Back in the USA

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to
find the ways in which you yourself have altered."

~Nelson Mandela

Pretty uneventful day today...lots of walking around Paris and trying to take it all in.

Ate dinner with the Beguins on the terrace during a rainstorm. It was very cool to watch the rain come down over the gardens. Mme. Beguin and Julien were on a roll tonight at dinner, and she repeated over and over her rules for healthy eating:

The three most essential foods are water, eggs, and bread.

You should eat an egg every day. Eggs are better than chicken breast for you. If you have cholesterol problems, eat 3 eggs per week.

Last Sunday Parisienne

I started this Sunday the same way I started my very first one (and second, and third) - heading to the market at Bastille. I went there on foot, determined to enjoy walking through the city as much as possible and took a different route. I wound up crossing the Seine and walking through Ile St. Louis and as I wandered down the street I saw several people with ice cream cones, slightly bizarre for 11 a.m. I then realized I was only a block away from Berthillon's, the famous Parisian ice cream store. I had walked by the other day only to discover it's only open four days a week, and although I hadn't even eaten breakfast yet, I decided to take advantage of likely my last time on the island and the fact that there was no line. Last time I can with my family I enjoyed the ice cream but didn't think it was anything special. This time was amazing. I had a single cone of chocolate ice cream with orange peel and it was one of the best ice creams I've had. Well worth the reputation.

After my ice cream cone I continued to the market, where I purchased mangoes, apricots, and nectarines. The fruit is amazing here...not that expensive in the markets and very tasty. Apricots are hugely popular in the last few weeks and I've been enjoying them. For lunch I had a sandwich from a Lebanese vendor...my third Lebanese sandwich and absolutely delicious. I took my fruit and my sandwich up to Canal St. Martin and walked along the entire canal. The weather was beautiful today and it was a fantastic walk. After relaxing by the canal, I discovered my new favorite Parisian park - Buttes Chaumont. It is a park on a hill that is the best replication of nature I've seen in the city. It actually has several hills with amazing views, plus a stream running through the entire park, complete with waterfalls and areas for kids to play in the water. Plus, you're allowed to sit on the grass in the entire park, a rarity in Paris.

After reading in the park, I took a bus back to the center of the city, where I met a friend in a cafe to watch the French Open final. Sports bars are hard to come by here, so we sat in your typical Parisian cafe, and it was a classy way to watch the final, which turned out to be an excellent match. after the match I went home and ate dinner with the fam, then started to pack up my room...

Brussels

In my last adventure out of the country, I went to Brussels yesterday with my friend Kristen from Middlebury. It's only an hour and twenty minute train ride, so it was an ideal last day trip. We arrived in the city around noon and started wandering around in search of the city center. We walked past the royal square and the palace and some beautiful buildings and churches and finally wound up in the Grand Place. There we ate lunch, croques hawaian (croques with a pineapple slice, very creative and pretty good). The sandwiches were pretty small though, and rather unauthentic looking croques, so we decided to get Belgian waffles for dessert. Mine was covered in whipped cream and chocolate and definitely lived up to its reputation. We looked in a few of the tourist shops and the chocolate shops, and vowed to return later, then searched for the tourist office so we could figure out how to get to Mini-Europe, our destination du jour. Unfortunately, the tourist office was undergoing renovations and closed until July, so we had no way of finding the European monuments we came hoping to see. Luckily there was a train station nearby, and the man at the information desk told us which metro to take to get to the atomium and Mini-Europe.

We started out wandering in awe around the atomium, built for the world's fair many moons ago. There was also some sort of Spanish fair going on nearby, so we hit that up too. And then finally, we made it to Mini-Europe. Kristen and I had taken a course on the European Union during the semester, and thanks to our professor's devotion and admiration for the EU, we also became obsessed with it. Thus the desire to go to the European capital, and the associated park. Mini-Europe is literally a miniature model of the continent (although in no way geographically correct). It contains all the major monuments of each EU country and you get a very informative pamphlet with interesting facts about each country. The booklet itself was worth the admission cost and the park was amazing for Euro-dorks like ourselves.

We took our time carefully reading all the facts and figures about the countries and looking at the various monuments, getting really excited to see the ones that we had visited for real. We stayed in the park until we were kicked out at closing time, and then decided to search for the real EU institutions. We couldn't find them on the metro map, and were ready to give up until a nice janitor said good evening to us and we decided to ask him. He gave us the metro stop (named after author of the document that found the EU) and we finally made it to the European Commission building. There wasn't much to see there, except the real thing as opposed to the mini-replica, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. We then returned to the main square for dinner and buying of Belgian chocolate before hopping on the train back to Paris.

Strasbourg and Alsace

Last weekend I headed east to the German border to Strasbourg, where I met my friends Alex and Katie, who are studying in Germany. Strasbourg is an adorable city, with pretty architecture, canals, and a neat combination of French and German culture. We met at the hotel on Friday afternoon and took off to explore the city. It's not very big, so we walked a decent amount of it in only a few hours. It was raining when we first left the hostel, so we started with tea and a pastry at cute tea shop. We walked around the main square and the cathedral, one of the best examples of Gothic architecture in Europe, and an adorable area of shops and paths along the water called "Petite France". We ate dinner in a French brasserie/German winstub where we ate the famous local dish, Flammkuchen, or, in French, tarte flambée. It's like a French pizza, but much richer, made with cream, cheese, and bacon bits. It was filling but tasty. After dinner we walked out to the edge of the city where the Council of Europe and the European Parlement buildings are located. There wasn't much to see there and they weren't open to the public except by groups, so we looked at the buildings and then headed back to our hostel to retire early so we could start early the next morning.

Since Strasbourg itself didn’t have many attractions, we decided to check out some nearby towns along the Alsatian wine trail. Originally we planned on taking the train, but we soon discovered that we could rent a car for a reasonable price. This turned out to be an amazing decision. We started out heading south from Strasbourg and went down the wine trail, seeing over 25 adorable Alsatian villages. The drive was absolutely gorgeous, through vineyards and farms and one-street towns. We took a winding road up a mountain to see an ancient castle and an amazing view. We tasted wine in two towns, both in the cellars of sweet old women. The degustations were amusing, because the women had to explain things to me in French and them in German, or we had to translate for each other. It was a fun linguistic as well as cultural experience. Alsace is known for its white wines (lucky for me) and we tasted pinot blancs and pinot gris at the first cellar. We all fell in love with the pinot gris, and we all have a new favorite wine. The second cellar was in a town known for the region's only red wine, pinot noir, so we tasted that as well as a sweet wine. I loved the sweet wine, but didn't really care for the bitter pinot noir. That night we ate dinner in one of the towns, and I had a munster cheese salad (another regional speciality).

Sunday morning we still had our car because it was cheaper to rent it for the entire weekend than for just the day. We went to the Alsatian museum in Strasbourg in the morning and wandered around the city until lunchtime, when we hopped back in the car hoping to taste some more wine. Unfortunately as it was a Sunday in France, nothing was open and we enjoyed a pleasant drive but no wine. We ate some more tarte flambee, then hopped on our respective trains back to our respective cities. Definitely one of the best weekends away I've had this semester.

Roland Garros, Part II

Courtesy of a family friend who works at ESPN, I had the fortune to get tickets to the French Open once again today, and spent a lovely afternoon/evening at Roland Garros. Most of the big stars played yesterday, so there weren't many big names to see, but I still got to watch some amazing tennis. I started on Court Suzanne Lenglen watching Carlos Moya beat Jonas Bjorkman. I then hit up some of the outer courts to watch some of the juniors play. There is a very noticable difference in the level of play, more than I would have imagined, and certainly a difference in the maturity level, since these players are on average 16 years old. They're fun to watch nonetheless and I kept returning to watch the outer courts. I also caught some mixed doubles action, and watched the Bryan brothers win. The Bryan Brothers were really fun to watch, both because I enjoyed sitting in a stadium of French people trying to pronounce their name, and because they are charismatic and cute together. When they do something really well they jump up and bump chests, and have lots of cute trademark moves. I finished up the day watching Nadal beat Hewitt on the big screen and another men's singles match. There weren't any women's singles today unfortunately, but I saw a couple familiar players in doubles matches.

On the French family home front, Mme. Beguin has been making jewelry like crazy and Laure finished her semester just in time for her school to add an additional class during June. She's been working super-hard on her final projects, so she's happy to be done with those, and was super-chatty with me at dinner tonight. Mme. Beguin wanted to make vegetable lasagna, but didn't have any lasagna, and found a kit to make Mexican food (probably 5 years old) in the closet and proceeded to make that. It tasted like something that came from a box, but it was a good effort and I was excited for Mexican. She even made it with chicken instead of beef so I could eat it. We ate dinner on the terrace and it was a very, quiet pleasant meal. I learned from both Mme. Beguin and Laure that the chameleon is dying (quelle tragedie). I should have guessed this last night when I got home and the crickets it usually eats were chirping louder than a field in Simsbury.

Bones and tennis

After finishing his studying abroad in Morocco a few days ago, Kyle came to Paris to play in Europe before returning to the US. We've been prancing around Paris for a few days doing lots of exploring and wandering. Last night we had a picnic at Montmartre with Middkids; unforunately rain pushed us onto the steps of the church and then the guards kicked us off. Unable to think of another public space out of the rain that would fit all of us and allow us to picnic, we headed to the waiting area in Gare Saint-Lazare (train station) and finished our picnic there. After all of our lovely sunny picnics in beautiful parks around Paris, our last one had to be a bit more exciting and challenging, and it certainly was.

This morning Kyle and I decided to visit a tourist site in Paris, and we chose the Catacombs. The Catacombs are underground tunnels where the French buried people, or relocated bones from graveyards in the 1700s. These are not your average mass graves however; the bones are stacked neatly with skulls forming designs between the longer bones. The exhibit was a one-mile walked through dark and damp caves with bones lining the walls. It was a very very creepy experience and we were thrilled to be back in the sunlight amongst the living at the end.

Afterwards we headed to Bois de Bologne, the major "woods"/park of Paris. We knew that the French Open was taking place near there, and had read online that you could buy tickets for only 10 euros for the night sessions. After wandering around the neighborhood for a half-hour, we finally found the stadium and joined the long line of others waiting for the ticket counters to open. About fifteen minutes before five, a staff member handed us a paper with the ticket choices and prices; we could either buy tickets for the stadium court, Suzanne Lenglen, Court #1, or a grounds pass. The line for the grounds pass was moving much quicker, and it only cost 10 euros, so Kyle and I picked that one. We also knew it was the first round, so good players would be on all courts. We got onto the grounds around 5:30 and started wandering around the courts. We saw a line at Court 2 and joined it, then discovered Max Myrni and Lleyton Hewitt. We watched the end of their match, then anxiously awaited the next pairing on the court. To our great surprise, James Blake was up next and we had an excellent view of the beginning of his match. We got hungry a few games in and headed to the snack bar to get some dinner. While eating our sandwiches and watching Rafael Nadal on the stadium court, two nice men approached us and asked if we wanted tickets for the Nadal match. We were thrilled and wound up with fantastic seats for the last two sets of the match. The Blake match still wasn't over by the end of the Nadal match, so we went back to Court 2 and saw Blake lose sadly in a fourth set. The match was great though, and the overall experience was amazing.