Sorry for the long break! School has been increasingly demanding of my time, and I also decided to make an excursion!
Part I - More of Paris
I'm taking a class offered by my program (so whew, it's with American kids, even though it's still taught in French by a French professor) called the History of Paris. It's my favorite class! We have an hour-long lecture, then afterwards we explore Paris to see the monuments talked about during the lecture in person!
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| The Pantheon! Located in the 5th arrondissement, it's the famous Pantheon :) |
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| église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont (church) |
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| My new friends pretending to be cool (yeah, I don't know why I'm friends with them either - just kidding). |
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| I told Bryan - "I can see why people are religious! These are really pretty!" While not exactly true, these are extraordinarily detailed and rather pretty :) (inside église Saint-Étienne-du-Mont pictured above) |
Last Thursday I had a girl's night out with my girl friends here - too bad I was too distracted by the food to actually take a picture of the gathering...
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| This was a "hamburger". Where are the buns? What's the sunny-side up egg doing on top of that patty? Where's the ketchup!? Oh silly Frenchies. |
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| I had literally just a GIANT BOWL of moules. Moules? I meant mussels (dipped in cream sauce). Yummmm. |
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| PROFITEROLES FOR DESSERT!!!!! Believe me, I almost didn't get the picture before these beauties were gone... gone into my stomach, of course! |
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| Random: supposedly that, in all 20-30 years of my uncle and aunt living in France, this is the single BEST place to have seafood. Apparently for 60 euros you can get a giant bucket of unbelievably fresh and savory seafood (lobster, crab, whatever you can think of) that 4 adults can't finish. The catch is that it's really far out of town and impossible to reach by public transportation. Have no fear. When my stomach gets desperate, I get resourceful! Cousin's friend thinking about buying a car, here I come! |
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| That's right - Edinburgh's got nothing on Paris in the food department! |
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Part II - EXCURSION: Rouen!
My friend Lauren and I decided that we wanted to take a weekend trip. But where to? Since I only have a two-day weekend at the moment, we decided to visit the famed but somewhat nearby (1hr30min train ride) region of Normandy! Specifically, the quaint little city of Rouen.
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| My (GIANT) ticket to Rouen! |
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| Palais du Justice |
So after walking by some pretty buildings, Lauren and I had lunch at this Tea/Cake shop she pre-planned for us to have lunch at!
And thus ends our weekend excursion. Have no fear! Bryan and I are going to embark on a great adventure in April and will definitely have loads more pictures from Italy, Switzerland, and Spain!
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| My wonderful companion Lauren :) She's from UT, too, but we only actually got to know each other here. |
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| Chocolat des anciennes - really thick, gourmet hot chocolate flavored with vanilla and cinnamon. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm! |
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| Cakes! SAVORY CAKES! What a pleasant surprise! These three were: smoked saumon, walnuts and (some type of French) cheese, and chorizo and olives. My mouth sure was confused when it tasted meat in cake! |
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| Silly French people. Apparently the French don't like boring old blank walls, so they like to "decorate" the sides of buildings. Here's a 2-story-tall guy breaking out of the walls of a building. Zoom in for a better view! |
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| I'm not as skilled as Bryan at taking our own pictures yet, but you get the idea - we're in front of the beautiful Rouen cathedral that Monet made more than 30+ paintings of! |
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| Random desserts. Oh wait, ARE they desserts? LIES, they're actually little pieces of appetizer-sized teasers made from the local seafood! Sure looks yummy. |
We decided to visit Le Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
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| My favorite part of the museum! The stairway was painted so exact that no matter what angle you look at the mirror, you'd always see concentric circles! |
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| It's us! |
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| Bryan's not the only one who gets to see cool illusions! |
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| The mini model of Rouen's Hôtel de Ville (city hall). |
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| Rouen is a city of clocks. You'll see what I mean later ;) |
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| What Lauren really wanted to see: Claude Monet's collection! This is one painting in the Rouen Cathedral series. |
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| I just liked this painting because of how DETAILED it was. See next pic: |
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| Look at these guys zoomed in! The reflection of the flag, the floating barrel, the hats of the rowers... so much detail! |
After some -insert girly squeals- SHOPPING!!!!!!!!!
... we had...
DINNER!!!!!!!!!!! (at a CRÊPERIE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
(So much excitement in one afternoon!)
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| I decided to order a simple crêpe sarrasin with just an egg (and seasoning) to start with - so I'd have room for more, of course! |
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| Lauren was debating over whether to get a sweet crêpe... so naturally I convinced her to. This one's called L'apple pie, teehee. |
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| Before I even get to the crêpe - here's something that made me squeal. TWICE. Behold.... the crêpe DISH!!! Yes, I DO want one (by that I really mean 10), PLEASE! |
Ok, that crepe up there deserves bigger font. It's the epitome of why I came to Paris (...Rouen?) in the first place:
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| ...and of course, dinner was terminated with an obligatory ice cream sunday (with Chantilly, bananas, and chocolate ice cream) |
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| The Rouen Cathedrale at night |
After dinner, we attempted to 1. do more shopping and 2. find some sort of night life, but apparently everything in Rouen closes down at 7pm, and the only nightlife that existed were clubs for middle-aged singles who were ready to mingle.
So we just decided to turn in early, watch some French TV, have some girl talk, and off to sleep we go! Good thing, too, because the next morning we woke up to some free breakfast served by the hotel, and a flea market!
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| Serving size-packaged Nutella!!! Why oh WHY don't we have that in the US? |
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| the sunday flea market - selling things from old books to fresh cheese (fresh!? paradox) to knitting equipments to piles of clothes to sweet newly picked clementines that I couldn't resist from buying. |
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| Yes, we're goofy and happy - but it wasn't our faces that we were trying to show you... |
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| These buildings! That's what we were trying to take a picture in front of - they're pretty picturesque, don't you think? |
After exploring Rouen some more, we decided to have lunch at yet another restaurant that Lauren had looked up and pre-planned for us to eat at. Not only was it one of the few places open on Sundays, but it was also absolutely wonderful!
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| Boeuf! Though I see a little problem... |
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| There! Fixed! I fed all the carrots to Lauren :) |
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| Ok, so this beef was SERIOUSLY GOOD. I had already put my camera away, but one bite into this beef and I HAD to take a picture. This piece was giant!! There were 4 or 5 pieces in that pot. I definitely wasn't getting ripped off! |
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| For dessert, I had a soufflé glacé. Yes, that IS a citrus-y soufflé covered in ice cream and caramel sauce :) |
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| This is the famous Gros Horloge (big/fat clock) of Rouen. We decided that this was a picture we had to take! |
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| Here's a prettier picture of it unobstructed by our big heads :) |
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| Le vieux marché (the old market) |
