Spring break: Brussels

Okayyyy city number two! This entry is going to be a fairly short one, because we were only there for a day and ALSO I have the end-of-the-year CIREFE party to get to...

We got to Brussels in the mid-afternoon. After storing our bags, we headed into town. Our first stop was this indoor-but-still-outdoor-but-it-has-a-ceiling type thing. It reminded me of a combination between Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas and the markets in Rabat, Morocco. We got a late lunch and did some window shopping, but most things were pretty pricey.




We walked more around Brussels, ate some chocolate, continued my endless search for "the perfect keychain" (I'm collecting keychains now, btw), and did some sightseeing. Random: There's a statue in Brussels- it's called the Mannekin Pis- and it's just a statue of a little boy peeing. Well, okay it's a foutain. But there are pictures/replicas/signs EVERYwhere about it. EVERYWHERE. So bizarre.

After a nap and some "16 ans et Enceinte" (16 and Pregnant) watching, we headed back out into town. We had been eating good food the previous few days, but we had never really gone all out and splurged. That word isn't even in my vocabulary 99% of the time, unless we're talking about mass quantities of diet soda. I got some pork in beer sauce covered in cheese, with some french fries and a Hoegaarden. Quality.



The next morning we headed over to the European Parliament! SO MANY FLAGS. We took an audio tour and learned a lot about the history of the parliment, how it works, etc. Mine was in French, because it had been a few days since I had spoken and... I just felt it was necessary.

However.

Question.

Why is Switzerland not part of the European Union?!

I mean there's probably some really good reason that I just don't get, but it just seems so sad that it's surrounded by all of these EU countries and it's just... not.

This is worth a Wiki search. Here's a link to Switzerland-EU Relations. If you're so interested. Which I was.

Anyway, anyway. Soon after that we headed for the train station. Back to France!

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Spring break: Bruges

Oh, hey. I've been back from break for less than a week and I've already uploaded all of my photos to Facebook (...pretty much because everyone else was... peer pressure...) and I'm blogging. Granted, last semester I blogged about once or twice a week, but whatever, that's completely besides the point...

So this vacation, my mom came to visit. We spent a day in Rennes, 2 in Bruges (Belgium), 1 in Brussels (also Belgium), and 4 in Paris (I'm not going to even...) After she left, I met up with some friends in Amsterdam for about 3 days. Soooo here we go:

We leave from Rennes early Monday morning (this is Monday the... 27th. right. right after Easter) and get on a train to Paris. We've got some time to kill in Paris, and I haven't gotten a haircut in roughly 6 years (okay or 6 months), so... what do we do? Oh, wait, there's a Beauty Bubble in the Paris Montparnasse train station! sure, okay, I'll get my hair cut in a train station for 10€. I refused to let my mom take a photo, because I'm sure I looked like a tool... everyone kept staring at me as they walked by with their fancy not-from-a-train-station haircuts and expensive luggage and such... but whatever. Cheapest haircut ever [that didn't turn out horribly].

Anyway, back to the trip.

We hop on a metro from Montparnasse up to Gare Nord in Paris. Last time I was in Gare Nord was when I came to Paris for a few days my senior year in high school. It was exactly how I remembered it, complete with creepers and everything. Anyway, a few hours (and a quick layover in Brussels) later, we're in Bruges! Let me tell you a bit about Bruges, as I myself did not know anything about it before my mom and Rick Steves (which is my new favorite person, ever) intervened...

BRUGES:

Northern Beligum, but not exactly on the ocean-> "The Venice of the North"

They speak Flemish ("Belgian Dutch") and French (but nearly everyone we spoke with also spoke English)

There's a giant tower in the center of town- the 13th century Belfort (Belfry). It "offers unrivalled views of Bruges and beyond, be sure to climb the 366 steps to the top where a picture postcard perfect panorama awaits you." (did it. ouch.)

"The Church of our Lady is one of the city’s most interesting churches containing many works of art, most notable being Michelangelo’s Madonna with Child marble." (didn't do it)

They really like bikes

and chocolate

but mostly bikes.



The first night, we grab a lovely dinner of mayo with a side of french fries (whoops, sorry, don't say "french"- they're just "frites"), a fine Belgian waffle with chocolate sauce and banana, and chocolates. We hit up Dumon for chocolates. I went in and asked for the craziest flavor they had... because really, who wants to eat a plain caramel or truffle, which you can just get back home? However, I didn't get the response I was hoping for. Instead, this Belgian lady sneers at me a little, and informs me that "We only have traditional chocolates here at Dumon. We don't do any "different" flavors". Okay, well look at you little miss boring.


Super fork + knife used when eating a waffle

Still, I manage to find some flavors that I've never gotten before. Speculoos and a marzipan strawberry. We continue to walk around the city until it gets dark, then head back to the hotel.

The next morning, after eating a enormous continental breakfast, we walk outside of the hotel and see an awesommmme market right in the square. It was smaller than the Saturday market at Rennes, but a lot louder. A lot of yelling in Flemish. We head to De Halve Maan ("The Half Moon"... I think) for a brewery tour, after getting lost for a solid 20 minutes. It happens. The street names are SO confusing. The tour was nice, and we got a "free" beer afterwards. Upon leaving, we were right near The Chocolate Line (what are the odds?!), where I bought a Cola flavored chocolate (surprised?) and one that was called "Marrakech"... I was intrigued... according to the website, it's "white chocolate ganache with mint leaves".

We climbed the tower in the middle of town (so. many. stairs.) then rented some bikes and rode out to Damme, where we ate dinner in a classy restaurant with absolutely terrifying photos of clowns on the walls. Seriously. I don't think they could've clashed more with the overall theme of the restaurant if they tried. *shudder* I wish I could've gotten a photo, but I felt that that would be a bit inappropriate...


The tower


Sooooo many bikes in Bruges.

The next morning mom bikes a bit more, I go for a run (and feel as if I'm the first person the Belgians have ever seen running, by the looks they were giving me...). We do some shopping, then head to the train station... off to Brussels.

Too tired to continue writing tonight/I'm in a middle of a good book... I'll TRY and get to writing about Brussels tomorrow... hm.

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That weekend I saw Lyon from the back of a motorcycle

Hello, again. So, two weekends ago I headed south... east... to Lyon. Lyon apparently has nothing to do with lions, and actually used to be named Lugdunum, back in the day. However, there are a lot of lion-esque motifs all over the place. Anyway. It was about 5 hours on the TGV, which wasn't too too bad.


I live in Rennes, which is on the little peninsula thingy in the west, pretty much directly west of Paris.

I met up with my friend Florian, who's from outside of Lyon and who had been renting a room at my host parents' house for the first few months I was there. He picked me up from the gare (train station)... on his motorcycle.

Now, I had been on a motorcycle before, for approximately... 45 seconds, when I was in Samaná. And that was terrifying, because I did not know the guy at all, we were going up a reallllllly steep hill, and we were on a cliff.

This time however, there were no cliffs in sight (well, not yet. I haven't gotten to Saturday yet), but we were speeding down the highway at like, a million km/hr. No, not really, but it just felt like it. It was probably only like 5000 km/hr. I'm really bad with metric stuff. But it was soooooo much fun, once I got over the fear that I was going to die and learned how to keep from getting tons of bugs in my face.



Friday we went to an old church on a hill overlooking Lyon. I forgot the name of the church... but it was pretty :) and historical. As many things in Europe are.


Me, obvs, and Lyon. Taken by Florian... my camera isn't that good.

We then explored Old Lyon, which was really quaint and full of old cafés. Again, typical Europe. We also walked along the banks of the Rhone River, with pretty much everyone else in Lyon. There were people running, biking, having picnics, drawing, skate boarding, drinking, drinking, drinking while running (honestly)... it was really cool.

After dinner we went and played billiards. I played for the first time about two months ago, and I've since learned that my talent for billiards is only slightly weaker than my talent for ice skating... and I think many of you know of my prowess as an ice skater... Still, I enjoy playing, especially when I know no one is taking it seriously.

Saturday we got up early and headed out (on the motorbike) to Annecy. Annecy is probably on my list of the Top 10 Most Absolutely Gorgeous Places I've Ever Seen. Actually, no. Top 5. Seriously. Breathtaking.



Here are the Google Image Search results for Annecy. Def. worth looking at. Gahhhh I love this place.

After getting some food and walking around the lake for awhile, we decided to head up the mountain on the motorbike. Because why not. It's the Alps. So we did. It took about 15, 20 minutes to get up the mountain... and then we arrived in Sound of Music land. Seriously. All I wanted to do was spin around in circles and sing about how the hillllllllllls were aliveeeee. Florian didn't understand the reference though, and neither did anyone else around me, so I stopped pretty quickly.

Side note: The Sound of Music is translated into French as La Mélodie du Bonheur...The Sound of Happiness. However, in Latin American Spanish it's La Novicia Rebelde, which is like The Stubborn/Rebellious Novice or something. when I found that out, if made my life.





We took the highway back, which only took us about an hour and a half. On the way there we drove through a bunch of quaint adorable French towns, which took about 3 hours, but was definitely worth it.

The next day we were totally wiped out and just hung out until I caught my train. It was an awesomeee weekend and I'm so glad that I got to see a completely different part of France. I leave in a month! So crazy. Okay, actually, I have my ticket for a month from now. I'm trying to find ways to stay here for a bit, but I'm not sure if that's going to work out. After this week, we're on vacation for two weeks, and my Mom is coming. After that, only two more weeks until everyone goes home. I don't want to leave!! Craziness. This term has flown by.

Okay, I'm going to go for a run now in the nice 75 degree weather that we've got going on over here... then dinner, watch some Top Chef... not do any homework, because I don't have any... la la la...

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Break #1: Part 4

Sunday:

Checked out of the hostel, got more Starbucks, bought some nasty seaweed crackers at an Asian grocery store because I didn’t know that they were seaweedy because I don’t read Chinese… anyway. We went to a mini street fair for a few minutes, then got on the metro and headed right back to the airport. Flight was short again (Europeans have it so easy… cheap airfare, short flights…) and we arrived in Paris in the mid afternoon.

I find it funny that Paris doesn’t even faze me anymore. I’ve been there 4 times, and it’s already just “oh. Paris. Oh…look, there’s the Eiffel Tower. There’s the Louvre. There’s the Arc de Triomphe. No big deal.” I wouldn’t say by any means that I’ve seen the whole city, but I can get myself around.

Anyway, so we kill some time in Paris and meet up with a friend and her boyfriend by Notre Dame (oh, look, there’s Notre Dame) before our train ride back.

Now see, it’d been a long break. We’d traveled by bus, metro, plane, train, taxi, horse (no, not really), and had been lugging our bags with us everywhere. We were tired (happy, but tired) and just wanted to get home. Our train fortunately arrived at the station in Paris on time, at like 10ish, and we thought that we’d get back in time to make our last bus of the night (1235ish). If we missed it, that’d mean two really expensive cab rides.

However. The train in front of us (Paris -> Rennes @ 9) hit a cow. Or, as they said on the loudspeaker “une bete sauvage“ (“a savage beast”). I don’t know if the conductor was trying to be funny or if the French people’s use of the words “savage” and “beast’ are different from ours. No one was hurt, fortunately (except the cow, I’m assuming…), but everyone from the first train had to get off and wait for our train to come. Once we pulled up to their station (about 1 hour outside of Rennes), they all pilled onto our train. Between the two stops, this added about an hour to our trip… aka, there was no chance at all of me making my bus.

Everyone was grumbling and tired and there is really nothing worse than a train full of unhappy campers. Especially when they’re French. I would’ve been more worried, but my host dad told me that he’d pick me up at the train station. So it was all goooood.

Anyway, yeah! That was my spring break. 3 countries, 3 flights, 4 new stamps in my passport (out of Paris, in/out of Morocco, into Madrid), countless pain au chocolats and Diet Cokes consumed… it was good times though. A bit stressful, but I had a really good time. Sorry this took me like 85904353 years to write and post. My next break is in a week- my Mom is coming to visit and we’re going to hit up Paris and Belgium. Expect an entry about that in mid-August, probably...

Link to photo albums on Facebook: one & two.

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Break #1: Part 3

Friday:

Note how these entries are getting shorter, as I have less drive to bore you all with the day-to-day details. Okayyyy so spent a lot of time in the Market, met up with Andy and her host sister and got Tajine (chicken, vegetables… kind of hard to explain, but really good) then headed to the ruins.

Ruins=really old. Growing up in such a young country (Awwww the US is such a baby), you don’t really see too often things that are REALLY REALLY REALLY OLD. Not to say that the Native Americans didn’t leave such behind, yada yada yada, but nothing like this.



After even more time at the Market, Andy and I headed to this really cool poetry slam thing. I’d never been to one before and didn’t really know what to expect. This slam was run by a 20-something American girl who received a grant to travel around the world and… errr, okay I don’t totally remember, but her goal had to do with liberating women, specifically teenage girls.

So what it was, and it was mostly in English (little bit of French, little bit of Arabic), was a poetry showcase. Girls would come up and read poems that they themselves wrote about being a woman in 21st century Morocco. They talked about the veil, crushes, harassment, family… it was really, really interesting. There was even a Moroccan hip hop artist. She sang in Arabic and I have absolutely NO idea what she was saying… but everyone else seemed to like it, so I assume it was well-written and woman-liberating...

Saturday:

By this time, out numbers had dwindled to two: me and my friend Ashley. At 5am we got up and hopped on a train back to Fez. From there we headed to the airport and got our second pain au chocolat of the day. Never did I think that I’d be a pain au chocolat conaisseuse, but Morocco really has nothing on France in that department. That being said, the couscous at my university in Rennes is like eating dirt compared to Moroccan couscous. Anyway, enough about the food…

After a really short flight, we land in Madrid, where we stay for less than 24 hours. We checked into our hostel, and found our room (which we share with 15 other people). There’s also a kitchen and a living room type area… it was actually really cool. Everyone was from a different country, and the two of us spent the afternoon with a Canadian girl who’s an au pair in France for the year.

We made a quick stop at Starbucks (overpriced, claro) and decided to do a Tapas Tour.

Para que sepas, a tapas are like Spanish snacks that’re eaten with alcohol, usually. I’m not talking Lay’s Potato Chips or string cheese here, I’m talking chocolate bulls tail, peppers & sausage, potatoes, more potatoes… yeah. That’s what we got. I wasn’t kidding about the chocolate bulls tail, by the way. It was like, stewed and it looked/tasted like beef stew. You wouldn’t have even known. The ‘tour’ part of the Tapas Tour means that we paid a flat fee at the beginning of the afternoon then went from restaurant to restaurant trying all of these tapas.

Kind of like a bar crawl, but with tapas, pretty much. After that we did the bar crawl.

It was great to be able to use my Spanish again. I know that I have an American accent, and an even stronger Dominican accent (which is confusing, because I'm white)… and that definitely threw a few people off. Still though, it was nice to be in a country where I could understand pretty much everything that people were saying. In Morocco, while French is widely spoken/understood, Arabic is the main language. I couldn’t even remember how to say “hello” for more than two minutes at a time.

Link to photo albums on Facebook: one & two.

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Break #1: Part 2

Tuesday:

Ryanair is sketch, and I’ll just leave it at that. However, it turns out the rumor that you have to pay to use the bathrooms is false. The flight is only about 2 ½ hours, and I pass most of the time reading The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. Totally recommend it.



So we get to Fez! Yeahhhhhhh! We all change over our money (Moroccan money is so pretty) and get a cab into downtown Fez. Side note for anyone who was in the DR: the cars used for Moroccan cabs are not at all unlike the cars used as conchos in the DR. really brought me back.


Concho look-a-likes

We spend about half a lifetime walking around trying to find a hotel and the medina (old city). Turns out we were walking in the complete opposite direction. We take another cab and arrive in the medina, which is like a market and touristy area and full of hotels and good food.

We checked into a hotel for like, 5 or 6 bucks American per person? We managed to convince some guys who were trying to get us to stay in THEIR hotel that I was Spanish, which was pretty fun… anyway, we then got some lunch. Mmmmmmm LUNCH. For about $7 American I got a Moroccan salad, tons of bread, Shishkabob, fruit, and almond milk. It was soooo good.

After lunch we walked around the market for awhile. I bought some knockoff red Converse and some other little trinkets, then found an internet café to let people (read: my dad) know that I am alive. We then head back to the room and I promptly fall asleep. It’s 5pm. I wake up again at 11am. I think that may be a record for me. There were 5 of us, and 3 beds, but I got my own bed because “I slept on the floor last night so I think I freaking deserve it.” It was lovely.



Wednesday:

We walked around the market a bit more, then our group split up for the rest of the trip. Two of my friends headed to Marrakesh, and me and two others got on a train to Rabat. The train car reminded me soooo much of Harry Potter. That was the first of many Harry Potter references that we applied on this trip.

Upon arriving in Rabat (2, 3 hour train ride) we found a hotel right in the city. It was kind of expensive, but it had a shower… which was worth the extra money. I had my first OFFICAL Moroccan couscous… and it was so good. We spent the rest of the day walking around the Rabat’s market and doing some sightseeing. We spent a lot of time at the Kasbah taking photos of the ocean… it was so gorgeous.



Thursday:

Breakfast was freshly squeezed juice. My friend who was in Morocco last semester had been raving about it for awhile, so we obviously had to try it. I got a mixed fruit flavor, but I also tried Avocado. Yes, it sounds like it would be nasty… but it was absolutely delicious. We moved into a cheaper hotel room (no shower =/ ) for the equivalent of like $8 American per person. Crazy.

Thursday I also had plans to meet up with my friend Andy. I’ve known her for ages, and she’s spending the year in Morocco. I went to her school to meet her before lunch, but I didn’t know exactly where to find her. I was going down the stairs to check out another room, when I run into her (almost literally) coming up the stairs. Much screaming occurs… and the secretary or someone comes over to shush us. But it was nuts, seeing someone from home thousands of miles away on a different continent. I’ve obviously had contact with people from home while I’ve been here, but I had yet to spend time with someone who’s from Syracuse. So it was much needed.


Yayyy friends

We all got pizza, then Andy went back to class. My friends and I got henna, went and visited a garden, and spent more time walking along the coast. We ran into some Australian girls who were completely lost (they were pretty far away from Australia, har har har...) and we spent about 20 minutes walking with them.

After that… we met up with Andy again and went to an unfinished mosque. I have no idea what it’s called. But it was cool. We stopped by Andy’s host family’s house for a few and I met her family, then the two of us went to the German Institute.

German Institute, you ask? In Morocco? Why would two people who don’t speak a word of German go out to a German Institute at 10pm?

Well… the German Institute is pretty much the only place in the whole entire country where you can buy alcohol.

Okay, small exaggeration, but still. Moroccans aren’t big on the drinking thing. Anyway, we split a bottle of wine and talked for awhile. I then tried to speak Andy into my hotel room (because it was late and she didn’t want to wake up her host family) but then we got yelled at by the night lady. Yes, Moroccan hotels have someone up at all hours of the night, but Paris Beauvais’ don’t. Go figure. Anyway, turns out you need to present your passport before staying in the hotel, even if you’re staying with people who have already presented theirs. After a lot of hushed yelling in French/Arabic/English, Andy was kicked out. Sorry again Andge.

Link to photo albums on Facebook: one & two.

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Break #1: Part 1

Okay, first of all, yes I know that it’s been over a month and a half since I’ve written. I write daily to-do lists in my planner, and “blog” has been on there every day for the past few weeks. Not that that means anything, because nothing got written, but anyway… it’s funny, because in the DR when I didn’t have internet I wrote like two, three times a week… whereas here, where it’s easier to write, I am like incapable of doing so.

So where did I leave off? Right after Disney, I think. Well, a week after I went to Disney I went to Morocco and Spain for break. Fortunately, I kept a little book with me the whole time and wrote down what I did each way, so that it’d be easier to remember/blog. Not that that helped, considering I’m so behind… but anyway, this blog is going to be broken up just because I have so freaking much to catch up on.

2.28 Mon- Paris
3.1 Tues- Fez
3.2 Weds- Rabat
3.3 Thurs- Rabat
3.4 Fri- Rabat
3.5 Sat- Madrid
3.6 Sun- Paris

Monday morning me and two of my friends got on a train to Paris. We were planning on hanging out in Paris for the afternoon, then getting up to our hotel in Beauvais (about an hour north of Paris) which was right near the airport (our flight was at like 830, 9 the next day). However, it had never… really… been figured out how we were going to get from central Paris up to Beauvais. That caused some problems, some stress, and some wine to be drunk in the middle of Palais de Congres (shopping mall in Paris).

We eventually figured out how to get up there, but due to unforeseen circumstances, we wouldn’t be able to check into our hotel. So… four Americans, students, not rich nor completely sensical… where do we sleep? Well the airport, of course!


And let me tell you, in case you didn’t know (and I hope you don’t know, because it’s not the greatest experience) that Paris Beauvais airport is SKETCH CITY. Paris Beauvais airport is not Paris’ main airport (that’d be Charles de Gaulle, folks) and it does not handle most major carriers. It handles, for example, Ryanair. In trying to explain the Paris Beauvais airport to a friend, I described it as the French equivalent of the Rochester Greyhound station. If you are also fortunate enough not to know the Rochester Greyhound station… just think of any bus station, anywhere (except maybe NYC) and subtract the English.

So we were all set to sleep in the airport. We had gotten dinner to go at the mall, I was curled up on one of the seats with my scarf as a babushka, it was all good. PS it was like 1030 by this time… it had been a long day, and I was more than looking forward to a little sleep time.

Then an announcement comes on over the loudspeaker telling us that the airport will be closing at 11.

Awesome.

So I mean… we’re kind of screwed. We don’t have many options, at all, so we decide to try and check into the hotel that we had originally planned on staying in. The friend who made the reservation wasn’t with us, so we were 99% sure it wasn’t going to work, but we really had no choice.

We get a cab, find the hotel, and… the front desk is closed. Apparently late-night check-in is more of an American thing as well. There are some other hotels around, so we start to look. We come upon one that has a weird ATMish thing outside its [locked] front door. While the French don’t have late-night check-in, they do have automatic room buying machines. Yes, that is the technical name for this thing.

(No it’s not)

So we buy a room. Overpriced, but it’s our only option. It has one king sized bed, which was actually more like a queen. And there are four of us. I ended up sleeping on the floor, simply because it was more comfortable than sleeping in a bed with three other people.



Okay, so then to make an even longer story short, we get to the airport the next morning (after some more “oh crap” moments), get our passports stamped, and get on our flight.

Next stop: Africaaaaaaa.

Link to photo albums on Facebook: one & two.

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