(I'm not complaining, I'm just saying... )
. . .
Today for lunch I bought a bag of day-old viennoiseries (= pains au chocolat, croissants, brioches) from my favorite boulangerie and some fruit at a market near my house. That would never happen at home! Usually I have a much healthier lunch than that, don't worry - my favorite new discovery is the "sandwich tunisien" which is inexpensive and includes bellpeppers, tomatoes, tuna, pureed carrots, potatoes, half a hard-boiled egg, one pitted olive (?!), olive oil, and a spicy sauce called harissa (finally something spicy!!). It's SO GOOD. My goal is to become friends with the old guy who always takes my order at the restaurant...which is, for some reason, named "Carthage Milk."
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So! Finally! An update on my life since it's gotten interesting! The first two weeks were fine, but it got even better with vacation and classes at the university starting.
First, vacation. I went to visit my friend Stéphane in La Rochelle. He's 30 something and his boyfriend Jacques (who I LOVE) is wealthy enough that he, Stéphane, doesn't have to work. He just goes to the beach every day. When I was there, he cooked me all kinds of delicious food - mussels, crêpes, chocolate mousse, chocolate cake, pasta, egg rolls... He loves to cook but doesn't eat much sweet stuff, so it was mostly up to me to each all the desserts! For those of you that don't know, I love good food (je suis gourmande, as the French would say). As you can imagine, I was in heaven. In the mornings, I walked around the city with either Stéphane or Jacques.
Look, a Classic Mediterrenean Port/Canal Picture! (St Martin, a little village on Ile de Ré)
The two towers of La Rochelle. I'm going to resist making an LOTR joke here.
The third tower. We climbed up this one...it was used as a prison at one point!
These are raw mini conch things....in talking with the guy selling them, I mentioned I'd never had one. He took one, pulled out the thing inside with the pointy end of the sign and held it out to me and said HERE! Taste it!! so I did. I glanced at it and decided it was one of those things you can't look closely at if you actually want to eat it (let alone enjoy it). It was surprisingly good.Jacques used to own a company that researched the patrimoine (hard to translate, but basically cultural heritage) of the region, so he has a pass that gets him (and me!) free into all the historical places and he knows so incredibly much about the history of the city (it was under seige in the 17th c.! I didn't know seiges were still happening then), the architecture, the people... It was great. Then, in the afternoons, we went to the beach. There are all kinds of gorgeous beaches in the area, but we usually went to one called La Pointe Espagnole, which was a bit of a drive but beautiful and quiet.
This is the beach I went to with Stéphane on Ile de Ré... you kind of stumble upon it after walking through dense woods for 10 minutes.
One afternoon before we went to the beach, we went to an exhibition in a town nearby where they're building a reproduction of Lafayette's boat to America!
La Hermione.
Stéphane and I. His face is ridiculous...his excuse was that he is incapable of smiling (a lie)
Jacques and I!! He's so adorable.After a few days in La Rochelle, I took the train to Paris. Stéphane gave me the rest of the chocolate cake to take with me for the road:
YES.I am, I'm pretty sure, the luckiest girl, because (in addition to everything else!) one of the owners of the store I work for in Chapel Hill (Toots and Magoo) let me stay in her beautiful apartment in Paris!! It's on the Ile St Louis (the island in the Seine right next to the island where Notre Dame is)... in short, when I told Jacques and Stéphane where I was going to stay in Paris, their jaws dropped. Here are some pictures, but Cheryle's website has better ones, obviously. If you ever want to stay in Paris, I highly recommend it. :)
!!!!There was also two more bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a fully equipped kitchen. Truly incredible! This was my view when I walked out onto the bridge next to the apartment building:
o hai Notre Dame.I arrived in Paris on Saturday afternoon, and went almost immediately to the Musée d'Orsay. I love the impressionists!!
View of Sacré Coeur from inside the Musée d'Orsay.After that, I met up with my friend Shonalie who was also in Paris, and we had dinner at a little restaurant in the quartier St Germain, which is (as far as I can tell) very literature- and (especially) art-oriented. Ever heard of Les Deux Magots? Well, our cafe was down the block, right across from the actual St Germain cathedrale.
Yum!!That night we couldn't figure out where in Paris people go out, so we stayed home and baked a chocolate cake and drank red wine. Terrific! On Sunday, I went to Versailles...such a pain, honestly, but incredible to finally see it. I didn't take many pictures (I prefer to experience things with my eyes, not my view finder/digital display) except of things that were really striking:
Hall of Mirrors!! truly impressive.
This is only half of it... Louis XIV was so into himself.
My favorite part of it all was the Queen's hamlet, which is where she "played peasant"...sounds fun to me, but it was not very popular with the actual peasants.
Pretty roses on my walk back from Trianon.After I got back from Versailles, I met up with Shonalie and we went to the garden of the Musée Rodin, which was free and had lots to look at.
Look who it is!That evening, we found a little restaurant near the apartment and ate there. Such a good choice! We had a really good tart as an appetizer and then I had this magnificent duck confit with potatoes. Equally as delicious was the bread we had with our food - I have never had such incredible bread. The French know what's up.
Ile St Louis is known for its ice cream (?!, I know), so after dinner Shonalie and I got some...so delicious!! Mine was coconut and dark chocolate.On Monday, I walked down part of the Champs Elysées, past the Place de la Concorde, through the Tuileries Garden (NOT an actual garden-with-grass, I was very disappointed), and past the Louvre (I couldn't handle more tourists). On my way through the Tuileries Garden, I went to the Musée d'Orangerie, which is a smallish museum that houses Monet's waterlilies pieces. I think it was probably my favorite museum, because it felt really manageable. There was a variety of art - Picasso, Degas, Monet, and lots of others. That afternoon, I went to Sacré Coeur, which is so incredible. Watch out, though, if you ever take the metro and get off at the stop nearby....the metro stops approximately in the inner core of the earth, and then it's up to you to get back to the inhabited surface. And then you have to climb up the hill to get to the actual church. Just a heads up.
It's worth it though:
Wow!! I went inside, but you're not allowed to take pictures. It's gorgeous on the inside too, unspurprisingly.I returned home that evening, and spent the last two days of my vacation just relaxing. My UNC classes started that Thursday, and then my classes at the university started the next Monday!
I'm going to do a separate post on my classes, etc, because this post is already long, and I'll probably have to go eat dinner soon!
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