Pardon the Interruption...

I know. I fail. I've had half a week to upload hundreds of pictures and blog about everything. And I haven't finished yet. I really should have finished by now, but oh well. Only 99 more London pictures to resize and upload. And three days of London to write about. I'll get to that later.

For now? I have to go pack. Again. =D I'm going to Milan, Italy, for the weekend. One of my friends from VCU is studying there, and I'm going to visit for my birthday. I have no idea what she has planned, but I'm sure it will be made of awesome sauce.

I'm not going to lie, I wish I could be in Richmond and hang out with a bunch of my friends instead of just one. Or home. Home would be nice too. But I'll take what I can get. After all, how many people celebrate their birthday abroad to begin with; on top of that, how many can say, "Yeah, I'm going to Italy for the weekend." So yeah, always look on the bright side of life. *whistle* It's a little bit anti-climactic though; I've been able to drink since I got here. Ah, well.

Ciao!

"First we'll go to Calais, then a boat across the sea!"

It took us about three hours to get to Calais from Paris. We had to get out and do fantastic immigration control things before getting on a ferry to Dover, England. But I has another stamp on my passport now! Yay! We got lunch on the ferry. I think it was almost two hours? Maybe three? But it was better than being stuck on the bus. We thought we were going through the Chunnel on the bus. We were a little bit disappointed about not taking the Chunnel, but I really do think I preferred being able to walk around. Go figure.

View of Calais from the ferry.

Oh, post title courtesy of "Les Misérables." Foreshadowing, clearly.

Finally the bus got to London. We dragged our luggage and ourselves from the coach station to the nearest tube station at 6pm-ish. Dear god. In addition to costing us 4 pounds each (!!!) for the fare, the ride was just crazy. We had to change once or twice and oh my god. It was worse than trying to get through Kenmore after a Sox game. Since the tube is so old to begin with, the trains are super small. Anyone over 6 feet should find alternative means of transport because it's just not worth it. And you have to take an elevator from the train level to the ground level in most stations because the only stairs are narrow, winding, and number over 175. Craaaaazy.

After that fun experience we went to our hostel (after taking a detour since their directions were made of fail), which was disappointing compared to the other two I'd stayed it, but I think this is what a hostel usually is like. Ick. It wasn't super dirty or awful or anything, but it was an experience. More on that later. We explored the immediate area a little and discovered that even though there were Starbucks everywhere, they all closed no later than 8pm. That's just stupid. Wound up at a pub for dinner.


I got fish and chips.

Oh yeah. Dinner was sweet. Went back to the hostel, planned for the next day, and went to bed since we were getting up bright and early. Wahoo!

La Belle Paris

So after Switzerland I had maybe 18 hours before my next journey: Paris!

Last week was the first of two vacations we get. Originally I had no plans outside of Switzerland. I thought maybe I'd just get on a train and go somewhere in France for a day or two maybe, but otherwise just stay here and chill. Then the Thursday before break Courtney asked if I'd like to go to London with her. Uh, yes! She was spending Saturday-Tuesday morning in Paris with a friend and leaving for London from there, so the easiest thing for me to do was go to Paris Monday and leave with Courtney on Tuesday.

SO. Thankfully no issues traveling this time. Got to Paris around 1:30, got to my hostel around 2:30 and dumped my stuff. Headed straight to Montmartre to feed the obsession I have with the movie "Moulin Rouge."


Word up. So there's the Moulin Rouge. I promptly got back on the metro (but not before getting a McFlurry at McDonald's!) and headed to Notre Dame. Pigalle is... interesting. Highly interesting. Not so much seedy and dangerous (during the day, anyway) as cheesy and just... weird. And cheesy. Very cheesy. I wish I'd stuck around in Montmartre a little longer, but there's not too much to do except see Moulin Rouge and the Sacre Coeur, which I'd already seen. So off to Notre Dame it was.

And it was made of fail. I really wanted to go up in the towers, but I missed the last tour by like two minutes. If I hadn't gotten confused when changing trains I would have had more than enough time, but there are two train systems in Paris, and I had to go from one to the other, and it was not fun. So I missed the tours. *pout* But I did go through the Cathedral again and take pictures of all the things I took pictures of in high school. And then deleted those pictures again because hey, it's not like the rose windows changed. I went into the treasury this time though, where they kept all sorts of cool things. They had reliquaries and really really old things, and robes from this or that king or pope, and lots of old chalices and things used in Mass. History is cool.

After that I called a friend I hadn't talked to since high school; she's studying in Paris right now and we met up for dinner. I wound up waiting an hour for her since she got hung up by a repairman at her apartment, but the weather was nice so I just chilled in the big plaza thing outside Notre Dame.

Oh hay!

And I took lots of pictures. This is one of the better ones. It's really hard to get the entire stupid cathedral in one shot when you're holding the camera at arm's length. Ugh. And then there was the star thingy, which is the center point of Paris. They say if you step on it, you'll go back again some day.

Hey, it worked once, right?

Those were the two biggest things I wanted to get back to Paris to see. I've already been to the Eiffel Tower and stuff. If I go back again, I'd like to go to the top of the Arc de Triomphe, finally get up the tower of Notre Dame, and go back to the Louvre. In high school they only gave us two hours there, and it took us about that long to find the Mona Lisa. So I'd like to go and really get to see everything.

After I met up with Haley we went into the Latin Quarter for dinner. I got...

FROG LEGS!

And spines, by the looks of it. It was.. interesting. And they tasted like chicken. Which apparently they're supposed to, because my friend looked it up on Wikipedia. I wouldn't have thought about it except aforementioned friend is also one of my Brothers and had asked if I'd eaten Siggy (the frog, our Chapter's mascot) yet. So this is all Phil's fault. And I've been telling people that from the beginning. They were pretty good, but there's not a lot of meat on them, so I think next time I'll get a better appetizer. I also got duck. Which was interesting. Didn't taste very different. Wasn't bad, but wasn't all that impressive either. Neither was the cheap red wine the waiter suggested to go with it. Buuut whatever. That waiter was interesting as well. Apparently he liked Haley, which meant things got silly and awkward very quickly, and it took us forever to get our check and leave. When we left the restaurant though, we wound up on the same street we'd had dinner on in high school! We actually passed the restaurant we went to and the guy there tried to get us to go in. (Which is what they do, and it's kind of unnerving. They just stand there and say "Hey come in here! Why not? Come on! Rawr!") I wanted to go back and take a picture, but not with the guy standing there arguing with the restaurant guy across the street. We also found the same souvenir shop we went to four years ago, but there was nothing of interest there.

So. Went back to the hostel. And again, like a good tourist, I promptly went to bed. Everyone talks about how hostels are great places to hang out and meet people, but clearly I fail at this. I can't help it if I get tired, haha.

Next day I went to the bus station where I was supposed to meet Courtney. I didn't have her phone number, and even though she had mine half the time it doesn't like people here, so we didn't meet up until we were actually on the bus. I'd been super early and got on the bus once it started loading to save her a seat. She had come later and waited downstairs to try to find me. But it worked out okay, and we sat together for the epic long bus ride.

Slideshow is here!

Exotic Switzerland!

Title courtesy of the movie "Moulin Rouge!"

Saturday the 14th I got up bright and early at 4:30 to get ready and catch a 6:10am train. I went with Juli, who's from Chicago and is here with the same exchange program as I'm on. We had bought our tickets online to print out in the station, but for some reason the machine decided it didn't want to print them. As a result, we had to buy new tickets from Chambery-Geneva, Geneva-Berne, and back. Epic, epic fail.

So we got to Berne around 10? Dropped our stuff off at our hostel. Explored a little bit. Stopped and got coffee because we were super tired and because it was snowing and absolutely frigid. We wandered some, took pictures, and got lunch. There really isn't a lot to see in Berne. Yes, it's the capital of Switzerland and yes it's a World Heritage site and it's medieval and all, but for the most part it was just a lot of stores. They did have museums, but we didn't go to any. I did, however, have spaghetti with Bernese sauce (or something to that effect). It was red sauce with bacon/ham, mushrooms, and pork, I think? It was really really good.

From there we wandered more. Went to Lush, which is like Bath & Body Works or The Body Shop, but entirely natural/organic, totally awesome, and may or may not be more expensive; I lost track of exchange rates. I bought a weird but awesome exfoliating moisturizer thing. All the labels were in German so I kind of just picked one up and went with it. I really liked the store, though, and I'm excited because there's one in Cambridge and one in the Burlington Mall. Guess I'm going shopping when I go home. =P

The one problem I had was that everyone there spoke German and no one really spoke French. Switzerland had 4 official languages, according to Wikipedia: French, German, English, and Romansh. I feel like Italian should be in there somewhere though. Anyway, so I was thinking, "Awesome! I can still speak French!" ...except no. There are French, German, and Italian regions of Switzerland, and they speak Swiss French, Swiss German, etc. Aaaand we wound up in the German region. So it was frustrating not to be able to communicate or to have to search out people in the stores who spoke English, and frustrating not to be able to speak French. I would rather have gone to Genève or somewhere French if I had known, because I hate being the person who just goes somewhere without being able to speak the language. But what's done is done. It was still a good experience, and made me want to learn German even more now. Like I need more of a reason to learn other languages.

We went to dinner at a restaurant called Punkt, which served a mix of various Asian foods. I got shirataki, which is Japanese, but I couldn't tell you what was in it. I got a Japanese beer called Asahi to go alone with it. They didn't have sake, which was disappointing. Both were pretty good though. We wandered more, then were lame tourists and totally passed out for like ten hours.

Sunday we got french fries at the McDonald's in the train station in Berne. Because we're cool like that. Had three hours to kill in Genève, so we went to lunch. Unfortunately, Genève is in the French part of Switzerland and apparently follows all the same customs; hardly anything was open at lunchtime. We wound up at an Indian restaurant. I don't know what I got because it wasn't the same thing I ordered. It wasn't bad though.

Overall, it was a decent weekend. I thought there would be a lot more to do in Berne, so I was a bit disappointed. It was cool to see a place like that though, where things were clearly medieval and quaint and such. And now I can check off Switzerland from the list of countries I haven't visited. :) I would like to get back to Genève at some point though.

Slideshow of all 86 pictures I took can be found here: Yay pictures!

Super quick update GO!

Okay, so I know I promised an update soon. It will come, eventually. In a nutshell: went to the World Alpine Ski Championships last weekend. Super fun. Have gone to some classes, still haven't gone to some others. Not super fun.

Going to Bern, Switzerland, tomorrow and staying overnight. Should be super fun. Next week is vacation and I didn't have anything planned, but I'm going to London with Courtney from Tuesday-Saturday!! So now I'm scrambling to get things done and organized because we're leaving from Paris, so I think I'm going to Paris on Monday. Wahoo.

10 Things I Hate about France

Real updates will come soon, with pictures. Until then, snark.

1. Everything is closed on Sundays. D:

2. Almost everything is closed on Monday, at least in Chambéry.

3. It costs 3 euro to do laundry?!

4. Strikes. I love not going to class just as much as the next college student, but I'd appreciate knowing class is cancelled before I hike a mile and up some hills to my campus.

5. There are construction guys outside my window and floodlights on at 7am.

6. I miss people. D:

7. Time differences are inconvenient.

8. Exchange rates.

9. Under no circumstances can you get a cup of coffee to go.

10. France made me sprain my wrist.

Not as snarky as I anticipated. I forgot some of the fun things I wanted to say.

"C'est chaud comme sport!"

So the strike was most definitely not as epic as they made it out to be. Transportation was running fine. Classes were cancelled though. Some of the other Americans went out and watched the protests ("manifestations"). My friend Cameron in Le Mans went out too. I, as usual, stayed in and did mildly productive things. Mildly.

At 7 I went out to dinner with Juli, Victoria, Elizabeth and Jill. We wound up at a place called Nuits Indiennes (Indian Nights). I had agneau (lamb) tikka masala, which was really good. From there we went to a bar/pub called Charly's and played darts. We were killing time before we met the rest of the Americans; everyone but Juli and me was going to a club called L'Opéra around midnight. From Charly's we went to O'Pouge's and eventually saw everyone. Whee.

Friday was nothing special, except that I didn't fall asleep til after, which was made of fail since I was getting up at 6. Why did I get up at 6am on a Saturday? Pour faire du surf.

Yeah. I went snowboarding in the Alps.

Shuttle buses run from Chambéry to a couple mountains. We went to La Féclaz. Got there around 9ish and hit the slopes at probably 10:20? Juli and Veronica waited for their ski lesson at noon, and I went up with Courtney, who's good at boarding, Sarah and Jill, who are both good skiers, and Victoria, who was going boarding but had never been before. I rode up with Courtney and Sarah; the view was breathtaking, until I gracefully tumbled off the chair at the very end and took Courtney with me. After much difficultly the five of us started off, Victoria and I falling every ten feet or so. It was rough even on the green trail. D: I got the hang of it eventually and took off down a hill. Eventually I only fell every kilometer or so. I was getting really excited when we reached the end and I was looking forward to going down again and being super awesome. All of the trails converged at the one exit and of course it was there that I lost control. I managed to turn around so that I was going backwards. I very gracefully lost my balance and fell back, landing hard on my wrist. I wound up having to take off my board and walk the rest of the way because I couldn't put any weight on my wrist to get back on my feet.

I hung out on the mountain for two hours while waiting for the bus back. Got a crepe and realized roblochon cheese is super nasty. Went to the hospital here in Chambéry (lucky!) since there was no doctor on the mountain. It took half an hour to check in, two and a half to wait, and then less than an hour for them to take x-rays, give me a brace and some prescriptions, and tell me the ligaments and tendons were a little torn. Whee, so my first trip snowboarding since I was 9, and I sprain my wrist. I was disappointed because I'd wanted to keep doing it all day, and because we're suposed to be going to the Championnats du monde de ski alpin (Alpine World Ski Championships) on Friday and then I think we were going to whatever we wanted on Saturday and Sunday. So I get to do nothing, yay.

Either way though, I can say I went snowboarding in the Alps. Oh yeah. =D Muscles I didn't know I had are sore now and my butt is ninetenn shades of bruised, but I totally went snowboarding.

My super cool snowboard.

The ski lift!

Me and Courtney

Me and Sarah.

Where I fell. x_x

The snow sparkled!

View from the ski lift, take one.

View from the lift, take two.

View from the ride back. Mountains and clouds and mist, oh my!