Le fete de Saint Marcel

the pictures say it all.

this is literally the craziest festival i have ever been to. Every year, all the people of the town dress up in these traditional Provencal clothing and parade around town. They dance, sing, jump, shoot muzzle loaders, and carry the bust of Saint Marcel down all the streets of the town. And every 4 years they slaughter a cow and parade it around town as well. This was my lucky year. So you are probably wandering just as much as i was, What is the point of this celebration? well the the story is pretty hazy at best. but i will try and tell it.

A few hundred years ago... when all the plagues and pests were hitting Europe pretty hard and killing a lot of people, there was one man who found the answer. This was a man who was walking down the road one day and saw a vision of Saint Marcel. The saint told him that if the people of his village ate the Tripe (cow intestines and stomach lining. gross, and previously always discarded as trash) then they would be safe. So the man told this to the village of Barjols and believe it or not the town prospered and was spared from the coming plague. Crazy. I know.

Well. we went, we saw, we jumped, we sang, we did not eat tripe, and we left. It was awesome. Definitely the kinda thing that tourists never hear about. I am glad to not be a tourist. I live here, and thus i sometimes here about these crazy events. I hope to find a couple more before i leave.

We made it to Paris

So we landed in Paris on the morning of New Years Eve! We had to take a train from the airport into town. On the train we met a cute french girl and an American girl. And the french girl is actually related to President Sarkozy! crazy!!! and she helped us find the right metro to get to our hotel, and she also had some pretty good stories. So we got off the metro and found our hotel like right outside the front doors of the station. We actually got our own room and shower and toilette. It was a real hotel. great way to end the trip and relax. So it is New Year's Eve, and their is no way that we are just going to sit in the hotel. Good thing i had friends in Paris. We met up with a guy named Nizar (friend from school, and the ambassador from Libya's son). We find the rest of our group (about 15 people) at the Arc de Triumph. From here we start drinking and walking towards the Eiffle tower for the big party. We get pretty good spots a little ways away and have the most perfect view for the countdown. There are thousands of french people around us. It was so great. Cinq, Quatre, Trois, Deux, Un, Bonne Anée!!!! it got crazy. Everyone cheering and happy. and then after a while there, we started the long walk back to the hotel and partied and met french people all along the 3 hour journey. It was truly a blast, and thus we woke up at 2pm the next day.

So for the rest of the trip we just took it easy and explored as many sites as we could (both durring the day and at night). This city is just magical really. I have been here before and i was still in Awe of so many things. So we saw: Sacre Coeur, Montmartre, Moulin Rouge, Galleries Lafayette, Bastille, Les Invalids, Arc de Triumph, Eiffle Tower, Mars parc, Champs de Essays, Louvre, Jim Morrison, Versailles, Sorbone, Parthenon, Statue of Liberty, Notre Dame, and so much more. And we ate some really good food along the way including my favorite; charwarmas (kinda like a Gyros, it's Lamb meat in a sandwich with fries and sauce. Awesome!) almost everyday.

So we spent a lot of time just walking around and exploring the city. All types of weather fell upon us except for rain. We got the sunny days, the cloudy ones and then the snow came one morning and covered the city. It was amazing being able to see this city in so many different lights. We also learned how to use the metro pretty efficiently after a day or two. It became second nature to take line 5 towards Place d'Italy and get off at Republique and catch line 8 towards Balard and get off at Concord. that is just one example, but it is fairly easy to get around the city if you know how to use the underground city. and that is exactly what it felt like when on the metro, you were in a whole other city. Sometimes the subway trains would surface and go thru Paris and give you some great views too. Like when we went to Versailles. This city which is not too far from Paris is owner to the Palace of King Louis XIV which is seated on a massive garden enriched estate. I would suggest this 10euro trip to anybody who has got an extra half day to fill in Paris. You get to see some incredible artwork, and be bewildered by the size and grandeur of the lifestyles that the former kings had lived.

The Louvre as expected was amazing. I feel like we saw the whole thing in half a day. We just kept moving. Everything from the infamous Mona Lisa to the Sphinx, to Aphrodite was before us. This museum is massive, and i would say to most it could easily deserve an entire day, but be ready to do a lot of walking. There are some other museums in town that i would have liked to check out, but we just didn't have any money left by the time we were in Paris. So we went to the largest cemetery in town to search for some of the greats. We got to the map and starred at it for a while along with 20 other tourists. I overheard a couple of cute french girls talking about going to see Jim Morrison, so i barged in on their conversation and invited us along. So all four of us started the journey to the other side of the grave yard. we passed some great looking tombs; fancy, new, shiny, old, big and small. I also was able to make some pretty good conversation with them (and i threw matt a couple bones, since he doesn't know french yet). we had a great time wondering the cemetery and yes we did find the great musician. As the day came to an end we left the graves and the girls and went wondering the town, like most nights.

So i will wrap up the Paris trip now. Matt left, and i still had one more day before i had my flight to get back to school. Some how my reservation for the last night was lost (go figure). so i had to hassle with the clerk, in french, to lower the price and let me stay, as opposed to sleeping on the streets. I got it down to 30 euros from 55. That was doable. so i got another nights sleep in the warm and then the next morning i woke up to more snow. And this time it was snowing hard. I caught my train to Beauvais (50 miles north) and we headed straight into the "little blizzard" as Aunt Angie would say. lol. The first problem was that the last bus shuttle that connects the train station in town to the airport had already left. And i am now out of cash. So what is a college kid to do? Write up a sign on notebook paper that says airport and go stand on the side of the road with his thumb out. Back Pack on, snow falling and a big smile. It took 40 minutes or so to get a ride. I was grateful! A nice lady finally pulled over, she said she lived by the airport and it wouldn't be a problem to take me. She said she remembered being my age. But she was from Antilles (some of the french claimed islands). I thanked her and was on my way. I sat in the airport for 5 hours waiting for my flight. And durring that time the runway froze! the 3 flights scheduled before mine were all canceled! big scare for a minute, but luckily my plane was able to land, and then take us to Marseilles. I little late due to de-icing the wings, we landed in MRS airport and i just had time to catch the last bus into Aix en Provence. I got home at 1:30am after traveling for 14hours (it would have been 4 if i had just gotten the train ticket. lol) I had fun, and now my trip was over. Time to go back to class. But then a snow storm hit Aix and classes were canceled for the next 3 days. so i was able to take a relaxation vacation from my vacation.

so that does it for that. I was safe and had a great time. And if you want to see more pictures then click the photobucket link on the right column. And PLEASE leave any comments or questions for me

London

ok, so i will try and keep this one a bit shorter. even tho London was more fun than Amsterdam. Part 3 of the Euro Trip and Matt and I are still having a blast

So we arrived in London at like midnight and on the completely wrong side of town. So the first task was figuring out transportation and quick. a lot of the bus lines were closing for the night and so was the tube. But no worries, i talked with a bunch of english people and we got it all sorted out and made it to the hostel by 1am. So we slept in the first morning and then decided it would be a great idea to walk into town instead of spending money on a bus pass. We walked for and hour and a half until we got to Tower Bridge. Long walk, but it was great to see everything by foot. You get more detail than you would just riding by on a bus. So on this day we saw; Tower Bridge, London Bridge, the Tower of London, the Bank of England, the Swiss RE Tower, and a whole bunch of other really cool buildings and monuments. Outside of the Tower of London they had a huge ice rink, and we must have stayed and watched people wipe out flat on their butts for half an hour. Literally within a minute somebody would have their arms flying in the air and then, thud. we laughed so hard. But alas we did not come all the way to London to see people fall down. We kept just wandering the city and exploring. This place is way bigger than i thought it was. So after we walked for a good few hours, we walked back to the hostel in Southeast London.

This Hostel was definitely the best out of the 3 we were in. I mean the beds were nothing special, but the sense of community that we got there was amazing. sometimes we would come back to the hostel just to chat with the people from all over the world. we were the only americans there, and everyone else was from about 10 different countries. We got exposed to a lot of different cultures. We heard so many interesting stories and really learned a lot from them. but i got to say there was a tv in the room, and boy does british television stink (so does most all of french, but we will get to that later)

So over the next couple days we kept being tourists and toured the city. we bought a bus pass for the city double deckers and also one for the Big Bus Company (tour bus). this allowed us to see Millennium bridge, Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben and the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Marble Arch, Hyde Park, Madame Toussards, and many other places. It was really neat, we could hope on and off the buses as we pleased for 48 hours. When on the bus we would get cool info told to us about what we were seeing. i would suggest it, but only if you are going to wake up early and get the full use of your 2 days. We checked out some other places in more detail like; the V and A museum, Shakespear's Globe Theater, and the Tate Modern (interesting art in here, and the word art is debatable) The museums in england are free to the public, fyi.

overall, i really enjoyed London, and i cannot wait to go back and see all the things that i missed. it definitely takes some time to see it all.

Christmas Vacation - Amsterdam

So. I think I have got some time to write now, the internet hasn’t been working that well lately.
This town has been crazy the last few days. We got 8 inches of snow. All the roads iced over and the shops closed. School also closed, for 3 days! There were many snowball fights, and people were out taking pictures all over town. I think this place only gets snow one time per year, if that (and has not seen a snow like the one we had since 1987! So… Now most of the snow has melted and things are starting to return to normal. I have got a lot of exams this week, some of which had review sessions last week that are now nonexistent. Oh well, wish me luck!

So my Christmas vacation was pretty awesome! My good friend Matt flew on over, and we toured Europe a little. So I already wrote about what we did the first couple days in Aix en Provence. So let me pick you up where the plane landed in Eindhoven.
So we got off the plane and had to walk down steps onto the runway and then into the terminal. Every plane we took was like this. None of them had connecting walkways into the building. Small time compared to ATL. Lol. Now we are in Eindhoven which is an hour and a half away from Amsterdam by train. And we had this assumption that everyone speaks English in the Netherlands, but this is not completely true (the signs are definitely not in English). But we did luck up and meet two 20 year old native girls who spoke our language. We buddied up with them to get to the train station and they helped us learn a few things in Dutch. They also showed us the right train to Amsterdam, very helpful. But sadly they were going to Rotterdam. So we had to say our goodbyes. Amsterdam here we come!

Our hostel is called “The Flying Pig, Uptown”. We got there at about midnight and had to go downstairs to the Bar to check in. We got all that taken care of and put our stuff in the room (4 sets of bunk beds, and 5 sleeping people). So we wanted to hit the town the first night so we went exploring a bit in the area of Leidsplein . We saw our first coffee shop, “The Bulldog”. It is pretty crazy what they can sell legally in this country. Lol. We also found ourselves a good charwarma place. We ordered a couple with the sauce Blanche and fries, and headed back to the hostel. We ate them downstairs in the chill out room, and starting meeting the other backpackers. There were people from all over the US and the world. Even met a couple French girls. So, we talked with these people for a couple hours and found out some cool stuff to do while we were going to be in Amsterdam. So we now had a plan, but we also wound up sleeping in everyday. The first day we walked all around the city and tried to find this Free Tour that we had heard about. It was supposed to be really good. But we could not find where they were meeting for the life of us, so we just kept exploring the town and got a good feel for the layout.

We were able to visit the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam. That was a really good experience to get to see and feel the history. We climbed the secret stairway and got to walk in the room they hid in for so many years. I am so glad that we got this chance. Also we visited a cathedral and a really interesting square. Begijnhof is a square that is completely surrounded by building, and you would not know it was there if you didn’t see a small doorway that led into it. Luckily I got pretty good eyesight. But it was interesting being in the middle of all these buildings. And a lot of them were not exactly standing straight up; I think something about all the water had to do with that.

So we finally found the tour on the last day and we stayed with it for about 30 minutes until we decided it was way too cheesy and ditched. So we hit the red-light district for a bit. Lol. You can find any type of girl, or man, you might want. But don’t worry we didn’t waste any money there. I can’t believe that this is a legal profession here. The girls pay a lot of money to rent out these windows, so in tern the clients have to pay at least 50 Euros for just about anything. And we definitely didn’t come with that kinda cash.

So we ended our trip with a nice walk thru Vondel Park. Just relaxed and took in the scenery and people. After this we went to this place called FEBO. it is a store where the walls are all like vending machines, but for hot portable foods that are made fresh and cheap. so we ate, and then it was off to Schiphol Airport to leave for London!!!

I made it thru the vacation

so i got to see a lot of stuff over the last two weeks!!! i spent Christmas in Amsterdam! Then a whole week in London! And then New Years in front of Le Tour d'Eiffel! It was all amazing, an i will give you the full details soon. I saw everything you could imagine seeing in these big cities. and i met a lot of really cool people from around the world. I still was using my french on a daily basis, and i think i might be on the way to becoming bilingual! finally.

well i hope all you have had a great vacation too.