Tell Me Your Stories

I've totally got the travel bug again. My last "travel" was my cross-country trip this summer with my cat for my first real, full time job. For now, the closest I'll get to Europe is my desktop background slideshow (which includes several images I've compiled from London, Paris, Stonehenge, etc.) at the office of my "big kid job."

Since I can't go anywhere for a while, I'd love to hear your travel stories. They don't have to be from Europe. Tell me about your trip to the Middle East or to the next city or state over from yours. Anything! Post your stories or links to your stories in comments. I can't wait to hear from you all!

Final Post: Thoughts about My Trip

First, I just have to share this. This is how I was welcomed home around 1am on Thursday, July 15 by my awesome coworkers Kacie, Brett, & Logan:

Kacie made me a sign on her iPad!

Kacie about to hug-tackle me as I exited the terminal. (Pic from Logan's phone.)

Ok. Actual blog now:
I've been back in the United States for about two weeks now, and I've been able to process a few things from my trip.

The most surprising thing to everyone I've spoken with is that, though I didn't mention too much about it in this blog, I no longer want to live in France (or at least not in Paris) because of my experiences there. The general consensus of all the people I've talked to that have been to Paris is "love Paris, hate Parisians". I had the same experience. I'm not counting it out completely yet, but lets just say that my idea of moving to Paris the day after I graduate in May is no longer at the forefront of my mind.
Maybe somewhere in Belgium is the answer.
Or Haiti.
Or some other French-speaking country.
I guess I'll have to go check those out soon. :)

Overall, despite snotty Parisians, I LOVED my experience this summer. I loved meeting people in the Ubaye Valley and becoming close to them. I miss them a ton - especially the people from the equestrian center: Marine, Flo, & François.

I learned a lot about myself during the trip too (especially the later part of the trip) - how I travel and how I learn mostly. I loved having a few things planned out for each day but then just wandering for the rest of the day and going wherever looked interesting. The best place for this was London because it was so easy to get around. I bought an Oyster card for about 3 days of unlimited travel around London and was able to just jump on and off the Tube at will. It was awesome - total freedom! I learned the most (other than when I was learning tons of vocabulary everyday in Barcelonnette) by doing that sort of wandering too. Luckily, a lot of places label historical sites with informational plaques, so there is a lot to be learned by just walking around and reading signs. I also took a self-guided walking tour that included a lot of Harry Potter sites and other historical sites along the way as well. I really got to know a lot of the areas right off the Thames.

Dublin was a good experience, but I don't think I'll spend more than two days there if I go again. It's a fun place to be, but I heard nothing about how amazing Cork is (among several other places) while I was there. I want to check them out if I can go to Ireland again.
(Although, I must say, there's nothing quite like getting toasted first thing in the morning in Dublin because of a tour through Jameson distillery followed by a tour of the Guinness Storehouse then wandering aimlessly for a few hours. Very amusing!)

I think next time I go to France, I will definitely spend more time on the French Riviera. Menton was definitely one of my favorite places from the entire trip, but I think I'll include some time in Villefranche-sur-Mer too. It was probably the most gorgeous place I've ever seen.

A lot of my family has asked me about life in France - given the fact that the US is supposed to be a "free country" and France supposedly is not. I remember making the same observation when my father asked me about my thoughts as we visited France & Belgium when I was 11 - there's no difference in day-to-day life that I experienced or observed. People are people who live their lives according to their culture. The governmental differences don't seem to make life and more or less difficult as compared to the US.

I guess the most important thing that I learned is that despite language issues (in Italy especially) or other setbacks, I can do pretty much anything on my own. This includes navigating both the Metro and the Tube with only one minor slip up (on the Tube), talking my way onto trains when a delay caused me to miss mine, making all my flights on time, arranging all my own transportation and lodging, keeping a budget, not losing my money or passport once during the entire trip, and lugging my giant suitcase (next time I will bring a much smaller one!) up and down about a million flights of stairs.

This trip really was the experience of a lifetime. It's certainly something I'll never forget and something about which I will be telling stories for the rest of my life.

Now...I just have to figure out when I can go back!!!


[PS
To all my readers:
Thanks for reading & for all your comments!!!]

Éirinn go Brách!

[Title also know as "Erin go Bragh!" or "Ireland Forever!"]

Dublin was a pretty cool place, but I didn't get to see as much as I wanted to because of the weather. The day I arrived it rained for the entire day (as it did the last day as well), and Dublin was the one place I went where the only real reliable means of transportation was to walk everywhere. I tried to tough out the rain for a while, but it was way too cold. :( So day 1 I took a long nap after wandering for about an hour, then I found a really cool pub where I ate dinner that had free WiFi!!! Within 10 minutes of sitting down and getting my first Guinness in Ireland, I was approached by a guy playing Pub Golf (which I gathered was just bar hopping in golf clothes) who told me I was the only woman he'd ever seen actually look hot while drinking a Guinness. That made me laugh a lot on the inside. He was pretty nice, and he invited me to come with them. While that would have been fun & rather interesting, I'd already ordered food, so I had to stay put. :(

The next day, since the weather was actually nice, the first thing I did was take the open-top bus tour around Dublin to find out what there actually was to see. It turns out that there are quite a few things to see that I just didn't have time for, but I was at least able to get a brief history of the highlights from the bus - history on things like St. Patrick's Cathedral, the famous Molly Malone, Dublin Castle, Trinity College (and its Book of Kells), and other things like that.

Here is the River Liffey.

St. Patrick's Cathedral.

The real fun came on day 3, however, when I decided to take a spur of the moment tour into the Wicklow Mountains and Glendalough. The mountains around Dublin are gorgeous and really really green!  It was an awesome tour and totally what I was looking for because, honestly, by that point in the trip, I was just really homesick and pretty tired of the tourist stuff.

View of Dublin.

One of the lakes (whose name I've forgotten) in the Wicklow Mountains.

See how brown that water is?

It's actually really clean - just full of minerals. And tasty too, I'm happy to report.

It's actually the water they use to make Guinness, which is why they say "Guinness is good for you" - because of the minerals in the water.

The bridge in the middle-of-nowhere in the Wicklow mountains used in the movie PS I Love You.

 

Guinness Lake - so called because the lake itself looks like a pint of Guinness because the water is so dark it looks black & the sandy beach on the right looks like the head of a pint of Guinness.

This is the view of an old monastery city near Glendalough.

The best day in Dublin itself was the last day (yesterday) despite the rain again. I decided to save all of my alcohol tasting for last. I started my day with a tour of the Old Jameson Distillery at 10am. The tour itself was pretty interesting since we had a tri-lingual tour group, so our tour guide kept switching languages. Most of the group spoke French, so she actually did part of the tour in French (since I understand it and all) until we were joined a few minutes in by a group that spoke only English and German. After that, she switched back to English.

After the tour, we were given our complementary "drop of whiskey" (read: probably a little more than a shot of whiskey) however we wanted it. I had this:

The traditional Irish way to drink whiskey: Whiskey & Cranberry.

It was EXCELLENT, & I'll probably start ordering it in the US.

And our group got a special treat. Since we were a small tour (only 11) and the first one of the day, we all got to do the whiskey tasting for free! (Usually they have to draw names or something.) We compared Irish (Jameson) whiskey with American whiskey (Jack Daniels) with Scottish whiskey (aka just "Scotch" - I guess I'd never really thought about "Scotch" as whiskey before...it was always it's own variety of liquor in my mind). The Irish whiskey was my favorite (they're not kidding when they talk about how smooth it is), but it was followed closely by the Jack Daniels. I really didn't like the Scotch. Bleh! It tasted way too much like earth and smoke for me to enjoy it.

My tasting spot.

And look! I got a little certificate afterward!

After the Old Jameson Distillery, I went to the Guinness Storehouse. The tour was self-led and actually pretty boring after the ingredients part, but the free pint of Guinness was awesome! When you go, you get to drink your pint in the Gravity Bar at the top of the Storehouse. It gives a labeled, 360 degree view of Dublin, plus you get to chat with fun people. I ended up talking to two German business men the entire time I was up there, which was really interesting.

Storehouse gates...well...one set of them.

In the Gravity Bar with my pint!

Admittedly, by this point I was a little intoxicated because it was right around noon, and I'd already had probably about 3 shots of whiskey when it was all said and done plus an entire pint of Guinness on an empty stomach. :-/ I had a good time afterward though. I just walked around more of Dublin (when it wasn't raining too hard), did a little window shopping, and had some lunch at a really good but inexpensive sandwich shop along the way. 

Yesterday evening I packed everything up to prepare for my flights this morning. I was AMAZED at how much stuff I'd accumulated and how much of my clothes that I hadn't worn had managed to get unfolded and unpacked anyway. However, I won the wrestling match with the stuff in my suitcase and managed to get it zipped, locked, and downstairs into the storage area to await the airport shuttle this morning.

I made it to my first flight and through customs with no problems, and now I am waiting out my ridiculously long layover in the Newark Airport.

Almost home!!!

Mind the Gap & Welcome to England!

Paris may still be my number 1 favorite foreign city, but I am IN LOVE with London. It is a very close second on my list of favorite foreign cities, and I kept an eye out for houses for sale or "To Let" in some of my favorite areas just in case I decide I want to go back there to live after I graduate.

Day one in London was spent taking a ridiculously too-expensive taxi from MoMo's house to the train station to ensure that I would make it on time since part of one of the Metro lines I needed to take was out. Then I went through customs both to leave France and to enter the UK in the train station in Paris and got STAMPS for both my exit of France & my entrance to England. I LOVE passport stamps!

I got from there to my hostel without any problems because the hostel is really close to a Tube station that is on a really good line. I could get to almost all the places I wanted to go in just a few stops. I went from my hostel straight to Buckingham Palace to see the Changing of the Guard. It was pretty cool, but I couldn't see the guards actually swap places within the gates in front of the palace because there were way too many people. I did meet two girls from Australia who ended up standing next to me to watch the Changing of the Guard. They were pretty cool, so that was a fun experience.

Processing out.

Processing out.

Afterward in the yard of um...might be the military academy or station or something? I really don't know.

After that I went to the London Eye for my "Flight" and a spectacular view of London. It was pretty cool, but I wish the weather had been a little nicer.

The London Eye.

Big Ben & the houses of Parliament.

The Thames.

My flight was followed by a trek to the London Dungeons (because I got a really awesome deal on a joint ticket for it and the London Eye). It was a really keyed down version of the idea of the 13th Gate in Baton Rouge with actors dressed as scary characters to try to scare you. Most of the actors were just creepy tour guides though that brought us through a scary maze of London's darker history including prisons, the Great Fire of London, the story of Jack the Ripper, and a few other things. That experience was followed by my first "traditional pasty experience" (yum!) & a Tube trip back to my hostel to take a nap.

After my nap, I went out to Waterloo Station to get a train ticket to Salisbury (to see Stonehenge) and went to a fish & chips place recommended to me by the guy behind the desk at the train station. The fish and chips weren't bad, but Louisiana does it way better.

Fish & Chips from Fishotheque near Waterloo Station.

The next day was pretty remarkable as well. I got up and got on my train to Salisbury then bought a bus ticket for a bus with an audio guide through part of Salisbury, Old Sarum (earliest now abandoned & nearly gone settlement of Salisbury), and Stonehenge. I learned a lot about the history of the area, had a few of the myths I'd heard about the origins of Stonehenge debunked, & really enjoyed seeing something I'd always had on my list of places to go. Well worth the trip!

My first double-decker bus ride!

Salisbury.

Trail to Old Sarum.

Ruins of Old Sarum.

The King's privy in Old Sarum.

Stonehenge!

It was bright but YAY STONEHENGE!

Following the finish of the tour, I returned to London to commence my self-guided Harry Potter walking tour that I downloaded off the internet which I ended up having to continue the next morning. I saw several sites that were used in the movies (some of which I got pictures but most of which I did not because I was too worried about trying to navigate through the streets - and remember to look right first rather than left when crossing the streets so I wouldn't get hit by a car), several sites that pertain to the movies/books but aren't actually used or mentioned, and several sites of interest that are just generally famous but have nothing to do with Harry Potter. I think the tour ended up taking me 5-6 hours when it was all said & done, but it was very interesting, well worth the time, and (best of all) FREE! (Free things are great in London because EVERYTHING is expensive there. I went over my daily budget by at least 5 pounds every day that I was there.)

Home of the High Commission of Australia - interior used for Gringott's Bank.

Too bad it's closed to the public. :(

So the actual city of London is guarded by dragons like Gringott's.

Who knew?

Anyone recognize this bridge?

How about now?

It's the Millennium Bridge - the ones the Death Eaters destroyed during the beginning of the 6th film.

One of the Leaky Cauldrons used in filming.

Another Leaky Cauldron.

Street used for the exterior of Diagon Alley.

After finishing my Harry Potter tour, I had another pasty because they are really good and went back to my hostel to pack up & get ready for that night. That night I got to see Henry VIII at The Globe Theatre!!! (Theater nerd bliss!!!!) It was excellent! Great acting! Great show (duh...it's Shakespeare)! Great costumes! Great orchestra (or whatever you want to call it - it was instruments of the period of the play)! I got chills & goosebumps & was generally in awe the entire time. Plus I was a "groundling" - I stood in the Yard (the cheapest ticket but arguably the best), so the actors ran through us several times and I was literally like 2 feet from the stage. It was an incredible experience and has, of course, rekindled my desire to be involved in theater stuff (not that I ever really lost it in the first place).

The Globe Theatre's stage!

In the Yard of The Globe.

In the Yard of The Globe.

I left my hostel at 4am the next morning to catch the bus, transfer to another bus, then take a train to Heathrow Airport for my flight to Dublin. Heathrow is ridiculously far from Central London, which I didn't realize since I came in from Paris directly to St. Pancras/King's Cross Station from Paris. I was able to check in with plenty of time & got to Dublin without a hitch.

Now I'm here, having a pint of Guinness at a bar with free Wifi (leave it to Dublin, right?) and enjoying my stay. But more on that in the next post.

Cheers!

Back in Paris

You know, I thought I'd have less time to post during the actual study abroad part of my trip & more time to post during my free travel part. Guess it's the opposite. Interesting...
Anyway...

We had a very long and interesting train ride from Rome to Paris during which we hardly slept because of the number of stops and how hot it got in our compartment. Once we finally arrived, we took the Metro (stairs & all with our heavy suitcases) to our hostel in the Latin Quarter, checked in, then explored the area a little. I found the library with internet, so I worked on the last post and caught up with my internet life.

After that, we went to the Eiffel Tower - all the way to the top. As is my tradition, the first thing I did was use the bathrooms which are on the very top floor. If the wind is blowing, one can feel the tower sway a tiny bit if in the bathroom. (A weird tradition, I know, but for the record, it was not originally my idea to try this - though I can't remember whose it was.) Unfortunately, it was not remotely windy. Afterward, we looked at all the sites we could recognize from the top, snapped some pictures, and descended to the 2nd floor where we had a snack.

Eiffel Tower!

Photo opp. at the top.

One of the views from the top.

Paris is awesome!

We returned to the hostel a little before it started to get dark. I wandered around for a while, had a crêpe (banana & nutella, of course), & went to be shortly thereafter.

The next day was the Louvre!
I love the Louvre, especially the Sully Wing which houses the Medieval Louvre exhibit & parts of the Ancient Egypt & Ancient Greece exhibits. I accomplished about half of it, including the room in the Denon Wing which houses my favorite painting: La Jeune Martyre by Delaroche. The only problem is that it wasn't there! It was on exposition, so another Delaroche painting hung in it's place. :-(

Pyramid entrance.

Yayayayay!

A shot of the medieval Louvre.

Egypt exhibit!

[Memory blank - I forgot what this is called. Oops.]

Pretty sure these are images of Bast - Egyptian Cat Goddess.

A sculpture I really liked.

I ADORE this piece!

After the Louvre we walked to Notre Dame to try to tour it and climb the towers, but the line was a mile long just to enter the cathedral, so we just walked around it and took pictures then returned to our hostel.

Notre Dame de Paris on a gorgeous day!

I found out that if you stand in the middle of Point Zero in Paris (this site), it ensures your return, so I did! :)

(And here's where I start to get really bad about remembering to take pictures...)
The following day, Mom & I decided after another sleepless, way-too-hot night in party central of the Latin Quarter, that we needed to change to a different hotel in a different area of Paris. That took a good bit of the morning, but afterward we to see l'Arc de Triomph, the Champs Elysees (where we went into a few stores, including what must be the BIGGEST Sephora store EVER), les Invalides (where Napoleon Bonaparte is buried - we just saw the building from a distance), and one of Paris's famous bridges Pont Alexandre III with all the statues.

Later, we went on a River Tour on the Seine and got a completely different view of Paris. The tour ended at the Eiffel Tower at about 20 minutes until 10pm. Since the tower lights up & sparkles for the first time each night at 10pm, we decided to wait around to see it since Mom had never seen it before. It's really pretty.

Our boat for the tour.

Sunset on the Seine.

Approaching the Eiffel Tower at the end of the tour.

Pretty, sparkly, lit up Eiffel Tower!

The next morning we went to Notre Dame and actually got in, but since it was rainy, the towers were closed. :( We had a generally very calm day, but I wasn't feeling well at all. We ended up going back to our hotel so I could sleep, and Mom left to see the Impressionist art collection at Musée D'Orsay.

Mom left to go back to the US the next morning, but I still wasn't feeling well. I ended up staying at our hotel an extra night rather than going to stay with my friend Mohamed so I wouldn't get him and his girlfriend, Fleur, sick.

The next morning I finally made it to Mohamed's, and afterward I returnd to the Louvre to finish looking at all the open galeries. I can now officially say that I've seen every open room in the Louvre!!! (A major accomplishment in my opinion.) After the Louvre, I went back to Mohamed & Fleur's and hung out. We ended up making a trip to the grocery store for taco supplies. (It was fun but really weird to be making tacos in France.) I also had my first Quick Burger (France's version of Burger King) experience on the way back. Mohamed and I were both starving, so we ordered a giant order of these fried emmental (type of French cheese) cheese puff things. SO GOOD!

This was also one of our purcases - Blood Orange Diet Coke.

It's REVOLTING! Pepsi + orange pixie stick is the best description I can give you.

Today was, sadly, my last day in Paris and in France in general. I made the best of it by visiting the Catacombs. They were exceptionally creepy because, really, who even thinks to decorate with human bones and because there was moisture dripping from the ceilling in places, which just added to the effect of the coldness & the darkness.

Tunnel into the catacombs.

Memorial in the catacombs.

Doorway into where the bones were.

"Stop. This here is the empire of death." (Or something to that effect.)

A heart made out of skulls.

Really. Creepy.

Afterward, I wandered around for a while in the area, ate lunch, and windowshopped. I returned to Mohamed & Fleur's to await Mohamed to go to dinner & get drinks while we watched the World Cup. We ended up in the Marais (neighborhood in Paris) at this really great falafel place where I'd already gone with the LSU group. Afterward, we got drinks at a bar near Gare de Lyon then headed back to MoMo's so I could pack.

Turns out MoMo has a pizza place in the Marais. LOL.

Tomorrow my train leaves for London at a little after 8am. I'm excited to go because of all the fun stuff I have planned to do, but I'm really really sad to leave Paris.