Marché de Noël December 17, 2008

I put off the christmas shopping yesterday, partly due to the grey and drizzly weather and partly to laziness, but I’m glad I gave in to that because it was much nicer today! I cracked the last of my christmas shopping, save for one or two small additional items I might pick up from duty free at the airport. It was nice because I could just wander aimlessly instead of trying to battle through the people on my way to do something else, as has always been the case before now. I had some chichis – long twisted sticks of fried dough rolled in sugar, and the obligatory vin chaud. I actually splashed out a little extra to get the souvenir mug (white with the red Marché de Noël d’Amiens logo on it)! I obviously can’t tell you what I bought, because some people reading this might be receiving the gifts in a week’s time! The exception to that is the little suitcase I bought, one that’s small enough to go as hand luggage but big enough for a short-trip bag. I’m going to need the extra space to bring things back this time; there was no way I’d fit it all in my one, medium suitcase. It’ll be useful for travelling over christmas and in the future as well. I might go back to town tomorrow afternoon after I’ve had some time to reflect and if I think of anything else I need, but apart from that I just have a 1hr spanish comprehension exam tomorrow morning, then I have to do laundry and start to pack. I’m going to have to pace myself though; given that I shouldn’t need to leave Amiens until lunchtime on Friday even if I want to be hours early for my flight, it’s going to be no good if I find myself sitting twiddling my thumbs with everything packed by 4pm tomorrow! I blame nan for this gene that makes me abnormally efficient at packing! I shall leave you with some photos again, this time from the market.

An Inpromptu Night in Paris December 14, 2008

As the title might suggest, I ended up spending a bit longer in Paris than I planned! I managed to get up early enough to get the fast train yesterday morning, and was in the capital by 10.20am. I got in touch with Aide and met him and the rest of the group (Robert, Suzanne, Natalie, Alice, Sophie, Brandy and Katherine) at Place de Concorde, which is at the opposite end of the Champs Elysees to the Arc de Triomphe. Half of them decided to go on a london-eye type ferris wheel while the rest of us made a start wandering through the Christmas market. This was actually a lot smaller than I had expected and I think Amiens’ is better! Once back together again we carried on meandering up the Champs Elysees, browsing the shops – especially good for Nat and Suz who’ve been living in Concarneau, Brittany – much like being in Cornwall in terms of shop choice! We also grabbed some lunch and by this point it had warmed up enough to start raining. We wandered all the way up to the Arc de Triomphe, and then back down the other side of the Champs Elysees where we stopped off for a while in Louis Vuitton, and gawped at the extortionately priced, diamond encrusted jewellery. I can now say I have a Louis Vuitton bag now though, and it was free! That would be the clear plastic one they gave me for my wet umbrella as I came in the door, presumably to stop me dripping on the merchandise…..it does have the LV logo on it though! Not long after we left our group started to diminish, as Rob had to leave to get his train back to Bordeaux. The rest of us metro’d to Galeries Lafayette to see their christmas decorations and peruse the shop, particularly the food section! It was completely packed in there, there was barely room to move in the crowd. Their decorations were impressive though and we got a good view of the blue Eiffel tower from the roof, although it was so cold, rainy and windy that taking pictures was a trial! At this point we’d also lost Sophie to her train for Le Havre, and the remaining 7 of us headed back for their hostel near Montparnasse to get ready for dinner. I decided to go for dinner with them although it would be tight to get back for my train; the last one was at 9.50pm. We metro’d over to the Latin quarter (around Notre Dame) and found a good fondue restaurant, although with the grumpiest waiter ever! He was actually drunk, we concluded. The restaurant was busy and he ushered us upstairs and got annoyed when we went to sit at a table that had 7 place settings; no no, that was for his reservation of 12 (there was an adjoining table), and we crammed round one that was set for 6. It didn’t matter so much as we were going to order four fondues and share anyway, but when he got round to taking our order he was watching his reservation table settle in rather than listen to us. And then he did listen to what we ordered, seemed perplexed at the idea of serving four fondues to 6 people but wouldn’t explain why, and then asked us to repeat it all again because he hadn’t written it down the first time! I was already seeing either my dinner or my train going out the window; if I tried to do both I’d have to wolf down some food and then run. In the end I decided I would stay and crash in the hostel, as they had spare mattresses in the room and didn’t think anyone would mind. As it turned out the food was very good at this restaurant, but we still had to contend with a refusal when we asked for more glasses for the water and more plates to share food round; apparently this was too much washing up! It was when he knocked a bottle of water over on the table next door that we decided for sure he must be drunk! We rounded off the evening with some photos by Notre Dame and a drink in a bar near the hostel. No one batted an eye when I walked in with them, and I even went down to breakfast in the morning. I walked out while the others were busying reception checking out, and no one noticed. To be honest I don’t think they’d have cared anyway, it wasn’t as if I took a bed that could have been sold to someone else. We made an early start this morning so that we could go over to the Eiffel Tower and Trocadero to take some pictures; as it turned out it was such a grey morning that half the tower was shrouded in mist, but it still made a good photo. We had lunch in a retro cafe near Gare Montparnasse, where Aide’s train to Angers and Nat’s, Suz’s, Brandy’s and Katherine’s trains in the direction of Rennes left from at midday. Which left me and Alice, to have a little wander round the smaller Galeries Lafayette and christmas market before parting ways at the metro to head for Gare de Lyon and Nord and our trains to Morteau and Amiens respectively. I was back in Amiens at 4pm and felt for Alice who had the longest journey of all of us; a train from Paris to Dijon, change for a train to Besancon and finally change for a train to Morteau!

Anyway I shall end this post with some pictures I took over the weekend….

Morning sky in Amiens

Frozen fountain in Place de Concorde

Christmas decorations in Paris

Galeries Lafayette decorations

Road of the Fishing Cat!

Notre Dame de Paris

Eiffel Tower lost in cloud

One week to go! December 12, 2008

Well I made it to half of my lectures since Wednesday morning but oh well, sometimes even with the best intentions you just find yourself unable to get out of bed! Anyway I now know for definite that apart from my Spanish exam on Thursday, I have no lectures next week. I’ve got some exam dates for January now as well, and so far no clashes which is good. The rest I’ll have to collect up next week; technically they should be posted on the noticeboards so it shouldn’t be too difficult (famous last words). I find it a bit bizarre than on the one hand the lecturers are stressing about all the material they have to cram in before the exams, and on the other they are happy to let the last week of term pass for an extra holiday! I think they haven’t quite got it worked out yet because from what I’ve gathered, the half term Toussaint and February holidays were only introduced last year, and end of semester exams used to be before Christmas. That’s meant that students have been moaning about having to revise over Christmas which I just find funny because it’s normal for me (not that I usually do that much haha!). I should have about 6 exams in January, so hopefully given that there’s a two week window, I will get away without clashes. And then the fun of building semester 2’s timetable will begin!

But seriously, it does feel like time is racing away, when you consider that the christmas holidays mark pretty much the halfway point of the academic year. Then the second semester is broken up into two 7-week chunks by the february half term just as the autumn semester was by Toussaint; then we’ll be at Easter and after that just a few weeks of revision and final exams.

Anyway I’m off to Paris for the day tomorrow so I will probably post on Sunday with a breakdown of that and hopefully some pretty pictures of their christmas decorations, but apart from that I wouldn’t expect too many posts for the next week because I won’t be doing anything much to write about!

Extended holiday December 10, 2008

Well it now seems like months ago I was in Barcelona instead of only a matter of days, but oh well. I felt ok when we got back on Monday but after yesterday’s lectures I found I was shattered! I tried to go to bed early last night but couldn’t sleep very well, and as a result I rather spectacularly missed both my 8am and my 10am lectures. I woke up before 10 but even if I’d rushed like mad I never would have made it before 11, so I didn’t think there was much point. I did feel a bit crap about it because the 8am was my last lecture for chemistry and my last 6.30am start – I felt a bit useless for not making it! Anyway I went into town a little bit later to get the rest of the secret santa present for the cardiff lot, and then met them for lunch and to exchange. As it turned out one was at a lecture so they’d done most of the exchanging last night, it was just me and Joe (who’d happened to get each other) left. Joe got me a chocolate fondue set which I shall look forward to using over christmas! It was a bit sad because not long after I had to head back to campus for a lecture while they went round the market for a bit, and I won’t see them now until January, as they’re all going home this weekend.
Mum’s decided not to come this month, but wait until January and make more of the trip for my birthday, which is good but it’s a shame she won’t get to experience the christmas market. All I have to look forward to now is Saturday, which will be a day in Paris with some of the other Keele french students. So far we’ve got ice skating and the Champs Elysees christmas market on the list to do. As for next week, I have….no lectures on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, a 1hour Spanish exam on Thursday, and probably no lectures on Friday. So lots of time to write lists, finish my christmas shopping, pack and repack! In some ways it’s bad because I’ll be impatient to get home and won’t have much to keep me amused here, but then in other ways it’s good because I’ll have lots of time to prepare and not feel rushed on Friday, and it makes the holiday seem a bit longer with no lectures or work to do. There are only two flights to Exeter on Friday; 9.30 am and the evening flight I’m booked on, otherwise I would have tried turning up super early and blagging a seat on an earlier plane. But I don’t fancy having to leave Amiens at about 5am!
Tomorrow brings a super clean of my room, laundry, and Spanish translation to prepare for Friday. It certainly is very strange having gone to the polar opposite of last week’s mad dash to get things done; this week I have nothing to do and all the time in the world to do it!

Viva Espanya – and especially Barcelona! December 9, 2008

Well, where do I start?! With the title I suppose – I haven’t spelt “Espanya” wrong (normally España in Spanish), I’ve just spelt it in Catalan. Which I learnt a bit of over the weekend! It was a fantastic minibreak, and we crammed quite a bit in – enough to fall in love with the city and to know that we must go back to finish what we started. None of us were ready to come back yesterday. There’s so much to recount, I think I will split this post up into bits otherwise I’ll forget.

Firstly, Ryanair! My god, what a horrible airline. I will avoid flying with them in future, they may be cheap but others aren’t far off their prices and you feel much more comfortable. The yellow and blue colour scheme, cheesy music and fanfare (!!) when you land just make you feel you’re in a cartoon for cheap brit holidays to marbella. The cabin crew are in a rush and harrassed-looking, not a smile nor a moment to spare, and they just roll out set phrases without taking much notice of what you actually say back! The turnaround for flights is dangerously fast, with the safety talks and everything done as you taxi to the runway. The pilots must have practically no relax time between flights. Anyway so that was a bit dire but on to the good stuff…..

Where we stayed: Barcelona Mar hostel, a couple of minutes walk from La Rambla, and the gothic quarter. Completely international place, very popular with english-speakers. We were staying in a 16-bed dorm but they also do smaller rooms, and it was ridiculously cheap considering the standard. Doors and lockers were card controlled, 24hr reception, free internet and breakfast, tv and lounge area, ample and clean bathroom facilities and any information you could possibly need available.

Barcelona: is a beautiful city in large part. The gothic quarter has the oldest and most stunning architecture, and houses the remains of the Roman founding city. There are plenty of other districts but we didn’t have much time to experience them. The port area is quite structured, with big plazas, walkways, sculptures and avenues of palm trees, but this is because of the renovations for the 1992 Olympics. It’s pretty but it’s hard to forget it’s all artificial – even the beach, whose sand was imported from Egypt, and all the palm trees are on (official) loan from Hawaii….a bit bizarre. It’s the best area to eat though, especially if you are after traditional tapas and paella. La Rambla and La Boqueria are the market areas, full of stalls and touristy shops….and unfortunately pickpockets. But every city with tourists has those, so you just get on with it. The tiny twisty streets of the gothic quarter feed off La Rambla and are full of shops we didn’t have time to explore properly.

What we did: We arrived late on Friday so just went for a drink before crashing into bed. On Saturday we had a look at the day’s offerings of activities on the blackboard in the hostel and picked out the walking tour of the Gothic quarter, a Spanish cooking class and a bar crawl for the evening. We wandered round the area for a bit, partly exploring and partly looking for the Travel Bar, the meeting point for the walking tour. As it was the walking tour retraced most of our steps but it was fascinating and we learnt a lot of interesting bits and pieces about the city. For example, there is a square (actually a triangle) named after George Orwell in memory of his fighting with the Catalunyans during the Civil War. There is a statue there now from a local art student which could be meant to represent TB (what Orwell died of) through a microscope – I think it looks like a giant robot CCTV camera. Perhaps more ironically (think 1984), the square is the local drug user and dealer hangout, and therefore has the most CCTV surveillance of anywhere in the city. Apparently George (of dragon-slaying fame) is also Barcelona’s patron saint, along with two others, and we saw a stone wall carving of him killing the dragon. We also saw some of the oldest remaining Jewish quarter houses, of which there are not many since the quarter was destroyed in recent history. In other parts of the town there are stones in walls of buildings inscribed with hebrew, which were robbed from the Jewish houses. Anyway after that we had some lunch (with Sangria) and followed that up with the cooking class down near the port, at which we started with…..more sangria! We learnt to make that, tapas and paella. It was lots of fun and there were only 8 of us there so it made it a bit more interactive. The bar crawl started not long after, proceeded through 4 bars (with free drinks at all) and ended at a club. We got back to the hostel about 4am, so a successful night! Needless to say, Sunday was a chilled day, and we just visited Park Guell (one of the biggest Gaudi architectures) in the afternoon, had more of a wander round the town and saw the Sagrada Familia (the massive Gaudi cathedral, still under construction), and had dinner at the port. We made an earlier start on Monday and took the cable car up Montjuic to the castle at the top, for a good view over Barcelona. It all passed too quickly though and before we knew it we were heading back to France.

Here are some of my favourite pictures, but the full albums are available here and here

Palm trees and house

Streetlights

Paella

Gothic Cathedral

Pillars in Park Guell

View of Sagrada Familia and over Barcelona city

Blink and you’ll miss it! December 4, 2008

This week has gone very quickly, and I think it’s because I’ve always had something to do, and something to think about that had to be done soon! I’ve spent all week going to lectures and lab, preparing for the weekend and getting work out of the way. This afternoon I finished my last piece of work until next Friday, and met my lab partner to give her my half of the lab report that’s due Monday. Now I can sit back, relax and look forward to the weekend in Barcelona! Well, in truth, I only have the next 24hours in which to look forward and then I’ll be actually doing it! I have my usual four hours of lectures tomorrow morning, then last minute getting ready and I’ll head into town and grab some late lunch before we head to Beauvais airport. We’ve decided to get a slightly later bus, because we’re doing online checkin (as we’re travelling on hand luggage only), we can go straight to passport and security checks at the airport, and skip the checkin queue. This also gives me a bit more time than I would have had after my lectures finish to get ready and make sure I don’t forget anything. We don’t land in Reus until about 8pm and then it takes about 1hr30 to get to Barcelona itself, so it will be a late night with not much in the way of dinner (plane food = bleugh. Ryanair plane food = BLEUGH!!!). Given that I will have been on the go since 6.30am, I think tomorrow is going to end up being a copious coffee day! I’m the only one of the three of us who really speaks Spanish as well, so I’ll be on translation duty. Although to throw a spanner in the works, Barcelona is the capital of the autonomous region of Catalunya…..where they speak Catalan, not Spanish (Castellano). However given it’s a major hub of business and tourism it’s the most bilingual (Catalan and Castellano) of the Catalunyan cities. The hostel where we’re staying does have internet access but I don’t expect we’ll use it, for a start we’ll be too busy exploring the city to stare at a computer screen! We get back late on Monday night, so I will give a full update on Tuesday, with pictures!

Crank up the pressure! December 1, 2008

Well the snowball is well and truly careering down the hill now! I had a lecture and lab today and in total spent the best part of 6 hours doing science. The lab was not as complicated as last time, but we still managed to have one mishap which involved an accidental bung, a build-up of pressure and the consequent mini-geyser and mess to clear up when the bung got pushed out. I managed to get quite a bit of work out of the way at the weekend by foregoing skating on sunday. I felt bad about this at first after having made so much of going every week, but now I’m glad I did work instead. I still have two pieces of translation and half a lab report to do for Friday, but I have a good reason to work hard over the next few days.

Mum has changed her plans again and if she manages to knock some space in her work schedule, she’ll be coming for a last minute christmas shopping trip next weekend instead of this weekend. So I’ve decided to bite the bullet and take the chance to go to Barcelona! Katie and Alice have had it booked for a few weeks but have been asking me to go too, and up until this weekend I didn’t think it was likely. But then Mum switched dates again and I thought, well, actually, I would really like to go! So I booked it today and will be away from Friday evening until Monday evening. I have so much to do by then it’s unreal – apart from all the work I also have to fit in some christmas shopping, preparing for the weekend, and normal things like food shopping! On that Friday itself I have lectures from 8-10 and 11-1……and have to be catching the bus to the airport at 2! I’ll have to have everything ready so I can grab and go once my lecture finishes.

I can’t wait, I’m so excited now! Normally I wouldn’t feel I could afford or allow myself a last minute break like this but this time I found myself thinking, why not? This is the year, of all years surely, where I shouldn’t miss opportunities to explore, experience, and widen my horizons.