating and had to wait around for another half an hour to get our bill. We probably spent about two and a half hours for the dinner experience tonight, but it was well worth it. 

For now, we crash. four or five hours of meager sleep and a day of fun in the sun has us dead on our feet. In the morning we leave for Caen, one of Normandie's largest cities. I have a feeling we are going to leave a little extra-extra early for the train ;) wish us luck! Thanks for all the well-wishes, everyone :D

Last day in Paris!

As we had forecasted yesterday, today was the most footsore day we have had since coming to Paris. I shudder to think of how many miles we have now walked. We started out the day by taking a train out to L'Arc de Triomphe. We walked around the plaza area beneath the arch for a while, checking out the hundreds of names etched into the walls. We then came upon La Tombe du Soldat Inconnu (the tomb of the unknown soldier) where burns a flame in memorial. We bought tickets to go all the way to the top, so we started making our way up the unending flights of spiral stairs. We were dizzy and tired by the time we reached the top, but the view was certainly worth it. Seeing all of the streets converge beneath us was really interesting, and we got a chance to see all of the historical sites from above, as well as formulate our plan of attack for the Champs-Élysées. While we were in the area, we tried to find the street that Grandpa lived on when he lived in Paris but were unable to find it anywhere. My guess is that the street name has changed since he was in the service.

We decided that we would take a good chunk of time to walk down the famous shopping avenue of the Champs-Élysées. Our first stop was in the store for Louis Vuitton to see how the 5% live. We were both blown away. Simple things that you could get at Target for $20 were oftentimes upward of 3500 euro. We even saw Louis Vuitton's infant clothing line, with the least expensive item we saw running about 375 euro. We also visited Lacoste and Tommy Hilfigure's stores, both equally expensive. We took a brief jaunt into Abercrombie and Fitch because they had a giant golden gate and two French guys standing out front pretending to be Americans, inviting us in with a "Hey! Whass goeing on?" They also had a shirtless black man in the front door taking pictures with giddy tourists.

The Louvre was our final destination, but the walk there was a lot longer in reality than it looked when we saw it from above that morning. By the time we got to the famous museum, our feet were already in pain, as the walk took so long. We spent a good part of the afternoon walking around the giant palace-turned-museum. We began by going through the Egyptian wing but later decided to check out the collection of Italian Renaissance art. Due to the crowds, we decided to pass on seeing the Mona Lisa, which from past experience was rather underwhelming anyway.

Because of the sheer enormity of the Louvre and the fact that we will be returning with our study abroad group in just a couple of months, we decided to skip out after two wings. We headed back to our hotel to change before heading out for a night the Eiffel Tower, only to find the small road packed with firetrucks and bustling fire crews. Our hotel was not on fire, thankfully, but a shop in the same building a few doors down had apparently had some gas issues or something. We sat and watched pigeons attacking each other for a while as the finished cleaning up the scene. We both put on our spiffy clothes and headed over to Paris' most iconic attraction.

Thankfully, this late in the evening, the lines were relatively short (during the day, the lines can be as long as 2-3 hours to get up to even the first two levels) and we actually arrived at a very good time. We saw the tower right before it turned on the evening lights, which was a cool change. To enjoy the full experience, we bought our tickets to walk all the way up, rather than take the elevator. It was a lot of work, and we were both huffing and puffing by the time we reached the second level. Sadly, the summit was closed, so we couldn't go all the way to the top, which was actually fine by me because I prefer the open-air second level to the glass and plastic enclosed summit, anyway.  This was my first time being on the Eiffel Tower at night, and it proved to be a fantastic experience. While it certainly is a marvel during the day, the bright city lights make the city glow at night, and therefore the view was even more wonderful. We even had the pleasure of being up top when the tower started sparkling (its worth looking this phenomenon up on youtube, as it is really fantastic). The weather was perfect and the breeze felt wonderful so high up.

However, no trip to Paris would be complete without something romantic and momentous happening. With the city lights glowing all around us, I got down on one knee and asked my wonderful and beautiful best friend if she would be my wife. With tears of joy in her eyes, she said yes, and I slid her engagement ring on. At this point we were met with some applause from people who had been paying attention. Suffice to say, the two of us could not be happier, and Hayley's ring looks gorgeous on her hand. We stayed and enjoyed the view for a while afterwards, but we decided to begin the descent, as tomorrow we will be getting up really early to head to Rouen, the first town in our Normandy part of the trip. On the way back to the hotel, we grabbed some incredibly delicious strawberry-vanilla ice cream.

Hopefully, I will be able to post again tomorrow night, but I'm not sure if our next hotel has wifi, so we will see. Thanks for reading!

Day two of Paris!

In an attempt to ease the pain of the time change, we woke up early this morning. After showering, we made our way to a small Patisserie (bread shop) down the road and grabbed some breakfast. After the first bite, I turned to Hayley and said something along the lines of "Man, it has been two years since I have had bread!" I meant of course, that nothing compares to the wonderful taste of French bread.

The main course for today was a trip to Le Château de Versailles, one of the most important parts of French history. The château, constructed under Louis XIV, is actually not located in Paris. King Louis XIV decided that to get away from the political influences of Paris, and to better control the noble class, it would be best to move the government to Versailles, which is about 25 miles away. When we got off our train, we began the long wait in line for tickets into the château. A man working for the tourism office approached us and asked us if we were students studying in France. When we replied that we were, he asked to see our passports with the visa page. Sadly, I hadn't thought it would be necessary to bring them, and so we lost out on what would have been free admission to the palace. Instead, we payed the full price and began our tour. We walked from room to room of the castle, enjoying the art, but mostly just the splendor of the rooms. Not all of them were in their original condition, but the staff of Versailles have done a wonderful job reconstructing the palace. I especially enjoyed the famous room of the château called the Hall of Mirrors. The chamber is very large, with huge chandeliers, incredibly painted vaulted ceilings, and one wall that is entirely made of mirrors, giving the room the effect of being twice as large as it actually is. It was incredible to stand in the room where the Treaty of Versailles was signed, ending the first World War.

Although we both enjoyed our long walk through the palace, in the end it could not compare to our walk through the gardens. Being so far away from any cities, the backyard of the palace is incredible. One of the first things you see as you walk around the chateux is the Grand Canal, a giant man-made lake. It is surrounded by acres and acres of gardens from simple flower arrangements to giant hedge mazes with ornate fountains spread throughout. Hayley was especially impressed by the marble sculptures throughout the gardens. There was a quaint little ice-cream shop in one part of the gardens, which provided us with a delicious treat. We laid out on the lawn in front of the Grand Canal for a while, loathe to leave, but the badgering in our stomachs reminded us that we had already spent most of the day at Versailles, as it was almost 5 p.m. We made our way back to the train station with sore feet.

When we got back into Paris, we decided that our evening would be best served by taking a trip to the Latin Quarter, the home of Paris's prestigious university La Sorbonne, as well as some of the most beautiful buildings in the city. Our first stop was Notre Dame de Paris, the iconic gothic church that was the focus of Victor Hugo's famous novel of the same name, as well as its Disney adaption "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame." We toured the chapel (like last night in Sacre Coeur, we managed to make it when mass was in session) and got to see the giant stained glass windows that make the church famous. Sadly, because it was so late in the day, much of the church was closed, so we were unable to get to see the displays of the Stations of the Cross, which was one of my favorite parts of my last trip to Paris. We walked around the outside of Notre Dame to see the back side, which is a prime example of Gothic architecture. For some reason, the front side of the church is recognizable by most, but the back side is a complete mystery. We sat in a park staring at the towering spires until some noise in the park caught our attention. A group of young guys were playing Petanque, which is a game somewhat similar to Bocce Ball, so we decided to watch until a two policeman came over and told them that they had to move to a different park down the road.

When we left the grounds of Notre Dame a few minutes later, we came across a memorial to La Deportation, which was where thousands of Jews and Jew sympathizers were exiled from Paris or killed outright during the German occupation in WWII. We paid our respects and started meandering down the streets of Paris towards the Luxembourg gardens. We only had a vague idea of where we were supposed to be going or how to get there. People always say that Paris is best discovered by walking around, and this was certainly one of those times where we got to see more by getting lost than going where we intended. We caught glimpses of the Eiffel tower here and there as we wound are way through the streets. While we had a destination in mind, we were also frantically searching for a somewhat inexpensive place to have dinner (although it was delicious, last night's dinner cost us roughly 50 euro) that sounded appetizing. I told Hayley about a delicious French specialty called a Gallette, which we decided we were going to try to find.

During our search, we ran across the Pantheon. This Romanesque building kind of sprang up on us, and we stopped to check it out. Sadly, we were unable to figure out what purpose it serves today. We continued on and eventually found the Luxembourg palace and gardens. While it no longer serves its function as a chateau, the Luxembourg palace today serves as the seat for the French legislature, and its well manicured gardens were well worth a visit. We were distracted, however, by a group of young people trying to film some sort of movie or something. Two women who we at first thought to be prostitutes and two sleezly looking guys were taking many shots of the same scene until the park police came over and yelled at them. Soon after, we decided to leave, laughing to ourselves. We walked for several more city blocks before we came across a place that served the type of food we were looking for. Although we had been looking for hours, the wait was well worth it. The food was delicious and we left with full bellies. To the left you can see a picture of me eating a Galette, which is kind of like a thinly sliced pancake-esque breakfast burrito kind of thing. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel, as it was already night and we were incredibly tired.

Tomorrow we plan to do all of the major sites that we haven't already visited, as it will be our first day of really having the whole day in Paris to explore. Hayley and I joked around today about how we wish we had purchased pedometers before we came to France, as we have probably put on at least 7 or 8 miles today.

In terms of the blog, I changed some of the settings around so that you no longer have to make a blogger account in order to post. All you have to do is scroll to the bottom of the post, click the thing that says either "no comments" or "x comments", and say hello. Much love to everyone back home!

P.s. sorry but no pictures for now. For some reason, they are being finnicky when I try to put them on the computer, but I will try to get them up there soon!

Intro and Day 1 of Paris

 Hello all!

So I guess I'll start by explaining what this blog is for. I am studying abroad this semester in Cannes, France at the College International de Cannes. I decided to write this blog for the dual purpose of keeping family and friends up to date with the goings-ons of life abroad, but also because, after having already completed two trips to France, I find myself looking back on hazy details that I wish I had taken more time to preserve. Hence, I am going to try to post as much of the cool stuff that I am doing. Hayley and I decided to leave for our study abroad trip a little early to have time to travel before classes start on the 27th, so I will also be doing my best to detail our mini vacation.

Day one!

We left Georgia (where I had been spending some quality time at the Van Gelder's new house) towards Dallas yesterday morning. After a five or so hour layover, we were on our way to France! The flight was actually rather underwhelming compared to my last couple trips, and both Hayley and I were unimpressed. We got remarkably little sleep on the plane (maybe two or three hours, optimistically) and arrived in Paris with some serious jet-lag. We worked our way to the SNCF (France's train company) station to take the trek to Paris, which took a bit longer than anticipated due to some accidental backtracking. By the time we made it to our hotel, it was already roughly 1 p.m. We decided to get cleaned up after our long flight, and Hayley commemorated our arrival to Paris by frying her hair-dryer and taking out the electricity in our hotel room. It was a great start.

Since it was already semi-late in the afternoon, I thought that it might be a good time to go visit Montmatre. This has always been my favorite part of visiting Paris, and it makes a good stand alone trip, as it is really not conveniently near any other major attractions. The chapel is gorgeous and the town is really rather charming. It was a long trek up the small mountain, bringing us to the highest point in Paris. Although we were winded from the ascent, the view was well worth the climb. We also got a chance to go into the chapel while a mass was in session, which was a very cool experience, although we were unable to take any pictures because of it. Afterwards,we took a tour through a museum detailing the history of the town, which has a rather interesting relationship with the arts, having been home to a number of famous artists, writers, and performers. The famous Moulin Rouge and Le Chat Noir are found in this little town. We would have stayed longer, but Hayley began to start feeling sick from a combination of lack of sleep and not having eaten anything all day. We decided that it would be best for us to find a place to get some food and head back to the hotel, since it was starting to get late.

We found a nice bistro in the Montmatre area and sat down. I had a delicious meal of Cannard Marget (duck with a delicious sauce made of molten happiness) and Hayley had the special house fish, although we were never really sure what kind it was. The food was delicious, and we both enjoyed a nice glass of Chardonnay and fresh bread.

Today was our semi-short day in terms of activities and we are certainly going to have a lot more going on tomorrow. Fortunately, tomorrow is supposed to be wonderful weather, unlike the off-and-on rain we had today. So far, though, the trip is going well and Hayley and I are having a blast. Very excited to write about our adventures tomorrow!