Fall Break originally consisted of 3 days the University gave + weekend for a total of 5 days of vacation…I decided to extend that and skip a few classes to have 15 days of traveling. :) SOOO I went to Paris, Le Touquet, London, and Cork during those 2 weeks.
PARIS:
(Isn't the sky cool with it's 3 layers?!?!)
I started off the trip by oversleeping - very, very (TOO) normal for me - and having to buy a new train ticket to Paris and not even knowing where I was going to stay when I got to Paris…then everything turned out okay. I heard back from the Tandeau family (Alexis’ family, who we had housed in Cary twice before).
(me at the Louvre)
I went to the Louvre (right) again on Friday night since it’s free for people under 26 and ended up meeting a group of people from Indiana that were studying in Paris. I walked around Paris with them and we ended up in front of Moulin Rouge on Halloween night and then watching “Moulin Rouge” at their apartment. Saturday I went to Versailles to see all of the rooms that I had read about in the false autobiography of Marie Antoinette this summer.
On the train ride back to the city at the St. Michel metro stop, a huge crowd of people surrounded an Italian musician singing a lot of American covers. He was in NYC the previous week recording so I talked to him a little bit afterwards and went to hear him perform at an Australian bar the next night and ended up singing a few songs with him.
It was really great staying with the Tandeau family because we went to an “American Conference” to discuss the upcoming elections (talking American politics with French people always turns out interesting). Sunday morning I found the American Church in Paris and then went to Musée d’Orsay for 5+ hours (it’s free the first Sunday of every month). I loved loved loved it. I think it’s been my favorite museum so far mainly because of all the beautiful impressionism. 
I went from there to Montmartre and Sacre Cœur (right) to see the view of the city at night and take pictures of it, but once I got there, I discovered that my camera was missing/stolen!!! – I had taken a few metros that day and hadn’t taken a picture since Notre Dame… - but I just went into Sacre Cœur and thought about how I was in one of the most beautiful churches ever, and then I wrote some more postcards which calmed me down. Tuesday morning I went back to Notre Dame and sang with the 2 musicians again – they let me have most of the money which paid for all my food and metro tickets in Paris and also my train ticket to Le Touquet – SWEEET!
We ate a traditional “Irish breakfast” : sausages and puddings that were made from lamb’s blood and other tasty things! I went to his music composition class with him, and it was really really cool and then we just walked around Cork and the college campus. That night we went bar hopping with his friends after Tyler made a delicious dinner with homemade biscuits!!! I had only ordered drinks in French, so they all laughed at me when the bartender didn’t know what I was asking for. The next day we went to the Blarney Castle and its gardens where the witch lives. 
I walked up and down the wishing steps and kissed the stone, so I’m supposed to be all blessed and eloquent this year…we’ll see. Then we went shopping at the Blarney Mill, and I bought a ski suit…I still wasn’t sure how I was going to pack it, but assumed that I’d have to wear it on the plane (I only had to wear the jacket, not the pants). That night I went to Tyler’s Gaelic class, which was also really cool. I’m glad I got to see another studying abroad experience. We went out to eat that night to have a nice “Christmas Dinner” (I think we were all a little homesick), hit up a bar for a little bit to have one last amazing REKORDERLIG CIDER (SOOO tasty!), then watched a movie at the house. I left early Thursday morning to go back to London, where I had stored my larger bag, and then headed back to Montpellier that evening. 
It felt so good to get back “home” after that long trip!!! I was gone for 2 whole weeks with just my hiking backpack. I’m really glad that I was able to see family and friends on the way! I’ll never forget it!
(Hotel des Invalides)
It was really great staying with the Tandeau family because we went to an “American Conference” to discuss the upcoming elections (talking American politics with French people always turns out interesting). Sunday morning I found the American Church in Paris and then went to Musée d’Orsay for 5+ hours (it’s free the first Sunday of every month). I loved loved loved it. I think it’s been my favorite museum so far mainly because of all the beautiful impressionism. 
Monday I went to Sainte Chapelle (to the right: the Chapel that Saint Louis – the King Saint – built to have an alter for the relic of the crown of thorns. The crown isn’t there anymore, but the beautiful, stain-glass windows are! There are 12 windows, each one containing the scenes from a different Biblical story. Next door I went to the Conciergerie (which used to be the Medieval Castle and then jails where Marie Antoinette was imprisoned before her execution during the Revolution), and the Palais de Justice (gates in the pic on the right). The whole “Ile de la cité” is cool just imagining that everyone could live within the walls of that one fortress if necessary. 
(below)
(below)I went to the place de Notre Dame to write some postcards, because it was beautiful outside and ended up meeting 2 musicians (a Belge and Frenchie) and started singing with them, then started singing FOR them (they weren’t really ‘singers’)…we decided to meet up in the same place Tuesday morning to sing some more. It was SOOO much fun! I left them to meet up with Jeanne Fasquelle (the daughter of the Député (like our State Representatives) of the Le Touquet region who came to Cary in August of this year) and she showed me around the French National Assembly after sweet talking the guard. Differences between it and our Congress building were their left and right parties are in different building with a beautiful courtyard in the middle and that they had massive Renaissance art all over their walls, ceilings, and floors.
I went from there to Montmartre and Sacre Cœur (right) to see the view of the city at night and take pictures of it, but once I got there, I discovered that my camera was missing/stolen!!! – I had taken a few metros that day and hadn’t taken a picture since Notre Dame… - but I just went into Sacre Cœur and thought about how I was in one of the most beautiful churches ever, and then I wrote some more postcards which calmed me down. Tuesday morning I went back to Notre Dame and sang with the 2 musicians again – they let me have most of the money which paid for all my food and metro tickets in Paris and also my train ticket to Le Touquet – SWEEET!
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(South African, Belge, Frenchie, American)
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LE TOUQUET:
Mrs. Fasquelle picked my up from the train station and we went to eat at Les Sports (a really well known restaurant) and I ate a “Welsh” (lots of melted cheddar cheese on bread). Wednesday I borrowed a bike to see the town. It’s really cute! Although it’s a bustling tourist town, on weekdays in November it’s charming and quaint. There is a beautiful town hall, church, and rosy/white mansion on a little hill – I took my Bible and read for a bit in front of it. We ate lunch at these 2 Italian peoples house – they STUFFED US to death!!! We would think we were done, but NEVER. I couldn’t move for a few hours and we had a very light veggie soup for dinner. That afternoon I went to the glasses store to pick out new frames for Quintin (the 12 year old son) – he trusted my fashionable opinion. On Thursday I met with a lot of people that my dad/family knows through Sister Cities…Martine is the first person to host my dad when he came to France the first time. She took me to Westminster Hotel to have some tea and cake and we just chatted about she remembers when I was 3 years old. Annie is an English professor at the culinary school in Le Touquet and she had been to Cary to take her students while they did their internships. We started off with an apero at her house and then went to the most famous crêpe place in Le Touquet…Amazing! She said in the summer time, there’s always a line going down the street to eat there – I’m really glad I visited in the winter. That night I ate some pastry delicacies with Quintin and went to bed, because I had an early morning departure to Boulogne. Mrs. Fasquelle take the children to school in Boulogne where her law office is, and that just happened to be where I was going to take a ferry across the channel. I had a few hours until my ferry, so I walked around the completely fortified city – making it the second that I’ve been to in France (the first was Carcassonne and there are only three total). When I arrived at the port where the ferry was to leave from…there weren’t any boats. How can there not be any boats?!?! I late found out the company went under, probably that exact day…SO I had to walk to the train station (a good 30 minutes away) and take a train to the next port city Calais. They had boats! But I had to make up Uncle Fred’s address in order to get on it…I landed in Dover and was going to take a train to London, but it was about half as much to take a bus. Unfortunately all the buses were full until 6pm or so (a 4 hour wait). I waited.
LONDON:
When I arrived in London, I had yet to talk to Uncle Fred about my stay in London…he knew I was coming, just not when. All I had was an address and directions from the train station…but I was coming from the bus station. I walked around and saw the Westminster Abby and Buckingham palace … It started to rain and I was lost, but I was on Good King George Street – that was a good sign. When I got to a rather large, familiar clock and building that was blown up in “V for Vendetta” I sat down on Winston Churchill’s statue. It was raining and I had no umbrella and I couldn’t get in touch with Uncle Fred. Finally I got a call from him and was safely directed to his apartment! Victory! Friday I went to a lot of free museums inside because it was raining (but luckily Nathan and Angela had left some rain boots, along with other shoes, with Fred on their way through London). I spent a large amount of time in the National Portrait Gallery to see all of the people I had been reading about in Anne Boleyn’s false autobiography - Henry VIII, Mary Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey, Bloody Mary, Elisabeth Tudor, ect…That night Fred took me to this amazing Indian restaurant and I learned to eat with my hands as messily as possible! The next day I went to the National Imperial Museum (full of all Britain’s war history) and then the British Library (there’s a room with a lot of original pieces of literature like Shakespeare’s first works, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Mozart’s scores with all of his notes, and even an entire Beatles section with papers and napkins and birthday cards with their song brainstorming…you could also listen to someone reading Dickens or playing Mozart or the Beatles singing while looking at all of the documents – I thought it was cool! That night, Uncle Fred and I took a cab to the Royal Albert Hall to watch Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to commemorate Armistice Day (the end of WWI). It was so beautiful (the opera house and the performance – the London Orchestra, Choir, and Boy’s Choir!), and we had GREAT seats!!! The next day Fred had the day off, so we walked all around the city, over the London Bridge, through Shakespeare’s church and the Globe Theater (apparently Kevin Spacey is the current Theater Director), Sir Francis Drake’s Pirate ship (not the original…and you can rent this one for parties!)…it started raining so we went back and watch some movies and TV series. Fred had to leave Monday to go to Los Angeles, but it was the first/only sunny day I experienced! I went to see the Changing of the Guards in front of Buckingham Palace and then met 2 guys from Washington State…we went to the Tower Bridge (not to be confused with the Tower of London…) but still cool! And then I went to Hyde Park (Henry VIII’s old hunting grounds) to find Peter Pan’s statue and I also bought tickets to go see WICKED!!! (It’s my favorite musical of all time, although I had never seen it – finally after 5 years I got to see it!!!) SO I was all packed up (because my flight was really early so I would have to leave at 3am from Fred’s house to get to the airport on time), and I left for the show…BUT RIGHT when I closed the door I realized that I’d left the keys inside the apartment and there was one lock that locked automatically!!! (I’m going to give the short version…) I knocked on the lady’s door upstairs and she called a locksmith and then went to get tools from some friends down the street…she came back with a crowbar because one of Fred’s windows wasn’t locked, but stuck. I popped it open and climbed in to see the keys on the kitchen counter. I RAN to the Tube and went to the theater already 20 minutes late for Wicked…and RAN in the theater to the second floor as I heard them singing “Loathing”, the 3rd song on the track…A guy who works there came up and asked if I was okay because I was panting. He looked at my ticket and said “I can get you a better seat than this…follow me.” SWEEET! So although I was about 20 minutes late, I got really good seats and it was an awesome show. I can’t believe I almost missed it!!! Well I made it to the airport and my flight okay and got to Cork at 8:30am on Tuesday morning.
CORK:
I took a bus from the airport to the city center after waiting 50 minutes, because I had just missed the previous bus….and then the driver didn’t even drop me off at the bus station where Tyler was going to meet me…he was just like there’s the main street (pointing)…I found a payphone and called Tyler trying to describe where I was…he finally found me like 30 minutes later. Wow. He was so scared that he’d lost me!
Mrs. Fasquelle picked my up from the train station and we went to eat at Les Sports (a really well known restaurant) and I ate a “Welsh” (lots of melted cheddar cheese on bread). Wednesday I borrowed a bike to see the town. It’s really cute! Although it’s a bustling tourist town, on weekdays in November it’s charming and quaint. There is a beautiful town hall, church, and rosy/white mansion on a little hill – I took my Bible and read for a bit in front of it. We ate lunch at these 2 Italian peoples house – they STUFFED US to death!!! We would think we were done, but NEVER. I couldn’t move for a few hours and we had a very light veggie soup for dinner. That afternoon I went to the glasses store to pick out new frames for Quintin (the 12 year old son) – he trusted my fashionable opinion. On Thursday I met with a lot of people that my dad/family knows through Sister Cities…Martine is the first person to host my dad when he came to France the first time. She took me to Westminster Hotel to have some tea and cake and we just chatted about she remembers when I was 3 years old. Annie is an English professor at the culinary school in Le Touquet and she had been to Cary to take her students while they did their internships. We started off with an apero at her house and then went to the most famous crêpe place in Le Touquet…Amazing! She said in the summer time, there’s always a line going down the street to eat there – I’m really glad I visited in the winter. That night I ate some pastry delicacies with Quintin and went to bed, because I had an early morning departure to Boulogne. Mrs. Fasquelle take the children to school in Boulogne where her law office is, and that just happened to be where I was going to take a ferry across the channel. I had a few hours until my ferry, so I walked around the completely fortified city – making it the second that I’ve been to in France (the first was Carcassonne and there are only three total). When I arrived at the port where the ferry was to leave from…there weren’t any boats. How can there not be any boats?!?! I late found out the company went under, probably that exact day…SO I had to walk to the train station (a good 30 minutes away) and take a train to the next port city Calais. They had boats! But I had to make up Uncle Fred’s address in order to get on it…I landed in Dover and was going to take a train to London, but it was about half as much to take a bus. Unfortunately all the buses were full until 6pm or so (a 4 hour wait). I waited.
LONDON:
When I arrived in London, I had yet to talk to Uncle Fred about my stay in London…he knew I was coming, just not when. All I had was an address and directions from the train station…but I was coming from the bus station. I walked around and saw the Westminster Abby and Buckingham palace … It started to rain and I was lost, but I was on Good King George Street – that was a good sign. When I got to a rather large, familiar clock and building that was blown up in “V for Vendetta” I sat down on Winston Churchill’s statue. It was raining and I had no umbrella and I couldn’t get in touch with Uncle Fred. Finally I got a call from him and was safely directed to his apartment! Victory! Friday I went to a lot of free museums inside because it was raining (but luckily Nathan and Angela had left some rain boots, along with other shoes, with Fred on their way through London). I spent a large amount of time in the National Portrait Gallery to see all of the people I had been reading about in Anne Boleyn’s false autobiography - Henry VIII, Mary Boleyn, Katherine of Aragon, Cardinal Wolsey, Bloody Mary, Elisabeth Tudor, ect…That night Fred took me to this amazing Indian restaurant and I learned to eat with my hands as messily as possible! The next day I went to the National Imperial Museum (full of all Britain’s war history) and then the British Library (there’s a room with a lot of original pieces of literature like Shakespeare’s first works, Jane Austin, Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Mozart’s scores with all of his notes, and even an entire Beatles section with papers and napkins and birthday cards with their song brainstorming…you could also listen to someone reading Dickens or playing Mozart or the Beatles singing while looking at all of the documents – I thought it was cool! That night, Uncle Fred and I took a cab to the Royal Albert Hall to watch Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem to commemorate Armistice Day (the end of WWI). It was so beautiful (the opera house and the performance – the London Orchestra, Choir, and Boy’s Choir!), and we had GREAT seats!!! The next day Fred had the day off, so we walked all around the city, over the London Bridge, through Shakespeare’s church and the Globe Theater (apparently Kevin Spacey is the current Theater Director), Sir Francis Drake’s Pirate ship (not the original…and you can rent this one for parties!)…it started raining so we went back and watch some movies and TV series. Fred had to leave Monday to go to Los Angeles, but it was the first/only sunny day I experienced! I went to see the Changing of the Guards in front of Buckingham Palace and then met 2 guys from Washington State…we went to the Tower Bridge (not to be confused with the Tower of London…) but still cool! And then I went to Hyde Park (Henry VIII’s old hunting grounds) to find Peter Pan’s statue and I also bought tickets to go see WICKED!!! (It’s my favorite musical of all time, although I had never seen it – finally after 5 years I got to see it!!!) SO I was all packed up (because my flight was really early so I would have to leave at 3am from Fred’s house to get to the airport on time), and I left for the show…BUT RIGHT when I closed the door I realized that I’d left the keys inside the apartment and there was one lock that locked automatically!!! (I’m going to give the short version…) I knocked on the lady’s door upstairs and she called a locksmith and then went to get tools from some friends down the street…she came back with a crowbar because one of Fred’s windows wasn’t locked, but stuck. I popped it open and climbed in to see the keys on the kitchen counter. I RAN to the Tube and went to the theater already 20 minutes late for Wicked…and RAN in the theater to the second floor as I heard them singing “Loathing”, the 3rd song on the track…A guy who works there came up and asked if I was okay because I was panting. He looked at my ticket and said “I can get you a better seat than this…follow me.” SWEEET! So although I was about 20 minutes late, I got really good seats and it was an awesome show. I can’t believe I almost missed it!!! Well I made it to the airport and my flight okay and got to Cork at 8:30am on Tuesday morning.
CORK:
I took a bus from the airport to the city center after waiting 50 minutes, because I had just missed the previous bus….and then the driver didn’t even drop me off at the bus station where Tyler was going to meet me…he was just like there’s the main street (pointing)…I found a payphone and called Tyler trying to describe where I was…he finally found me like 30 minutes later. Wow. He was so scared that he’d lost me!
We ate a traditional “Irish breakfast” : sausages and puddings that were made from lamb’s blood and other tasty things! I went to his music composition class with him, and it was really really cool and then we just walked around Cork and the college campus. That night we went bar hopping with his friends after Tyler made a delicious dinner with homemade biscuits!!! I had only ordered drinks in French, so they all laughed at me when the bartender didn’t know what I was asking for. The next day we went to the Blarney Castle and its gardens where the witch lives. 
I walked up and down the wishing steps and kissed the stone, so I’m supposed to be all blessed and eloquent this year…we’ll see. Then we went shopping at the Blarney Mill, and I bought a ski suit…I still wasn’t sure how I was going to pack it, but assumed that I’d have to wear it on the plane (I only had to wear the jacket, not the pants). That night I went to Tyler’s Gaelic class, which was also really cool. I’m glad I got to see another studying abroad experience. We went out to eat that night to have a nice “Christmas Dinner” (I think we were all a little homesick), hit up a bar for a little bit to have one last amazing REKORDERLIG CIDER (SOOO tasty!), then watched a movie at the house. I left early Thursday morning to go back to London, where I had stored my larger bag, and then headed back to Montpellier that evening. It felt so good to get back “home” after that long trip!!! I was gone for 2 whole weeks with just my hiking backpack. I’m really glad that I was able to see family and friends on the way! I’ll never forget it!
