God, the weather is strange in Paris right now. Last week it was so hot and steamy, and now it's like February at Stanford... rainy and in the forties. Not too pleasant. It's not a big deal for me, though, because I have to stay in and do some work these next few days. And since I have work to do, I'm obviously going to procrastinate, so it's blog-updating time! And there's a lot to say... oh goodness, we've got to cover the rest of England, last week in Paris, and this weekend in Barcelona. Hold on, because this is going to be a long one! I've divided it into three sections to make it less daunting, so take your time. :)

Oh, and a quick apology-- I noticed tons of typos in the entry I wrote last week when I revisited it. J'ai si honte.

Anyhow, England, continued...

:: I don't think I mentioned yet how xenophobic England felt, and how paranoid about its security. Okay, I know these are "dangerous times" or whatever, but seriously. Not a single garbage can in the entire Underground? Vacuum-sealing my eyedrops at Heathrow? A ten minute interrogation about my business in England on arrival? That's a little excessive. Silvia told me that England has the highest number of security cameras per square kilometer in the entire world, and I would totally believe it.

:: Everyone says it, but it's so true: Oxford is so Harry Potter-esque. You should see the capes they wear! Like, I'm not kidding... students wear long flowing black capes, as do professors. It's hard not to laugh when you're in a convenience store and someone is walking around in a billowing thing that looks like a Halloween costume. And all the ancient common spaces and stuff... the same deal. We went to Formal Dinner at Francie's college, and it was in this echoing hall with gothic windows and long tables, with the professors sitting at the Head Table in front of everyone else. Crazy.

:: Francie took me to London on Saturday, because I have always wanted to go. We were only there for the afternoon and evening, which is hardly any time to do it justice, but I've always wanted to visit, so we did our best. It would have been foolish and stressful to try to "do" London and see all the famous sights and monuments, so we just did a few things, which was fine with me.
I've always wanted to visit the British Museum, so we went there. It was fantastic, I must say. It's free, and I marvel at the fact that you can just stroll in off the street and find yourself before the Rosetta Stone and other treasures like that. Wow, the Rosetta Stone is small! But it remains one of my favorite artifacts I've ever seen. It's so odd to think of all the human passions and efforts that have unfolded around that hunk of rock... its original creation, its capture and transport to England, and the controversy of whether it belongs to England, France, or Egypt. It's odd to be able to stand before something that provokes so many international complications. Same goes for the Elgin Marbles, which I think are more interesting for the political stew in which they are broiling than for their actual historical context. Anyhow, those things, the famous mummies, and everything else made me a big fan of the British Museum. I will have to go back, because a couple hours was barely enough to see those few exhibits.
On Francie's recommendation, we also went to an exhibit at the British Library called "Treasures of England" or something like that. Actually, it was pretty splendid. I had forgotten how much history that little island country actually has, but what a glorious past. Perhaps the British can be forgiven for their backward-looking country; there's a lot to look back on. The Library had a lot of general treasures from the rest of Europe and the world, as well; I particularly enjoyed seeing original manuscripts from composers like Chopin. And they had original copies of the Magna Carta and stuff like that, pages and pages of manuscripts from various authors, other stuff... and I think a lot of the Library for putting it all on display instead of hiding it in some warehouse somewhere! Kudos.
We also went for a walk along the Thames, from the Tower of London to the Tate Modern, passing various landmarks: the Tower Bridge, the new London Bridge (which is tremendously ugly; London should be ashamed); St. Paul's, and the new Millennium Bridge. The river walk was nice, but it must be said, I think the Seine is a better place for a walk. The Thames is a grander river, but the banks are crowded with ugly modern office towers and the path is not always pedestrian-friendly. We were heading for the Tate Modern, but wanted to grab some dinner first. Unfortunately, the area around the Tate Modern, Southwark (charmingly pronounced "Sutherk") is an industrial nowheresville of broad, empty streets, warehouses, and blank windows. We had to walk for almost half an hour before we found anything open, a gritty tandoori restaurant. Fortunately, I really wanted Indian food in London, so it was fine with me. We ate and felt much better after we did.
I think the Tate Modern is my new favorite museum. Wow! It's the city of London's modern art museum, and is housed in a former factory or power station or something similarly industrial. They've left a lot of the original fixtures in place, so it's an innovative setting for a museum. And the collection is just astonishing. They have it set up thematically instead of chronologically, kind of like Centre Pompidou, but even better; the fact that so many masterpieces show up in such an eclectic collection is amazing. Wandering around there was a great experience. It's also open late for a museum (especially in comparison with Paris), and is free. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
In general, London gets massive thumbs up for the museums, and I had a great time there. That being said, what I saw of it was kind of cold and characterless, and it felt huge and sprawling... a dour version of how I imagine Southern California. It felt impossibly big. I will certainly have to return, though, with more time.

I think that's everything I wanted to share from my visit to England. But oh, lucky reader, our adventures together are just beginning! Come now and relive last week in Paris with me.

:: I finally visited the Musée d'Orsay. At first, I did not like it as much as I hoped I would. I was quite tired when Vicky and I got there, and the collection begins in a pre-Impressionistic period (I think) that I find pretty dull. But before seeing more, we went to the café on the top floor of the museum, which gets mention as the nicest museum café I've ever visited. Coffee was fairly reasonable, and the setting was cool, with the old station's gigantic clock (the museum occupies a former railroad terminal) looming over the tables. The collections after the café were much more interesting to me, then, as well. I saw Dejeuner sur l'Herbe, which lives up to its reputation as a masterpiece, I think -- it's so strange! And speaking of that, Manet was a far more versatile painter than I realized; the Musée exhibited works of his in many different styles. I didn't know much about him before this, so that was cool. I also saw a good chunk of Gaugin, whom I like, and of course some Matisse... he just shows up in every Musée I visit! And thank goodness for it, because I become a bigger and bigger fan with everything I see. I also had a moment of Midwestern pride, because Seurat's studies for Sunday on La Grande Jatte were in the collection, but not the original, because it's in Chicago! Ha.
There wasn't time to see all of the Musée, so I will have to return. I left really liking it, though.

:: We went to this great park called Buttes Chaumont in a distant corner of Paris. It's a strange place, with a huge artificial mountain in the middle, but lots of fun -- there are waterfalls and bridges and fake classical temples, all of that nonsense people liked to scatter in their parks in the nineteenth century. It also has a lot of large and gracious old trees. The top of the artificial mountain offers a lovely view of Sacre Coeur and the more urban areas of Paris, so Silvia and Vicky and I just sat on some rocks and chatted for a while, the city spread out at our feet. The only sad thing was that the long bridge which is one of the park's hallmarks was closed for repairs. Perhaps we can return...

:: We got to enjoy another Bing outing, this time to the opera to see Carmen. Sadly, I did not like Carmen as much as I thought I would. I do like music of that era a lot, and I like musicals, but something about opera drives me a little crazy. It's so dramatic... my favorite (meaning, the part I find most ludicrous) moment is when Carmen flips over a tarot card revealing her impending death, stands up, and sings, "DDEEEEEAAATTTTHHHH!!!!" Stuff like that just makes me want to laugh out loud. I mean, I like melodrama as much as the next person, but seriously? The ballet was definitely better suited to my tastes. At least Carmen is sung in French, though, so it offered the chance to practice the old language skills.

:: Thursday was one of the more ridiculous days I've had in Paris. Vicky and Silvia and I decided to have a picnic on the Champs de Mars, the long park that runs up against the Eiffel Tower. It's a great place to hang out, with lovely views of the Tower, of course. Well, I don't know exactly how this happened, but somehow we each ended up drinking a bottle of wine apiece, even though it was two in the afternoon! It was a hot, hot day, and the wine hit us pretty hard... we were a silly bunch by the end of our picnic. Please don't judge me; I know a lot of my Paris fun involves drinking at various landmarks. Oh well! Judge if you wish. I'm kind of judging myself, it must be said.
Anyhow, the best-slash-worst thing was that we had a long-anticipated program to attend right after our picnic-slash-happy-hour. It was a presentation on chocolate tasting in which we were to learn how to sample and enjoy fine chocolate like fine wine (smarmy, I know, but don't pretend you wouldn't have fun doing it too!). When we rolled in ten minutes late I know I was still semi-smashed, but oh well. The chocolate was delicious even if I couldn't really tell you what the chocolate man had to say about it.
You'd think we'd end there, but not really. We went to a café to reenergize for the rest of the day, and then headed out to the distant twentieth arrondissement, a working-class area far from our usual haunts. We had read that this area was full of interesting bars, cafes, and galleries, a youthful and innovative district for staid and matronly Paris, so it sounded like a fun place to hang out. And indeed, we found a number of promising bars without looking too hard. We settled at a place called Le Chien Stupide, a bright and colorful bar with five-euro mojitos and a friendly bartender, who just sat there smoking and drinking champagne with his friends the whole time. It had a friendly, youthful, convivial atmosphere which I hope we didn't ruin by dragging our American selves in. I don't think so, though. It was probably my favorite bar that we've visited in this fine city.
We wanted to move to a more central location before the metro stopped running and we were doomed to the night buses, so we left the 20th and headed to the more familiar Latin Quarter, looking for a bar called La Rhumerie, famous for its tropical flavors and fried bananas. Well, the kitchen was closed, sadly, but the drinks were good... I had this ridiculous chocolate-rum confection which tasted like a milkshake. The bar had a good atmosphere, so we had a great time.
This day was actually one of my favorites we've had in Paris, because it was just an endless succession of low-key fun.

That was our week, pretty much. But, oh no, the fun's not over yet. It never ends on study abroad.... This weekend I went to Barcelona, probably one of the most hotly-anticipated trips of my life. For various reasons, I have wanted to come to Barcelona since high school, and now I've finally had the chance! Join me as I relive the trip....

So, Barcelona. I definitely liked it, but it's funny... I didn't bond with it in quite the way I'd hoped. Everything I knew about -- the strange and wonderful Gaudî architecture, the beaches, the chaos of La Rambla, the Spanish squares and such -- pleased me as much as I'd expected. But in my opinion, Barcelona didn't have that much real atmosphere. Certain areas did -- the lovely Gothic quarter, for instance, with its tall brooding buildings and colorful graffiti -- but a lot of it was just pleasant and bland. I suppose Paris has spoiled me... for all of its personality defects, or perhaps because of them, Paris is bursting with its very particular Parisian character. Parts of Barcelona seemed to have very little personality, and in fact reminded me of Monaco, which readers of this blog will know to be a huge insult. :)

I also expected to be dazzled by Barcelona's nightlife, and thought there would just be young people and liveliness and bars and cafes spilling into every street, which there were, but not to the extent that I hoped. We didn't go to any clubs or anything, and I'm sure those are the really fun part of a night in Barcelona, and I did like the places we went (especially this one place with four-fifty mojitos -- yes, that's the drink of the week, I guess). But it was less of an endless party than I expected, or if it was, the party wasn't quite to my tastes.

I do want to go back there, because I'm sure there's more to see and do, and there are certainly more neighborhoods I didn't even set foot into, but for now, it was enough time there.

Anyhow...

:: The people in Barcelona were generally very nice. The people who ran our hostel were extremely friendly and helpful, although one would hope they would be, so maybe that's not so remarkable. But random people on the street kept offering us directions, especially the first day, when we were searching for the hostel. Although I still prefer finding things on my own I really appreciate the niceness that drives a gesture like that. The people of Barcelona seem to have a better relationship with tourism than the Parisians do. I think Paris is embarrassed that it's so widely-visited and tries to pretend otherwise, while Barcelona embraces it. Barcelona's is probably a healthier attitude.
And yet I had a few bad run-ins with people in Barcelona. Or, not really bad... but let me explain. People were not shy about honking, for instance; I've never been honked at so much! And this one old man once stopped to scold us for blocking an escalator. Strangest of all, I bumped into this one dude at a metro station, and he started screaming at me and doing all this macho you-wanna-fight bullshit, which was disgusting. I found myself missing the Parisian way of pretending everyone else just doesn't exist. It makes things easier.

:: We tried to go the the beach, but accidentally got there quite late, around eight! And just as we arrived (literally just) a huge bank of clouds rolled right over the sun. We still hung out there, as it was a nice evening (though windy), and I took a quick swim as the sun set (and how many times will I be able to say I swam in the Mediterranean at sunset? Even if the sun itself was behind the clouds, but whatever), but it was not the hot barbeque-of-our-bodies we were hoping for.

:: I know I mentioned this already, but Gaudí's Modernisme really is phenomenal. All the buildings in this style look like they've just risen from the ocean, shiny and dripping and draped in colorful seaweed. It's strange and I wouldn't think it would work, but it does. The most famous building, Sagrada Familia cathedral, is huge and preposterous, and the smaller buildings are lovely to stumble across. So that was fun. Parc Güell is the most famous public space in the style, and it has that same character, just with lots of trees and funny things to clamber over, along with fantastic views of the city... so thumbs up there, of course.

:: I was pleased, because I remembered more Spanish than I thought I would, and I got to be the group translator (kind of, with Silvia), which was fun. It was also strange, though, because whenever I tried to speak Spanish it came out with lots of French words and grammar! Little things like connectors and colloquialisms... I felt bad but I couldn't help it. I guess Spanish and French share the same compartment of my brain now.

:: The food in Barcelona was really good. I mean, really. This is probably in part because we indulged on fairly nice restaurants, but I think Barcelona is known for a pretty innovative scene. It's been so long since we've eaten in young, brightly-painted restaurants with creative, well-presented dishes! Paris just doesn't go for that. Here were my menus: a mille-feuille (layered pastry) made up of mozzarella, tomato, and pesto for an appetizer and honey-olive-oil grilled vegetable plate for the main course one night, and gazpacho with a poppy-and-vegetable risotto the next night. It was really, really delicious. And street food (cafés and falafel and ice cream) was definitely cheaper than Paris, and just as good, so hooray for that.

Last night after we finished dinner, we felt like we should go out for a night on the town -- this was Barcelona, after all, a famously fun city. But we decided to come home. We were all tired, not just from this weekend, but tired in general, I think, from traveling. I don't expect you to pity my jet-set lifestyle of the past month, and I'm glad I did all the traveling I did, but last night, the thought of coming back to Paris sounded just wonderful. Every time I've gone somewhere else, coming back to Paris has been the greatest ending to a trip I could hope for. It's always such a pleasure to see people trading bisous at the baggage claim, to hear French again, to taste French bread, to settle back into this city that, whatever its imperfections, I'm beginning to understand and beginning to like an awful lot. It feels surprisingly like home.
And so here I am again, home. And now the end is close; it almost makes me want to cry sometimes. A little less than three weeks and that's it -- back to my real home, the home country I can't deny, however much I might wish I could. But right now, today, is still a beginning, the beginning of my longest stretch of time in Paris since April, and let me tell you, I'm excited. There's so much still to see and do!
So on that note, I should go do my homework so I have time to enjoy Paris in these last weeks. I will bid you adieu. And even more than usual, thank you -- this has been a long entry. And if you've read this far you make me smile. :)

My room is in full-swing tenement mode right now. For one thing, I've let my life descend into abject squalor... I won't even describe the horror I'm looking at right now in this tiny dorm room. I'll just say it's worse than you're imagining. Also, I did laundry today, and now clothes are hanging from every surface in my room, slums-of-Naples style. To top it all off, my glasses are broken and hanging crookedly from my nose. I really do feel like some poverty case. Well, except for the whole extravagant-life-in-Europe thing. But you know.

The eager reader may have noticed that I haven't posted in a while. Things have been a little stressful here. Not the fault of Paris; I've just had some real work to accomplish, and I've also been facing the mounting frustration of my summer job search. Yes, you heard me, search; I still don't have a summer job. Oh, but I have a lovely collection of rejections. Fuck the working world, I swear. So yeah, things have been a little less than idyllic here.

Of course, I'm leaving something important out that has nothing to do with any of this. I spent this past weekend on the road again, and have the chronicles of traveling to share with you! This weekend it was off to that soft and crumbling land drifting off the coast of Europe, the attic of the Anglophone world, the home of English... England! I finally made the pilgrimage to that country that gave us our language, and our country itself, in a way, not to mention my sometimes-hated, sometimes-liked major.

Anyhow. England. Where to begin? So I was staying with Francie in Oxford, of course, at the Stanford center. Wow -- what a different life those kids lead compared to us. The Stanford in Oxford program really seems like normal Stanford, just filtered through a different country. They all live in a dorm, they all have intense academic work to do, they live an hour away from a thriving metropolis but obligations keep them at Stanford... crazy. And then it seems like they have all the good stuff of Stanford -- the random conversations and the study breaks and all that kind of stuff that college creates. Not us! We Paris kids live in a non-stop, beautiful vacation and I love it. :) So it was strange for me to be in that kind of environment again -- not just the dorm, but the whole "college city" feel. I guess Oxford is the original college place; that's where university was born, I would assume. And today, the inner core of the city is nothing but colleges and the pubs and businesses that support them, surrounded by parkland. It's picturesque, and pleasant; the fifteenth century version of Palo Alto. Sub Gothic for Mission Romanesque in the architectural recipe.

England is beautiful in a soft, melodious way. On the bus from Heathrow to Oxford I was struck by the huge amount of livestock. In France it seemed like there were mostly plants, grains and mustard and whatever else is growing in those rolling fields, but not that many animals. But England had them everywhere -- clusters of sheep, and statuesque cows, and big majestic horses with their manes blowing Lisa Frank style in the wind. And everywhere there were hills, and clusters of plump trees, and streams. It's a homey kind of beauty, a little different from the straight-trunked beauty of nature in France.

One of the biggest shocks of visiting England was the language. It was so odd to step off the plane and be able to understand everything! That might sound obvious, but seriously, it took me off guard. I think my brain is so used to devoting most of its capacities to decoding French that it didn't even know what to do with itself. It was certainly disorienting. Because the English are paranoid I faced a long inquisition at Her Majesty's Customs or whatever and could barely remember how to engage in official business in English. And yet... as the weekend went on it became more and more clear that I wasn't really understanding English. There were so many times when I had to be like, "What?" Those accents can be hard! And in general, it is a very foreign place, English-speaking or not. I feel it's deceptive because you feel like it will be easy, or I did, at least. How hard can it be without the language barrier? Well, there were still tons of cultural cues I didn't understand.

On another note, I think the English are even more obsessed with tradition than the French. In France, the past is always there, especially in Paris, which lives in the nineteenth century. But there are modern things in France, too. I don't mean like telephones and cotton candy -- I mean modern architecture, modern re-interpretations of things, modern thought. England felt completely obsessed with its own past, though. All the modern architecture was thoughtless and ugly -- not ugly in a Tour Montparnasse way, but in an anonymous no-one-cared kind of way.

Let's see... let me stop this rambling and get specific. Here's some stuff we did:

:: Punting. This is perhaps the dumbest mode of transport ever invented in the world. It is also an Oxford tradition. It's boating on the winding streams that drift past the colleges and pastures of old Oxford. But it's not a normal boat. It's a long, flat vessel, like a ladder with plywood nailed on one side and stubby walls jutting out, so that it's like a long shallow tray. One person rides in the front and the other stands on the back, and that person propels the boat forward with -- yes -- a twenty foot metal pole, by pushing said pole against the muddy bottom of the river. Now, this is ridiculously difficult. The biggest problem is steering; how do you fight the current and wind with that thing? We ended up backwards several times. It's also hard because once you get a good push, you have to haul the stupid pole up, out of the water (and it's twenty feet long!) and put it back it. It's so clumsy and odd. Oh, when you go on this, they also give you a two-foot paddle, which I think is a joke, because it's uses are somewhat limited.
Screw that, it must be said. I'm rowing next time!

:: We went to English Tea right after I got there, which was a lot of fun. I tried clotted cream for the first time, which is much better than it sounds. The Tea came with the works -- scones, jams, creams, cucumber sandwiches, and chocolate cake, all of it on a three-tiered silver platter. And tea, duh. It was really satusfying.

:: Francie introduced me to the English habit of eating cheese with chutney, which sounds awful but is jaw-droppingly delicious.

:: We went for a long pub crawl through Oxford! So different from the Parisian night scene... it was fun to just stop, grab a pint, and then go on and do the same thing elsewhere. We got quite drunk off pints, it must be said. And they all had phenomenal pub names, like Eagle and Child (the one Tolkien and CS Lewis used to frequent! Too bad I don't like fantasy or I would have been more moved, perhaps....)

Oh goodness, I'm afraid I'm quite tired and should stop here. But don't fear, gentle readers-- next installment will describe our magnificent day in London (including the Magna Carta, the Rosette Stone, and new favorite musée, the Tate Modern), and the Parisian adventures of the past week! (Including Peruvian food, beautiful parks, liqueured café in the company of an enormous clock, Edouard Manet, and the presidential palace of France)

Bon soirée, mes cheris....

Since when is Nutella health food? I mean, seriously. I'm sitting here staring at the jar, which offers this as a balanced breakfast: Nutella on two pieces of bread, a bowl (yes!) of milk, and a glass of orange juice. I mean, I love Nutella and all, but that doesn't scream "Pete Déjeuner Idéal" to me. More like fatty snack. Never mind that as I'm sitting here my face is probably smeared with Nutella... in embarrassing quantities... oh yes.

Anyhow, today is a Laundry and Homework Day. I actually have homework... mais non! Honestly, it's been so long since I did any work that it's almost a welcome change of pace. But I am procrastinating, obvi, so I thought I'd write a quick entry about life since getting back from my Grand Trip.

:: Actually, I have to go back to the night before we left for our Grand Trip for one anecdote. Silvia and I went to buy books to amuse us on the train (I got Guns, Germs, and Steel, which is sadly more boring than I thought it would be, and As I Lay Dying). Anyhow, we went to The Village Voice, which is Paris's premier English language bookstore, and a Left Bank institution. While we were browsing I heard the clerk say something about Amy Tan coming. Huh? I thought. And sure enough, a few minutes later, who should come breezing in the door with crazy shoes and a little dog in her arms but Amy Tan! Now, I didn't even like The Joy Luck Club, and in fact never finished it, and we didn't even talk to her, but still -- this was the biggest celebrity encounter of my life. I was in the same room as Amy Tan. It actually felt very Lost Generation, with the American author in Paris and all... very exciting.

:: Realizing how quickly time is going I have vowed to be better about getting out of my room and seeing the sights of Paris. I actually did see a number of things last week. I went to this thing called the Promenade Plantée, an elevated park in the eastern part of Paris, which was actually very cool... a long elevated walkway lined in flowers and shrubs. I don't know how it got there but it was pleasant and a little magical, walking at the level of the roofs and all that.

:: I also visited the Parc André Citroën, a new park on the banks of the Seine in the southeast corner of Paris. Supposedly it marries nature and technology; I was pretty excited to check it out. Actually, the place is strange and a little unpleasant. It looks like the overgrown ruins of a shopping mall... featureless walls of dirty gray stone blocks, pockmarked lawns, glass pavilions with nothing inside or outside. The northern segment is prettily planted but the rest is just strange. The big draw is supposed to be a huge network of fountains, but they were all off -- there were just shallow pools of mud and litter with a couple ducks standing around. Worst of all, no one was there using it. And while I was there, it started to rain. I was not sad to leave. Incidentally, I just googled the place, and found it ranked as the second worst park in the world by the Project for Public Spaces. (They have a really cool website profiling urban spaces-- I find that kind of stuff really interesting. Check it out: http://www.pps.org/great_public_spaces/)

:: I finally visited Père Lachaise, the most celebrated cemetery in Paris. I don't care if I'm morbid, I actually really like visiting cemeteries. They're always so green and restful. Père Lachaise was almost too big for a casual stroll, though; vendors outside the gates sell maps and guides -- it's that big. Tons of famous people are buried there, but I wasn't in that much of a pilgrimage mood, so I only saw a couple -- I went to see Heloise and Abelard, and remembered how much I hated studying them in my Medieval Women class, and I stumbled across Chopin's grave, which was actually quite nice. His monument was covered in flowers, and an old man was spritzing all of them with a spray bottle as a flock of Poles paying homage looked on. Also, Chopin died on my birthday, which is kind of cool. (In a morbid way, of course.)

:: We've been to several movies in the last couple of days. On Friday we saw Le Prix à Payer, which was dreadful. We had expected a stupid romantic comedy, which it was, but it was rock bottom. Supposedly it is the worst French movie of the year. Last night, though, we went to see a movie called Paris, je t'aime (Paris, I love you). It's a collection of eighteen short films, each one directed by a famous director and each in a different neighborhood of Paris, all exploring some theme of love. Well, it was spectacular. I feel like we were the perfect audience for this movie... we were able to laugh with the Parisians in the theater at all the idiosyncrasies of life in Paris (how native I felt!). At the same time, a lot of the films explored being an expatriate, or some another kind of outsider, in Paris, and I could totally feel for those, as well. The last one (and the one set in my neighborhood!) involved a middle-aged American woman's dream vacation in Paris, and the happy-sad way it feels to be here sometimes, especially when you are alone... I almost cried. I feel like she was talking for me. I won't try to summarize that part of the movie because it will just sound silly but seriously... it meant a lot to me. I don't think I would have thought as highly of the movie if I saw it at home, but the context of watching it here left me completely moved. I left the theater wanting to see it again, right away! I will certainly have to buy it.

:: Remember Le Queen, the famous Paris club that had shunned us when we tried to go last time? Well, I found another batch of free passes, so Vicky, Silvia and I got ourselves beautiful and decided to give it another go. Seriously, we looked good... I felt very glam walking down the Champs-Elysees. Anyhow, we got there, and praise the lord, they let us in. Imagine our surprise when we found that nobody in the damn place was remotely dressed up! It was all jeans and t-shirts... so I guess we didn't need to impress them after all. Well, whatever. It was really fun... my first trashy Euroclub experience! It was nineties night, so because of the pop culture void that was my childhood I didn't recognize that many songs, but it was still a good time. We danced ourselves silly.

Well, I guess I should go do my homework and cleaning. Thanks for reading yet another entry, and au revoir!

Oh man, grab a snack and put up your feet, because this entry is going to be a long one! I haven't posted in a while because I just got back from a week-long trip through the south of France. Yes, a week; is this for real? Do I actually live a life now where I can take a week-long vacation in the middle of school? Yes. The answer is yes. I am so lucky.

Here, in convenient city-by-city form, is what we did.

BORDEAUX was the first stop on our glorious trip, though it must be said, our arrival in the city was kind of an anti-climax. We had come, of course, for the wine; the city is the center of the Bordeaux-producing region. But the city itself doesn't have much to offer. Supposedly it has a lovely old town, but all we saw were sleepy, tattered neighborhoods, and a fairly dull downtown. It looked like the training-wheels version of Paris -- similar nineteenth century feel, but much smaller and much less interesting. Whatever, no big deal, except that when we got to the city's Office de Tourisme we discovered that we had missed the day's wine tour... by ten minutes. All wine activity is far away from the city itself, scattered over the surrounding countryside, so it's not like we could just hop over to a vineyard or something. The people there were not too helpful, but told us to come back at 2:30, when the "wine expert" would be around. We sat outside, staring at the dull city around us, thinking this was a pretty unfortunate start to our trip.

But then our luck changed. The wine expert turned out to be extremely nice and unbelievably helpful. In five minutes on the phone, she arranged a personal (yes!) tour and tasting for us, at some château reachable by bus. It cost barely a fraction of what the official tour would have been and sounded amazing. We couldn't thank her enough. And indeed, the tour was amazing. The owner of the château (a beautiful mansion on a rolling pastoral estate, although she called it a "small" château -- ha!) took us around the cave and wine cellars, and at the end let us pick a bottle to try. It was very informal, and was just the four of us -- this really was looking into some family's home and business! So cool. The owner let us wander around the grounds afterward and it was exactly my image of rural France: vineyards, green fields, an abandoned barn covered in overgrowth, little outbuildings, lush and verdant. We had a great time.

So Bordeaux, in the end, was pretty cool. We had a hurried dinner in town and then got on our overnight train to...

MARSEILLE. I loved Marseille. But I don't get to talk about that yet, because after arriving in Marseille at 5:30 in the morning we left immediately for...

AVIGNON. What a lovely little city! I have compulsively read Peter Mayle's travel books about Provence, and Avignon brought them to life for me. It had everything I was expecting... colorful little houses, crumbling medieval walls, rolling countryside, lush vegetation, canals, generally overwhelming picturesqueness. It was lovely to look at, but that's really all you can do in a place like that, so we left after a few hours for...

ARLES. Somehow I found Arles less charming than Avignon. It had the same Provençal character, plus a handful of Roman ruins thrown in, but it seemed kind of dusty and forgotten to me. The big draw here is Van Gogh's legacy; it was in this town that he painted "Night Café" and "Starry Night," among many other works. It's also where the famous and unfortunate ear incident happened; lucky visitors go to see the insane asylum where he was subdued. Alas, time was short for us, so we contented ourselves with the original Night Café and a garden mimicking another painting of his (although this garden's fountain was clogged, digustingly, with dozens of dead snails).

We returned to MARSEILLE and immediately got a hotel. Remember, we had been on the go by this point for a long time (two days, with a night on the train), so having a hotel room seemed impossibly luxurious. We had a delicious dinner that night, but slept a lot, too... we had earned it after the train! The next day was our chance to explore Marseille. It's kind of a grimy city, with graffiti and litter everywhere, plus messy construction sites on every corner, but it's completely beguiling anyhow. The whole place is a bright Mediterranean port city, with narrow little streets, pastel houses, white shutters, the works. It's also cosmopolitan and cheap compared to Paris -- finding a place to eat was never a problem.

Our big adventure in Marseille was supposed to be a visit to the island Château d'Îf, a grim fortress drifting offshore from the port, and the prison in Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, but the Island was somehow closed, so we were denied that pleasure. I wasn't sad about that, though, because it gave us plenty of time to poke around Marseille's charismatic streets. We also climbed to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde, a zebra-striped church on top of Marseille's tallest hill... we almost died on our climb, especially because it was quite windy, but the views were worth it.

No matter where we were, the city felt so alive... the pretty little towns we'd been to previously (and the Riviera we'd visit in the next couple of days) sometimes seemed like living, overpriced postcards... flat and substanceless. Marseille had heft. It felt real and alive, which I appreciated. It was definitely my favorite stop on our trip.

The next morning, we said farewell to Marseille and hopped on a train to CANNES, of film festival fame. By the time we got there it was sunny and warm -- perfect weather for the French Riviera! Because, everything else aside, Cannes is still a seaside town, and it's quite nice on a summery day. We actually didn't spend much time in Cannes, leaving the city itself for a nearby island which my guidebook recommended, the Isle St.-Marguerite, ten minutes away by ferry. We bought sandwiches on the island and had a picnic on the beach, overlooking the Mediterranean. Beach is not quite the right word... we actually ate on a rocky promontory, overlooking the sea, with forests behind us (the Island is miraculously undeveloped). It was fine for picnicking, but when we tried to go swimming we found out this wasn't the best place. Below the water were algae-covered rocks, sharp and slippery; Silvia, Vicky and I foolishly tried to press in, and Vicky and I actually made it out to the deep water. Swimming was fun, and lovely; I couldn't believe I was in the Mediterranean! But then when we got out we began to feel... not quite right. It turns out we'd all gotten various wounds from the rocks, and painful ones at that! It was almost comical. Silvia was leaving footprints of blood on the rocks, Vicky had what looked like black seedpods in her foot, and I had a cut on my big toe which was giving me -- I kid you not -- the most excruciating pain of my entire life. It was almost unbearable. Mostly because of my complaining, we bundled ourselves together and got the hell off the Island... I honestly thought I might need an emergency room or something! But the pain subsided by the time we got to the mainland. Turns out Cannes itself has a normal beach, sandy and soft, where we collapsed for some rest after that ordeal. I'm still glad we went to the Island, though... after all, how often will I be able to say I picnicked on an island in the Mediterranean?

After rehabilitating on the beach in Cannes we hopped on a train to NICE. Based on my guidebook's recommendation, we had called a hotel and booked a room for four, and so we set out from the train station expecting a nice little place like our lovely one in Marseille. Well. Let me tell you, this is why guidebooks can't be trusted. Our "hotel" was actually a hostel, and a dingy one at that; we had a room, yes, but with iron bunk beds and barren pink mattresses, and a shower and a sink behind a curtain (not a door!) but no toilet. We looked at each other and knew we had to get the hell out. The owner was not pleased, but thankfully our credit card hadn't gone through (not that the owner should have rung it up before we got there anyhow!), so it didn't matter, and we just kind of left. There were tons of hotels around that area, so we found a four-person room in a two-star hotel with real beds, a real bathroom, towels, and everything else for the SAME PRICE as the hostel. I was so relieved we got to change! What a nightmare that would have been....

Anyhow, we didn't actually spend much time in Nice. The next day, Monday, was a big exploration day for us... our first stop was MONACO, famed mini-country and playground of the rich. It was honestly the most horrible place I have ever been in my life. Hot, crowded, and unpleasant, I can think of nothing I liked about it. Sure, it has a nice setting, but it's built-up like a shopping mall... ugly and characterless. Sure, it's on the Riviera. But there's no beach! Just vacant streets and yachts. The main feature of public life is apparently parking garages; one has to pass through them to get anywhere. And getting anywhere, incidentally, is challenging; crossing the Porsche-clogged streets is a chore, especially for us, because we were there as they were setting up for the Monaco Grand Prix. And the rich... my God, the rich... let me summarize my irritation by pointing out that all day I was looking for an ATM, and couldn't find my bank, and finally did toward the end of the day... but instead of a normal branch it was a "private banking" site for the rich with nothing to offer me! I was disgusted. Monaco has no charming streets, no restaurant districts, no beautiful architecture; everything seems artificial and tacky, despite the vast embarrassment of wealth that underpins it all. I have never been happier to leave a place.

The Italian town of VENTIMIGLIA would be lovely anywhere, but arriving there after a day in terrible Monaco made it even better. Yes, I said Italy; it's the first town over the border, and French trains go there, so we thought, why not go to Italy for dinner? The town is small and charming, everything I hoped the French riviera would be... a quiet (though rocky) beach, a dense clutter of honey-colored buildings, palm trees, a promenade, etc. The quiet was the best part... although it was obviously a tourist town, there weren't many tourists. It was also a novelty because the tourist parts of town all catered to French-speakers instead of English-speakers (it's an exotic little day trip for people from the South of France), so we felt more French than American, at least in the eyes of the Italians. Anyhow, all we wanted to do was eat, though we did spend some happy time staring at the beach; but we had gelato (delicious!) and a long, lingering dinner right on the beach, overlooking the sunset. It was one of the most magical meals of my life. It totally erased the dirty feeling of Monaco from my mind.

After dinner, we made our way to the train station to catch our train back to Nice. When we got there there was an Italian word none of us recognized on the train schedule, something like "soppresso," which didn't sound good. We approached the guard and had a conversation in French with him in which he explained that the word meant the train wasn't running. "Comment?" we gasped, and he explained that the French trains were having a strike. Well, as you can imagine, this was slightly stressful to us, as we weren't even in the same country as our hotel. In the end we had to take a 100-euro cab ride back to Nice. Although crossing the border in a taxi was a novel experience, and made me feel rich and famous for some reason, paying was not so fun. But, what can you do? We assumed the strikes were because of the elections that had happened the night before (we saw burning dumpsters on our way to our hotel, so apparently not everyone was excited by Sarkozy's election!), so chalked it up to experience and left it at that.

And finally, NICE, and the end of our trip. I didn't really have high hopes for Nice. In fact, I expected it to be a sightly poorer version of Monaco -- a shopping mall by the sea. But in the end, Nice had a lot to offer. The town is charming, and we had delicious ice cream and sandwiches in the course of the day, all among the colorful buildings and narrow streets. The big draw is, of course, the beach. It is neither sand nor slabs of rocks, but pebbles, which are actually more comfortable than they sound. We spent almost the whole day at the beach, swimming and sun-bathing. This was the first time I've ever had a really nice day at the beach, and I loved it! The water was an impossible turquoise color, and warmer than I expected, and the rocks were better for lying than I could have hoped. It was a great way to end our trip, and the appropriate mental preparation for the sometimes-trying experience of the overnight train back to Paris.

Yes; the end. Have you made it this far? I have a couple more comments before signing off.

:: One of the biggest treats of the trip was having a TV in Marseille and watching European music videos at night before we went to sleep! We found some treasures, including the remix of "Beautiful Liar" and a French R&B song called "Ma Soeur." The TV also planted that one Gwen Stefani song and the Nelly Furtado / Timbaland / Justin Timberlake star vehicle "Give It to Me" in our heads for the rest of the trip.

:: Four is so the perfect number for traveling. From train seats facing each other to hotel rooms to more subtle group dynamics, I highly recommend.

:: I can't decide whether the trains of France are wonderful or awful. The service is frequent and relatively cheap, and got us where we wanted to go (expect for the notable exception of the strike!). But there were some exceptions, especially with the overnight trains. For instance, the bathrooms were somewhat primitive... we were lucky if they even had running water, and soap? Don't even think about it! We also had a crazy man on the train with us for the eleven grueling hours from Nice to Paris. He kept lurching through the aisle, an awful trail of BO drifting behind him, and approached us at least twice to mumble something about gâteau -- cake. That was kind of a long night, I must admit, especially because I had a full day of class starting an hour after our early morning arrival back in Paris!

:: Speaking of Paris, being away made us realize two things: how expensive Paris is, and how unfriendly its people really are. I say that with love, of course. But it's true... everywhere else, people would be nice to us in a way that they aren't in Paris, waiters and tourist office people and our hotel clerks and stuff like that, but others as well. People on the street would offer to help us find things, for instance, or the people next to us in the restaurant would laugh at our gaffes in a nice way, asking where we were from. None of us even remembered how to be nice, so we just stalked past the people who tried to be friendly, realizing later that they were probably actually nice and not creepy. Oh dear... Paris has worked its mean little self into our veins....

:: Also along those lines, people were willing to speak French to us, which was a refreshing change from the impatient Parisians, who switch to English often (just to spite us, we feel)....

:: We had vowed to try local delicacies in every place we visited (cheese or wine or pastries or whatever), but kept being thwarted by closed shops or other obstacles so that we only did so (beside the Bordeaux in Bordeaux) in Marseille, and hated the candy we tried (it's lavender flavored chocolate, which is as ghastly as it sounds).

:: I do have to indulge in some verbal food pornography for the better meals we had. Among its many charms, Marseille was great for eating. The meal we had our first night there was one of the best I've had in France, and the waitress was very nice, explaining what dishes were (in French!). That whole region has a strong Italian influence on its food, so there was delicious pasta, creamy sauce with mushrooms in my case. I also had an onion tart with that meal which was definitely the best appetizer I've had here. Oh, we also tried pear liqueur, which was unbelievably strong! Order aperitifs with caution.... Oh, we also had Lebanese cuisine in Marseille, also delicious. And I must single out the ice cream from Nice that I already mentioned, which was so great because of the odd variety of flavors... I had spice cake, chocolate gingerbread, and honey pine nut. The first two were wonderful, though the third was a little weird. Still. Parisian ice cream would never come in whimsical flavors like that, so it was a big treat.

I guess that's it. If you read this far, you are my hero, and I thank you for being patient and interested. Already adventures in Paris are piling up, so look forward to another entry soon! And before I close, I do have to say thanks to Nafis, Vicky, and Silvia, who were absolutely wonderful traveling companions. I can't believe how compatible we were, and how much fun I had, and how we managed to laugh and enjoy ourselves, even after, for instance, cumulative days of train travel. En fait, you guys are splendid.

With that, I will say au revoir and à bientôt!

Today I finally saw one of the sights of Paris I've always wanted to see: the famous prostitutes of the Bois de Boulogne!

Today, May 1, is a national holiday in France... this is, after all, a proudly socialist nation (or at least, in theory), so the worker's holiday is a big deal. No one works, and most businesses (except for a fair number of restaurants) are closed. People buy flowers (I smelled my favorite, lily of the valley, for the first time since I came to Stanford!), and everyone fills the streets to enjoy pleasantly pastoral activities like walks and picnics. Actually, there was also a huge rally today for Segolene Royal which must have drawn thousands... I know this because it was held at a stadium right next to my dorm. There were vast throngs of people in the street heading to the rally when I finally got out of my dorm room today. The election is coming up fast... I'm excited. I do love a good election.

But not being French, and being self-centered in any case, I did not do the educational thing and go to the rally. Instead, we went for a picnic in the Bois de Boulogne. This is an enormous park on the trim western border of Paris. Actually, it's more a woodland than a park... lots of untamed nature, very Romantic, in that nineteenth-century-British-landscape-painter way. We only saw the tiniest corner of it (it's enormous... almost three times bigger than Central Park) but had a great time tramping over the little woodland paths, among streams and brambly patches and stuff like that. We did visit a particularly lovely part of the Bois, the Parc des Bagatelles, a walled-in "Anglochinois" garden with swans and peacocks roaming around. But, in typical French fashion, at the stroke of eight police came through with whistles and shooed us out of the park before we could see everything we wanted. Oh well... a good reason to return.

Anyhow, the prostitutes. Maybe because it's located in a rich and prosperous part of Paris, the Bois is known for becoming somewhat... entrepreneurial at night. I seem to remember a part of The DaVinci Code involving prostitutes in this park (though God only knows what that had to do with the mysteries of Jesus), and my guidebook mentions the particularly celebrated Brazilian transvestites who work the park at night. For such a reputation, the place seemed tame by daylight -- children, miniature trains, the whole family-friendly deal. But then -- we left right as the sun was setting, picking our way down one of the park's principal roads, chatting about this and that... and our conversation stopped dead when we saw our first prostitute! She was standing in a little wooded glade beside the road, all legs and short pink dress, running a comb through her long hair. And then we saw more. Maybe they sleep in the forest by day and emerge like lemurs in the night. But they were definitely prostitutes. I don't know if they were man or woman, Brazilian or not... but prostitutes, yes. The funniest part was being there right at sunset, as the two worlds of the Bois collided, families with children walking right past seductive, vacant-eyed "ladies of the night."

Enough of that. I have been doing much more than prostitute-watching in Paris. Last week I realized with some alarm that I haven't been taking advantage of the pass I have from Stanford for entry into all Parisian museums, so I've been to several in the past few days. First of all, I went to the Louvre and finally saw some of the more famous works, including the Mona Lisa. God, everyone says it, but I have to as well... what a disappointment. Or, maybe not a disappointment, but a mystery, at least. Why so famous? Why does it merit a slew of guards and an enormous wall all to itself? It certainly isn't much to look at, comparatively. The whole Louvre makes me feel that way... I just have trouble relating to a lot of the art on display there.

But I went to the Musée de l'Orangerie, a place I've wanted to go this whole time, and found it to be fantastic -- small and manageable and full of interesting works. The museum specializes in the era bridging Impressionism and Modern art, and that includes some of my favorite painter, Matisse. Turns out it includes a lot more, as well... I discovered an artist I'd never heard of but whose work I found especially compelling, Chaim Soutine. The Museum's most celebrated installation is a 360-degree panoramic presentation of some Monet water lily paintings, which are pretty dazzling if you like that kind of thing. Anyhow, this musée totally lived up to my expectations. Hooray.

Yesterday I went to the modern art museum at the Centre Pompidou, probably Paris's most controversial building. This is the one that's turned inside out, with all the pipes and other infrastructure painted in primary colors and put on the outside. I personally like it, and enjoyed the chance to see the building from the inside. And what an art museum! Seriously, this is what I relate to -- Matisse, my favorite, but all the others, too. And what a setting. The museum is on the fourth and fifth floors of the building, so the large windows and terraces offer sweeping views of Paris. Another great museum. Hooray again! And all this for free... "oui, je suis étudiant en histoire de l'art" ... that little line, coupled with my letter from Stanford is pretty much my mantra these days.

On Sunday I finally did something I've wanted to do since arriving: taking a good long walk. I set out from my dorm without a clear destination and just made my way around the city. Paris is a great place to do something like that, so I had a good time. It surprised me how well I could navigate the Left Bank, my part of the city -- familiar sights (or at least names) kept popping up. That makes me pretty happy if I'm getting to know Paris. There were also some dramatic sights. The afternoon was threatening rain, and I saw some trees dropping pink flowers like raindrops as thunder boomed in the distance... quite a sight. Later, though, I got caught in the rain, which was less poetic and more annoying. It poured like it hasn't since I've been here, though I didn't mind that much -- I've gotten so used to seeing Paris in bright sunshine that seeing its moodier side was kind of a treat.

One last story to tell -- don't judge! So we went to this hookah bar we've been to a couple of times. It's a really nice environment, friendly and calm, reasonable, a good place to hang out for a few hours. Of course we got hookah. We decided, however, to try a new flavor -- the one that sounded exotic and (to me) delicious, "miel" -- honey. When we ordered it, however, the waiter kind of looked at us. He told us that it was "trop fort" -- very strong. We thought nothing of it and ordered it anyhow. He brought it and it looked nothing like any hookah we'd seen before. And when we tasted it, we could hardly stand how strong it was and how unexpectedly difficult it was to get the smoke down. We didn't taste any honey. And after a few hits we looked at each other and said, "Something feels different about this...." I will spare you all the details, but let me tell you -- this was no ordinary hookah. We all felt... well, almost high. Can you guess where this is leading? So, being nerdy students, we of course went online later that night and looked it up. Sure enough, "honey" and "miel" aren't only what they really are, but also refer to hash... so we accidentally had hashish in our hookah! Oh man... it was, I think, one of the funnier surprises that Paris has brought me.

Those were the big adventures of the last few days. Now I have my "long" day of class tomorrow, and then we leave for our fabulous tour of France the next day! I am dying of excitement. So no updates for a little bit... but thank you for reading this one. Bisoux!