Jacques Fortier

So this weekend I went to Bruges (in Belgium) with Nicki, Ben, Annemaire, Kendra, Christine, Katie… I think that’s pretty much it. We left inredibly early in the morning on Saturday. I got up at something like 4:45 to make a 6:30 train. I’m still not sure how I managed to do it. We got on a Belgian train in Luxembourg, and as soon as we got across the Belgian border, it filled up with kids, making it impossible to sleep.

One of the first things we did when we got to Bruges was have lunch. We were looking around for a restaurant when I noticed a street vendor who had Bratwurst and waffles. It was a pretty awesome lunch for 3.50 euros. Belgian waffles are incredibly good. Those first ones we had were pretty crummy by Bruges standards (they were reheated instead of made fresh), but they were still really good. I guess what we had were Flemmish waffles, because there are apparently a bunch of different kinds of waffles in Belgium, but anyway, they’re made with a much more bread-like dough than American waffles. Instead of pouring batter into the iron, they would press a wad of dough into the iron. They wouldn’t quite cook it all the way through, so the center would still be just a little gooey. I’m not sure how they get the timing down so well, because all the waffles I had in Belgium had exactly that consistency.

After lunch, we went to the hostel to check in and drop off our bags and then met up with Katie, who had come earlier. Then we went out exploring. We went up the bell-tower in the main square, which had such a bad spiral staircase that they had a rope up the middle to hold onto. The staircase kept on switching between clockwise and counterclockwise as if to keep you from getting into a good rhythm. It also had hundreds of steps. Once we got to the top, it was definitely worth it, because it had an amazing view of Bruges. We also checked out the Church of Our Lady, which was your typical cathedral. Apparently its distinction is that it’s the tallest cathedral made entirely of brick. Bruges is apparently really known for its chocolate and lace (news to me), because there lots of both shops around the city. One chocolate shop had this chocolate fountain set up in front of their shop that looked incredibly mouth-watering. The Belgians definitely know how to eat, because in addition to the amazing waffles, the loads of chocolate, and all the other great food, they had some of the best ice cream I’ve had outside of Italy.

Being in Belgium, we naturally did a lot of beer drinking. On Saturday, we visited a brewery that had a cool tour. They used to be a big brewery, but when health codes made them do things like actually enclosing everything the beer was processed in, they switched to being a micro-brewery and made the old brewery into a museum. After the your, we naturally got to sample their beer, which was pretty good. The funniest part was our waier, who was really friendly, but kind of weird. He spent a lot of time talking to us and trying to hide from his boss, who I don’t think was too happy about all the time he spent at our table. He spent ten minutes telling us how much he hated the French (which is apparently a common sentiment in that part of Belgium). Then he told us all the bars we should go to and suggested a bunch of beers to try. He told to where the bar to meet all the young people was. We were all interested until we found out he meant 16-18 years old.

After the brewery, we headed back to our hostel for dinner. Our hostel had a restaurant downstairs that was apparently pretty good, so we decided to eat there. Most of the people had a Flemmish stew, but I had some amazing spareribs. I haven’t eaten that much meat in quite a while. Ricky, a guy from GTL who we were sort of hanging out with, had met a guy who worked for Let’s Go, so we had dinner with him. It turns out Let’s Go only hires Harvard students, which was news to me. He was a pretty nice guy, so apparently going to Harvard doesn’t get to everyone’s head. After dinner, we headed out to check out some of the bars, but a bunch of us were just incredibly beat from the long train ride, so we ended up turning in early.

On Sunday, we started the day with some of the best waffles I’ve had in my life. They were made fresh right before our eyes, and they were… just amazing. I never knew waffles could be so good. We tried to find the vendor later, but she had disappeared.

After breakfast, we headed to a boat tour of Bruges. Like many other cities, Bruges claims to be the Venice of the north because of its canals. I’m not sure if it’s canals are quite up to that level, but they were pretty cool. I think the highlight of the tour was the “world’s smallest window”, which looked pretty small. After the tour, Ben and I tried to find the place we’d had waffles for breakfast while the girls shopped for souvenirs. We failed, but we ended up finding some pretty good waffles, just not up to the standards of that morning.

For lunch, we found a cafe, where we naturally sampled a whole bunch of Belgian beers. I had Grimbergen, a really good trappist beer recommended by the waiter at the brewery. A bunch of people got different kinds of fruit-flavored beers. I was already pretty sure that the Belgians made the best beer in the world, but that lunch sealed the deal for me. I’m told Grimbergen isn’t anywhere near the best beer the Belgians have, and it was already way better than any beer I’d had before (not that I’ve had that many. We didn’t even bother getting Stella or Leffe because they’re considered so common in Belgium (like Coors or Budweiser), but even those beers are so much better than the junk most Americans drink.

After lunch, we headed to the Basilica of the Precious Blood, which apparently has a piece of cloth with Jesus’s blood on it. You couldn’t actually touch the cloth, but you could touch the thing that held it, if you wanted to wait in line. The church itself was kind of interesting, because the bottom of it was a very typical Romanesque church, while the relic was housed in an upper church that was an incredibly gaudy version of a Romanesque church. Basically, it looked like someone who was trying to go Romanesque, but just couldn’t keep himself from using way too much paint and gold leaf.

After the church, it was pretty much time to head back to Metz, which we did. On the way back, the train was once again filled with kids. We changed trains in Brussels, where we naturally took the opportunity to get Belgian waffles one last time.

Note: Entry backdated because I felt like it.

So this weekend I did a giant tour of southern France. The original plan was to go to Avignon, Arles, Marseille, and Carcasonne, but I couldn’t work it out, so instead I went to Avignon, Arles, Marseille, Nice, and Monaco. Not bad for a four day. Shane and Joel were my partners in crime for the weekend. None of us had a digital camera, so I stole all of these pictures off of the web. If you don’t like that, sue me. (Actually, if you own the pictures please don’t sue!)

We took a night train from Metz to Nimes, arriving sometime between 6 and 7 am. Since we had a while to transfer in Nimes, we went and checked out Nimes’s Roman arena, which was pretty impressive looking. I was pretty tired so I don’t remember much else of Nimes. We were only there for about 40 minutes, because we hopped on to a train to Avignon.

Avignon was really cool. It was a big city, but it had a really relaxed feel to it. I think the feeling was kind of like what the Southern US is supposed to be, but without the road rage and racial tensions of Atlanta. We walked around Avignon’s old city for a while, checking out the city hall, an ancient church, and a bunch of other things I forgot. The church was interesting, because the spire was way shorter than they usually are. I noticed a lot of them the south: church spiries that looked like they’d had 100 ft chopped off the bottom. Next we headed to the Palais des Papes (the palace of the popes), where the Pope lived for around 100 years way back in the day (14th century). The palace actually looked more grim than anything else. We didn’t bother going in because I had heard it isn’t all that great inside. We went next door to Notre Dame des Doms, which was your basic Romanesque cathedral. Apparently there’s a bench there where the Pope would kneel, but I missed it. The coolest thing about the Palace was the Rochers des Doms, which was a park beside the palace that gave you an awesome view of the Rhone river valley, the bridge, and Villeneuve-les-Avignon. The park was right near a bend in the river, and it’s one of the highest points in Avignon, so you could see tons of great views from it.

After checking out the view, we walked down to the city walls, and went along them to the Pont Saint Bénezet, aka le Pont d’Avignon, aka the famous bridge in the nursery rhyme. Since we were still being cheap, we decided not to shell out to walk on the bridge, so instead we walked down to the river, and then walked along the river.

We decided to head across to the river to Villeneuve-les-Avignon, which, in spite of its name (the New City of Avignon), is 700 years old or so. Apparently, even though the French king encouraged the Pope to move to Avignon, he felt it necessary to build a fort on his side of the river to protect himself from the Pope. No, that doesn’t make much sense to me either. While we were waiting for the bus, I had a nice chat with an older woman who had a son working in Canada, although she didn’t know where. So we took the bus across the bridge (but not the bridge) and then hiked up to the Fort St. André, and then back down again.

That was pretty much it for Avignon. Our next stop was the Pont du Gard. We had to take a bus, so we went to the bus depot and were lucky enough to find that the next bus left in five minutes. An hour or so later, we were at the bridge. The bridge was really impressive. I don’t think the massiveness comes through very well in the pictures. It’s apparently the second-tallest surviving Roman structure (after the Colosseum). From up close, it looked incredibly massive. And to think that it was built completely with human power. We walked across the bridge, then went down to the river to get the view from below, waded in the water for a while, watched people diving, skipped some stones, and then headed back across to find out when the next bus came.

The bus was a great story. It turned out the next bus wasn’t for four hours. Oops. So, we took a different bus to the town of Remoulins (don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of either), got some lunch (moussaka), walked around for a while, and then got on a bus back to Avignon. Once we got to Avignon, the next train to Arles was cancelled, so we had to wait for two hours before we could finally get moving again.

On the train to Arles, we met some girls from Quebec who were really nice. I knew they were Quebecoise immediately because they sounded like they were speaking French correctly (as opposed to all the French people who just sounded plain wrong the first month I was here). OK, well, the giant Canadian and Quebec flags on their backpacks were a giveaway too. We chatted about our trips on the way to Arles. It turned out they were taking two weeks to see the region we were seeing in four days. Once we got to Arles, we went our separate ways because they were staying in a hotel and we were staying way the heck out in the HI hostel.

We got to the hostel, then went back downtown to find some dinner. There was a square with a ton of restaurants, including the Cafe la Nuit that we had been warned was super expensive. So we had a great meal at another place that someone in the square told us was the best restaurant in the square. I had some lamb and some fries that I think had been fried in olive oil. More people need to start doing that, because they were delicious. After dinner, we headed back to the hostel and passed out. To think we did all that, and it was only the end of our first night!

Saturday morning, we got up and to check out the sights in Arles. Shane told me that there the girls from Quebes were in the breakfast room. It turned out their hotel had fleas, so they sneaked out and came to the hostel. We chatted for a bit, and then we checked out and headed to the sights. There was a cloister, that was pretty cool but nothing special. Your de rigeur Gothic cathedral. The Roman arenas, which were pretty neat because they’re in pretty good condition. I just stood there for a while and imagined thousand of people in togas screaming as gladiators fought it out down below. Provence just has this feel to it that makes it feel like those times weren’t all that long ago. We went back to the square with the restaurants to have lunch. The waitress was really nice–she was really interested in our travels and I think she loved having the chance to practice her English. A pigeon crapped on my hand and my shorts, which wasn’t quite so nice. We had tartine, which is basically the Provence equivalent of bruschetta, but closer to being a pizza on bread. It was also great stuff. If the people in Provence know how to do one thing, it’s definitely cook. After lunch, we dashed to the train station, ran into the Quebecoises one last time, and then hopped on a train to Marseille.

I think if all we had seen in Marseille was the view from the train station, it would have been worth it. We stepped out of the train station to an amazing view of Notre Dame de la Garde at the top of its hill. The sun shining off the statue at the was an amazing effect. It’s rare to see a building that just seems so well placed.

Anyway, we didn’t have much time in Marseille, so we went to the Quai des Belges to board a boat to the Ile d’If. The island is of course the site of the famous Chateau d’If, where Edmont Dantes was imprisoned in The Count of Monte Cristo. The castle was pretty cool. I thought we were going to get a tour, but it turned out to only be a “commentary” before we went off to see it on our own. The girl who was giving the commentary was pretty funny, and there was a lot of joking back and forth between her and us. Unfortunately, Joel and Shane didn’t understand much French, so they didn’t enjoy that part nearly as much as us. After the commentary, we checked out the castle, which was pretty cool. They had a “cell of Edmond Dantes”, as well as cells used to imprison real people. You could even see some of the scratchings made by prisoners back in the day. And, there was the whole story of the Rhinoceros on the island…

Once we got back to Marseille, we took a bus to see Notre Dame de la Garde. The church looked just as impressive from up close. The upper chapel was naturally incredibly gaudy (we didn’t get to see the lower one because there was a mass). The view of Marseille was great. After seeing the church, we basically just got something to eat and then got on a train to Nice.

Still more to come…

I’ve got a bunch of research to do for ECE 4000. Then I need to put together a 5 minute presentation on my work. I should also be getting a head start on my thermo homework, because it always takes 4-5 hours. Naturally, I’m blogging about my weekend instead.

The weekend started with some poker over at RESAM. I came in second this time, so I got my money back. I almost got knocked out. I was getting bad cards and was getting bored the game and so, as I usually do when I get bored, I started to bluff way too much. With a bit of luck and some discipline I dragged some the depths of my soul, I managed to hold on for second. It’s not that I was worried about the money; it just annoys me when I start playing so crappily. A bunch of French guys were watching us; they’d apparently never seen people playing Holdem before. We started chatting with one of them. He was a pretty cool idea. He’d taken classes in Scotland for a few months, which we think was the reason he said “fucking” so much. OK, pretty crappy story, but whatever.

The astronomical clock in Strasbourg’s cathedral.

On Saturday, I took the train to Strasbourg to meet my aunt Rosemary. I hadn’t seen her in eight years, so it was kind of cool catching up on a lot of the stuff in our lives, but at the same time it was a little bit weird because it felt like we were such strangers. She used to live in Strasbourg, and you could really tell that she loved the city as she gave me a tour. It was neat because she knew a lot of the history of place. Things like “This is the square that used to be packed with people listening to Hitler’s speeches although no one will admit to having attended them anymore” or things she remembered doing with my uncle (who died around a year ago) really made the place come alive.

Temple Neuf in Strasbourg.

Temple Neuf in Metz.

There was a bunch of neat stuff in Strasbourg. Their protestant cathedral is called Temple Neuf, just like Metz’s. They aren’t exactly the same, but they definitely have a lot of similarities, especially (to my eye anyway) the relative lack of ornamentation and the visible brickwork. I think Metz’s Temple Neuf is definitely the better of the two. Waaay better location, and a cooler building too. Strasbourg’s cathedral also has an astronomical clock. The clock is still on the time Strasbourg used before the introduction of standard time, so it’s a half hour off from the rest of the world. Anyway, at the top of the hour (bottom of the real hour) you can watch the clock do all sorts of things. Bells gong, saints go marching, the 4 different stages of man walk around, etc. It apparently shows all sorts of different things, but it was pretty hard to figure most of them out.

Like a lot of churches in the area, their was an inscription in the cathedral honoring the memory of the American GIs who died while liberating the area in WWII. It’s too bad a lot of Americans can’t understand the inscriptions, because you see them everywhere, and they’re pretty moving. I think most towns I’ve seen in this part of France have a street named after the XXth American Corps, the unit that did most of the fighting in this area.

I also learned a bunch about French food, which is definitely one of my weaker points. It turns out that choucroute is sauerkraut (good stuff). Crudités turn out out to be raw vegetables. Rognons, which sounded appealing, turn out to be kidneys. Note to self: Learn more about French food before I eat something truly nasty.

After an afternoon in Strasbourg, I hopped onto the train to Munich. I’m really not sure about this vaunted German efficiency and timeliness. My train was delayed over an hour getting into Munich. I talked to people who had delays on German trains and ended up getting back into Metz a day late. Shane and Kirsten apparently also had delays getting into Munich. At least the DB trains are much nicer than the SNCF ones.

One of the four gates into the old city of Munich.

Now that I’ve gotten to Munich, I can start to show pictures again, because I met up with Kirsten and Shane and so I have pictures from Kirsten again. We were staying at the Wombat hostel, which is an awesome hostel just across the street from the Munich hauptbanhoff (main train station). Since Kirsten and Shane weren’t there when I checked in, I went out and explored the city on my own. I headed along Bayerstrasse to the old city. The first view I got was of the gate shown to the right, except when I saw it it was night out. There were still just as many people there at 10:00 pm as there were when Shane and Kirsten saw it though. I walked around the still-bustling old city and checked out all of the sights. It was pretty cool touring a city at night, because we usually do it during the day. Of course, it also meant I couldn’t go into most of the sights.

King Ludwig II’s bed in Schloss Linderhof.

Outside view in Linderhof.

On Saturday, Shane and Kirsten’s friend Christoph and his fiancée Constanze took us on a highlight tour of Bavaria, which was super awesome because it meant we got to take a car. We started at Schloss Linderhof, one of three castles/palaces built by King Ludwig II. This one was apparently intended to be his private retreat. We walked in the front door for our tour and I thought to myself, “hmmm, that statue of Ludwig looks awfully like Louis XIV”. Turns out it was good old Louis. The entire palace is pretty much a giant temple to Louis XIV. It was incredibly incredibly gaudy (I think the picture of his bed pretty much says it all). You could tell that the staff really loved the place, but it was showing wear in a number of places. I thought it was kind of ironic that we sort of look down on Ludwig for living in the past and yet there we were, tramping through his hundred-plus year-old castles.

After Linderhof, we took a super scenic drive through Austria to Neueschwanstein. The drive was really beautiful and the scenery reminded me of the Canadian Rockies. I was explaining how the Rockies tend to be jammed with German and Japanese tourists and that I thought it was because the Rockies reminded Germans of Bavaria. Just as we were saying it, we passed a bunch of Japanese tourists taking pictures on the side of the rode. Apparently, Japanese tourists are a world-wide stereotype. Between Christoph being a crazy drivier and the windy mountain roads, I almost got carsick. I think if the trip had been five minutes longer it would have been all over. Europeans will apparently make out absolutely anywhere, because we saw a couple who were apparently so overcome by the beauty of a mountain lake (which was pretty beautiful) that they were going at it right at the side of the road.

The best view of Neueschwanstein is from an incredibly scary bridge.

Group shot! Shane, Constanze, Kristoph, me and Kirsten outside Neuswchanstein. Yes, I have my eyes closed again.

So we got to Neueschwanstein, cookies bar barely untossed. That is to say, we got to the base of the mountain Neueschwanstein sits on. The plan was to hike up to a lookout behind the castle, check out the view, hike down into a gorge, and then finally hike back up to the castle in time for our tour (you had to buy tickets for tours at a certain time). I was still feeling queasy, so I almost didn’t do the hike, but I decided to tough it out. I’m glad I did. The picture in the post below is from the halfway point of the hike. When we got to the top, we went and checked out Mary’s bridge, which crosses a really steep gorge. The bridge was scary as all hell. It was small, really crowded, and reminded me way too much of my own mortality. So I admired the view real quickly and then rushed back to solid ground. Next we hiked down to the bottom of the gorge the bridge crossed. There was a really tall waterfall feeding a stream with the clearest water I’ve seen in my life. I figured I wouldn’t have many opportunities to drink from a mountain stream, so we all drank a few handfuls of water. Yep, tasted just like water. Finally, we hiked up to the castle, waited a half hour for our tour time, managed not to kill the obnoxious Americans, and checked the place out. It was pretty neat. The view was awesome and it looked really good inside. It’s crazy to think it was built at the same time as sky-scrapers were starting to go up in New York and Confederation was happening in Canada.

A view of Hohenschwangau, this time without my head in the way.

Two castles was more than enough for one day, so we headed over to Andechs, a monastery cum beer hall. We were so incredibly tired that I actually managed to fall asleep in the middle of a conversation with Shane in the car. We skipped the monastery part and went straight to the beer hall. They had some good German beer and even better pork, both of which were pretty interesting. It’s apparently pretty common in Germany to mix beer with Sprite or Coke. There are rules for which types of beer you mix with which drink. I tried a little bit of a beer and Sprite, which didn’t taste half bad. The pork they had was more like a hunk of pig. It was pretty much part of a leg, roasted with the skin on. You could still see bristles on some parts of the skin. It was some of the tastiest pork I’ve had in a long time. The skin was really good, although I skipped the part with the hair on it.

After the beer hall, Christoph dropped us off at the train station so we could head back into Munich. I ran into some people with Canadian flags on their backpacks, so I grilled them to make sure they were really Canadian. We got back to Munich, walked around the old city a bit more, and then went back to the hostel. Sunday was pretty much just a travel day as we took most of the day to get back to Metz.

Me, with Hohenschwangau in the background. Now, say Hohenschwangau 10 times as fast as possible!

And now, exclusively on jacquestravelogue.blogspot.com, a sneak preview of my trip to Munich. This is me at an overlook on the trail up to Neueschwanstein. The castle in the distance is Hohenschwangau. If you’re wondering why my eyes are closed, you’re supposed to be looking at the scenery, dammit (and this is one of three pictures of me from the trip, so it’s not like there were many options).

So far, all pictures on this site were taken by the multi-talented Kirsten. The witty and engrossing prose is all by me, with the exception of the following quote, which is also from Kirsten: “Castles rock, literally”.

The plan for this weekend: Meet my aunt (who I haven’t seen in over well over 5 years) in Strasbourg, then continue on to Munchen to meet Shane and Kirsten.

Exciting CORA purchase of the day: A euro-wallet. Finally, my 50 euro notes won’t stick out of my wallet announcing “Hey, hey, over here! I have money to steal!”

My southern France trip is coming along slowly. I’ve got one person coming along, and I’m starting to put a plan together. Hopefully I’ll be able to use a lot of the train time on the way to Munich to figure everything out. Right now I’ll definitely be going to Avignon, Marseille, and Aix-en-Provence. I’m still waffling about Nice and Carcasonne… one… both… neither?

This weekend I went to Paris with Shane and Kirsten. Saturday was a crazy day with something like 16 hours of sightseeing. Sunday was more relaxed, but we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do. Oh well. Going armed with a guidebook and ideas for stuff to do and getting a map definitely made it a better weekend than the first one.

We arrived on Friday night. Getting there was a little bit of fun. There was a guy at the ticket office who was a complete asshole. They have this weird automatic system for people waiting in line but the sign aren’t clear about how it works. He came by and basically treated everyone in line like a bunch of children instead of just saying “Yeah, the sign doesn’t say it, but you need to stand behind this line for the system to work”. Anyway, he was a complete asshole to Shane (who speaks a little bit of French, but not enough to always communicate fully) and basically got him thinking there was a strike and then sent him away. So when I got there we went to buy tickets stopping in Nancy. The woman looked at us like we were a bunch of morons and said “The strike was yesterday”. Ahhh, civil servants. Anyway, Friday night was pretty uneventful. We checked into the hotel (which turned out to have a double bed and one single instead of three singles… oh well), got a late dinner, and went to bed.

Van Gogh’s House: The highlight of the trip.

We came around a corner near Sacré Coeur to this view. The weird-looking building straight ahead in the distance is the Centre Pompidou.

Saturday started early. Our hotel was in Montmartre, so we started by walking around the area. We saw Van Gogh’s house, which was pretty unimpressive, especially given that it was more of a flat than a house, it actually belonged to his brother, he only lived there for two years, and all we saw was a plaque on the building. The next stop was the Moulin de la Galette, site of what’s probably Renoir’s most famous painting. I think the area’s changed a lot since then, but being at the site of such a famous painting was pretty cool. We walked through Place du Tertre, ignored all the hawkers, and turned the corner to an awesome view of Paris spread out below us. A block later and we were at Sacre-Coeur, which is a pretty neat church with an awesome view. After a while checking out the view and the church, we took the little train down the hill (just because we could with our metro passes), and walked down through all the tourist traps to the main drag. Kirsten, who absolutely relishes being a tourist, bought herself two Eiffel Tower statues. We walked along the Montmartre main drag (which changes names constantly like all French streets), checked out Place Pigalle and all the sex shops along the way (from the outside, I swear!) and hopped on the Metro.

Marshal Foch’s Tomb

Our first stop was Les Invalides, home to a veteran’s hospital, Napoleon’s tomb, and a bunch of military museums. I actually walked to Les Invalides while waiting for the train at the Gare de Montparnasse last weekend, not realizing that it was such a famous site. I think it was closed then. Anyway, we discovered what an awesome investment our 18 euro museum day pass was, because we skipped the line and went right into Napoleon’s tomb. The tomb was pretty awe-inspiring. There were also a bunch of side chapels for different heroes of the Republic. My favorite was that of Marshal Foch, commander of the Allied armies in World War I. Apparently poppies are a symbol of rememberance for WWI in France as in Canada, because he had a wreath of poppies at the foot of his tomb. It turns out at least some Americans aren’t aware of In Flanders Fields. Anyway, we apparently missed an awesome WWI museum at Les Invalides, but that’s life.

The next stop was the Rodin museum, which is just down the street from Les Invalides. It’s definitely worth a visit, especially if you have a museum pass. It was neat because it had a whole bunch of famous Rodin statues in a garden setting, on the same grounds where he lived when he created many of them. At the Musee d’Orsay they have the plaster moulds used to cast a lot of the bronze statues in the Rodin museum, so it was neat to get to see the statues in both forms. The Thinker, the Gates of Hell, The Burghers of Calais, Balzac, and a whole bunch of other ones were there.

After Rodin, we walked over to the Musée d’Orsay, with a quick pit stop along the way for lunch. On the way, we walked by Hôtel Matignon which is the official residence of the Prime Minister of France. The Musée d’Orsay was cool: tons and tons of impressionist paintings. Once again, the museum pass saved us something like a half hour of waiting in line. I think we spent over 3 hours at the museum. We even ran into some other people from GTL. The only bad thing about the museum was that it was absolutely clogged with Americans.

After Orsay, we did a sort of quick walking tour of downtown Paris. We walked to the Conciergerie (former French court, used as a prison during the Revolution most famously to hold Marie Antoinnette). Then we went next door to the Sainte Chappelle which has the neatest interior of any church I’ve seen so far this summer. After that we walked to Notre Dame and decided not to wait for an hour to get into the towers or 20-30 minutes to get into the church.

Box

The next big stop was the Centre Pampidou, a super cool modern art museum. Unfortunately, the fifth floor was closed, so we didn’t get to see much early 20th century art (like Picasso). The fourth floor had some pretty cool comtemporary stuff. I really liked the sculpture at the entrance called “Box” which looked nothing like a box. There was also a cool room that you looked into with tinted windows that looked different depending on how far and from which angle you looked at it.

The statues weren’t the only ones getting it on.

After Pompidou, we went to a nearby restaurant in the Marais neighbourhood, where I once again discovered that I know almost nothing about food in French. I know the names of the basic meats and some of the vegetables, but beyond that I’m almost completely useless. It’s really strange that I speak French so well but am so hopeless in French restaurants. We spent a while at the restaurant and then hopped onto the metro (for only the second time that day) and went to the Jardin du Luxembourg (the Luxembourg garden). The Luxembourg garden is apparently the place where French people go to enjoy chilling on the lawn, probably because they don’t have lawns of their own. There were some snazzy statues donated by Catherine de Medici, including one that we were told at our GTL seminar was a statue of Zeus watching “two lovers getting it on”. There were chair conveniently placed near the fountain for people who wanted to immitate the statue. It being France, there was naturally a couple getting in on in one of the chairs.

After hanging out in the garden for a bit, we headed off in a whirlwind tour of Paris. We rushed over to the Jardin des Tuileries on the metro, dashed through the gardens to the looted Egyptian Obelisk at Place de la Concorde, looked at the Eiffel Tower in the distance, hopped back onto the metro to the Champ des Mars (which, by the way, looks like an excellent place to have a picnic… nice lush green lawn with a great view of the Eiffel Tower) arriving just in time to see the Eiffel Tower’s hourly sparkling at night. Then we dashed over to another metro station and went to the Arc de Triomphe, trying to get there before 10:30 pm so that we could use our museum passes to climb to the top for free. Unfortunately, we failed, so we ended up just checking out the bottom. After that, we walked along the Champs Elysées, shuddering at the inflated prices at the cafés along the way. We also got to check out their preparations for the 2012 Olympic bids. They’d closed down the Champs and were installing facilities for a mini-Olympics type thing. When we got to the end of the touristy part of the Champs, we got back on the Metro and headed back to Montmartre.

When we got back to Montmartre, we set out along the main drag again to check out the Moulin Rouge at night, try to find a late night crêperie (it was almost 1 AM by this time), and just look at the night-life in general. The Moulin Rouge looked much cooler at night, the only places that were selling crêpes looked really sketchy, and I didn’t see any of the working girls the guidebook claimed we would see. We ended up grabbing pastries from a 24hr Viennoisserie and heading back to our hotel. By that time it was nearly 2 AM, which meant we had been touring around Paris for 17 hours straight.

One of the fountains we didn’t get to see working.

On Sunday, we were originally going to go see Versailles, go back into Paris to check out the catacombs, and then head back to Metz. That was the plan anyway. The first wrinkle was that the Gare de l’Est (from which the train to Metz leaves) doesn’t have luggage lockers. So we had to go to the Gare du Nord to put our luggage away. Then there was a long line to get RER tickets. Then we just barely missed the train to Versailles and had to wait a half hour for the next one. Once we got to Versailles, the lines were super long (the first Sunday of every month is free), so we just went around back to the gardens. They jack up the prices for the gardens on the weekends because they run the fountains, which are supposed to be pretty impressive. We missed the first showing and we couldn’t stay late enough for the second showing, so we ended up walking around the gardens a bit and then chilling near the fake canal Louis XIV created for his village of imported Venetian gondoliers.

That was pretty much everything. The last bit of excitement was Shane getting fined 8 euros for using the Blue discount during the White period on the train back to Metz.

I went to Spain to meet my friend Melissa from Atlanta. We spent two days in San Sebastian. It was fun… mostly. Definitely an adventure.

I ran into Jessica (a French student, even though she has an American name) on the way to the train station. It turns out she’s the first person from Metz (the first Messin) I’ve met at Supélec. I’ll have to see if she’s going to be around for the summer because most of the French students are leaving in a week or two. In fact, I think I hear one of their farewall parties through my window…

I had a bunch of time to kill, so I wandered around Montparnasse. There was a cool looking military history museum, but I was closed. I had my first French crêpes, which were kind of interesting. I think you can get literally anything on your crêpes. The crêperie had much better Sangrias than the ones in Spain…

From Paris, I caught a TGV night train to Irun. The TGV night trains Irun, in a word, suck. The seats don’t even recline, and I’m incapable of sleeping while sitting up. Add to that the loud French people on my car, the dude with the headphones playing way too loud, and the fact that I didn’t know there’s apparently a lightswitch on each car (so I didn’t try to turn the lights off), and I probably got 3 hours of sleep all night. The train ride from Irun to San Sebastian was nice and painless, especially given that there’s some local train bahn.de hasn’t heard of that runs every 20 minutes or so.

When I got to San Sebastian, I found out Melissa had only been able to get a two person hostel room for her and her friend, so we spent two hours trekking around San Sebastian looking for a bed for me. It turns out there was some kind of convention in town, so I ended up paying 120 euros for the last bed in a pretty nice hotel. Ouch. Good thing I worked non-stop for a month before coming to France. The next night we were able to get a triple room at a pensione. If you’re ever in San Sebastián, Pensione Larrea is comfy, clean, comes with bed linens and towels, and the woman who runs it is super duper nice.

San Sebastián is seriously into tapas. Apparently in most other parts of Spain, the bars only have them during certain times of the day. In San Sebastián, they’re pretty much in the bars constantly, and they’re all pretty good. The bars all also have a local white wine called Txacoli (it’s Basque, pronounced chacoli). It’s a little bit fizzy, and it’s apparently essential that it be poured from as high as possible, because all the bartenders did that. Before I learned its name, it was easy to ask for it by just miming a pouring motion from the top of my reach.

So we ended up not doing much of anything, because the weather was pretty crappy (cold and wet) which ruled out the beach. On Saturday, after getting a bunch of tapas and some Txacoli, we hiked up a hill in the town to see and ruined castle and a giant Jesus statue. The view was pretty nice: the ocean on one side, the city nestled between lush green hills and the beach on the other side.

On Sunday, there was a fair representing all the different regions of Spain, with good and fine from each. I sampled the wine of Rioja (a region that apparently includes San Sebastián), which is some seriously good stuff: I brought a bottle back with me. I also got some wine from Extremadura that I wish I’d gotten the name of. Finally, I tried some Manzanilla, which is a kind of Sherry from Andalucia. For some reason it at first gave me the impression of being sweet, even though it was very dry. It was some pretty good stuff too.

I had serious problems with Spanish. I couldn’t stop myself from sayingOui instead of Si. Plus, every time I would search for a word in Spanish, I’d usually come up with an Italian one instead. And, I would always try to pronounce Spanish words in Italian. In spite of that, I could understand a surprising amount of spoken Spanish (like maybe 1 word in 4, but usually those were the key ones), and even more written Spanish.

Getting back to Metz today was an adventure. I needed to get to Hendaye (Hendaia to the Spanish) at 10:30 am. Unfortunately, I got the time of the train wrong (it left at 7:45, not 8:45). So, I hopped onto a train to Irun, hoping I’d figure stuff out from there (no one in the train station in San Sebastián spoke English or French, so I could only do the most simple of communication). The people in Irun did speak French, but they had heavy Spanish accents and there was a jackhammer going full-tilt in the station. So, I ended up getting help from a Brazilian migrant worker of all people, who showed me where to get the Topo, a metro that went from downtown Irun to the train station in Hendaye. Good times.

The TGV back to to Paris was cool. TGVs, in case you were wondering, are fast. It’s hard to realize because the ride is much smoother than with trains like the EuroCity. But when you see how fast you’re passing cars on the highway, it really sinks in.