This past week, my mom and sister were here visiting. It was really nice, and we did SO much. Museums up the wazoo. Mum gets like that - when she has a plan to do stuff, she does it. I'm very proud of them. It was really intense for me especially, though, because I was being a tourist with them, as well as their tour guide and translator, plus continuing to be a student, and hopefully enjoy it all too. Hence the title of this post - I was ready to fall into bed at every moment.
My favorite part of their trip , stuff-wise (as in, having them here was the best part) was Tuesday, when we went to Versailles for the day. It also just happened to be the only day I have seen in Paris yet that didn't have a cloud in the sky. Not. One. Single. Cloud. Not even a wisp. Just a clear blue as far as the eye can see.
The chateau of Versailles is ridiculous. Absolutely nuts. Each room was worth approximately four hundred gajillion dollars (you don't even want to know what that is in Euros). Even the simplest room that we walked through had a mural on the ceiling. There was one room with velvet walls!! All the beds that we saw (and there were WAY more fancy beds than there had been fancy people living there) were ostentatiously ornate, three or four feet high mattresses with huge canopies and feathery plumes at the corners. Also, gold was everywhere. Everything was gilded. No wonder the people hated them - they were starving while Marie Antoinette and her elite posse decided to have yet another portrait taken of them to put in the new room that they had just built. Who doesn't need a seventh study in the East Wing of a chateau?
Other than that, Sainte Chapelle was unnecessarily closed every day, Mom's French started coming back, and Bertillon's (ice cream) was as heavenly as ever.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Monday, February 8, 2010
I'm legal!
Sorry it's been a while - my life was picked up and spun around by a cyclone of awesomeness starting about two weeks ago or so.
So, as the title suggests, I have since had my 21st birthday! (Shoutout thanks to ADP for the fantastic surprise birthday skype) It was great. Thursday, a bunch of friends took me out to an Indian place, and we all shared 5 curries/saags/yumminesses and a ton of rice. Then we got crepes for dessert (Rhiannon and Becky got seconds, hehe), when I remembered that the best crepe is nutella and banana slices. I think I already mentioned this in another post, but it merits being mentioned multiple times.
Friday, Andy and I saw Mr. Nobody, which I highly recommend, as long as you don't mind needing to watch it about 7 times before you understand it. It's kind of a mix of The Matrix and Sliding Doors. After that, we went to a party of some American girls who are in the same program as Kirill, who is Aaron's Russian friend from the high school era (remember that time?). We're big on having random, far-reaching connections here. It was great, their apartment was 3 stories for 3 people, with incredibly high ceilings and a bubble staircase (the railing was metal circles of different sizes attached together). SO cool. We met new people (the first ones I met were a British girl and a Finnish dude), and chatted about being in France. Yael and I barely caught the last metro, and got home around 2am.
Saturday (yeah, I decided to have an entire birthday weekend, to compensate for the fact that turning 21 is not nearly as big of a deal in France as in the United States), Andy and Kirill and I watched The Princess and The Frog (fun french word of the day: frog = grenouille. Another fun french fact: "to have a frog in your throat" is "avoir un chat dans la gorge"; literally "to have a cat in the throat") (and yes, this is the new Disney movie...), then met up with people and went to have dinner in the latin quarter. The rue that Kirill knew of was stuffed with restaurants, with people enticing customers in with deals and freebies. The place we ended up going to was an Italian place, with an appetizer (calamari for me), main course ("individual" pizza that I could only eat half of) and a dessert (apple tart) for 9 euros. REALLY good deal, and decent food - I liked the pizza, and the veggie soup that Andy got for an appetizer was really yummy with the bread dipped in. To get us in, though, the guy outside ended up promising each person in the group (there were 8 of us) three free cocktails, which was similar to sangria.
After this dinner, we went to a bar/club to meet up with some of Kirill's friends. This place was set up with a normal bar on the main floor, and then a dance cavern below. There's no other way to describe this place. It was craggy stone cavern with uneven walls, a low ceiling, and minimal lighting (except for the neon clubbing lights). It was epic. We had gotten there around 10:45 (and therefore gotten downstairs for free, because it was before 11), and danced like maniacs, with Lady Gaga songs followed by Michael Jackson, followed by one that was DEFINITELY on my parents' mix tape for their wedding. CULTURE SHOCK (thank you Allie Benson). In any case, most people decided to leave around 1, so as to catch the metro, but Kirill and I decided to stay for a bit and dance some more (during which time, a French guy made a passing comment to Kirill and I of "chaud comme lapin". If you don't understand French, find someone who does to translate). Around 3, we found a 24-hour cafe to rehydrate, and then kept dancing until 6, when we took one of the first metros back to our respective homes, and (for me, at least) collapsed into sweet oblivion for several hours.
As if that weren't wonderful enough, we all went bowling the next day (I like bowling. Hush up), and then Kirill made me dinner and we watched a movie and I happened to fall asleep at his place.
And then I was happy.
And 21.
But mostly happy.
So, as the title suggests, I have since had my 21st birthday! (Shoutout thanks to ADP for the fantastic surprise birthday skype) It was great. Thursday, a bunch of friends took me out to an Indian place, and we all shared 5 curries/saags/yumminesses and a ton of rice. Then we got crepes for dessert (Rhiannon and Becky got seconds, hehe), when I remembered that the best crepe is nutella and banana slices. I think I already mentioned this in another post, but it merits being mentioned multiple times.
Friday, Andy and I saw Mr. Nobody, which I highly recommend, as long as you don't mind needing to watch it about 7 times before you understand it. It's kind of a mix of The Matrix and Sliding Doors. After that, we went to a party of some American girls who are in the same program as Kirill, who is Aaron's Russian friend from the high school era (remember that time?). We're big on having random, far-reaching connections here. It was great, their apartment was 3 stories for 3 people, with incredibly high ceilings and a bubble staircase (the railing was metal circles of different sizes attached together). SO cool. We met new people (the first ones I met were a British girl and a Finnish dude), and chatted about being in France. Yael and I barely caught the last metro, and got home around 2am.
Saturday (yeah, I decided to have an entire birthday weekend, to compensate for the fact that turning 21 is not nearly as big of a deal in France as in the United States), Andy and Kirill and I watched The Princess and The Frog (fun french word of the day: frog = grenouille. Another fun french fact: "to have a frog in your throat" is "avoir un chat dans la gorge"; literally "to have a cat in the throat") (and yes, this is the new Disney movie...), then met up with people and went to have dinner in the latin quarter. The rue that Kirill knew of was stuffed with restaurants, with people enticing customers in with deals and freebies. The place we ended up going to was an Italian place, with an appetizer (calamari for me), main course ("individual" pizza that I could only eat half of) and a dessert (apple tart) for 9 euros. REALLY good deal, and decent food - I liked the pizza, and the veggie soup that Andy got for an appetizer was really yummy with the bread dipped in. To get us in, though, the guy outside ended up promising each person in the group (there were 8 of us) three free cocktails, which was similar to sangria.
After this dinner, we went to a bar/club to meet up with some of Kirill's friends. This place was set up with a normal bar on the main floor, and then a dance cavern below. There's no other way to describe this place. It was craggy stone cavern with uneven walls, a low ceiling, and minimal lighting (except for the neon clubbing lights). It was epic. We had gotten there around 10:45 (and therefore gotten downstairs for free, because it was before 11), and danced like maniacs, with Lady Gaga songs followed by Michael Jackson, followed by one that was DEFINITELY on my parents' mix tape for their wedding. CULTURE SHOCK (thank you Allie Benson). In any case, most people decided to leave around 1, so as to catch the metro, but Kirill and I decided to stay for a bit and dance some more (during which time, a French guy made a passing comment to Kirill and I of "chaud comme lapin". If you don't understand French, find someone who does to translate). Around 3, we found a 24-hour cafe to rehydrate, and then kept dancing until 6, when we took one of the first metros back to our respective homes, and (for me, at least) collapsed into sweet oblivion for several hours.As if that weren't wonderful enough, we all went bowling the next day (I like bowling. Hush up), and then Kirill made me dinner and we watched a movie and I happened to fall asleep at his place.
And then I was happy.
And 21.
But mostly happy.
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