Salut mes amis!
Today marks the end of my second week (well technically the start of my third.. but whatever it's Sunday, at that always means the end) and man am I exhausted... and really really hot.
The week went just about the same as the first, classes Monday-Thursday, IES lunches Monday - Wednesday (always a delicious experience... Tuesday I had a salad that consisted of huge pieces of cantaloupe, ham, a bit of lettuce and a small wedge of tomato... it was bizarre... but good).
Wednesday I went to go look at the Théâtre Antique, which is an old Roman style Theater in the middle of town, not far from the Ampithéâtre or Arena I went to last week where they still have bull fights... rarr! The only problem was in the middle of checking out everything... it began to rain.. and rain hard... and normally I would have welcomed such a downpour as I was sweating like crazy.. but when you have an Ipod, a camera, and a cell phone on you... I wasn't so excited fo the rain to come. The rain continued into the night and it did make for a mean thunderstorm that I got to watch and listen to from my bedroom window... nothing like a thunderstorm to lull you off to sleep, let me tell you.
For the rest of the week, I mainly took it easy... got dinner with friends a couple of times, went out for a nightly apéro (pre-dinner cocktail), etc. I must say, I really do the way the French treat a meal. It's not go go go go go! like in the US, instead, it's come home... have yourself an apéro, which in my case is typically a Mauresque which is a cocktail made with Pastis, a liqueur produced in Marseille and orgeat syrup (is that an English word? sometimes I forget the words in english) and then after a little while you can settle down for some dinner which typically lasts at least an hour or so... depending on how fast the people or children you're with will eat.
Anyways, so Friday, our excursion was to Avignon, a larger city in the Provence region about 20 minutes away by train. In the morning we went to look at the Palace of the Popes which was the residence for Pope Clement V and other popes. After our tour of that, we had a nice little pique nique in the park next to the Palace and were given the afternoon off... you know what that means!! SHOPPING. It was the first H&M I had seen in weeks and I was thrilled because now is the time of the Soldes or sales in France. Twice a year, France has month long sales of a lot of their clothes to get old stuff out and make room for new things. That mean I was able to find an adorable skirt and dress both for 50% off. Heaven. After shopping, I was exhausted and although the group was going back at 5, I decided to catch an earlier train so I could sleep and finish the 3rd book of Twilight (my weakness, it's so embarassing).
That night, we decided to go out and get Tapas and Sangria at an incredibly reasonably priced Spanish restaurant right off the Place du Forum where Van Gogh painted the Cafe la Nuit painting (I really wish I could remember the real name of that painting). After Tapas, we went down to this old building, that no longer had a roof and my friend Patrick's host dad was performing in his band there, and there was an open bar and free pizza. While I wasn't hungry anymore, there's no way I would turn down an open bar, so we drank some free beer and head banged to the music. There is a shortage of places to go out and dance in Arles, so this was a wonderful substitute to a bar or discothèque.
Saturday, aka 4th of the July, Aka our Nation's Birthday, Aka my FAVORITE holiday, we took the train to Marseille to spend the day and night there. We got some food and spent most of the afternoon at the beach. What perfect temperature. Although I must say, Marseille is DIRTY. The streets, the water, ugh. It was not clean. Although, with a population of 1.5 million, it's not a surprise that it was as dirty as it was. That night, we showered, bumped into a whole crowd of other IESers who were waiting to take the train back that night because theirs had been canceled (way lame SNCF) and grabbed pizza off the Vieux Port where a lot of the boats are docked. That was gorgeous at night.
This weekend was an interesting time to go... as it happened to be Gay Pride fest... soo... going out to the bars that night kind of meant that every bar... was now a gay bar.. even if it really wasn't. But it was fun just the same, We danced till our feet would no longer let us and walked our 45 minute trek up back to our hotel, which happened to be at the top of a very large hill/millions of stairs.
This morning, we spent our time walking around Marseille and trying to see some sights, despite our fatigue, and exhaustion. We are so not in walking shape. Arles takes like 10 minutes to walk from one end to the other so being in a city of 1.5 million, wow. Our feet hurt. We got to see the old part of the city as well as one of the Cathedrales and that pretty much took us back to the train station to go home.
After a long weekend, tonight will be an early night I am sure.
Miss and love you all!
Bisous,
Maura
No comments:
Post a Comment