Gatzing Out: France

Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Paris, Part Two: The Part That Didn't Totally Suck

When we last left our heroine (aka me), she was sulking in the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, wondering what she had done wrong in life to deserve such an unrelenting stream of bad luck.

Luckily, things were only going to (mostly) get better from that point forward. After about an hour spent indulging in self-pitying and childishly wishing to be at home wrapped in a blanket, hugging a teddy bear, and quite possibly reverting to thumb-sucking, I picked myself up and walked back toward the Mosquée de Paris with a defiant air and a look of steely determination. "Forget you, Paris," I said in the FCC-friendly version of my inner monologue. "Forget you and forget your mother. I am Renée forgetting Gauthier, and you have not beaten me yet. Forget, forget, forget."

I arrived at the mosque and found the ticket counter. There seemed to be some sort of hullabaloo; aside from the ticket seller, there were two men standing nearby shouting in Arabic and banging their hands emphatically on the desk. I waited from a safe distance to see how this apparent dispute was going to lay out, but the ticket seller merely smiled at me, took out a ticket, and motioned me forward past the other two men, who were apparently simply having some sort of heated debate rather than engaging in a customer service dispute.

The upside to this was that the ticket guy sold me a student-price ticket, which I was not going to argue with. Despite the fact that I look about eighteen years old, I have not been able to claim student discounts anywhere because of my lack of a valid student ID. It's been killing me, because every place I go ticket sellers will ask, "Are you a student?" and then I have to say no and pay full price. Adulthood: it ain't all it's cracked up to be.

Anyway, the mosque was cool. It didn't blow my mind with its supreme beauty or anything (the fountains were dry and the gardens were sparse, since it was still rather early in the season), but I'd never been to a mosque before and it was cool to look around.

La Mosquée de Paris

After the mosque I headed toward the Seine to meander in the general direction of Sainte Chapelle. I'd never visited it before but my 501 Must-See Destinations book had recommended it and I'd generally heard good things. Along the way I checked out the stalls of used books along the river and cheered up as the sun finally made an appearance after a morning spent hiding behind forbidding-looking clouds.

My first views of Notre Dame reminded me of my last trip to Paris which, it must be noted, had gone rather more smoothly than this one. Nevertheless, the return to somewhat familiar territory brightened my spirits considerably. I thought about taking another look inside Notre Dame, but the line--which stretched all the way across the square and then continued on for a block or so--quickly dissuaded me, and I continued on to Sainte Chapelle.

Sainte Chapelle, built by Louis IX between 1239 and 1248, is a magnificent chapel that was once part of a royal palace within the city. Today Sainte Chapelle and apparently part of the Palais de Justice next door are the only parts that remain of the old building.

The chapel is divided into two floors: the Lower Chapel (which houses a lot of souvenir stalls these days) is relatively low-ceilinged and heavy-looking, with squat arched columns and moderately-sized stained glass windows. The ceiling is painted dark blue with gold stars, although I suspect the paint job was done more recently than the thirteenth century. The Lower Chapel was built for the use of palace staff. It's impressive in its way, but the main draw lies upstairs, in the Upper Chapel.

The Lower Chapel

So up I went, climbing a narrow stone spiral staircase. At my first glimpse of the chapel, my breath caught in my throat. It was, to quote the French lady standing nearby, "magnifique." Sainte Chapelle has gorgeous stained glass windows that stretch nearly from the floor to the heights of the soaring Gothic ceiling. It seems like there is more glass than stone making up the chapel walls, and this gives the chapel an air of extreme delicacy and fragility combined with extraordinary strength. It's really quite remarkable to think about how these glass windows have survived the Reformation, the Revolution, and two world wars, plus eight hundred years of general wear and tear. I mean, I can't even make a pair of boots last beyond a season. (In my defense, Dartmouth winters are really hard on shoes, especially when the pathways get over-salted. My knowledge of medieval chapel maintenance is admittedly limited, but I'm pretty sure road salt doesn't come into it.)

Windows of the Upper Chapel

Sainte Chapelle, now with added scaffolding for your viewing pleasure!

Not even the hordes of tourists could detract (much) from the splendor of this place. The only major distraction was the scaffolding covering three of the windows, which were being restored. (Hey, when you get to be 800, you need a facelift or two. I'm sure Joan Rivers would back me up on this.)

The cloudy weather (the sun had disappeared again) couldn't even ruin the effect, although I can only imagine what Sainte Chapelle looks like with the sun streaming through all the windows. It's easy to see why it's nicknamed "the jewel box."

When I had been waiting in line for Sainte Chapelle, I'd noticed a flyer advertising a Bach concert for around 7 pm. On the way out I decided to be impulsive and I bought a concert ticket for the reasonable price of 16€. Then I walked around in the rain looking for a place to eat dinner. I got soaked through despite my umbrella and the quiche I eventually ate was thoroughly underwhelming, but by this point I had a concert to look forward to so things seemed okay enough. Plus nothing could be worse than the beginning of the day.

I slogged back through the downpour to Sainte Chapelle and took a seat for the concert. I had high hopes that the chapel would warm up a bit once the doors were shut, but no such luck. I was sopping wet and shivery throughout the entire program, but it didn't really dampen (see what I did there?) my mood. Like I said, sometimes it takes the morning (okay, morning and previous evening) from hell to put things in perspective.

The concert was good. Was it the best I'd ever heard? No, but it was still quite lovely, and you really can't beat the venue of an eight-hundred-year-old church. The acoustics were surprisingly underwhelming, but I could hear well enough even though I was near the back.

Much more distracting was the middle-aged Russian lady next to me who seemed to think that stage whispering was the same as actually being silent. Let me just list, in order, the things she did during the concert:

1. Started a conversation with her companions in the middle of a piece

2. Pulled out her cell phone, turned it on, checked for texts

3. Pulled out a SECOND phone, turned it on, started texting

4. Pretended to be a bunny rabbit (?!?!)

5. Giggled uncomtrollably at her own rabbit impression

It was entertaining, I guess, but I would have rather enjoyed without interruption the entertainment I'd actually paid 16€ for.

But after the concert I went back to the hostel, took a long-anticipated hot shower, and had a sound night's sleep free of both annoyed hostel employees and Russian bunny people.

Paris, maybe you ain't so bad after all.

The closest I got to the Eiffel Tower on this whole trip

Tuesday, June 4, 2013

Pictures, Pictures, and More Pictures

Remember that post where I summarized my trip and then cheated you all out of seeing photos? (You do now, I guess.) Well, here you go. Photos!

Adorable toy store in Montpellier ("The Little Queen's Apple")

Alley lined with racks of postcards, Montpellier

Chateau Chenonceau on the River Cher

Long Gallery at Chenonceau, formerly used as both a ballroom and a war hospital

Beautiful weather and beautiful flowers at Chenonceau

St. Gatien Cathedral, Tours

Inside St. Gatien

Place Sainte Anne in the medieval city of Rennes

Loch Ness and some temperamental Scottish weather

The ruins of Urquhart Castle on the shores of Loch Ness

Paris: A Really Un-Funny Comedy of Errors

May 18, 9 pm

Arrive at hostel after lugging backpack through the rain, following iffy directions from GoogleMaps. Reception informs me that instead of two nights I've booked in the eight-bed mixed dormitory, I've been assigned one night in a six-bed female dorm and one night in the mixed, which means I'll have to check out in the morning, shove all my stuff into a locker in the hostel basement, and then re-check-in in the evening.

The sole consolation I get from the receptionist: "Usually the six-bed room is more expensive, but we'll only charge you for two nights in the eight-bed dorm." You'll only charge me for the services I actually ordered?! Wow, that's big of you. Thanks.

9:15 pm

Arrive in room to find that bed A, the bed I've been assigned, is taken. Bed C appears to be the only available bed in the room. So I take bed C.

May 19, 1:25 am

Awoken by hostel employee shoving some sort of check-in paperwork in my face and demanding "Is this you?!" in French. The form belongs to the person who apparently belongs in bed C. I summon all the French I have available in my mentally muddled state and try to explain the situation. Considering that I had been fully unconscious not one minute earlier, I think I do a pretty good job. Hostel guy is unimpressed and says--rather snottily in my opinion--"En fait, le lit etait disponible," which means, "In fact, the bed WAS available."

Oh, was it really? Sorry, it's clearly MY fault that no one changed the bed and it therefore appeared to be in use. I should have used my PSYCHIC POWERS. My bad.

1:30 am

Hostel guy goes to get fresh sheets for the other bed for the girl who was supposed to be in bed C, and I check the time and promptly freak out because I think it's 1:30 in the afternoon and that I overslept by six hours. (In my defense, the room was very brightly lit and I HAD BEEN UNCONSCIOUS FIVE MINUTES AGO.) Once I figure out it's 1:30 am (after the other people in the room enlightened me to this fact) I crawl back under the covers, now both a time-telling dunce AND a bed-stealing jerk.

8:30 am

Oversleep.

9:30 am

Set off for the Catacombs, the one thing I want to do most in Paris--and possibly on this trip. You can't get me down, Paris! I still have the Catacombs! (OMINOUS FORESHADOWING)

10:00 am

Metro police kick everybody off the metro because the line is going out of service due to construction. Were there signs about this? Sure, but they all said the line wouldn't be affected until four or five stops later. Good one, France.

10:05 am

After many flights of stairs and two MOVING WALKWAYS I finally make it to the subway platform of the line to which I'm transferring, just in time to see the train pull away. Fabulous!

10:12 am

FINALLY get on the right metro. Catacombs, here I come!

10:25 am

Start wandering around the square looking for the Catacombs, which are supposed to be RIGHT THERE.

10:35 am

Still wandering, but on a boulevard now.

10:45 am

STILL wandering, and now I'm nearly back where I started. Time to pull out the map.

10:50 am

Found them!

10:50:30 am

Found the sign that says "The Catacombs will be closed Sunday, May 19." There is no explanation offered.

10:51 am

Fighting the uncontrollable urge to cry in public in front of strangers. Also zipping through the five stages of grief, except I keep getting stalled on anger and denial and seem unable to land on acceptance. This was the thing I wanted to do most on this trip! It was basically the reason I came to Paris, and I checked the hours of operation a million times! This cannot be happening!

11:00 am

Stalk back to the metro station, quite tempted to just go back to the hostel and nap forever. Decide to check out a Sunday market, swing by the Mosquée de Paris (Paris Mosque) which is supposed to be pretty cool and unique, then go to Sainte Chapelle if I'm feeling up to it. I give myself full permission to mope and wallow in self pity once these things are done.

11:15 am

Sitting sulkily on the subway, I become convinced that I am going to be mugged today, because hey, why not? Also that I am going to miss my flight tomorrow, lose my passport, and spend the rest of my trip in the American Embassy trying to get my life together.

11:30 am

Arrive at market. Eat a pretty good galette (a savory crepe, basically). Am feeling a bit better.

12:25 pm

Start wandering around, casually searching for the mosque, which is in the same neighborhood as the market.

12:45 pm

Found it! There it is, towering about a block or two away.

12:55 pm

Oh hey, can I check out the mosque? NO, because it's closed from 12-2. What the actual hell. What is this day?!

By 1:00 I had lost all faith in Paris. As far as I was concerned, it sucked. Worst city on the planet, and it obviously hated me. But 1:00 proved to be a turning point. Don't worry, this story has a happy ending!

Well, happyish. Spoiler alert, I never get to see the Catacombs. But I get to see some pretty cool other stuff. That story (with pictures!) will be posted soon.

Until then, let's leave me sitting forlornly on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes under a cloudy sky. It's more dramatic to end that way.

Thursday, May 30, 2013

So, Where Was I?

I didn't mean for that title to be a pun, but I guess it kind of is. Anyway, I really need to catch up on blog entries so I figured I'd do a rundown of a bunch of cities.

No pictures (yet); my ipad is still being a princess about charging properly. It appears that it will only charge at a snail's pace, and even then it will only do so if it is completely turned off and left to its own devices. I'm telling you--princess. Hopefully once I get it charged to an acceptable level (and really, I'm not being picky at this point; 40% will feel downright extravagant) I can come back and pop some photos in here for those of you who hate words and prefer (pretty?) pictures.

So, here is a very brief breakdown of what I was up to one or two weeks ago.

Montpellier (May 12-15)
A vacation from my vacation--awesome! I stayed with my cousin Nick and hung out with him, my Aunt Linda, Uncle Ed, cousin Chris, and his girlfriend Stephanie. I did not have to plan anything, find anything, or do any sort of errands. It. Was. Awesome.

We had some great dinners, explored Montpellier, and did a really interesting wine tour in the Pic St Loup region. I learned a lot about wine, and I re-learned that my alcohol tolerance is laughably low. (I am the very lightest of the lightweights, and after a quarter of a glass of wine I look like I've got a bad sunburn all over my face.) But the tour was accompanied by a fantastic dinner, the guide was really friendly and knowledgeable, and there were like ten different varieties of wine to try. (I'm even starting to like red wine, everyone!)

Finished out my sojourn in the south by doing some shopping, and by some stroke of luck I FINALLY found a pair of black Oxford heels that didn't look like they were created with the cast of Pretty Woman in mind. Carrying them home would prove difficult, however, so I shipped them, along with some other souvenirs I picked up. Packing everything took some doing, as I refused to buy a shipping box (I had a perfectly good shoe box right there!), but I eventually managed it. Granted, Chris did have to hold the lid on for me while I taped, and all parties involved (except for me) were extremely skeptical that the box would ever make it out of the post office. (Bets were placed at 90-10 odds.)

The happy ending/epilogue to this story is that the package arrived in the US this week, apparently unscathed. Ha-HA! (That was my triumphant laugh of victory.)

Tours and Chateau Chenonceau (May 15-17)
Left Montpellier just as the rain was blowing in, and managed through the magic of the TGV (France's high-speed train) to mostly outrun it. Arrived in Tours feeling tired and sort of blah, but had a pretty awesome hotel (not hostel!) room.

Went to Chenonceau (a castle on the River Cher) the next day, and had all sorts of plans to write a very historically informative and hilarious blog post about it, but now that it's been two weeks I've sort of forgotten my angle and am too lazy to be bothered. Sorry, everyone. But eventually there will be pretty pictures to make up for it!

Rennes (May 17-18)
I had zero attachment to Rennes--it was mostly a convenient stop-off for seeing Mont St. Michel the next day. So, as often happens with these things, Rennes ended up being a fantastic stop. It started with the cleanest, most efficient subway system I've ever seen and continued with an open-air book fair. The hostel room had only one other bed, so I had a pretty fair amount of privacy, which was nice.

Ate a late lunch at Creperie Sainte Anne, in the medieval heart of Rennes, among timber-framed houses and other outdoor cafés. It was delicious and I had a mug of cider (which is a thing in Brittany--hurray for my favorite variety of booze!) and just sat and people-watched and did some writing. Not having any particular points of interest to check out was quite relaxing. Less relaxing were my attempts to download the season finale of Elementary from itunes, which were thwarted at every turn. They remained thwarted for the next 4-5 days, so that was sort of a bummer.

Mont St. Michel (May 18)
This is going to get its own entry. Eventually. I mean, a couple of these points might get fleshed out in future posts, but I'm not going to bother getting into Mont St. Michel right now.

Paris (May 18-20)
Ditto for Paris, which was a series of unfortunate events from start to almost-finish. There's a happy ending (sort of)!

Inverness/Loch Ness (May 21-23)
Inverness is located in the Scottish highlands on Loch Ness. In the course of the day and a half that I was there, the weather went back and forth between rain and sun at least five times a day, and occasionally there were high winds, hail, and rainbows (three! Complete rainbows, too--all the colors and a full semi-circle) thrown in for good measure. (Also, the morning I left, it snowed in the Highlands.) I did a Loch Ness boat tour in the afternoon but was otherwise pretty lazy, since I didn't feel well at the beginning of my stay. And then I accidentally ate meat (I think...either that or it was the most convincing fake sausage I've ever tasted). And then there were, um, blog issues.

Inverness was a perfectly nice city in general but a pretty weird experience for me personally, let's just leave it there.

Edinburgh (May 23-25)
Edinburgh is such a crazy, morbid, messed-up, awesome city that it deserves an entry all to itself. Prepare yourself for all manner of miscellany, from Harry Potter to body-snatching to more accidental ingestion of meat (possibly? It's unclear. Either way, I ended up leaving a lot of meals uneaten north of the border.).

The Peak District (May 25-28)
A.k.a the site of my technological downfall. This is going to get its own entry as well...I hope.

And that about brings us up to the present! I realize that I did very little in the way of actually updating things and much more in the way of "Hey guys, remember how I haven't written the stuff I was supposed to write? Here's me not-writing it some more!" But you'll just have to accept it as it's all I can manage at this point. Sorry.

Between that and the "no pictures" thing, you're probably feeling pretty cheated with the "new" post. So here is a picture of a cat hugging a kitten. Happy Thursday, y'all.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

...And Then I Fell Into an Alternate Dimension

The long-awaited (?) tale of my further adventures in the mountains.

Last Sunday, the twelfth (still behind on the blogging, sorry, guys), I took the train to Montpellier from Marseille to meet up with my relatives. My Aunt Linda, Uncle Ed, cousin Chris, and his girlfriend Stephanie have all been visiting my cousin Nick, who lives in Montpellier. The five of them have been traveling around France but were making a stop in the city for about three days, and I had arranged to meet up with them there.

We were all sitting at dinner when Chris asked me what my weirdest experience so far had been. After thinking about it for a few minutes, I realized I had a truly bizarre backpacking story; I was only surprised that I hadn't thought of it right away.

Things had started innocently enough. I'd been sitting in Sospel after my hike up Mount Agaisen. It was around two o'clock, I think, and the next train back to Nice would not arrive for nearly two hours.

I did, however, have a train schedule in my bag, and some investigating revealed that there was a train going in the opposite direction that would be by in about forty-five minutes. "Hmmm," I thought. "Now that's a possibility."

The truth is, I felt like I was not being nearly impulsive enough on this trip. Planning was, of course, necessary in order to see everything I wanted to see on a reasonable budget, but I felt like my tight schedule was keeping me from the quintessential backpacking experience of just hopping a train a going somewhere, anywhere. So I decided to be impulsive and hop a train. It wouldn't cost me anything extra, since the day's travel had already been covered by my rail pass.

I checked the guidebook pages I had stored on my ipad for some guidance as to where I should get off. The only relevant town mentioned was Saorge. "Saorge is the prettiest spot in the Roya Valley," the guidebook gushed. "Set in a natural amphitheater high over the river, its slate-roofed houses are tiered between narrow alleys in the style of a typical stacked village."

Sounds cute, I thought, and one of the train stops on the schedule was Fontan-Saorge. Awesome!

If only I'd thought! If only I'd known!

I took the train to Fontan-Saorge, looking forward to checking out some slate-roofed houses in a natural amphitheater. What I got was a barren wasteland...in a natural amphitheater.

Things seemed okay when I first stepped off the train. I mean, the conductor didn't do anything like ask, "Really? Are you SURE?" when I got off, and there were a bunch of other people disembarking as well, which would seem to imply that Fontan-Saorge was, at the very least, not an undesirable location. But once the train had pulled out of the station, things got REALLY different REALLY fast.

First of all, all the other passengers hightailed it to the parking lot, got into waiting cars, and cleared out of there as quickly as humanely possible, leaving me standing in the middle of the cracked, empty pavement all by myself. If we'd been in a cartoon there would have been a giant dust cloud that cleared to reveal me standing alone in the parking lot as some stray tumbleweeds drifted by.

Second, the train station was locked and empty. It looked as if no one had been inside in quite awhile. Weird, but not SO weird, since a lot of the smaller train stations are locked up most of the time.

But things got weirder. Now that I was by myself, could take full stock of the situation. The train station, unlike most French train stations, was not located in the middle of town or even on the outskirts of it. It was unceremoniously plunked down between two towns, and my only guidance was a signpost with two arrows, one pointing to Soarge, one pointing to Fontan. There was no mention of the distance to either.

I walked to the sign and looked around to get my bearings. To the left, the road went through an underpass built to accommodate the train tracks and then swerved around a corner, so I couldn't see anything beyond it. To the left, the road to Saorge entered what appeared to be a fairly long tunnel dug into the mountainside. I had no desire to be hit by a car while walking through a dark tunnel, so that narrowed down my options considerably.

And then: oh happy day! There was a hiking trail going up the mountain, away from the road. This seemed like a godsend, since I was starting to feel sort of uneasy and exposed standing alone on the road next to what appeared to be an abandoned train station. I set off up the path.

It was immediately clear that this trail was not nearly as well-traveled or maintained as the GR 52 in Sospel. It looked less like a hiking trail and more like a path that animals or errant hikers had created accidentally. Branches and thorns crisscrossed the pathway, which was overgrown with grass and weeds. I soldiered on anyway, despite my realization that this steep, pretty exposed path would be difficult to hike back down without falling on my butt.

Adding to the general Twilight Zone atmosphere was the natural amphitheater aspect of things. While it was kind of cool in theory, in practice the amphitheater meant that all the sounds from miles around felt like they were being bombarded straight at me. I kept thinking I was coming upon a waterfall or something, but it was really the sound of the river far below being projected into the mountains. The distant highway made it sound and feel like I was going to be run down by an eighteen-wheeler at any second.

I kept climbing until the path simultaneously entered a patch of woods and turned a corner. Suddenly, I was overwhelmed by a totally illogical, primal fear, like when you turn off the lights and you suddenly think, "What if there's someone lurking in here with me?!" Obviously, it's crazy and unfounded, but it's one of those feelings that's hard to ignore.

"What if there's a crazed mountain man behind that corner?!" I thought, freaking myself out even more than I already had. "What if there's a yeti (or whatever the Alpine equivalent of a yeti is), but instead of being shy and gentle it has an insatiable hunger for human flesh?!"

"That's stupid," said the logical, adult part of my brain. "There is no yeti or mountain man back there...but if it's all the same to you maybe just go with your gut and turn around anyway."

Even the LOGICAL, ADULT part of my brain was freaked out. This is what Fontan-Saorge has done to me!

I got back down the mountain more quickly than expected with the aid of a branch that I used as an impromptu walking stick, but when I got to the bottom I still had forty minutes before the train to Nice came to return me to civilization, where people hardly ever have to worry about yetis or mountain men.

So I walked up the road toward Saorge, past an abandoned basketball court and a deserted tennis court. A car stopped and the driver asked if I wanted a ride. "Non, merci," I said, heart hammering, before turning around and walking in the opposite direction, looking more and more like a mentally confused vagrant with every passing moment.

I walked through the underpass and around the corner and was treated to view of a town I assumed to be Fontan, which was just far enough down the road to make walking there pointless given how much longer I had before my train arrived. So I decided to just walk back to the train station and hope for the best. When I got there I saw three teenage girls sitting on the platform waiting as well, which made me feel ever-so-slightly more secure. I sat down on the next bench over. We waited.

Just when the feeling of having been dropped into some Twilight Zone-y parallel universe was beginning to abate, two skinny, mangy dogs came trotting up the train tracks, looking for food. They had collars with string leashes dangling off of them--but there was no sign of their owner. At all.

The scaredy-cat part of my brain and the logical adult part of my brain, for once in perfect agreement, clutched each other for dear life and cried, "Dear God, we're going to die in a post-apocalyptic wasteland surrounded by scavenging dogs and snotty French teenagers and probably a mountain man and a yeti! WHYYYYYYYY?!"

This anecdote has been pretty amusing when I re-tell it over dinner with my family or via Skype to my best friend, but let me assure you that it was pretty darn unsettling at the time. I mean, I could recognize the humor as I was experiencing it--the dog thing: really?! I couldn't have planned a better capper to the whole experience if I'd tried--but it's harder to appreciate the humor when every instinct in you is going, "Nope. Nope. Nuh-uh. I DO NOT LIKE THIS ONE BIT."

When I look back at the whole thing, it almost feels like a dream I had. You know what I mean, the sort of dream where everything sort of makes sense but seems really...off, and then once you wake up, you feel very strange and on edge?

Yeah, it felt like that. Thank God I woke up.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Magnifique, Merveilleux, Marseille!

If you'll recall from an earlier entry, I unfortunately missed my train from Nice to Marseille. As you can imagine, I was not in the greatest of moods when I arrived in the city, and I did not have particularly high hopes for my stay.

For starters, in a classic tour-de-force performance, GoogleMaps sent me the wrong way. Remember how I once said I love GoogleMaps more than I love some people? It's probably still true, but I have to say that I love GoogleMaps a little less now. It's still not as bad as the time it sent me and my friend Madison walking down Santa Monica Boulevard in the exact wrong direction for an hour (through a seedy neighborhood), but I was still none too pleased.

When I finally made it to the hostel, the first thing I noticed, unfortunately, was that someone had smashed the window. There wasn't a hole, but it was covered in cracks radiating outward from the point of impact. Oh sweet Jesus, I thought, I've made it this far only to die in a hostel in Marseille.

For some background: Marseille has a reputation for being what one would call a "rough city." Every single guidebook I own begins its page on Marseille with something like, "Don't let Marseille's reputation scare you!" which is a pretty scary statement for a guidebook to make anyway. The point is, though, that Marseille is reclaiming itself after sort of being the Detroit of France, and in the last few years, when there were race riots in every major French city, the very multi-cultural Marseille continued on without any problems (because everyone there gets along! All together now: awwwwwww!).

Despite my trepidation, the reception area of the hostel seemed very legit and not seedy or dangerous, and the receptionist was very friendly.

Once I got to my room I was even more impressed. It was probably the nicest hostel I've ever stayed at. For starters, it was a four-woman dorm, which always beats fourteen-bed female (Nice) or fourteen-bed mixed (Prague) or even eight-bed mixed (Munich). Second, the room was TWO STORIES! (Hello, luxury, I've missed you.) The downstairs contained a toilet, a bathroom (the French keep the toilet separate from the shower/sink...I dunno, it's just a thing here), and some wooden lockers tucked underneath a curving staircase. Upstairs was a bright and cozy room containing four beds (two bunked), a couple end tables, and a table and chair. The room was lit by a skylight and a couple lamps and there was a graphic print hanging on the wall. Furthermore, the wifi worked in the dorms (a rarity in the world of hostelling, unfortunately), there were enough electrical outlets for everyone (woohoo!), and the bathroom was a real bathroom with a real shower and not a hostelly shower.Real talk: I would go back to Marseille just to stay at this hostel.

I was already recovering from my icky day when one of my roommates arrived. The last of my roommates, I should say, since two other beds had already been claimed even though their occupants were apparently elsewhere. Anyway, she was very friendly and introduced herself right away as Katherine from South Africa. We chatted a bit and discovered that we both wanted to check out Marseille's Saturday markets the next morning, so we made plans to go together. In the meantime, I headed out to explore a bit.

After some walking around I was getting hungry so I picked up some dinner at the supermarket and returned to the hostel to cook it. While I was in the kitchen area I started chatting with another woman my age, Nadja, who was from Australia but was working in France at a vineyard. We had a nice conversation and I went back up to the room after dinner only to discover a few minutes later that Nadja was the third roommate, which left only one more mystery person. (It turned out to be a middle-aged French lady who was perfectly nice but not anyone I got to know particularly well.)

When Katherine returned to the room she and Nadja hit it off right away and went out bar hopping together, while I opted to stay in and catch up on New Girl. (Zero regrets on that front. That day had beaten the crap out of me.)

The next morning the three of us hit the markets (fish, produce, and random junk) and had a nice morning before splitting up--Nadja and Katherine to explore Marseille some more, and me to hike Les Calanques near Cassis, about a twenty-five minute train ride away.

Unfortunately the walk from the train station into the center of Cassis took me about twice as long as the train ride itself, but it was no big deal. It was a lovely sunny day and the tree-lined path to town was bordered on one side by the road and on the other by vineyards, so yeah, things could have been worse.

I made it into Cassis and after brief stop-offs at the Tourism Office (the lady was hardcore judging my poor French), the bathroom (which cost 50 centimes and was run by a blind guy and a guy who looked like Steve Buschemi), and the supermarket (to buy "lunch"--aka a box of Pims cookies--for my hike), I set off.

Les Calanques are narrow channels of the Mediterranean that cut into the coast around Cassis, creating deep gorges and some truly unique landscapes. There are six Calanques altogether, I think, and three of them are accessible by foot from Cassis. I was only able to get as far as the first one (Port Miou) because I had to get back in time for the girls' night Katherine and Nadja had planned, but it was definitely a fantastic hike. I'd love to go back and spend more time there someday.

Les Calanques were designated a national park only last year, which is really surprising to me because they are some of the most beautiful natural landscapes I've ever seen (and I've only seen the one! I've heard that the others are even prettier.). Judge for yourself:

They've also been well-traveled by tourists; the rocks are really slippery and shiny, worn down by people's shoes. You know those fake, fiberglass-like rocks they use in water rides/fake rivers at amusement parks? A lot of the rocks at Les Calanques look and feel like that.

I left myself plenty of time to get back, not being entirely sure how long it would take me. As a result, I ended up having a little time in Cassis, which would be worth a return visit in its own right, I think.

I made it to the train station a full hour ahead of the time I'd planned, and ended up taking an earlier train back. This turned out to be a good thing, as I got a little downtime before dinner.

At around seven, Nadja and Katherine and I started getting ready to go out to dinner at a nearby Indian restaurant. We listened to music and drank wine and Katherine did our hair--stereotypical girly stuff. We had a lovely dinner in terms of both conversation and food, and then I begged off to do some work (I know, LAME and BORING but I'm super-behind on my freelance work) while the other two went out.

In the morning the three of us attended what basically amounted to the final quarter of Sunday mass at Notre Dame de la Garde, which overlooks the city and is decorated with maritime/nautical imagery as a nod to Marseille's seafaring history. (I particularly liked the model ships hanging from the ceiling like mobiles. It was some of the most whimsical church decor I've ever seen.) Around one o'clock Nadja and I left for the train station but not before the three of us exchanged contact info and a group hug.

It's funny how people you meet can really make your experience in a place. Marseille was not a city that particularly attracted me, nor is it now--I mostly picked it for the cheap lodging and easy distance to Les Calanques. But Marseille has definitely ended up being one of the highlights of my trip so far.

But now--on to Montpellier!

The post title is shamelessly stolen from Katherine's Facebook album. Credit where credit's due.

Friday, May 17, 2013

Eats Across Europe: Candy Edition, Part One

Candy--okay, chocolate--is a food group unto itself, I think you'll agree. I had no particular plans to research (read: eat my body weight in) candy bars when I started this trip, but one fateful afternoon at a Prague metro station changed everything. (EVERYTHING!) I was hungry and shaky and so jet lagged and out of it that I felt like I was standing on a ship at sea, rocking back and forth, when in reality I was standing on the very solid and stationary concrete floor of the Malostranska metro station. With blood sugar plummeting and stomach growling, I grabbed the first candy bar that looked palatable. I had no clue what it tasted like or what was in it, but I took one bite and I was in love.

Unfortunately I was still starving and out of it, but the Great Candy Love Affair had began. Since then I've been seizing every opportunity to sample new candy bars. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make for the sake of giving you, all six-and-a-half (Miss Jessalyn "I only look at the pictures"*) of my blog readers, a complete guide to European candy bars for your future travels. You are so very welcome.

Most of these (with the sad exception of Delissa) can be found in more than one country, so I've just labeled each with the country where I first tried it.

(*Jessalyn, best friend, I love you! Please keep looking at all my pictures. Kay, thanks.)

Kinder Milk Bars (Germany)
Yummy but inferior to KinderSurprise, which is pretty much the same in terms of flavor but of course comes with the added advantage of containing a prize. Apparently the US Customs will confiscate KinderSurprises, though, since they're choking hazards. (Really? REALLY?!)

Anyway, Kinder Milk Bars are standard but delicious milk chocolate candy bars with a white filling that is ostensibly like milk (albeit milk saturated with sugar and whatnot). Market Basket people, I hope this sounds good to you because this is what you're getting from me. (Bought a 30-pack at the duty free store at the airport for like 5€...score!)

Ritter Sport - Yogurt Flavor (Germany)
It really tastes like yogurt!!! I don't mean in the way people usually mean regarding candy, when they say something like, "This Fruit Roll-Up tastes like strawberries," when what they mean is, "It tastes like sugary [but delicious] strawberry flavoring." I mean that Ritter Sport Yogurt Flavor really tastes like yogurt sandwiched between layers of milk chocolate. It's got that perfect, sour yogurty tang to it. Which is good, because I bought it for breakfast at the duty-free store after sleeping all night at the airport. It was between the yogurt flavor and the cornflakes one, both of which seemed appropriate to the situation. I got the yogurt one because it sounded weirder. I sort of wish I'd gotten both. Über breakfast!

Delissa (Czech Republic)
Oh Delissa bars. I can't even begin to express my love for you in prose, so I won't even try. Poem time!

Chocolaty, wafery, hazelnut sweet,
I can think of no better candy to eat.
When I was hungry you came to my rescue,
To which all I can say is, "Delissa bar, bless you!"
Light and delicious with crispity crunch,
It is true that I once ate Delissas for lunch.
The nutritional value may be debatable,
But a candy this tasty is simply unhateable!

Noteworthy: autocorrect has learned how to spell Delissa. Not only that but it will correct other words to Delissa. My work here is done.

Also noteworthy: they come in white chocolate as well, but the filling for those appears to be coconut instead of hazelnut. Still good, but not quite as good as the original.

Knoppers (Germany)
Like layers of Vienna wafers but crunchier, alternated with a layer of chocolate hazelnut and a layer of milk cream. The bottom wafer is chocolate coated. Overall, Knoppers are all right but lack the poetry-inducing magic of Delissas.

Lion (France)
Made by Nestle, so my first thought was: why they don't distribute them in the US?! Upon reflection I realized it's probably because we already have them, we just call them 100 Grands. Lion bars are basically the same thing--chocolate outer coating, then a layer of crispy bits, then some weird but delicious caramel-nougat-hybrid sludge in the middle. I got a three-pack and ate one at breakfast time, one at lunch, and then one at senior citizen dinner time (4 pm on my stalled train). Lion: a candy bar for all meals!

Ritter Sport - Marzipan Flavor
About a month or two ago I bought some almond paste at Market Basket so I could make cookies. I had about 2 ounces left over, and those 2 ounces have been sitting in my fridge ever since, undisturbed except for when I'm craving something sweet but am trying to resist the urge to eat junk food. In these kinds of situations, I will slice myself off a piece of almond paste and happily snack away. Sometimes if I'm craving some chocolate I'll spread Nutella on top of it.

The Ritter Sport Marzipan bar tastes pretty much like almond paste with Nutella, except about a million times better.

Balisto (France)
Chocolate-coated honey almond wafers. I was hoping for a sort of wafery, crunchy Toblerone sort of situation, but no such luck. Had the consistency of chocolate covered graham crackers and was just sort of meh. (Full disclosure, though: this is the opinion of someone who doesn't particularly like chocolate-covered graham crackers. If you happen to be a fan of them, then I guess Balistos could well turn out to be your Delissas. Just something to think about.)

Daim (France)
Sort of like Skor or a Heath Bar: a thin wafer of toffee coated in chocolate. Simple but top notch. Would eat again. DID eat again, in fact, and was eating it with so much gusto that a stranger wished me bon appetit. Thanks, random train station lady who "only needed three more Euros for a ticket to Marseille"! I appreciate it!

And that's it for now! Fear not, I'll continue my candy crusade and be back to update you on the merits of some more foreign candy bars in the not-too-distant future.

Thursday, May 16, 2013

View from the Top of the World

Still playing catch-up here, so the events of this post took place about a week ago, on Thursday the ninth. I mean, the date's not importantly anything, it's just to give you a frame of reference as to just how behind I am. Anyway, onward!

When I was planning my European adventure, I read a lot of books. But perhaps no book was more central to the locale-choosing process than my copy of 501 Must-See Destinations. You have probably seen this book on the bargain table in the vestibule of Barnes and Noble. It is fantastic. It cost me all of five dollars, probably, and it has been invaluable not only in trip planning but in making me forlornly (wander)lust after other exotic locales.

At any rate, one of the Must-See Destinations featured in the book is Mercantour National Park in France. As soon as I started planning my trip, I knew I HAD to go there. That being decided, I spent most of my time using the book to borderline assault the rest of my family.

"IT'S JUST SO PRETTY!" I said, shoving the book in my mother's face as she tried to cook dinner.

"LOOK HOW PRETTY IT IS!" I commanded my father as he went upstairs to change after work.

"IS THAT NOT THE PRETTIEST THING YOU'VE EVER SEEN?!" I demanded of my sister as she tried to nap on the couch.

And now I've been and gone and I can say that, while the part of the park I saw looked nothing like the picture in my guidebook, it is definitely among the prettiest places I have ever visited.

The pretty scenery overload started with the train ride from Nice to Sospel, a small mountain town on the southern boundary of the park. The train on that particular route is called "Le Train des Merveilles" (the Train of Marvels) because it travels a really beautiful scenic route--so pretty that a train ride is a tourist activity in its own right. I got some pretty pictures but, like the photos from my last pretty train ride, I'm saving them for a later post.

I got off the train in Sospel and set about trying to find one of the GR trails that supposedly went straight through the middle of town. GR stands for "Grandes Randonnées," or "big hikes," and there are tons of them all over France. However, I was having some problems locating them in Sospel. I'd walked down the street out of town, hoping to run into something that looked hiking trail-like, but no such luck, so I'd turned around and wandered back into town. In a stroke of brilliance (read: an average level of logical problem- solving skill) I decided to go to the tourism office. It was, of course, closed for the public holiday, so I was on my own. Keep on wandering, sad hiker without a hiking trail! Keep wandering!

By a stroke of luck, I happened upon a wooden sign pointing me in the direction of GR 52. "GR 52 it is, then!" I said to myself, and started climbing up a giant hill past houses and walls and cars. As I got higher, the houses got farther apart and the road became less busy, and eventually it dead-ended into a dirt hiking trail.

By this point I was soaked through with sweat, not only because the hill was giant (GIANT, I TELL YOU!) but also because the weather, which was supposed to cap out at around 65-70 degrees, was clearly well into the mid-seventies or above already, and it was only mid-morning. I was cursing my jeans and sighing forlornly at the thought of my gym shorts just sitting in my bag back at the hostel.

Luckily, the path became more winding and therefore less steep and strenuous, so my lack of shorts quickly became less of a problem. The trail went through a wooded area for a little while and then began its winding ascent up Mount Agaisen. The path was out in the sunlight, bordered on either side by bushes or rocky bluffs. As I walked, the foliage ahead of me rustled as tiny lizards that had been sunning themselves on the path ran to hide. (There were a LOT of lizards, guys. If you don't like reptiles then I would suggest that you stay well away from Mercantour National Park.)

Just look at this adorable little guy!
Every time the twisty path changed directions, a new "level" began, and at each new level I stopped to take about a gazillion redundant pictures of the view. I knew it was pretty much the same scene every time, but I couldn't help myself. It was so beautiful that I felt compelled to take as many pictures as possible, even though photos just don't do justice to the real thing. I really tried, though:

I reached the summit of the mountain in probably about two hours, and the view there was every bit as lovely--and perhaps even more impressive--than the scenery on the way up. I stopped to eat lunch and enjoy the sunshine and the sight of the mountains and valleys spread out all around me, but had to move on a bit quicker than I'd planned because the spot seemed to be frequented by giant buzzy insects. I don't mind bugs generally--in fact, I think they're pretty interesting to watch most of the time--but these things were giant, like they'd been bred in a mad scientist's lab or something. Plus they seemed to enjoy speeding past my head in group formations, like the insect equivalent of the Hell's Angels. I finished my sandwich and got moving.

I explored the mountain top for quite awhile and eventually came upon a view that can only be described as breathtaking. And I'm not exaggerating or being hyperbolic; I mean that I literally stopped breathing for a second. I was not aware that this was a legitimate reaction to something and not just a tired cliché, so I was pretty surprised by this turn of events. The picture might help explain it a bit, but it won't really convey the feeling of being high above everything else, having a view that stretches for miles, and seeing mountains and valleys spread out before you with very little evidence of humans. In some directions I could see distant towns and houses, but mostly the only human additions to the landscape were some power lines stretching from one mountain top to the next, and even THAT was impressive given the sheer distance from one tower to the next. It was a truly awe-inspiring experience.

Looks like the mountains have been photoshopped in (they haven't) but still doesn't come close to capturing how incredible it all was.
After wandering to my heart's content, I realized that I was beginning to get a bit tired and that I still had at least a two-hour hike back into town. I made good time coming back down the mountain, even though I ended up on a self-inflicted detour with the steepest hills known to man--seriously, they were practically just vertical drops. But I made it back into town with a couple of hours to spare before the next train to Nice.

The story of how I killed that time is worthy of its own post (it's a pretty fantastic anecdote, if I do say so myself), so au revoir for now!

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Un Petit Pause

It's 8 pm (and still light out!), I'm twenty-three, and I just rolled into Tours. Better get out there and soak up the culture, right?!

Well, maybe, but I ain't gonna do it.

I'm tired, guys. I've been on the go for nearly two weeks now and things are catching up with me. Plus I just spent a couple lovely days hanging out with my awesome relatives in Montpellier, and during that time I had the luxury of never needing to check a map, watch the clock, ask for directions, catch a train, or find a place to eat. So setting off on my own again today was something of a bummer in a sense, for those reasons and for the simple fact that seeing my family made me a touch homesick.

I hadn't been homesick at all up until this point, which was at first faintly surprising to me until I realized that I haven't really had the opportunity to be homesick. I've been constantly on the go, doing things, planning, catching trains, sorting out food and accommodations and directions and maps and whatnot. Over the last couple of days, though, I had a chance to chill out a bit, and that added to the (very welcome) presence of family is making me feel sort of like a sad sack tonight. I mean, I spent the train ride from Montpellier listening to the Amelie soundtrack; that should give you an idea of the sort of mood I'm in right now.

I read a quote once that about how "melancholy is the pleasure of being sad," and it seems really applicable right now. I'm quite looking forward to spending my night in catching up on some shows I've missed since I've been away (got up to date with Doctor Who yesterday and New Girl today on the train, so tonight will be devoted to Elementary) and wallowing a bit before going to bed good and early. (It's 8:30 pm and still really light out now, so I do have a bit of time to kill before my body will even allow me to go to sleep for the night.)

But I'm gonna take a nice hot shower. I'm going to eat the chocolate marzipan candy that I bought as a gift but that became all melty and squished and therefore ungiftable. I am as pumped about this night in as I was about some actual destinations on my trip. Introverts for the win!

Tomorrow it's a trip to Chateau Chenonceau and possibly some exploration of Tours, which seems like a pretty cool city. Keep an eye out for more posts in the next couple days...I have some partially written already and this brief break might allow me to actually finish them, post them, and get mostly caught up--hooray!

But for now, it's time for a Me Party. A tout a l'heure!

Monday, May 13, 2013

Eats Across Europe, Part One

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned food much in talking about this trip. If you know me at all, you might find this suspicious lack of food talk puzzling, since I can rarely get through a normal conversation without:

1. Talking about a food I've recently cooked and/or eaten,
2. Expressing a desire to be cooking or eating either at this moment or in the very near future, or
3. Actually eating something during said conversation.

Well, if you've been wondering what's up with me and my non-food-centric blogging, here's your lightbulb moment: I've been reserving an entire blog post to devote to food. AN ENTIRE POST. You're welcome.

This is part one of many, since I'm obviously only about a week into this trip and still have many, many foods to sample and enjoy--especially now that I'm in France, the land of macarons, cheese, chocolate, Gratin Daupinois, ratatouille, croissants (au chocolat!), tarte citron, quiche, and SO MUCH DELICIOUS BREAD.

So without further ado, here's the rundown on my trip's cuisine so far. (This isn't every meal; just the ones I deemed noteworthy for whatever reason.) Keep an eye out for the next food post, which will focus exclusively on European candy bars! (I do this for you guys! It's tough work but someone needs to tell you non-travelers what a Daim bar tastes like.)

Grilled vegetables and goat cheese (Prague)

In Prague, I got dinner with Jenny, a fellow American I met on the Prague tour. We asked our guide to recommend a good restaurant where we could try some Czech specialties, and she sent us to a bar/restaurant a couple streets away, telling us it had vegetarian options as well as the more meat-based Czech dishes.

I wanted to get fried cheese, since it's sort of a Czech specialty (and it's cheese! That's fried!) , but the restaurant was all out. If I couldn't have THE fried cheese, I at least got SOME fried cheese. The meal was good, nothing to write home about really (although, ironically, I am LITERALLY writing home about it right now), but it was so cheap: the meal plus a soft drink cost me the equivalent of about seven US dollars. Go Prague!

Donut and butterbreze (Munich)

I wanted some German food. The German vegetarian place near my hostel was closed and I was feeling quite lazy, so I swung by the train station and was like, "Okay, here we go, fine German cuisine." I got a standard sandwich for dinner but accompanied it with a donut and a butterbreze (butter pretzel), since they're both sort of Bavarian things. No Bavarian cream in the donut, unfortunately, but it was still chocolate-frosted deliciousness, a little fluffier and cakier than donuts I'm used to.

Butterbreze is pretty much what it sounds like: it's a pretzel. Filled with butter. Literally, they slice it open and then spread butter on each half before smooshing the sides back together. The fattiest, most delicious sandwich ever.

Tofuschnitzel (Munich)

Delicious. I don't even know everything that was in there...some kraut, I think, definitely mustard, lettuce, tomato. The guy named off a couple of spices, ginger for sure and, I think, cumin. Had a couple bites where I could really taste the ginger and it was quite unexpected and refreshing.

I ate this magical meal at Royal Kebabhaus by the Hauptbahnhof in Munich, after having read about it on happycow.net, a vegetarian restaurant review site. The proprietor was super nice and friendly, really patient with me even though he spoke only a little English and I speak absolutely no German. Since schnitzel is kind of a thing in Germany (but is traditionally made with super-tenderized meat), I was excited that I got to experience it in my own vegetarian way.

Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln and Augustiner Hall beer (Munich)

I'm not typically a fan of beer, but in when one is in Munich it's kind of obligatory to try the beer. I'd already passed on famous Czech beer in Prague, so I felt like my hands were tied on this one. The beer was okay if you ask me, a non-beer-drinker, but my evaluation is probably not the one to go by, especially if you actually happen to like beer a lot.

The Käsespätzle was really delicious, though. "Käsespätzle mit Röstzwiebeln" means " cheese noodles with fried onions." I'm not sure if it's specific to Bavaria or Germany in general, but it's delicious, like macaroni and cheese but even better. (And you know how I feel about mac and cheese to begin with.) The spätzle, or noodles, are made of eggs and semolina, generally, and they are softer and more tender than the sort of pasta I'm used to eating. The cheese was sharp and salty and perfectly balanced by the sweet sharpness of the onion, which had not been cooked very long and had therefore retained a pretty strong flavor. Yummy, yummy, yummy. The picture does not do it justice at all.

As a side note: I got this dinner with Amanda and Rachel, two women I met on the tour to Dachau. Amanda had somehow found out about this place--the restaurant of the Oktoberfest Museum--and had suggested it. It was a fantastic choice--the restaurant itself was cozy and labyrinthine, with long shared tables and bench seating. Very atmospheric, and a good way to cap off my admittedly brief time in Munich.

Socca (Nice)

Delicious. I'll admit that I was predisposed to like it because I like chickpeas and I like crepes and these are essentially chickpea crepes, but OH MY GOD.

While socca is eaten around the entire Côte d'Azur region and into Italy, Nice is particularly known for socca. There are rivalries between different restaurants in the same way that New York pizzerias all claim to have the best pizza in the city, and people's socca tastes vary just as some people prefer one place's pizza over another. Some restaurants make crispier socca, some do it softer, but I think it's safe to say they're probably all delicious.

The traditional way to eat socca is with a little bit of black pepper. I'm not a huge fan of pepper so I put only a very little, and I didn't think the peppery bits were any better than the plain parts. In fact, I think I preferred it plain. It is definitely a savory dish but the socca I tried (I got mine at Lou Pilha Leva in the Old Town) had a really subtle sweetness to it and an almost peanut buttery flavor. Think of it in those terms to understand the sweet/savory balance...it's sort of got the same ratio of sweet to savory as peanut butter. As a result I'm inclined to say (blasphemy?!) that socca would taste good drizzled with chocolate, but if you ask me there are few foods that wouldn't be improved by that.

Gelato from Fenocchio Glacier (Nice)

Fenocchio is an institution in Nice, a famous ice cream/gelato place offering 70 different flavors. I was only in Nice for two days, so I couldn't try all 70, but I made an honest effort and tried six. I went for the weird ones, too.
You're welcome.

Vanilla with pink pepper: Really weird at the first bite (weird but good!), but I got more used to it as I plowed through it. Pink pepper, in case you've never tasted it (I hadn't) is milder than black pepper, and tastes surprisingly good with vanilla. The only way I can think to describe the taste/texture combo is "sparkly."

Cactus: Mild, sweet, and perfume-y, with some strangely citrusy undertones to it. I wanna say it tasted like aloe (it may have actually been straight-up aloe), but I can never remember actually trying aloe so I have no idea where I'm getting that frame of reference.

Speculoos: This is what made me stop for ice cream in the first place. I'm crazy for Speculoos anything (if you've never tried Speculoos, they're like gingersnaps but better), and this ice cream did not disappoint. It tasted a little like the cinnamon-gingersnap ice cream Tracey and I made once.

Honey and pine nuts: Can I just eat this for the rest of my life? Okay, thanks. The warm sweetness of the honey was in perfect proportion to the savory pine nuts, which kept things from getting too sicky-sweet.

Rice and milk: Creamy taste, chunky texture, delicious overall. If you like tapioca pudding, you would love this. If you don't like tapioca pudding, then I feel sorry for you but you should probably just pick a different flavor of ice cream.

Mojito: My love of mojitos is well-documented (see: every picture from my twenty-first birthday) so I figured I'd love this sorbet. And it turns out it was only okay. It tasted like it had dried mint, not fresh (which I suppose is more practical, but it's just not the same) and there was a sour/bitter aftertaste. It wasn't bad, per se, but I wasn't really sure how I felt about it. On the plus side, I wolfed this down because I was quite thirsty after a day spent hiking in the mountains near Nice and this was definitely a thirst-quencher.

Well, that's it for this round of "What's Renée Been Eating?" Tune in next time for Speculoos macarons, famous Marseille cookies, long-lost favorite French foods, and more!

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Nice is...Nice Enough

As far as cities go, I've never been particularly attached to Nice. Or I guess I should say I was never particularly attached to the idea of Nice, since my firsthand knowledge of the place was limited to my once getting a connecting train there.

But now I have actually stayed in the city and can say it with conviction: I have never been particularly attached to Nice.

There's nothing wrong with Nice. It's a perfectly fine city. I just didn't get that vibe from it. You know the vibe I'm talking about.

However, I did enjoy quite a few aspects of the admittedly meager amount of time I spent exploring the city. Colline du Chateau, or the Castle Hill, is pretty cool and offers, among other things, stunning views of Nice, some rather sparse (compared to other places) castle ruins, some interesting cemeteries, a cute park, a picturesque waterfall, and lots of stands selling postcards to tourists.

Some views of Nice from Colline du Chateau

I'm going to straight to hell for even saying this, but doesn't the face in the middle remind you of Voldemort?

Waterfall on Colline du Chateau

Beaches in Nice are made up of rocks, not sand.

I also spent some time walking in the Old Town, which was really cool, and along the famous Promenade des Anglais, which was really overrated in my opinion. For instance, compare the guidebook's portrayal of "relaxing on the Promenade des Anglais" (upper righthand page) to the reality of "relaxing" on the Promenade des Anglais (basically the same picture, zoomed out):

See what I mean?

I did have some pretty good food in Nice, but that's going to be the subject of its own post. There's not much more to say on this front, I guess, so here's an obligatory touristy picture of Hotel Negresco (a Nice landmark).

Until next time!