France!

Last weekend was my last European trip... for now :)
I went to France to visit Mary Holmgren, who has lived there for the last year teaching English to elementary students. It was so wonderful to see her again, and luckily we were in Paris at the same time as another high school friend, April Ward who was traveling with her boyfriend!

On Thursday I left Berlin bright and early. I arrived in Paris and spent the morning and part of the afternoon exploring Paris on my own. I made it around surprisingly well for not knowing more than a handful of words in French! That day I saw the Notre Dame, the Pantheon, The Luxembourg Gardens and the Eiffel tower before I took a train towards the ocean to Mary's town, Caen.

NOTRE DAME:



PANTHEON:

*video of Pantheon*

LUXEMBOURG GARDENS:

TOUR EIFFEL:

*video of eiffel tour*

The train station was an interesting experience.... As I was eating a sandwich, I broke my tooth on a hidden seed in the baguette. Then there was a technical problem with the board which shows which platforms are for which trains, so I and about 200+ others missed our trains. I ended up waiting there a couple of hours, but I got a lot of practice using a few French phrases (mainly "parlez-vous l'ainglais?")

I arrived in Caen and was delighted to see Mary! She had organized a small welcoming committee consisting of some of her friends and delicious snacks. We had a nice evening talking and walking around the beautiful town in Normandy. Caen is gorgeous-- a lot of it was destroyed by the war, but it's been rebuilt nicely and has a wonderful atmosphere.

CAEN:



The next day we went to a small choir performed by some of Mary's students in the afternoon. They sang a few French songs and two English songs (Imagine by John Lennon and Hello Goodbye by the Beatles) which Mary taught them. It was really cute-- 2nd-4th graders singing, "imagine all ze people.."

*video of kid's choir*

After the choir concert we stopped by a dentist to see if they could somehow fix my tooth, although everyone Mary had called wouldn't give us an appointment. Luckily, the receptionist thought Mary's French was sweet and told us to wait in the waiting room until the dentist had a bit of free time. About 20 minutes later he put a temporary covering on my broken tooth-- for free!! (I've since had it fully repaired at a dentist in Berlin). God is good :)

Later we took a bus to a nearby town called Ouistreham, which is right on the English channel. We walked along the beach, which is a beach of Normandy but not one of the ones involved in D-day, we put our feet in the cold cold ocean, and we ate crepes.

OUISTREHAM:



Saturday we got up very early and traveled to the palace of Versailles, which was the home of Louis XIV-XVI and Marie Antoinette. As we walked around the palace grounds and the beautiful gardens, period music was playing. We rented a canoe and rowed through the large reflecting pool. When I say rowed... I mean, we rowed but not super well at first. All of the other canoes had men rowing and lazy women gazing about. We worked hard and eventually each rowed with one oar, although the entire time we rowed the canoe backwards and almost collided with several boats. As we were heading back to the dock, a little boy (about 4 years old) in his dad's canoe shouted in french to his mom who was rowing a different canoe that she was worthless because she was rowing the canoe backwards. She pointed our boat out, saying that we were doing it the same way so it must be ok. I guess we were worthless too! It was so much fun though, and one of my favorite parts of the trip!

VERSAILLES:

*video of versailles*

Later we went back to Paris to meet April and her boyfriend. After we were reunited, we walked through the city to the Louvre and the Champs Elysees, which is a famous road.

WALKING THROUGH PARIS:

*Pompidou building-- inside out*

*hotel de ville, town hall*

*it was the sales time of year in paris-- it only happens twice a year, so stores were packed*

LOUVRE:

CHAMPS ELYSEES:


OPERA HOUSE:



After April and her boyfriend left to find their housing for the night, Mary and I walked back through the Latin quarter, enjoying the sunset by the beautiful river La Seine.

LA SEINE:

*mary by the oldest bridge in paris*

After it got dark we took a bus to the airport where we stayed the night in order to save some money and be adventurers. We didn't sleep much because it wasn't super comfortable, but it was fun nonetheless! Overall it was a wonderful weekend and I really enjoyed my taste of France!

*in the airport*