Day 21

The program is slowly coming to an end and I'm going to miss the new friends I've made, but I am also really looking forward to having some consistency back in my life... And to have my best friend visit! Part of our final is to give a group presentation on a place we visited without the class and the group I was in presented on the Musee d'Orsay. We were supposed to give the presentations during our picnic at the Buttes Chaumont, but it was raining so hard we had to postpone the picnic. We still got to wander around the park though. Buttes Chaumont was designed by Baron Haussmann in the 1860's who was a city planner for Paris. The park is kind of funny because when you're walking around it you get the feeling like it's a man made park and you're not really in the outdoors. Like the log railings along the bridges and things aren't even real wood. For example, the "logs" are concrete molded to look like the real thing and there's a waterfall that's almost too perfect.  This little gazebo thing is really cool though. I walked up to it and the view is pretty sweet.

This is me and my professor Teo. If you want to know a little more about him he actually has a wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teofilo_Ruiz. One story that he told us that isn't on Wikipedia though that I found to be really funny is that when we lived in New York and worked as a cab driver. One time while he was driving down Broadway he cut off a limo then flipped the driver off because apparently the limo driver was an awful driver, but he ended up getting stopped at a red light right afterward and the limo pulls up right next to him. Except it was the back window of the limo that was matched up with Teo's window and it started to roll down while they were stopped. And then what do you know, Katherine Hepburn sticks her head out the window and says, "You sir, are not a gentleman" and then rolled her window back up. This story was told to us to say always be on your best behavior, because you never know who is watching... He said he tried to redeem himself by bringing roses to her next performance, but had no luck apologizing. Poor guy.

This is just another view of the gazebo

Then at night a bunch of people got together and we made a potatoe, prosciutto, cheese, and egg scramble to clean out our fridges and played more card games. You really do eat well when you're in Paris. Afterward I got a dessert crepe of Nutella, Grand Marnier, and coconut. I don't know why I haven't topped more things in my life with this magical combination!

Day 20

The rain has started up again and has made our walks a little more challenging. We went to Pere Lachaise, the famous cemetery, and learned about some of the people buried there. Also our professor bought 10 roses to leave at the cemetery's most deserving graves. Here's just a few of the highlights. 

This is the tomb of Abelard and Heloise. The couple from history's most passionate and true love story. 

 The classical composer Chopin

Jim Morrison 

Then we were free for the afternoon to explore Paris, but I went back and took a nap before our final dinner out together. . We went to Le Trumilou and had the whole restaurant reserved for our group. Throughout the program, each of us were supposed to upload 5 photos to a group flickr page that depicted daily life in Paris. Then the head of the travel abroad department picked her 2 favorite from each student to put in the Paris Travel abroad video that will play in the office. So we had a slide show at this dinner that showed which photos got chosen. It was a pretty neat way to end the trip.

This is a shot of all of us walking to dinner in the rain after getting off the Metro

 There was plenty of wine to go around!

I ordered the duck that came in a plume sauce that was to die for! I ended up pouring the rest of the sauce from the bowl on my fries...

 And for dessert we had chocolate cake, but it tasted more like a giant brownie. SO GOOD!

We called ourselves the kids table because we were separate from everyone else, but we still had a blast!

Day 19

Wednesday was a touristy type day, but I didn't hate it! We went to the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre. It is a nut house in front of the Sacre Coeur. There are "North Africans" who aggressively try to tie friendship bracelets on your wrist and then charge you 5 Euro for it. I was smart and kept my arms crossed with my wrists basically in my armpits, but other people in our group had to fight them off. One girl actually threw her water bottle at one of the guys to keep him off. 

Montmartre is a cute little neighborhood where the impressionist artists liked to hang out. It's still an artsy part of town where local artists set up their work and paint on the spot. We had lunch there and were free to walk around and do some souvenir shopping.

 This is a famous vineyard that has a grape harvest party in the Fall.

 Here is the cafe that Amelie works at in the movie "Amelie"

And here is the ever famous Moulin Rouge. It's kind of a disappointing sight to be honest and it's surrounded by sex shops and bums. Which is funny because there are tour buses constantly driving by and the poor people have to see the heinous displays.

For dinner I went out to a good French restaurant L'Alchimie and dropped 33 Euro on a fantastic meal. I ate every cents worth! This is my entree (American appetizer) of Albacore tartare. It was on top of tapenade, drenched in a sesame oil and wasabi sauce, and topped with a caramelized sesame cookie.

Here is my plat (American entree) of Saint Pierre, AKA John Dory. I've never had this type of fish before because it's not native to the US, but it was so moist and delicious! It was served in a white wine, butter, and rosemary sauce. I pulled a Mom and sopped up all the remaining sauce with the table bread... And it had deep fried garlic! 

This was the best meal I've had so far. Madi, lets see if we can top this! I cant wait till you arrive on Sunday :)

Day 18

Yesterday was a really good day! We started the day off early and saw the statue of where the Bastille used to stand. We kept walking and went to this old square that used produce all the furniture in Paris, but it's all pretty rundown now. But apparently thats where most of the peasants came from who stormed the Bastille during the revolution.  

We stopped for lunch at the market of d'Alligre and a few friends and I went to this couscous place that was incredible! You got to choose from a variety of skewered meats and then it came with a mountain of couscous and a liter of the most delicious vegetable sauce that had the largest chunks of veggies. All for 7 euro. We didn't know there would be so much food so we only ate about half our lunch and took the rest home for left overs. I cant believe I forgot to take a picture of it, but I stole this one from my friend Pam

We also walked along a raised pedestrian path that was completely empty. It was nice for a change, we didn't get the snooty looks coming from people scowling at the large number of people walking together. These are the 2 building I liked the most. This first one looked like it got chopped in half.

 And this one is just unique in its own obvious way.

 The next stop was the Gare de Lyon which is just an old giant train station, but it's really pretty

Then we finished our walk and had a free afternoon/evening. So my friend Pam and I ate our left over cous cous on the Champ de Mars then decided we wanted to get dessert and go shopping in the neighborhood by the opera house. But pretty much by the time we got there the stores were closing... and it was still light out so we wanted to make good use of our trip over there. We walked to the Tuileries and sat by the fountain for a while then notices the Arc de Triomphe in the distance and thought it too looked close enough to walk to. Little did we know we ended up walking all the way down the Champs Elysees and the sun was already setting. Which by the way was the most beautiful sunset I've ever seen without getting to see the sun. The sky was almost a neon pink and purple. This picture just doesn't quite do it justice though.

I don't know if you can really see, but that poor mini cooper was stopped in the round about for few minutes. I think the driver was too scared to exit. I know I would have been! I don't think I could ever get used to driving on a road where there aren't any dotted lines to guide me.

The Champs Elysees is so pretty at night time. And the shops are open much later there so we got to see how beautifully decorated they are all. For instance, this is the original Louis Vuitton and it looks like its glowing gold!

The more I get to walk around Paris without the class the more I LOVE it. But it also makes me appreciate being in nature and living a low key lifestyle where I don't feel like I am going to catch contagion every time I ride the metro or walk past a band of gypsies.

Day 17

This was Monday and because a lot of students were returning from weekends spent abroad, our professor didn't want to take us on a long walk. We went to his favorite look out spot of the city in Belleville. That was pretty much the highlight of the walk because the rest was spent walking around the "working class" part of Paris. There was a ton of cool graffiti, but not much else in terms of monuments or architecture. 

I take that back. This building is pretty cool. I have no idea what it is used for though.

After the walk I went to get gelato from a gelato shop called Amorino. It's kind of like a chain here in Paris, but it has the best gelato! And you can get as many flavors as you can get the scooper girls to cram in the cup so I took advantage of that. The speculoos is the best!
I've been learning a lot of new card games and word games on the trip because we like to sit around and talk and play games in the evening. I also discovered the nutella and coconut crepe for dessert. I don't even want to think about how bad it is for me... I'm only in Paris for one more week so I'm going to eat all the crepes while I can!

Barcelona Weekend

I finally made it to Barcelona after many difficulties. Originally there were 7 girls going on the trip and by the time the actual weekend came only 3 of us made it to Spain. Some girls booked their flight for the wrong days and couldn't get a refund, while other girls decided they couldn't afford the trip anymore... even after purchasing their nonrefundable plane ticket. It was a little frustrating to deal with, but everything worked out in the end. I even got my own bedroom, bathroom, and full size bed!

I left Thursday evening and it was pouring in Paris so my flight was delayed an hour. But we arrived a little after 10,  went to dinner, and got a good nights sleep.

This is a photo of myself in the Plaza de Catalunya.

 Alex is in the middle and Sabrina is on the right.

On Friday we walked and shopped along the main street, La Rambla, and went to the Boqueria for lunch and to check out all the produce.

The fresh juice was by far my favorite. And there were wild combinations. These were my favorite: blackberry coconut and orange, lemon, lime.

Olives!

 Cheese!

 Bulls brain, penis, and testicles... EW

We had a great paella meal at this organic stand. They had the adjective "orgasmic"in front of every item on the menu. It was weird. I refused to say "I'll have the orgasmic paella"

 We took a few of these to the beach on Saturday.

 So many eggs! You could get 30 eggs for 3 Euro. They also had emu and ostrich.

Friday night after our paella dinner we decided to see what the barcelona night life was like. I'm not a huge fan of nightclubs, but I wasn't going to be a party pooper. We went to a club called Razzmatazz and apparently 12 AM is too early to arrive at a nightclub because it wasn't open yet. We were unaware of this, but while we were standing outside trying to decide what to do we met a group of people that were from London who had also showed up too early. Luckily there was an Irish pub across the street that was open so we had a beer and got to know one another. The 3 of us ended up hanging out with their group at the club which was a lot of fun! The club has 5 different dance rooms that all play different music, so naturally we were in the room that played songs by bands like the Cure, the Killers, and the Clash. We danced until 4 AM, or should I say we danced until Alex's Tory Burch sandal got stepped on and broke and she threw a fit. Fortunately for me I was ready to go anyways.

Saturday we went to the Playa de Barceloneta to relax after our night out on Friday. The beach was so crowded, but gorgeous! As we walked back we walked through the Gothic quarter and saw the cathedral and lots of other cool architecture. I wish I knew more about some of the buildings I was looking at, but we were on our own to explore.  That night we went out for tapas and sangria. While we were sitting at the bar a man came up to us and have us each a rose... Men are very straight forward in Spain.

Sunday I had to rally the other 2 to get some more sight seeing in. I really wanted to see Park Guell and it took a little convincing to get them interested, but I succeeded in the end! Park Guell is in a nutshell, "Gaudi's Utopia". The architecture is outrageous. I kept thinking I was in Jurassic Park,

 I also fell in love with all the mosaics.

After Park Guell, we of course had to see La Sagrada Familia. I personally think it is hideous, but I also  have never seen anything like it (except maybe King Triton's castle in the Little Mermaid). Because of our late start we couldn't tour the inside. I guess I had to save some things for my next visit!