Beautiful Barcelona

As my semester in France neared its end, a brief window of free time appeared. Right after my program ended, and right before I met up with my parents, I discovered I had a couple free days. And since my friends were planning on meeting up in the wonderful city of Barcelona I decided, on a whim, to join them. Of course, this whim was granted thanks to some great deals-- not only was my favorite hostel chain having a huge winter sale, the plane ticket was also very cheap.

So, with the stars aligned, my friend and I hopped on a plane and flew to Spain! Getting there was easy, not only was the plane ride a short one, but there were no customs to go through.

We took a bus from the airport and jumped off on the first stop to see this 'magic fountain' my friend had heard about.

These heavy-grained, high ISO pictures do little to capture the feel of the square at night. More than that, they're lacking the feel-- the 'I just landed in a foreign city I never even dreamed of visiting and look how cool it is'.

After a good deal of searching and walking, we finally found our hostel, threw our stuff down, and headed out to find dinner. After more searching and walking we ended up circling back to the first restaurant we saw, a Japanese restaurant. I know what you're thinking-- you're in Spain and eating Japanese food?? In my defense, I had just spent 3 1/2 months in a town that, while nice, lacked the Asian food options I was used to. The restaurant in Spain served delicious fried sea food rice for a good price.

The next morning we went on a free walking tour of Barcelona-- a guide met us at our hostel and then took us to the meeting point. The tour was 2ish hours long and amazing. Not only was our tour guide passionate about his job, but the city itself was covered in layers of history, stories that I would have never known about had we not taken the tour.

The tour was free, and at the end you tipped the guide whatever you felt like-- it was definitely worth it, and a cool way to see the city, given that I didn't have much time there.

The next day we headed out to see one of Barcelona's biggest attractions-- Sagrada Familia, a massive, impressively strange cathedral. Designed by Gaudi, our guide told us that it was originally designed to be a lot taller but looking at its ginormous shape that seems neigh impossible.

This picture doesn't even come close to depicting this bizarre cathedral. Gaudi thought straight lines were too man made and wanted his cathedral to have a more organic feel to it. You could stare at the front for an hour and still pick out new details, hidden in the many facets. The cathedral was undergoing heavy construction so we couldn't see all of the outside. The line to get in looked hours long so sadly we just walked around the cathedral.

After the cathedral we hopped on the metro and went to an overlook park area.

After getting off the metro we still had a huge climb ahead of us. Luckily, the lovely city of Barcelona had installed escalators for part of the trek up the hill.

The climb was well worth it-- the overlook gave impressive panoramic views on the city.

This is the Sagrada Familia-- from this distance you can see just how huge the cathedral is, and how much construction work is going on.

There was a cool mosaic area that you had to pay to go in, so we just hung out on the outside and snapped some pictures.

After 3 1/2 months of seeing nothing but pigeons, it was cool to spot these little critters in the trees.

We spent the rest of the day just walking around, enjoying the city.

This was a delicious coffee drink my friend has us all try. It's condensed milk at the bottom, with a shot of espresso on top. Mix them together and you have a tasty drink.

After two days, my quick trip was over, and I jumped on a plane to meet my parents in the south of France.

Thanks for reading!

Le Fête des Lumières

A couple of weeks ago, I headed to Lyon with a group from my school to see the Le Fête des Lumières-- the festival of lights.

Of course, anytime anyone said 'festival of lights' I'd break out in Adam Sandler's Hanukkah song. Hanukkah iss.....a festival of lights....

 Anyway! The festival of lights in Lyon has nothing to do with the Jewish holiday. Rather, it's a really cool weekend where they set up fabulous light shows that play on buildings strewed throughout Lyon, France's third largest city. 

We started off in the main square in downtown Lyon-- they projected a cute animated movie on the Ferris wheel, complete with lights and fireworks.

I was told that Lyon saw 4 million extra tourists just during the festival of lights weekend and I believe that. There was an unbelievable amount of people at the festival. Everyone was wearing black and it was incredibly hard to keep up with people-- at some points we had to hold hands like kids in order to not lose each other in the crowd.

The streets of Lyon aren't terribly big to begin with, but the flux of people stretched from building to building in some parts-- pushing you shoulder to shoulder with the next person.

Not all of the shows were as grand as the first one. Some were more modest, just lights, no images for example.

It was rather cold so we all grabbed a cup of my new favorite drink-- vin chaud. Literally, hot wine, though it translates to mulled wine. I never knew what mulled wine was, but I love vin chaud. It's delicious, sweet, and it warms you up quickly on cold nights.

As the night wore on we started to nervously glance at our watches. Our school was taking us back in a bus-- if we missed the bus, it'd be too late to catch the last train home. The massive crowds made getting anywhere take five times longer than normal.

We had heard that the city hall put on the best light show so we tried to head in that direction to see if we could see it quickly enough to get back to our meeting spot on time. We literally got stuck in a street, surrounded on all sides by a huge crowd of people. The mass of bodies had the added benefit of warding off the cold so it wasn't as cold as it had been the whole night.

We couldn't move forward, we couldn't move backwards, and we weren't sure where we were even going. Every couple of minutes the crowd would inch forward a foot or so and then abruptly stop. Time was marching forward without us and we worried that we wouldn't be able to get out of the crowd with enough time to get to our meeting point.

One of the chicks who lived in the apartments lining the street we were stuck on looked out at the huge crowd of people stuck in the street and decided to spice it up. Opening her window she started blaring some upbeat French song that everyone knew the words to. We all started cheering; it made the wait more tolerable as the crowd turned into a small dance party-- even if there wasn't enough free space to do anything but kind of sway back and forth.

Eventually we reached the end of the street and saw that we were right at city hall in time for the light show. It was, by far, the best light show in the entire city. It spanned two grand buildings and was intricately beautiful.

After the light show ended, we linked hands, put my fastest friend in the front, and set about running our way through the dense crowd to get the our meeting point in time to catch the bus. My friend was amazing at finding the little spaces between people and had us through the seemingly impenetrable crowd in no time at all. Not only did we catch the bus, we also had time to grab some churros.

Stay tuned for more posts coming soon! We've been longing around the house so I've had time to sort and edit my photos and write those blog posts I'd been putting off for weeks.

Thanks for reading!

Gorgeous Annecy

Another post? So soon?

How is this possible? I've been, for no particular reason, putting off writing about all my adventures here, which leaves me with ton a pictures and stories I want to tell before I forget.

A couple weekends ago there was a holiday in France so we had a three-day weekend. On Monday Michelle and I got on a train headed to Annecy, a town an hour or two away from St. Etienne, nestled in the mountains near the Swiss border.

The ride to Annecy was in and of itself jaw-dropping. We curved around looming mountains, passing by small villages.

When we finally arrived in Annecy, it was bracingly cold as we followed the signs to get to the main attraction-- a huge lake surrounding by mountains.

You can't really see the lake in this picture.....but it's there!

It would've been cool to be here in the summer-- the water was crystal clear and a beautiful blue. However, the cooler weather meant a less crowds in this gorgeous area. We wandered around town-- le vieux ville  was gorgeous and almost reminiscent of Venice, with all the stone buildings crowded around a little canal.

Annecy was apparently a huge spot for boating-- there were hundreds of sail boats bobbing in the water. Michelle and I were surprised to see just how many people were eating lunch in their boats which were anchored near the shore.

Bride of Love :)

We only spent a day here but that was enough time to wander around the city and take the sites in. Two trains and two hours later we arrived back in home, sweet home of St. Etienne.

Stay tuned to hear about Le Fête des Lumières in Lyon!

Thanks for reading :)

The Home of Dr Who and Sherlock

Alternative Title: Fangirling in London

Last weekend my friend Michelle and I skipped school (for the first time, my professor asked if I was sick the next Monday seeing how I'm always the first one to class everyday) and jetted off to London to see a friend. It was Thanksgiving when we left-- we tortured ourselves by checking out everything that our family and friends were gorging on back home while we were stuck in a provisional terminal in the airport that lacked even a vending machine. Our dinner was some cookies I had squirreled away.

Lack of traditional food aside, it was a fairly short flight to London.Our tickets had been relatively cheap, but that was because we flew into the Gatwick airport which is about 30 miles outside of London. Getting into London wasn't difficult, they have a train that will take you right into the middle of the city, but it's a bit expensive.

None of the prices in London look that bad-- but that is due to the exchange rate, about $1.50 = 1 pound. Regardless, we made it into London late Thursday night and tried to met up with our friend in a busy train station without a phone or wifi.

Non-surprisingly, that didn't work out so we hopped on the metro and went to our hostel. We stayed in Generator Hostel, the same hostel company I stayed in Dublin with. In London they were crazy about the security-- to get near the hostel you had to show your room card. Though I suppose that's a good thing. Regardless, the hostel in London wasn't near as nice as the one in Dublin. We got stuck in the basement, which was undergoing a lot of construction, and didn't have any showers near us.

Luckily we didn't spend much time at the hostel. Friday morning we successfully met up with our friend and set off to see all the tourist sites.

The London eye! While we didn't actually go on the London eye-- it cost like 20 pounds and the line looked two hours long-- it was still cool to see.

Big Ben! I literally fangirled when I saw this. Maybe because I never thought I'd ever go to London, or because it previously had existed solely on my TV screen before commercials during the Olympics.

This picture has crappy quality because it's a zoomed in look at my iPhone picture taken while running across a bridge while a cold rain began to pelt us.

After a lunch of fish and chips (a necessity when visiting London) we headed to the Victoria and Albert art museum.

The museum was enormous-- I could've spent weeks wondering through it.

Sadly we didn't have weeks, so after a coffee and brownie break at their gorgeous cafe we headed off to dinner.

The next morning we met up and went to Buckingham palace to see the changing of the guards.

Or rather, we saw something, I think, I'm not sure what. The crowd was huge considering this is the off season and this happens every day. Some guards walked by, some rode horses, and a cold 30 min later it all appeared to be over.

After a quick lunch at a really cool Japanese place, we walked by the Tower of London and toured the Tower Bridge.

Part of the Tower

The Tower Bridge was like the second bridge constructed in London and gives panoramic views of the city.

After the Tower Bridge we headed over to see Westminster chapel, but when we arrived there was a service going on so the church was closed. Which makes sense-- often times in France the cathedral will be open to tourists even if a service is going on; it's a little awkward to try and take pictures while people are trying to worship.

That night, after enjoying a particular delicious cinnamon roll-- don't get me wrong, I adore French pastries but they do not have cinnamon rolls over here and after three months you just start to crave them-- Michelle and I went to see Phantom of the Opera! I've been obsessed with this musical for about as long as I remember. I know every word to every song and most of the speaking parts.

We showed up at the ticket office the day off trying to buy the cheap cancellation tickets. It was 20 pounds for the seats with 'partially obstructed views' and 50 pounds for the 'non-obstructed view'. The lady working assured us that the views weren't really obstructed-- just a small little pole that might only get in the way sometimes so we bought the cheap tickets. When we found our seats that night I laughed as I sat down. The pole, which wasn't too small ((probably a good thing since it held the low hanging ceiling up)) was directly in front of my seat, making it a little difficult to see things. I spent the first act dodging left and right to follow the action. Luckily for the second act I was able to find an empty seat next to Michelle which offered a miraculously unobstructed view of the stage.

The next morning we had an early flight to get back to Lyon. Long story short, the metro opens late, the trains sometimes don't come and when they do they have mechanical difficulties, the different terminals are really far away, but one mad dash-- and a lost scarf-- later, we made to our gate just as they began to board.

Thanks for reading! :)

6 Things I Miss From the US

It feels somewhat sacrilegious writing a post about the things I miss from the US. After all, I'm in France-- the land of cheese, bread, pastries, chocolate-- the list of delicious things goes on and on.

However, there are a few things that I miss from the US.

1. Breakfast Food

The French don't believe in breakfast as much as Americans do. In the United States, at least once a week when I'm home, my father cooks up a huge homemade breakfast. From fried eggs and bacon, to chocolate chip pancakes, to crispy waffles covered in fruit and whipped cream, it is always a great way to start a day. I can't wait to get back to the US and stuff my face with bacon-- something that doesn't really exist over here.

2. Taco Bell

I can't believe I'm writing this. And I wouldn't be, if I hadn't daydreamed about eating Taco Bell tacos for hours during class this semester. The meat isn't real and neither is the nutrition, but sometimes you just crave cheap Mexican food. Also, another thing that isn't terribly popular over here.

3. Public Restrooms

So this is rather inconvenient, but in France, public restrooms don't exist. Sure, if you go into a decent restaurant you might find one, but everywhere else you're out of luck. The bathrooms in McDonald's ((which sadly exists in abundance over here)) have codes that you have to look on your receipt to find in order to unlock the doors. You have to pay to use the restroom in the train station in Lyon. So when your day consists of sight seeing in a town and getting a baguette for dinner, finding a restroom turns into a game of who-can-charm-the-waiter into sneaking and using the restroom.

4. Goodwill

I have found exactly one thrift shop in my town. To put things into perspective, in my hometown, which is considerably smaller than St. Etienne, has four thrift shops--and those are just my favorite ones. Suffice to say, I can't wait to run to Goodwill and buy some cheap sweaters when I get back home.

5. Pianos

This can't come as much of a surprise, but there aren't any pianos just lying around for me to play here in France. Even though I expected this, I still missing sitting down and striking out the opening chords to The Great Gate of Kiev. I'm excited to get back home and even Hendrix, where there will be pianos-- albeit perhaps badly turned-- a plenty for me to play.

6. English Cheese

So this the most sacrilegious thing I can say while living in France, aka the country of cheese. It was like saying I didn't Guinness while in Ireland-- I'm a little worried the inhabitants will kick me out. Revoke my visa.

However, my friends won't be surprised to hear that I'm slightly obsessed with cheese. English cheeses that is. French cheeses, while I haven't tried all of them, goodness who has, tend to be far too strong for my taste. And France, non-surprisingly, doesn't sell English cheeses really. Aside from a bit of cheddar from a nice friend a couple weeks ago, it has been three long months since I last ate cheddar. Sometimes I think I have a calcium deficiency to amount of times a day I crave cheddar cheese. Hopefully I'll be able to eat cheddar before I get back to the US-- Michelle and I leave Thursday for London. They better have cheddar cheese.

C'est tout! Just a few differences between France/US. It's probably a good thing they exist. Otherwise I might just stay in France forever.

Like I mentioned above, Michelle and I are flying to London-- 45 min flight! great thing about Europe, everything's so close-- on Thursday to visit the great city and some friends :) Stay tuned to read about our British adventures.

Thanks so much for reading!

Dublin: Day Two

Day two of Dublin found us trekking over to the Dublin Zoo. It was a long walk, but after another delicious breakfast at our favorite joint, Oscar's, we were ready.

But a side note on Oscar's...

Oscar's was a little restaurant next to our hostel. We went there every morning for breakfast-- not only were their scones/muffins to die for, the atmosphere was amazing. They had an eclectic mix of huge armchairs surrounding little tables.

After another delicious breakfast we walked to the zoo.

It was a slightly chilly, sunny day-- the zoo was sparsely populated with young families.

 

The zoo was a lovely medium sized zoo-- I really liked their Africa section; the giraffes were adorable. It was really cool to watch them dash across their enclosure. I can't imagine what it would have been like to be an European explorer seeing the African planes for the first time. The giraffes have such an awkwardly large body but they run with surprising grace. 

  

The light was just gorgeous in the wolf enclosure-- this photo is completely unedited, which is a rarity for me.

After the zoo, we stopped in a little pub for a quick lunch and plotted our afternoon. We wanted to see an old castle that was supposedly easy to reach. Our guide book didn't offer anything more than 'take bus 42 from city center'. I would just like to make a little side note to explain that the city center of Dublin is about the size of a good size town in Arkansas. I would also like to a take a second to rant about the impossible Dublin public transportation system. Even after asking for directions twice, it still took maybe an hour and half to find the bus stop for bus 42. Not that this 'stop' was labeled. Or had a map. Or any useful information. It was just a little yellow pole.

We got on the bus, telling the driver exactly what stop we were going to get off at-- in Dublin how far you are going dictates how much you pay-- and then settled down for a surprisingly stressful 30 min. There was no map on the bus to tell us how many stops were before our stop. None of the stops we stopped at were labeled. I also had very little coins on me-- and you have to pay exact fare-- so if we got lost it would be expensive to try and get back to the city. Eventually the houses gave way to trees and I feared our stop had been one of the many little yellow poles we had already paused at. I inched my way to the front and asked the driver when our stop was, he kindly said it was the next one. 

If he hadn't told us specifically, we would have never gotten off at the right stop. It was just a little yellow pole of the side of the road-- from the stop you couldn't see anything that suggested that a castle might be near. 

Regardless, we miraculously got off at the right stop, and meandered through the forested trails that led to the castle. 

It was cold and it had just started to rain when we turned a corner and saw the castle.

It was a cute little castle overlooking an impressive lawn. We quickly made our way to the ticket office, glad to get out off the cold rain. However, when we tried to buy tickets to see the castle we were informed that since it was Halloween the castle was closed, running only children's scary tours, which were completely booked. However, the gardens were still open. So, after a coffee break as we let the rain peter out, we walked through the gardens.

There wasn't much in bloom, seeing how it was the beginning of November, but the gardens were still interesting.

I never wanted to get on a Dublin bus again, so we followed the signs to a train station that was next to the castle. The only sign offering help at the train station was a piece of paper on the wall that had an arrow pointing to the right labeled DUBLIN. However, after several helpful people, we somehow managed to get on the train heading to Dublin. With free wifi on the train we both were quickly on the phone with friends/family back home; ah the miracles of technology.

And thus ends day 2! It didn't go exactly as planned, but neither did day 3 ;) stay tuned to see how the best laid plans of mice and men went!

Thanks for reading :)

Dublin: The Beginning

It was a warm summer day. Our coffees lay discarded on the table as we dreamily browsed through the travel books. 

'We should backpack through Europe.' I said, the words representing nothing more than a hazily defined dream. 

Diamond just laughed. We became friends when we met in jazz band in 8th grade, when Diamond decided that I, friendless and introverted, wasn't as weird as she had previously thought. But traveling through Europe? Our educational system had equipped us with just enough knowledge to point to a couple European countries on a map-- I dreamed of the excitement of foreign cultures and languages. However, we were just two girls from Arkansas-- all we were currently worried about was homework, and figuring out what college to apply to. Traveling through Europe, staying in hostels-- it was all just a far fetched dream, one that would, in all reality, probably never be realized. Concrete obstacles, such as time and money, stood firmly in the way of that crazy wish.

That is, until the stars aligned, and somehow Diamond and I found ourselves both studying abroad in Europe. Granted, we were almost the furthest away two people can be and still be in Europe-- me in France and her in Estonia. However, when I started planning my week long break, I remembered the dream we had had several years ago. Who knew when this opportunity would come up again, so we picked our dream location, Dublin, Ireland, and started working on achieving that dream.

On Tuesday, October 29th, we set off for Dublin. Diamond had a direct flight from the capital of Estonia. I wasn't as lucky-- it was almost a two hour trek to the nearest airport, with a tram and two trains-- flying first to Frankfort, where I had a long three hour layover before a flight to Dublin.

We met up in the baggage claim in Dublin--  I hadn't seen Diamond since she left for Estonia, so it was great to finally see her again.

Finding our hostel was...an adventure. We took a tour bus into the city, but missed our stop because we forgot to hit the button to ask to stop. We stumbled off on the next stop, pulling our maps out and trying to figure out what was what in the dark streets. It was cold and windy and we wandered around for maybe an hour, having no luck for finding the mysterious street where our hostel was on. Eventually we found the hostel-- turns out, we had walked right by it about ten minutes after getting off the bus but we had somehow missed the huge signs and bright lights.

The hostel was huge, with a cool bar/lounge area/mini-restaurant on the ground floor. It had a great atmosphere with the added benefit of me not feeling guilty when I hung out without buying a drink; it was our hostel, after all. Our room, a 8-bed mixed sex dormitory style, was on the second floor. For the first couple of days our roommates were reserved, and we didn't see much of them. It felt like someone was always asleep in the room so we didn't hang out much there. Aside from a little issue-- let's just say that the hostel got a bit too creative with their men/women bathroom symbols, apparently writing men/women is just too mainstream but we don't need to expound upon that-- the hostel was a fun, cheap housing option.

Our first full day in Dublin was spent exploring downtown in a search for the National Museum of Archaeology. The museum was as cool as the name sounds. But on our way to the museum we spotted a cool looking national library so we decided to check it out.

The library was surprising gorgeous and surprisingly functional-- we were the only people in this room who hadn't come there to read the books so we didn't stay long.

The National Museum of Archaeology was very interesting, packed full of cool artifacts and stories.

I don't have space to post all the cool things we saw, but they ranged from Ancient Egypt to Medieval Europe.



After the museum, we set off to find Christchurch Cathedral. Finding it wasn't that difficult, getting in, however, was. We walked in one of the doors only to see an 'exit only' sign. So, we circled the entire church for the next 15 minutes looking for any other entrance, and not finding anything. Eventually we returned to the first door and realized that the entrance was exactly opposite of the exit sign.

Um. Yeah.

The cathedral was enormous and beautiful. We hung out for maybe an hour, exploring the cathedral and the basement/underground area.

After the cathedral we headed to the Guinness Factory. Luckily for us, getting there was fairly straight forward, just a rather long walk.

The factory was interesting-- we learned the official way to drink Guinness and got a free pint. Diamond opted for a free Coke but I braved an entire pint of Guinness...suffice to say, it is not my favorite type of beer; it's far too bitter for me.

After the Guinness factory both Diamond and I were exhausted and we trekked back to our hostel and collapsed onto our beds.

And thus ends, day 1! Be sure to check back to hear more tales of my adventure in Dublin.

Thanks for reading :)

Aix-En-Provence

Last Friday a friend and I went to the opera. Carmen was playing and we had heard that they sold any empty seats for 5 euros fifteen minutes before the show.

Luckily for us the show wasn't sold out and we scored some awesome seats on the balcony for roughly 6.50 dollars. It was my first time at the opera and I loved every minute of it. I loved that there was a tiny screen hanging over the stage that displayed French subtitles, as the actors were speaking/singing a mixture of French and Italian. I understand a lot more thanks to the subtitles; though there were still some things that got lost in translation. Once I was so busy trying to read the subtitles that I missed the death of a character.

The next morning we woke up early and boarded a train for Aix-En-Provence, a French city a couple hours away from St. Etienne. Since we had class on Monday we weren't able to spend much time in this beautiful city. However, we had plenty of time to wander around the historic city center and people watch.

I believe there was a fountain at almost every single intersection.

Like any French city worth its salt, Aix was full of beautiful old cathedrals. The previous pope either visited this cathedral or this cathedral just really loved the previous pope...the signs and plaques weren't that clear.

One thing I love about France is that this is the city; this is where people live, work, eat, shop-- it isn't some museum or 'historic' sight. These beautiful old buildings are just another part of life.

We were searching for a quiet spot to eat our dinner when we ran into a wedding that was just finishing in a gorgeous cathedral. I loved the classic Bug.

The wedding was in this cathedral-- I tried my best not to gawk. This photo, by the way, was taken with my iPhone. I'm still impressed with its panoramic abilities.

Speaking of gorgeous cathedrals and iPhone photos, here's another cathedral we stumbled upon Sunday morning. Aix has this really cool market on Sunday mornings-- one side of their main street is covered in tents of local artisans and there's another market by Hotel de Ville full of fresh produce.

I was craving some tea Saturday night so I drug my friends to this cute tea shop I spotted-- the tea was delicious and it was a good place to relax and people watch.

 

I took, and edited, this photo on my iPhone-- I'm going to post a tutorial (eventually) on my favorite methods of photo editing on my phone. I liked taking photos on my phone because it's easily accessible. Also, I don't feel like a tourist, as much, when I use my phone as opposed to my huge camera. 

I wish we had had more time to spent exploring the city and making use of their museums. There's also a beautiful mountain not far outside the city-- we saw it when we arrived at the train station-- but we weren't sure how to get there without a car.

The main fountain at night :)

Sunday afternoon we said goodbye to Aix and hoped on a train back to St. Etienne where we finished out last week of classes before holidays.

And the holidays have arrived! We have an entire week off-- I've been enjoying the extra sleep. This Tuesday, however, I'm getting up far earlier than the sun to make my flight to Dublin.

Who needs sleep when you have Dublin and your best friend? I won't be bringing my computer to Dublin so I won't be able to post much while in Ireland. I'll try to post small updates from my phone so stay tuned!

Thanks for reading :)