Jeremy's visit and Paris

Jeremy came to visit from March 12-20th and it was very nice to see him. The only bad thing was that I still had class during the day, so he was stuck in a strange city all by himself at times. My host mom and I picked him up at the airport (where his flight was an hour late...) on Thursday and I got him all settled into his little hotel/apartment thing. It was a pretty cute little hotel with a little kitchen and balcony. That night we went to Le Wok, a fantastic Chinese restaurant in Montpellier and ate with my friends before heading to Vert Anglais for quiz night. I think Jer was a little tired from all the traveling so we didn't stay out too late his first night. We spent quite a bit of time with my host family... my host mom invited us over for every meal, and we decided that eating for free was better than risking a strange meal at a restaurant. We went to a rugby match with my host dad, Jeremy got to see the Australian bar where I go every Tuesday night, and we also went to the local aquarium. The weather was beautiful the entire time he was here, he really lucked out... we even biked to the beach and got a decent tan. I'd say the biggest event was making cheeseburgers for my host family. I promised my host brothers that when Jeremy came we'd make them cheeseburgers and they didn't forget it. I think they were actually counting down the days until we made them. It was a hit, my host mom bought every condiment ever created, and everyone was pleased, I think. It was a little weird because my host dad and brothers don't really like their meat cooked, so we ended up making a few mostly raw hamburgers for them and then cooked hamburgers for us. All in all, it was so nice to have him visiting, and it was harder to say goodbye when he left Friday morning than it was when I left Minnesota in January.

I'm half way done with my stay here and I know that the time is really going to fly now. I've booked my flight to Athens, Greece for my spring break trip, and I'm going to buy some train tickets to Barcalona soon. It's strange that I can see the end of the trip now, and I'm not looking forward to leaving. Of course I'm looking forward to seeing everyone back home, but I'm going to be a wreck trying to leave my host family. They're really great.



I went to Paris two weekends ago with three other girls and it was a ton of fun. We only had two and a half days to see all of Paris, so we had quite the schedule.
Friday we arrived in the afternoon, checked into the hostel, and mapped out our day. We took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe and paid to climb to the top. It was a great view of the Champs Elysées and the crazy traffic around the Arc. I had yet to see the Tour Eiffel, so when I got to the top of the Arc and turned the corner I was so excited to have a full view of it. We took a lot of pictures and then we were all itching to get to the Tour Eiffel. We walked from the Arc to the Tour Eiffel and it was really cool to get closer and closer to it and watch it get bigger and bigger. They were doing construction on the very top of it, and the lines were crazy long, so we decided not to go up it, but we took quite a few photos before heading out. We headed back to the hostel to change and then made our way over to the Louvre because it's free for students on Friday nights. We saw all of the famous sculptures and of course, the Mona Lisa, and we spent nearly two hours in the museum until we were just too hungry. We tried to go to a restaurant that my friend had recommended, but the wait was over an hour and we were starving. We walked up the street and had some of the most delicious hamburgers ever at a French restaurant. It almost felt like we were back home with big juicy cheeseburgers. We got home around midnight and went to bed almost immediately.

Saturday we visited the national opera house which was stunning in the sunlight. The inside was pretty incredible too. I'm jealous that these older countries have such amazing buildings. Then we headed over to Sacré-Cœur and we fell in love with the Montmatre area. There were tons of little shops and narrow streets and we wandered around for quite awhile buying souvenirs and gifts. Sacré-Cœur itself was pretty impressive, and the view from the steps was really great.

We headed over to Notre Dame which was also neat, unfortunately my camera had died by this point, I'll have to steal some pictures from my friends.

Sunday we went to Starbucks and I had a chai tea with soy milk, and it was quite possibly the best thing ever. I forgot how much I love chai tea, especially with soy milk. It was actually just really nice to sit in very comfy chairs sipping on warm drinks and relaxing a little. Our train left that afternoon to take us back to Montpellier, and I was happy to get home to my own bed again. It's kind of weird that I now associate my host families apartment with my home now, and I love coming "home" to my room, my things, my "family."

I've got sort of a nasty cold now, so I've just been bumming around the apartment lately, hopefully I'll be 100% healthy for my trip to Greece.
Some photos from Paris...
The Arc
La Tour Eiffel
Louvre
Part of the outside of the Opera House

Oh yeah, we went to the Moulin Rouge too... Turns out the streets surrounding it are full of sex shops and strip clubs... it was an interesting walk.

Nice!

The weekend of February 20th I went to Nice with a bunch of girls from my program. It was probably the best weekend I've had so far here in France. We were in a hostel (that provided towels!) and that had four bunk beds. There were some girls at another hostel too, so I think all together we were a group of about 14. We left Montpellier on Friday morning and arrived in the afternoon in Nice. It was a pretty long train ride, but I slept most of the way.

Our first stop was the Roman Orthodox Cathedral in Nice. It was kind of just stuck in the middle of the city, we walked up a road and all the sudden out of the trees there was this beautiful cathedral. A few of us paid 3E to go inside and it was totally worth it. The inside was covered in gold and paintings and lots of color. Also, the ceiling was SO high, all the way to the top of one of the globes. It was one of the cooler things I've seen while here.

Our only real plan after that was to experience Carnival on Saturday night, which we'd heard was insane, so we just wandered around for awhile on Friday and ended up finding a Ferris wheel, and the beach! We also found a little mini cotton candy/popcorn/etc. stand that reminded me of the state fair in Minnesota. Lily and I each got a gaufre (waffle) with nutella and whipped cream and it was DELICIOUS. We enjoyed them while riding the ferris wheel and gawking at the sea. We walked down to the beach after (which was a rock beach, maybe not ideal, but still... a beach!) and just enjoyed the ocean breeze for awhile. It was a beautiful day.

We headed back to the hostel to meet up with our friends who took a later train and got ready for dinner. We ended up finding a cute little Italian place and since we were all starving we just went in and ordered. I got a pizza and it was pretty delicious, I think everyone was pretty satisfied with their meal. We were ready to go out and find the night life. We ended up sitting in some bar where there was some live music, but we didn't stay out too late knowing that Saturday night would probably keep us out pretty late.
Saturday a few people woke up early to go to the contemporary art museum, but I stayed back with two of my friends and got lunch near our hostel. We walked around the town for a little and did some shopping, which is always a good idea in France. I think we all found something we liked and then headed to Monoprix to grab some wine and champagne for the night. We met up with the rest of the girls at the hostel and got ready for the night. I made the mistake of wearing my friends shoes without socks, and realized about 8 blocks into the walk that the shoes were just slightly too big, and I was very quickly forming very painful blisters. Not fun. Oh well though.

The parade that night started around 9 pm, so we got there early enough so that we could have prime standing spots. I guess we chose correctly, because we were RIGHT in the front next to all of the chaos. We all bought masks and were ready for some crazy Nice Carnival. I thought I was ready for the parade, but nothing could have prepared me for this. I thought that having gone to the Eveleth street parade on the 4th of July back home would have prepared me for the silly string, confetti, and crazy floats.... however, this parade make Eveleth look like an ant parade. There were thousands of people, the floats were ALL huge, insane, and slightly frightening, and there was more silly string and confetti than I have ever seen in my entire life. No, seriously, SO MUCH SILLY STRING! We were constantly picking it out of each others hair and masks, until we eventually just gave up. The floats were so intricate, and most of them had moving props or people. There were also a lot of people walking in costumes between the floats. It was truly one of the craziest parades of my life, I'm so glad I had the opportunity to experience it.
This guy in particular reminded me a lot of the Eveleth parade. I have a picture of his thong, too.
After the parade we stayed out for awhile, but most of us were pretty exhausted and eventually headed back to the hostel to call it a night.

The next day we woke up and headed to the Musée Matisse. It ended up being a pretty long, and consistently up hill voyage, but it was a beautiful day again, and the view of the city getting smaller as we got closer to the museum was so worth it. We finally got to the top of the very large hill after about an hour, and we found the museum. It was in this very cute old house that overlooked a garden. There were also orange trees outside, and that made me happy in itself, because orange trees only grow in warm weather. The museum was pretty cool, a lot of interesting art and sculptures, but nothing that I would put on a "must see" list. We headed back towards town and made our way to Vieux Nice to eat lunch. The old part of town was adorable, tons of little shops in very narrow streets... exactly what I expected. The entire town is beautiful though, I love the fact that all the houses are the same shade of color with vibrant shutters. Who even uses shutters anymore? I'm not sure, but I love them. We ate some ravioli at a restaurant and then unfortunately had to book it back to the train station to head home.

It was a very successful weekend, and I would recommend that everyone make it to Nice--specifically Carnival, if they're ever in France.