Mom's trip to Paris/My 21st birthday

Salut!
Now that my mother is on her way back to the United States after a lovely five day visit here, I have some time to write about what we've been doing!  It's been a very busy and fun-filled week between sight-seeing, finding new restaurants, and of course my twenty-first birthday!  Paris was a bit of a zoo this week since so many people are on vacation, but we fought the crowds when necessary and did a lot of nice sight-seeing.  I even went to a few places that I hadn't visited before, like an ancient Roman amphitheater in the heart of the Latin Quarter and the Basilica of Sacré Coeur.  We also did a lot of sightseeing on foot, at least on Monday and Thursday, by far the nicest days of the week in terms of weather.  I didn't take as many photos as usual, because these were mostly places I've been to (many times) before, and also because Mom had her camera with her, which is much nicer than mine!
On Monday we saw a bit of the Marais, Paris's old Jewish quarter, before heading past the Louvre, via Les Halles, and then through le Jardin des Tuileries to Place de la Concorde, up Les Champs Élysées to L'Arc de Triomphe.  (It sounds like a lot more walking than it was--I'm still surprised at how walkable of a city Paris is!)

Église Ste Eustache, near les Halles

Mom with the big head in front of Ste Eustache

On Thursday, the other sunny day of the week, we spent the morning wandering around Montmartre and the afternoon visiting Sainte Chapelle and the marché aux oiseaux, or bird market, which actually sells flowers and gardening goods, as well as little gifty things like Christmas ornaments and is always a pretty place to wander through.

Of course, the gray and drizzly weather during the rest of the week didn't keep us from being out and about!  On Tuesday, despite the drizzly weather, we headed to the Latin Quarter, visiting Notre-Dame, Ile de St-Louis, Les Arènes de Lutèce (the ancient Roman amphitheater I mentioned earlier), and of course le Jardin du Luxembourg.

Les Arènes de Lutèce

On Wednesday, we didn't have great weather for my birthday, either, but we headed over to the Rodin museum to visit its sculpture garden, walking past les Invalides on the way, before going to la Tour Eiffel, which was pretty crowded despite the crummy weather (its top was obscured by passing clouds).  I'd bought the tickets ahead of time, so we didn't have to wait in line to get in, although it was pretty crowded inside, especially to get to the very top level.  But we persevered and made it all the way to the top, despite my dislike of elevators and Mom's dislike of looking over the edge of tall buildings, and it was a lot of fun anyway!  And in the evening, after a lot of hassle and a change of plans when the restaurant where I'd been planning to eat ended up being closed for construction this week, we finally met up with a bunch of my friends here at a very interesting restaurant in the Marais, not too far from here...  We'd thought it was called le Curieux Spaghetti Bar, but when we arrived at the address, the name had been changed to Who's.  It was a very interesting restaurant, and the food was quite good, and the company was excellent, so it ended up being the best birthday dinner I've had in a while!  And certainly the most interesting...

Le Penseur--The Thinker

view from the top...

most of the birthday diners outside the restaruant

After the day of good weather on Thursday, we spent Friday morning at le musée d'Orsay, and the afternoon at Les Galeries Lafayette for some window shopping!  Of course it's way too expensive to shop there--it's like Nordstrom's on steroids--but it's always fun to look at what they have, and the building itself is pretty impressive, too.  However, you can't take photos inside the Orsay, and I didn't bother while we were shopping, so the details of the day will be left a bit to the imagination, but suffice it to say that it was a lovely day and the end to a lovely week!

Joyeux noël!

Bonjour et un joyeux noël à tous!
So, although it's certainly not a white Christmas here (which is fine by me), there have been lots of Christmas festivities this past week!  On Thursday night, my friend Victoria held a lovely party for two of her friends visiting from the French countryside, and it was also a sort of pre-Christmas party, with some of the typical French Christmas food (salmon, foie gras... I had the salad) and one typical American dish, an apple pie, baked by yours truly.  The party was a lot of fun, and for more practical language reasons, I enjoyed being surrounded by so many talkative native French speakers!

Yesterday morning, for Christmas Eve, the three other students in my program and I had arranged to meet at a restaurant called Breakfast in America, specializing in (surprise!) American food.  It was hands down the most satisfying breakfast I have eaten since leaving the States, with the possible exception of my breakfasts in Ireland.  I had a stack of blueberry pancakes--delicious!  And an "Obama" (peanut butter and chocolate) milkshake rounded the meal off very nicely.  We also arranged a Secret Santa among the four of us, which was a lot of fun.  I received some very classy English tea and some yummy red candies!

For Christmas Eve dinner, which, incidentally, is traditionally when the French, and many Europeans, open their presents and celebrate the holiday, Victoria had me back over to her house for a really lovely dinner with her and her mother.  Of course, they also had some of the traditional meat dishes for themselves, but they also prepared a lot of vegetarian dishes which we all enjoyed as well!  (And there were macaroons for dessert--yum!)  I had brought over a little yellow orchid arrangement as a hostess gift, and Victoria's mother had also gotten me--a yellow orchid!  Great minds think alike, as the saying goes!  It was a very lovely evening!

And then today, after a very quiet morning, when I opened Dad's Christmas card, and early afternoon, spent alternatively reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (in French) and listening to David Sedaris's Holidays on Ice (in English), I enjoyed a nice family dinner with my host family, as well as my host mother's sister and nephew.  Again, there were more of the typical meat dishes (foie gras, salmon), but also a nice green salad, some delicious onion sauce, and a yummy mushroom tart (as good as mushrooms ever can be, anyway).  Then came the present opening; I gave Natalie an orchid arrangement in red, and she gave me a really nice little shoulder bag from India and some lovely soap and lotion from L'Occitane!  And then we had dessert, which was a meringue filled with ice cream, with a candied cherry in the center.  Yum!  So it was a very lovely evening, and it has been a very lovely Christmas week!

My gifts!

the aforementioned ice cream-filled meringue

And the celebrations continue for another week, as my mother arrives tomorrow morning (early), and then it's my birthday, and then New Year's Eve!

Barcelona!

Hola amigos,
Last weekend I enjoyed a trip to Barcelona, where it was both sunnier and warmer than it has been in Paris lately.  There were also lots of palm trees, orange trees, and flowers in bloom, but unlike here and in Dublin, they didn't look out of place!  There is also a lot of modern art in Barcelona (think Picasso, Miró, Gaudí, for example).  The cool part is that it's not all just in museums--Gaudí was an architect, so his work is quite visible throughout the city.  He is, possibly, most well-known for the cathedral Sagrada Familia (Sacred Family), which was his masterpiece although it was not completed in his lifetime (and in fact, it's still not finished--construction is ongoing).  I didn't go inside Sagrada Familia, but I did take a look at it from the outside, and it is quite impressive!

Before heading to Sagrada Familia, I visited a home designed by Gaudí for a wealthy family and now known by their name: Casa Batlló.  It is a really cool building, and I really enjoyed the tour of the inside!  There are very few straight lines, but there is lots of stained glass and interesting tiles and woodwork.  The outside is fascinating as well--many have speculated that it looks like a giant dragon!  And I can see where that's coming from; the trees made it hard for me to get a good photo, but search for images of it, and look at the line of the roof...

Hint: it's the house on the right...

This is the first staircase: it's meant to look like a giant spine.

This is the main staircase up the center of the house.

the house as seen from its private terrace

the "spine" of the dragon (the roof)

Later that afternoon, I visited Parc Guell, also designed by Gaudí.  Mostly it's just a really nice park with lots of trees and dirt paths, but the entrance is pretty spectacular: the wall around the garden is decorated with beautiful tile mosaics, and the gatehouses have very interesting spires.  They look onto the main staircase, also in fantastic tile mosaics, which lead up to this weird space that has a roof but no walls and lots of columns, and if you go farther up, you come to an open area with these really cool, curvy benches covered in more tile mosaics, and there's a great view of Barcelona (the park is up on a hill to the north of the center of the city).

the gate houses

the main staircase

mosaics on the roof of the columned space

What a cool bench!
It was surprisingly comfortable, for a bench made out of tiles.

But that was on my last day in the city!  I'm getting ahead of myself.  The first day, took a bus from the airport to Plaça Catalunya.  From there, I wandered down La Rambla, which is Barcelona's main pedestrian drag.  It is very touristy, but La Boquería, a big, traditional, open-air market is just off La Rambla, and that was pretty cool.  And La Rambla ends at Port Vell, Catalonian for "the old seaport," with a giant statue of Columbus up on a pedestal overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.  After a lunch of nachos (rather more Mexican than Spanish or Catalonian, but still yummy) I wandered around la ciutat vella, or the old city, which includes le barri gótic, or the Gothic quarter.  Picture lots of small, windy streets lined with narrow old buildings and strung with Christmas lights and lines of laundry.  Later in the afternoon, once I'd deposited my bag at the hotel, I continued my exploration of la ciutat vella with a trip to Barcelona's cathedral and the Picasso Museum.  I liked the Picasso Museum a lot because they had a large collection of his works spanning across the course of his career, which allows visitors to see how his artwork changed over time.  (His early paintings are quite traditional, not at all what I think most people think of when they think of Picasso.)

La Rambla, as seen from Plaça Catalunya

La Boquería

That's Columbus up at the top.

Port Vell

The Catalonian flag is on the left, the Spanish flag in the center.

Plaça Reial

Barcelona Cathedral 

detail of one of the spires

By mid-afternoon, I could check into my hotel, which was located on Plaça Reial, right off La Rambla.   It wasn't anything spectacular, but for the very reasonable rate I was paying, I found it quite acceptable. And my room had a balcony looking out over La Rambla, which was nice.

On day two of my visit, I headed to the Montjuic district of Barcelona, which is up on a big hill.  That's where the Olympic Stadium (from 1992) is located, as well as la Fondació Joan Miró, which is a big museum dedicated to the art of Miró, another 20th-century Catalonian modern artist.  I didn't really know anything about him (yes, him, in Catalonian, Joan is a man's name) before I visited the museum, and although I'm not really a fan of modern art, I enjoyed my visit there.  As with the Picasso Museum, the large collection was dedicated to the works of Miró and spanned his career, so by the end of my visit I felt I'd learned at least a bit about the artist and his work.  I also spent a bit of time wandering around Montjuic on foot before ending up at Plaça Espanya.

the Olympic stadium

Plaça Espanya

Later in the afternoon, I ventured to the other side of town, determined to visit a beach and dip my toes in the Mediterranean.  It certainly wasn't warm enough to go swimming or lay out and tan, but it was nice to walk along the beach a bit.  And to arrive at the beach, I walked through Parc de la Ciutadella, which was quite nice as well.

I'm not sure what this was, but it was in the Parc de la Ciutadella.

I don't know why there was a big statue of a mammoth there...

...or a giant metal fish by the beach.

my dip into the Mediterranean

view of the coast looking back towards Barcelona

I made a little face in the sand.

And that night, I went to a little venue offering a show of live flamenco music and dance, which was pretty cool.  Lots of slapping of thighs and clapping of hands and stomping of heels!

And then the last day, as I already mentioned, I saw Gaudí's works.  So much for what I did; now for what I ate.  First, it's a bit tricky being a vegetarian in Barcelona--even harder than in Paris and Dublin, I found.  But I managed pretty well, nonetheless...  I think my favorite was the vegetarian paella I had on the last night there, although the xurros con chocolate were pretty delicious, too.

The inside of Els Quatre Gats, where Picasso and his buddies used to eat.

spinach ravioli with a creamy cheese sauce

crema catalana

Breakfast: toast, tea, and... whipped cream!
I ordered a plate of cream, in the vain hope of getting some protein with breakfast.
I wasn't really expecting just a plate of whipped cream, but it was tasty.

This was a nice little restaurant near my hotel.
I ate breakfast here every morning.

This is what hot chocolate should be: thick, creamy, and rich, but not too sweet.
It was almost like liquid pudding--delicious!

Tapas! From left: pan amb tomates (bread with tomatoes),
ensalada russa (Russian salad),
and roquette with goat cheese, almonds, and quince jelly.   

FLAN

the aforementioned vegetarian paella
(rice, vegetables, and spices)

As a last note, another interesting aspect of Barcelona is its multilinguism.  Although it's a part of Spain,  where the official language of course is Spanish, it's in the region of Catalonia, which has a history of independence and its own distinct culture and language, which means that most signs are in both Spanish and Catalan.  I found it really interesting to see Catalan everywhere, since it's not a language I speak, but I found I could often understand the signs in Catalan, since it's similar to Spanish and especially to French.  But since it's also a big tourist city, many of the signs are in English as well.  I found that the translations were usually pretty good, but over the course of my three days there, I encountered some funny translations that weren't quite right...  So for your enjoyment, here they are.

Okay, this isn't a mistranslation, but I was shocked to see them in Spain!

Curses, courses--same difference!

Again, this isn't a mistranslation, but the most stylized dog poop I've ever seen!