Paris and Cognac

Waz up?! Sorry I haven't written for a while (I've had a few complaints so I'll try to update more regularly) I've actually been quite busy since I last dropped some lines so sorry I didn't fill everyone in.

Wednesday March 18th was another gorgeous day, so a group of us headed to a park for a french picnic (baguette sandwiches, quiche lorraine and a popsicle from the park vendor). I think everyone had the same idea as us because the park was crawling with little frenchy picnickers everywhere (it probably didn't help that nobody ever works on Wednesday afternoons and all the little kiddies are out of school by noon, so they all decided to congregate at the same park as us). We ate, read, sun bathed (I got superly sunburned) and gossiped for a few hours before I had to head back into town to meet dad at the train station. I ended up waiting at the train station for almost 2 hours because dad hadn't made the train I expected him to arrive on, so it was late by the time he arrived. We had some problems with the hotel I'd booked him to stay at, so after about an hour of arguing with a lady in french (at least I got to practice/show off my french skills to dad) we grabbed a taxi and headed to the tower that I live in. Dad ended up staying the entire time in the tower with us, instead of getting a hotel because one of our roommates was moving out and offered the room to dad (talk about good luck).

Thursday March 19th I had the morning off because one of my schools was on strike (like I said it's a national pasttime to strike here), so I took dad to the best boulangerie (bakery) in town to grab some breakfast (luckily the best boulangerie happens to only be a block away). After breakfast we walked into town and then to my school for my afternoon class. After I finished teaching we headed back in to town and I gave dad a brief tour of Angouleme. That evening we booked a hotel for our weekend in Paris.

Friday March 20th we woke up early and caught a train to Paris to spend a four day weekend there (I love only working 3 hours a week and only on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because it makes every weekend a four day weekend). I spent the day giving dad a tour of the western half of Paris including the Louvre, Champs Elysees, Arc de Triomphe, Grand Palais, Eiffel Tower, Hotel des Invalides and other notable areas in western Paris (like the Place de Concorde where Marie Antoinette lost her head). In the evening we went to visit the Louvre to have a look around (after 6pm I get in for free which is the only reason I went...I'm not a fan fo the Louvre), but dad found it about as interesting as I found it which is not at all (its ovecrowded with people and so much art and artifacts that its too overwhelming).

Saturday March 21st we were planning on visiting Versailles this day, but unfortunately we jumped onto the wrong RER train so by the time we arrived back in Paris (after illegally riding on two trains and having to jump some turning exit gates) it was too late in the day to attempt Versailles (Versailles is the palace of Marie Antoinette, Louis, Napoleon, ect). I'd been warned that it's so massive that it actually takes a couple of days to see it all. So instead I finished the tour of Paris by showing dad the eastern half of the city. We started by grabbing a baguette and some cheese and heading to Luxembourg Park for lunch. From there we visited the Pantheon (that's where all the famous dead authors are buried), the Sorbonne, Notre Dame Cathedral, Sacre Coeur, Moulin Rouge, ect.

Sunday March 22nd we finally made it to Versailles, but unfortunately Sunday is one of the worst days to visit because everyone and their dogs (literally) go there on Sundays (because everything else is closed). So the line to get tickets stretched on forever and two hours later we actually were able to enter the rooms that were the ancient halls of royalty. Versailles was stunningly huge and everything was covered in gold, frescoes, statues, ect. The Palace was enormous and extravagant (although its only possible to access one wing of it right now, because the rest is still going through restoration after being left abandoned for centuries), but the grounds were twenty times larger (infact they were so large you couldn't even see the boundaries of it even when standing in the middle). The grounds are covered in statues, finely trimmed bushes and trees (literally all of them were pruned to have a specific crazy design shapes) and enormous fountains (some the size of lakes, literally, people were actually out rowing around in them). There are three other smaller palaces on the grounds. One is where Napoleon and his wife lived because they didn't want to stay in the huge palace, one was Marie Antoinette's private get-away house that Louis gave to her and the other was the queen's house/get-away. All were way overly lavish (no wonder people chopped off their heads) but really fun to wander through. Visiting Versailles took the entire day and we still didn't get to see everything. By the time we arrived back in Paris it was getting dark and dad kept on bugging me about seeing Paris at night (granted he'd got the idea from me because Paris is known as the 'city of lights') so we left the hotel around 8pm. I took dad on an extremely long walking tour of Paris at night, hitting all the best spots. We made it back to the hotel a little before 2am.

Monday March 23rd was our last day in Paris. I wanted to make it back to Angouleme a little early because I had lesson plans I needed to prepare before my classes on Tuesday. So we took a metro to the "Bastille" (that's the old prison where Marie Antoinette was held before her date with the guillotine and the prison that was stormed by the citizens during the revolution, but now there is only a pillar as a monument to the infamous structure) and then made our way to Pere Lachaise Cemetary which is where the greats like Jim Morrison, Balzac and Oscar Wilde are buried.

Wednesday March 24th dad, Nalelli (one of my roommates) and I took a 45 minute train to Cognac to see the town. The town is rather small so it didn't take much time to explore every street of importance. Dad and I visited the Hennesy Cognac Distillery and went on a tour that included a tasting of a couple of Cognacs upon finishing. All in all a good day (even though I'm not really a fan of cognacs).

Friday March 26th we had a lot of visitors crashing at the tower for the weekend (Celine had two swiss friends in town, I had dad and Pamela had two british friends visiting so needless to say it was pretty crowded). Since we had so many visitors we decided to go out to a french restaurant for a huge dinner Friday evening (that and I don't think our little kitchen could have held that many people cooking in it). It was a fun evening (its always fun to try new restaurants and menu items).

Saturday March 27th I took dad to visit the ruins of an old Abbey in town. I had never been there (my roommates had told me about it) so I enjoyed it a lot. It was really beautiful. We stopped by a huge shopping mall on the way home to buy groceries for Sunday (remember nothing is open on Sundays so we have to do Sunday's shopping on Saturdays) and some wine and lots of cheese. In the evening we drank at the tower for a bit before heading out to the bars/clubs.

Sunday March 28th we had a huge wine and cheese party. Dad had mentioned since he'd arrived that he wanted to try a variety of cheeses and wines (since that's what France is famous for) so we'd bought some of the smelliest cheese (yes, apparently the smellier the tastier) we could find and a variety of wines and pineaus (some from this region and some from the Bordeaux region). So about 15 of us sat around all afternoon sampling different types of cheese and wine (we had to make several bread runs to our favorite boulangerie for all the cheese). All and all it was a complete success. I found a couple of new cheeses that I like and now know which ones to stay well clear of.

Monday March 29th dad left for Bordeaux to meet Anna at the airport. They are planning on travelling around France for two weeks and then coming back to spend easter weekend with me before they return to the states. After I dropped dad off I went to the local bookstore and grabbed some new books which I'm currently trying to trek my way through.

I've moved into a new room in the tower, because it's closer to the kitchen/common room floor (I moved from the 8th to the 5th floor. The common room is on the 3rd floor) which is handy since everyone is leaving at the end of April so I'll have two months of this huge tower all to myself. I'm not sure that I'm really looking forward to that however. I think its going to be awefully lonely. Other than that not much has happened this week. Spent the past couple of days researching jobs I could do for the summer (if you have any suggestions let me know), moving into my new room, reading and generally just being lazy. I received a care package from mom yesterday with the "Twilight" movie and movie snacks (popcorn and theater candy), so we're planning on having a movie night soon to indulge (nobody knew about twilight before I got here, but I introduced everyone to the book series and now they are addicted). TTYL. LoveYa.