Un week-end des batiments grandiose (A weekend of grand buildings)

So this weekend (as some of you may be surprised to hear) I stayed in Paris.

Thursday, my class at Accent went on a visit to the Opéra Garnier. Louis-Philippe (the last king of France) commissioned the Opéra Garnier to be VERY close to his residence (the Louvre) because the previous venue he saw operas and plays in was too dangerous. And he did not hesitate to commission quite possibly one of the most beautiful buildings in Paris. Unfortunately, since there was a rehearsal going on we could not go inside the actual auditorium. However, there are some beautiful galleries all around the opera that we explored. I’m really looking forward to actually seeing a performance at the Opéra Garnier before I leave.

Friday, I got my first haircut in France! It was a little bit scary at first because I don't know the vocabulary very well for getting your haircut and, therefore, it could have gone horribly wrong. But my hairdresser was incredibly nice and knew a little bit of English. The only word I really needed help with was layers, the rest I could explain on my own. My haircut is pretty different from normal; the layers are shorter which makes my hair curl differently. I wasn't so sure I liked it at first but all of my friends here have been raving about it so maybe it will grow on me!

Saturday, Accent took us to two chateaux (castles) to the south of France: Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Vicomte. Fontainebleau is a state owned chateau that was once the residence of many different kings including Francis I, Henri IV and Napoleon Bonaparte. The chateau is HUGE; it has 2,000 rooms! Different parts of the castle were built at different periods in the style of the particular king who built the new rooms. It was originally built as a hunting chateau because it sits in a large, famous forest: le foret de Fontainebleau. This chateau is different from Versailles because Versailles was a chateau de pouvoir (a castle of power) and Fontainebleau was a chateau du vivre (castle for living).

Our group walked around with a guide. The guides use these microphones and then each person gets an earpiece so the guide can walk and talk and not worry about everyone hearing her. It was great until we would run into other groups and get major interference. Our guide was pretty hilarious. She kept laughing at herself and making jokes which mostly had to do with a difference in translation between English and French. She did speak very good English though. I loved the chateau because it was so large and ornate. And oh man, the chandeliers…

After Fontainebleau we drove over to Vaux-le-Vicomte. Vaux-le-Vicomte is smaller than Fontainebleau and is privately owned. Some of you might already recognize the name because it is where Tony Parker and Eva Longoria got married (cough Grete cough). I was actually pretty disappointed with this chateau. Inside, they had set up all of these mannequins in every room which were meant to show what the rooms were used for back in the day. Some mannequins had voice overs, some moved and one even had a projection of a real person talking on its face so it looked life-like (or just creepy…). I don’t even remember looking much at the decoration of the rooms because I was so distracted by the mannequins. The person from Accent that went with us, Adrien, has been to Vaux-le-Vicomte several times and this is the first time he has seen these mannequins. He thought it was hilarious though and followed us through the rooms laughing.

So we pretty much bolted through the creepy chateau and got to the gardens! Now, nothing is in bloom yet. Unlike the unusually warm week two weeks ago, last week was pretty much like winter in Paris. This week is supposed to be much warmer so we are all excited to see some flowers and leaves on trees! But even if nothing was in bloom the gardens were fantastic and huge. We walked almost to the end and back of the gardens and it took us over an hour. There are fountains galore and some of our friends even rented a golf cart to drive around the gardens in. JUST as we were turning around to get back on the bus from the end of the gardens it started to rain (which has become the story of every trip I have taken thus far). None of us had umbrellas so we booked it back. But check out my pictures of the sky… it was SO cool.

I had my friends over for dinner last night because my host parents were at their house in the country and told me I could invite some friends over. My host mom even made us a brownie cake which was so nice of her. Jackie, Kavita and I cooked and made a giant salad, Jackie’s excellent salmon, rice and broccoli. I couldn’t figure out how to work my host mom’s stove so we learned how to make rice in the microwave! It was so nice to have my friends over and to be able to chill in a non-public place. We just sat around talking and eating. It’s definitely something we would do more often if we had our own apartments. We also participated in earth hour (if you haven’t heard of it: earth hour started 2 years ago in Sydney and has since become international. At 8:30p.m. no matter where you are you are supposed to turn all of your lights off for an hour to raise awareness about energy consumption.) and ate by candlelight :-)

Something random I have wanted to write about:

*We had a debate in class one time about whether or not there are more homeless people in DC or in Paris. I honestly can’t make a comparison but I can tell you that there are A LOT in Paris. Something that is interesting/different is that the majority of them have dogs. My friend Lauren said to me that she thought this had to do with the general French love of dogs. It’s a little bit different than our idea of “man’s best friend”. The French LOVE their dogs. So she said the reason so many homeless people had dogs was because the French people would be more willing to give them money if they saw that there was a dog suffering too.

The time moved ahead here last night finally so back to 6 hours difference between here and the East Coast! That is going to make getting up at 6 a.m. tomorrow fun…

The Opera Garnier from the outside.

One of the incredible galleries in the Opera Garnier.

Out on Friday night: I don't have a picture of my new haircut curly yet so I thought I'd put this one up of it straight, just after I got it cut.

Fontainebleau from the front.

One of my favorite rooms in the chateau. Check out that chandelier!

Napoleon's throne room. This is the only throne room you are still able to see in France. You can tell it is Napoleon's throne because the chair is a little small, don't you think? ;-)

The famous steps of Fontainebleau. This is where Napoleon gave his adieu when he abdicated the throne. You can barely see but Jackie and I are waving from in front of the wooden door at the top of the stairs.

The gardens and the love temple at Fontainebleau. Since apparently the king would bring about 3,000 guests with him to Fontainebleau when he came, the love temple (what a great name) is where the king went when he wanted to be alone...

The front of Vaux-le-Vicomte.

One of the creepy mannequins in the chateau. Yes, that is a squirrel on his shoulder.

The view of the gardens from the back of the chateau. We walked aaallll the way to that green hill in the middle off in the distance.

I just had to share this picture. The sky is SO incredible.

And then we turned around and saw this... and that is when we started booking it back to the bus on the other side of the chateau ;-)

Cette ville est plus que vous pensez (this city is more than you think)

Amsterdam took me by surprise! I went to Amsterdam with the impression that the city was overtaken by prostitution and drugs, but that is definitely NOT the case. Amsterdam is incredibly beautiful and one weekend was not enough to see it all.

The train ride to Amsterdam is four hours long. Not so bad because I love the train, but still pretty long. When we got to Amsterdam my first impression was BIKES. Outside of the train station (and everywhere else in the city) there were hundreds and hundreds of bikes. After figuring out the tram system, we found our hostel and started sightseeing!

First of all, like I said, Amsterdam is beautiful. There are dozens of canals that run throughout the city and tons of bridges as a result. The houses are brick and actually reminded us a little bit of the architecture in Adam’s Morgan in Washington DC. Whenever we turned a street corner we were taken aback by yet another beautiful bridge and canal.

Oddly enough, the first thing we went to see was the red light district. For whatever reason I was under the impression that the red light district was off to the side of the city, but nope! It’s right smack in the middle of everything. We went to the red light district to find Indonesian food (Amsterdam has a large Indonesian population and therefore really good Indonesian food) but walked around a little too.

Saturday, we started the day with a three hour, FREE walking tour of the city. One of my roommates, Grete, had recommended this company, Sandemans, to us because she had taken their tour in Edinburgh. The tours can be free because the guides only work on tips. Our tour guide was an American masters student. She was incredibly, incredibly knowledgeable and it was an incredible tour for being free. We walked all over the center of the city and saw things like the red light district, the oldest church, the Royal Palace and famous coffeeshops. A few interesting things we learned:

*Selling marijuana is actually illegal in the Netherlands. However, the authorities in the Netherlands have this philosophy that if someone is doing something illegal but it is good for business and it doesn’t harm anyone than it is ok. Since marijuana is both lucrative and harmless the authorities turn a blind eye. Someone hasn’t been arrested for smoking a joint in 35 years.

*The people in the Netherlands are some of the tallest in Europe.

*Prostitution was made entirely legal in the Netherlands in 2000. The oldest prostitute is around 75 years old…

*The Netherlands was the first Republic in Europe.

She was also great for answering all of our questions about places to see and places to eat. This company has tours all over Europe for those of you who are interested. I would highly recommend it.

Saturday evening a few of us went to the Anne Frank House. It was a sobering experience; however, the museum was so well done and I learned an incredible amount about something I admittedly didn’t know much about. The museum not only had the original diary of Anne Frank, you could walk through the annex where they spent two years in hiding.

Saturday for dinner we ended up eating pretty late at a “pancake” house. No, unfortunately these weren’t pancakes like we have in America (and ever since I have been craving American pancakes…), they were more like crepes actually. We walked in 10 minutes after Sara (of Sara’s Pancake House) had closed her kitchen. She was incredibly nice and accommodating though. She allowed us to stay as long as we wanted and was very patient with us when we ordered dessert after dinner. She was just one example of the incredibly nice people we met in Amsterdam.

Sunday, we got up and went straight to the Van Gogh museum. The museum has a special exhibit right now called “Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night”. The exhibit followed Van Gogh’s influences for painting his famous “Starry Night”. It discussed and gave examples of French painters Van Gogh idealized as well as showed how he studied the night sky. I was fascinated by the exhibit and loved Van Gogh more and more as I walked through. The museum is pretty large so we didn’t see much of the permanent exhibit but we got a good taste for Van Gogh.

We pretty much spent the rest of Sunday eating haha. Amsterdam has great (and very unhealthy) food. Just imagine… a waffle drizzled in hot chocolate sauce with a little bit of powdered sugar on top. How can you resist that?

It was interesting being in a place where they don’t speak French. So many Dutch people speak English so we had no troubles whatsoever getting by, but it was weird walking into a store and just speaking English to the store owner assuming he/she knew English. Just something we’re not used to after being in France for almost two months (ah! Where does the time go??).

When I got back home my host parents had left a big poster of Obama sitting on my desk. It was funny and made me a little homesick. However, I now have a large black and white picture of Obama smiling on my wall :-)

What we saw when we walked out of our hostel...

The red light district at dusk!

Me and Jackie in Dam Square before the tour started on Saturday.

Can you tell that these houses are leaning forward? And do you see the hooks hanging from the top of the houses? Our tour guide explained to us that the Dutch use the pulley system to move large furniture from the top floors down to the street since the stairways are so narrow. However, they realized that the things they were lowering down would bang along the front of the house on the way down. Therefore, they built their houses leaning forward to prevent this. Why they didn't just make the pole with the pulley on it longer, I don't know...

A beautiful courtyard outside of a Protestant church. The Netherlands has been historically protestant and, as a result, the Catholics had to have secret churches all around Amsterdam for many years.

The narrowest house in Amsterdam! (the pinkish brick house in the middle) Apparently, the man that lives there is taller than the house is wide. Therefore, when he lays down to sleep he can only sleep longways in his house.

Yet another beautiful canal.

The girls I traveled with.

A pretty ridiculous picture of me in front of the most famous fry shop in Amsterdam... like I said, we experienced Amsterdam's food.

A flower stand in the flower market.

One of my favorite pictures from the trip.

My friends in the "am" of the "I amsterdam" sign!

:-)

La Semaine des Arts (The Week of Arts)

Jackie deemed this week (starting yesterday) the week of arts because of all of the artsy things we seem to have been doing/will do.

Yesterday was full of sightseeing and attempting to check things off of my list of things to see in Paris. Jackie and I went to the Cité de la Musique (a museum on music) for a saxophone concert in the morning. The saxophone player, Dave Liebman, is a pretty famous jazz saxophone player. He has played with big names like John Coltrane. I was excited to go see him because my sister plays saxophone and I thought she would like it if I went. The concert was meant to be a little bit of a lesson on jazz as well as showing off his talent. He played with the in-house orchestra that was fantastic. The style of jazz wasn’t my favorite (very, very free form) but he was remarkable! It was also very much a cultural experience for us because he spoke very little French so the director of the orchestra translated for the French speakers in the audience. It was interesting to hear how she translated what he said into French. The concert hall itself was nice and I’m excited to see the actual museum exhibits at some point while I’m here.

After the concert we met some friends at the Musée de la Mode (Fashion Museum) and saw an exhibition on the famous Parisian designer Sonia Rykiel. Later on in the day we went to another concert. There is a small magazine here called Pariscope that is put out every Wednesday. Pariscope has all of the movie times of every movie at every theater as well as listings on concerts, performances and museum exhibits. I had read about this free brass band concert where they were going to be playing music by John Williams. We went to the auditorium not really knowing what we were getting into. We saw a bunch of kids outside and thought we might have ended up at a high school concert but decided to go in anyway. Luckily for us, it was an adult brass band that was pretty good.

After experiencing two concerts yesterday, I have a confession to make. My high school band was lucky enough to take a trip to Germany and Austria the summer after I graduated. Our director, Mr. Leach, proudly told all of us after one of our concerts that if Europeans applaud in unison it means they really really liked you and wanted an encore. We all thought he had no idea what he was talking about and still kind of joke about it today. Well everyone, I hate to admit it, but it is true. At both concerts I went to yesterday the crowd clapped in unison at the end wanting an encore. I literally laughed out loud when I heard this (as I’m sure all of my friends from band will laugh when they read this). Mr. Leach was right…

I’ve seen two American films at movie theaters in the past 24 hours. Last night my friends and I saw Slumdog Millionaire (which if it is still in theaters in the States and you haven’t seen it, go.) at a theater that was only 3,90 euro for young adult ticket! How incredible! That is less than a movie in the U.S.! Most theaters here are pretty expensive except for on weekend mornings. My host mom invited me to go see Gran Torino with her this morning. I had been planning on catching up on sleep but thought it would be good to spend some time with my host mom. It was so nice of her; she paid for my movie and everything! We had a good time and took a little walk around the huge park by my apartment afterwards.

While on our walk, my host mom pointed out one of the prostitute’s vans I have seen. This particular van is always decked out in something new (today it was rainbow colored umbrellas). It was a little awkward to talk about, considering the subject, but I learned something interesting. Apparently in France it is illegal to have prostitution in houses. Therefore these women have to work out of these vans. That answered some questions I had…

I realized I haven’t talked much about my home life. I normally only interact with my host parents during dinner; we are all busy at other times of the day. Dinner is so different than dinner in the U.S. though. It lasts an hour and always consists of 5 courses. First, we have soup (my host dad is in love with soup). Second, is a salad course. Sometimes this is actually salad, other times we have avocados with a creamy white sauce on top and one time we even had a grapefruit carved out with avocado, walnuts and salmon (weird, very weird, but good). Our main course can be pasta, fish, and these cheese croquets she makes for me and always consists of vegetables (usually carrots, peas, onions, green beans and potatoes). Next, we have cheese and finish up the remaining salad. My host mom explained to me that the French normally eat salad after their main course to help with digestion. However, I think the cheese afterwards counteracts that… Anyway, we don’t eat very much cheese, usually just a few slivers with half a piece of bread. Finally, dessert. Dessert can be the most interesting part of the meal for me… My host family loves baked apples in any form. Anyone who knows my picky eating habits knows that is one of the things I dislike most. Unfortunately, I can’t bring myself to tell them because there are already so many things they have discovered I don’t like and I know it is one of their favorite desserts. But sometimes, we literally have apples from her garden that have been zapped in the microwave with a little bit of sugar on them (peel and all). It’s healthy for me so I just suck it up and eat them but chocolate mousse night and cake night are always better!

This week should be interesting… there is a planned, large general strike on Thursday where transportation is practically going to be shut down. I don’t totally comprehend the purpose for the strike but it has to do with people’s reactions towards some of the recent radical changes Sarkosy has been making in France, as well as the changes to the University system that the students and professors have been protesting for over a month now. I’m not sure if I have to go to grammar class or not but it could potentially be a really far walk. Look for a blog post on the strike; it could be an interesting day! Thursday night is also the ballet we are going to. And Friday I leave for Amsterdam!