Barcelona Navidad, & Biarritz (January Adventure)

Barcelona Dec 19th to 26th.
Hello again everyone. Now that I have a weekend at home in Lisieux, without traveling or living out of a backpack, I can finally catch up on the blog and update everyone about the christmas holidays and the january adventure to Biarritz.

Last time i wrote about my mom coming to visit me in December. That’s pretty much where this blog picks up from, as mom and I were in Paris visiting the city a few days before her flight back to the U.S. Since I was already in Paris with my mom, Cecil was able to meet me there by taking a direct train from Lisieux. So on Friday the 19th, after giving hugs and saying goodbye to mom (in Paris of all places!!!), Cecil and I got on the bus to the airport and before long we were on a plane heading to Barcelona!

The plane ride started out being a pretty interesting experience. We flew with Ryan Air, which is known for being an incredibly cheap (for lack of a better word) airline. Sometimes they offer 5 euro tickets for a one way ticket between major european cities, with the taxes eventually costing more than the actually flight itself! While we knew it was a budget airline, we didn’t realize just how ‘budget’ it really was until we experienced it first hand. First of all, according to the website, the only piece of luggage that you are not charged for is a small carry on. So obviously with the idea of saving as much money as possible in our heads, Cecil and I decided to cram a week’s worth of clothes and toiletries in a bag not much bigger than a backpack. Suffice it to say I regretted this decision later on in the trip. Also while Ryan Air tickets claim to take you from Paris to Barcelona, “Paris” is actually code for Beauvais, an airport about an hour and a half bus ride from Paris, and “Barcelona airport” similary turns out to be located about 90km from the actual Barcelona city itself. So what you may save in cheap airfare ticket prices, you make up for in airport transportation, luggage fees, and wasted time waiting in lines, buses, and small airports.

We eventually made it to the real Barcelona about 11pm at night. I had taken a couple semesters of spanish in college, but since it had been so long and since french came much easier for me, I wasn’t really up to the challenge of understanding where to go to get to the metro stop, or which one to take to get to our hostel. So I asked a local who was buying a ticket literally ... “donde.... metro....billeto (taken a french word billet, meaning ticket, with an extro ‘o’ at the end in hope to make it more spanish and thus understandable to him). He smiled at me and told me in very good English which subway to take. I felt kind of like an idiot, but at the same time I was relieved to discover that we wouldn’t have to rely on my pigeon archaic spanish to survive in this ciy. In fact we learned that English is spoken pretty regularly as Barcelona is a popular city for U.S., and English expatriates.

Anyway, we stayed 6 nights in Barcelona in a youth hostel on the outskirts of the city center. The main reason we chose it was because it cost 10 euros a night to stay there, and in Europe, that is too good to be true. But it turned out that the reason for the low price was because there were 10 people to a room, it was located a good 15 minute train ride away from the city center, and since it was located in the hills outside of Barcelona, we had to hike up a hill to get to it! We were really tired the first night since we arrived there pretty late, but instead of being rewarded a good night’s sleep, we were blessed with a full mariacha style brass band playing music for the some function that was taking place right below our window. Suffice it to say, we didn’t enjoy the hostel that much that night, or even the remaining nights, as our neighbors were pretty noisy sleepers, we had to wake up by 9:30 every morning so the staff could clean the rooms, and because every day to get into the city we had to take a 20 min train ride, and coming back after a long day of exploring, the train ride and the hike up the mountain to get to our hostel was always awaiting us.

But as for Barcelona itself, I thought the city was unlike any other city I have been to. The style of many of the houses was very unique. Several of them are built asymmetrically with unusual curves and spectacular colors, - a unique architectural movement called Modernisme and mainly attributed to the revolutionary artist Antoni Gaudí and by Barcelonese painter Pablo Picasso. It makes sense then, that Barcelona has a pretty big art vibe to it. Cecil and I didn’t go to any museums during our stay here (partly because we prefer Impressionism to more modern art) but we still admired Gaudí's works that you could find simply by walking around the town or through parks. While I won’t recount what happened each day, I will list some of the things that we did during our week long stay that we enjoyed...

- Climbed Mont Juic (‘Hill of the Jews’), took pictures at the top looking over Barca.
- Went to the beach DAILY!!! Since there was much more sun and warm weather compared to Normandy. Even still, Cecil and I were pretty much the only swimmers.
- Walked down the famous La Rambla, a pedestrian-only strip full of street performers, human statues, pet and flower stands, and artists! (we were told to watch out for pick pockets).
- One day we decided to do two different activities; since Cecil liked aquariums he decided to go see the Aquarium of Barcelona with a cool underwater tunnel where sharks and other sea creatures swim all around you. I on the other hand, being completely obsessed with soccer (I should say football now, being in Europe), paid to have a tour of one of the biggest and well known football stadiums in the world - Camp Nou, the stadium of the world famous soccer club FC Barcelona. I got to sit in one of the 100,000 seats, touch the grass, see the team’s dressing rooms, all the things that make soccer fanatics like myself go crazy!! :).
- We saw the Sangrada Familia (from the outside, since it cost 10 euros to go see a freaking church ... what a crime! hehe). This is an immense structure designed by, of course, Gaudí. Unfortunately he died before the 18-tower church was close to being completed, but many people make the touristic pilgrimage today to witness the work-in-progress until it’s finished in 2026.
- I caught up with a very good friend of my Dad’s, Roger who lives in Barcelona. Roger and Dad were very good friends in their 20s, and it they moved to England together. Roger was the best man at my parent’s wedding, so it was really cool to meet up and have a drink with him in Europe of all places!
- We had Christmas dinner at Roger’s place and had a nice time talking with some of his partner and his Barcelona friends (in English and pigeon Spanish).
- On our last day, we took a train trip to a small beach town called Sitges located 30 minutes outside of Barcelona. We wanted to spend our last day on a nice sunny beach without crowds of people, so we walked from the train station to the beach and were suprised to discover a really nice secluded sandy beach with hardly any people on it at all! We quickly found out after an old man came into view around a big rock on the beach COMPLETELY NAKED, and another middle-aged man laid a towel out beside us and started undressing that we had discovered the only nude beach in Sitges. Several other locals came to bath and bask in the sun in their birthday suits through out the day, one woman but mostly middle to older aged men. Cecil and I sighed and said to ourselves “Oh Europe,” but it didn’t bother us too much, and just became a funny story and experience.

For the rest of the time we spent a lot of time under the sun (in December yayyy) swimming, covering ourselves with sand, picnicking with sangria on the beach, and learning some Spanish/Catalan words at the same time. All in all, it was a nice break away from rainy Normandy. But now I am glad to be back in Lisieux and back to teaching.

Jan 30th - Feb 1st
Biarritz! We decided to get out of normandy on this weekend, and so we scrummaged around online and found a train ticket for only 15 euros to go to a city called Biarritz. We had never heard of Biarritz before, so we looked it up on google map and discovered it was at the complete bottom left part of France. With that much ground covered and for only 30 euros round trip, we both were convinced this was the next adventure for us. It turned out there was a slight catch. The reason the train tickets were so cheap was because the train left Paris at 11:00pm, and instead of being a sleeper train where the chair reclines or they provide you with a bed, it was a BAR train, meaning that the chairs didn’t recline.on a train that is a bar and a train à la fois. took a night train from paris at 11:00pm and got in to Biarritz at 6:30am. We didn’t print out the directions for the hotel in which we were staying, so we actually walked the wrong 3km into town towards the beach in the complete darkness of the early morning. While are legs and backs were quite tired and we were really cold, the long directionless walk turned out to be a blessing, as we made it to the beach right as the sun was rising. I think it was the most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen (granted I am not alive at that hour on most mornings to witness many sunrises, but still it was awesome being able to see such a blend of pinks, oranges, reds, and purples, while standing on la Vierge sur la Roche on the atlantic ocean. Once we found our hotel later in the afternoon we crashed for the rest of the day and only made it out for pizza that night for dinner. Sunday, being our last day before returning back to work, we took the time to explore the city. We walked through the small little surfing town and found most of the centre-ville to be full of ritzy shops, high-end clothing stores, and casinos. Most of the people of Biarritz were well dressed, bundled up in fur coats and showing off their wealth. But every once in a while a local decked out in a wetsuit, surfboard in arm, would occasionally stroll through the city barefooted towards the water. Leaving the city behind us Cecil and I made our way through a pretty coastline trail towards the Lighthouse for a picnic and a magnificent view looking back across the Biarritz Beach. After lunch, we hiked down to the beach to join the other dogwalkers and beachbums, skip some rocks in the atlantic, and admire the talents and tricks of the many surfers riding the world-famous Biarritz waves back to shore. Finally, we ended our day walking along the beach (in the rain), grabbing another pizza at our favorite restaurant, then waiting for the next night/bar train to take us back to Paris and then Lisieux by Monday morning, ready for teaching.

Time for some photos! I will talk about the February vacation trips to Amsterdam, Nice, and Italy soon, and describe more about teaching in the next blog...


BARCELONA



















































BIARRITZ

Update- December

Hey everyone sorry it has been such a long time since the last time I have posted anything up on the blog! Let’s see, a lot has happened since the last update when my Mom was here visiting me. I’ll start there.

Between Dec 8th - 12th like any other school week I would have classes to teach. However during this week, the students across France decided to go on strike as they were unhappy with the changes the government was making in the high school system. President Sarkozy from what I understand was trying to take out some high school subject options for the students, and since they did not want that to happen, high school kids all over France got together and put up big planks of wood and metal in the entrances of their schools. Luckily, this happened to my school Paul Cornu as well, so I basically had the entire week off from teaching. This worked out perfectly because as my mom was visiting me for 2 weeks, we had a week to use the car and explore the beautiful cities of Normandy. In our first excursion we drove to Caen (Normandy’s captial) to revisit the city where my mom did her study abroad when she was a college student in England. It was really cool because we got to see her old host mother her was 91 (more or less) and still healthy and who had a good memory from what I gathered if she could remember my mom when she stayed with her in the 1970s.

Since my mom rented a car during her 2 week stay, the typical short distance weekend trips that Cecil and I had gotten used to were no more! On the first weekend my mom was here, all 3 of us got in our small little French Peugot Car, and drove about 3 hours to Mont Saint Michel. For those of you unfamiliar with this French monument, it is essentially a castle/town/abbey from the middle ages that is especially unique because it was built on an island a couple hundred yards from the mainland. In the day when the tide is out, many tourists make the bare-footed trek across the sand to reach the island. During the evening the tide comes back in making the trip back a little more damp and actually highly dangerous. They say the tide comes in like “galloping horses”. YIKES. Since we were visiting Mont St. Michel in december, we chose the drier option to get to the entrance by using the one road that leads up to the main entrance and parking close by. Unfortunately the season in which we were visiting this monument is notorious for bad weather. And the day we were there Normandy did not disappoint. IT POURRRRED down!! I was lucky to throw one umbrella in the car before we left Lisieux. Although it was cloudy and rained during most of our visit, the one good thing about seeing the Mont St. Michel during the winter is the crowds. We were told since this monument is the second most vistited in France (after, you guessed it, the Eiffel Tower), that in the summer it is PACKED with people. So luckily for us we traded the crowds of tourists for rain. In the end it was a good trade, and we enjoyed all that we got to see on this historic castle/island. Essentially you walk in a narrow cobble-stoned path, lined with little stores, shops, and restaurants featuring the best regional cuisine, as it gradually slopes upward toward the central abbey. There are places to stop, rest, and take pictures along the castle walls which became fantastic look out sites over the British Channel and back across mainland France. Finally the path takes you to the abbey where for only 5 euros, you get to explore the famous cloister (a type of enclosed-garden), church, bell tower, refectory (dining hall), and some outdoor areas that let you have an even better view of the sea and land around you! Suffice it to say we all enjoyed the it a lot - we were even lucky enough to be in the abbey at the perfect time to see a local monk ring the massive bell to call the other church members to mass! (Check out some of the pictures below.) We finished our weekend visit staying in a cozy motel right near the island and enjoying the local seafood for dinner. I think I may have had the best French food in my time here so far - I ordered Moules-Frites, which translates to Mussels and French Fries. mmmmmmmmmmmmm.

The next adventure I went on was visiting Paris with my mom, before she left to return to the States, and before I left with Cecil on our trip to celebrate Christmas in Barcelona. My mom and I got to spend a couple days in Paris, before our plane flights, and we crammed as much as we possibly could into those few days. Our hotel was situated in the Mont-Martre neighborhood, so one of the first things we did was hike up to Sacré-Coeur, which is this beauuuuutiful cathedral situated on top of the famous Mont-Martre butte that overlooks Paris. We had a small picnic of baguettes, salami, and brie on the steps of Sacre Coeur while listening to the music of local street musicians. I wanted to show my mom the Moulin Rouge without tell her...but she soon figured out where we were heading as we walked past several sex shops and brothel type businesses in this notorious risqué neighborhood. In the late afternoon, we visited the famous Musée D’Orsay and got to see some of the prettiest paintings ever! Since coming to France, I’ve learnt a lot more about art and have taken a real interest into Impressionist artwork. Since my mom likes impressionism too, we were simply amazed at the famous paintings by Renoir, Monet, Cezanne, Manet, Degas, and my personal ‘post-impressionist’ painter, Van Gogh. Though I don’t know that much about art, I couldn’t help but feel goosebumps on my neck and a chill down my spine as I entered a room and saw Monet’s waterlillies, Renoir’s ‘Dance at the Moulin de la Galette’, and Van Gogh’s ‘Room at Arles’. The famous paintings you always see in textbooks or in magazines, but this time - we stood just a few meters (ok feet for the american crowd) from them!!!! It was probably the best museum I have been to so far.

When we left the Orsay, it was already quite late, so we decided to head back to the hotel room. But instead of hopping on the closest metro, my mom and I took our time walking along the Seine. Fortunately we headed in the perfect direction and ‘stumbled upon’ ...... The EIFFEL TOWER. I had been to the eiffel tower once already with my dad back in 2003, but that was in the day. At night it was a whole different story! The were crowds of people standing around taking tooons of pictures I think partly because at night the tower is completely lit up. It really changes the image of the monument and I discovered that I prefer it best at night time. We joined the tourists and took several pictures. Finally we had a savory french crepe for a light dinner and slept. In the morning I did not have much time to explore more of Paris because my friend Cecil was meeting me there in the early afternoon to catch our flight to Barcelona for christmas. So after we met him at the train station, we all made our way to the airport shuttle pick up area. I said goodbye to my mom, before Cecil and I boarded the bus for our next trip - Barcelona. But I had a woonnnderful 2 weeks with my mom here and I was sooo happy she came to visit and see france, speak french, eat cheese, drink wine hhaha, (rent a car so we could travel easier :) ) and see her old region where she studied abroad when she was a college student. I look forward to seeing more of my family when they come this summer to visit Europe.

That’s it for now, I will try to update again really soon describing a little bit about barcelona and also about the next adventure that I am embarking on tomorrow during the Feb. vacation: AMSTERDAM!!!

p.s. go BARACK OBAMA!!!!!

UPDATE!

SORRRY guys....It's been sooo long since I have had the time to update the blog, and tell everyone how things are in France. And it's not that I was able and chose not to. But of course it is again due to the on going struggle with obtaining internet in the apartment. It has been almost 2 months since we made the request, and the people at the store tell us each week we go to ask them what the problem is...'sorry you are really unlucky, this has never happened before, it has happened with every customer that requested internet on the same day that you did, you just have to wait one more week etc' and more excuses like that. Suffice it to say we are STILL internetless, and have almost given up all hope. So I am in an internet cafe, hoping to spend most of the time updating you what has been going on since the last blog (mostly in november).

I took Thursday off from classes to go to London and visit my uncle, cousin, and some friends. I bought a round trip train ticket from Paris to London and got to go under the British Channel for only 60 euros! Cecil, my roomate, didn’t come with me unfortunately because he had classes, but it was ok because it was still very fun to be in a country that spoke English!!!!!!(A break from a foreign language does some good from time to time) ... Ironically I spoke very little English in London because 5 people from Lyon (people I met last Christmas when I went to France) stayed with us in my uncle's London apartment near Tower Bridge. So I ended up actually speaking more french than english, which was actually really good because I was able to improve a lot and learn more french words (some cool slang words which I probably shouldn't mention here - haha).
In London, my cousin came drove from Bristol to visit me on the first day. The rest of the weekend I spend taking the underground with my Lyonnais friends, visiting typical London monuments like Big Ben, London Bridge, The London Eye (a huge ferris wheel), Oxford Street (a road famous for its shopping), and my personal favorite...Wembley STADIUM. The soccer field where the England National team plays. Since I love soccer so much, I decided to pay 8 pounds to do the full tour. I got to sit in the highest chairs in the stadium, touch the field, visit the MVP room, sit where the players get interviewed after the match, and even check out the dressing room with all the players' jerseys on the wall. It was SOOO WORTH IT.

So that was my biggest trip during November. For the rest of the month, I continued working at my high school in the week, and taking small train trips with Cecil to visit other Normandy cities/villages that we hadn't already seen. One weekend we traveled 1 hour to Dives Sur Mer - it was Absolutetly BEAUTIFUL. I have to return here! The train from runs through the green countryside in the first half of the journey, and then moves almost directly on to the sandy beaches, the train tracks running just parallel to the shore, just 200 feet from the sea! Cecil and I spent the day speaking french, picnicking, enjoying the blue waves, and taking pictures of a spectacular sunset.

Later in november, we decided to celebrate Thanksgiving with the other american assistant in Lisieux. Even though no french person celebrates thankgiving, the american teaching assistants (3 of us) came together and bought everything we could find from the local supermarket with the word turkey on it (in french 'dinde'). And since we have no oven, we used the microwave and 2 stove tops to cook cordon bleu (with turkey), mashed potatoes, canned corn, and mexican chicken wings. VERY THANKSGIVING if you ask me hahaha. I hope all of yours was a little more traditional. I definitely felt myself longing for a slice of turkey and stuffing, doused with gravy after the French Thanksgiving meal was over...

Teaching has been very enjoyable as well. I work Monday to Thursday every week, and get Fridays off so I can enjoy 3 day weekends. My busiest days are Tuesday and Thursday when I have 4 hours of classes. I have 5 different English teachers I help out with, and they have different teaching methods and ways of using me, the English assistant. Sometimes I am in the same class at the same time with the teacher, helping by going around the room and talking to the students, or helping them with activities. Other times I take a small group of students for an hour in another classroom and try to get them to talk in English, on conversation topics (their favorite subjects are when we discuss the differences between the U.S. and France - like high schools; american students have the same schedule every day and get out of school around 3 o clock, while french students have different classes every day of the week and get out of school by 5 or 6 pm. And finally other teachers have me take half the class and talk to them,, or design English activities to engage them for half an hour. I really enjoy talking to the students and find them all to be friendly and nice, and excited that there is an American around their same age in the classroom. It's weird, it kind of feels like being a movie star since the town is so small. Even the Librarians at the local 'bibliotheque' recognize the two american guys that come in once a week, and always say 'Hello' in a french accent (instead of Bonjour), followed by 'Go Obama'.

What else... that was mostly it for november, besides some other weekend bus trips to small French town.

What's really cool is that last monday, Dec. 8th, my mom came to visit me in france!! In fact she is here next to me, working on her own computer, and she is staying for another week, for a total of about 2 weeks here in Lisieux. It has been wonderful having her here. Since she is a french teacher at the U of O, her french is obviously very good and so it makes living and traveling around france very easy for her. We have already seen many things together, and it is really nice because she has rented a car. Normally Cecil and I do not have the luxury to go to too many places in france, especially if they are far or inaccessable by train. But having a car makes all the difference. And in fact last weekend, we 3 drove to the second most visited touristic site in France - le Mont St. Michel. For those of you who haven't heard of it, it is this incredible castle/abbey/town that was built about 1200 years ago on an island out in the middle of the British Channel. When the tide is low, people can access the island on foot by crossing on the sand, but later in the day when the tide comes in, the castle/town is almost completely surrounded by water (making it extremely difficult to attqck during the middle ages). It rained the entire time we were there, but we took a TON of pictures because it's truly a specila monument, and I was told my a teacher of mine that it is considered by some as 'la ouitieme merveille du monde" - or the 8th wonder of the world. We have many more adventures planned before she goes back this weekend, such as visiting Caen, the city where she studied as a student for study abroad back in the (olden) days, and also Paris of course.

That's it for now, now time for some pictures...