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Hey all! It’s been a great adventure BelleCatastrophe. But recently I’ve felt a little out of sorts with wordpress. Also I got a free TypePad account :)
From now on I will be blogging from www.mahface.com.
I’m really excited about this new blogging adventure as it is a joint project between my youngest sister, Chelsey and I.
So happy reading and see you over at MahFace :)
Hello, I'm me., Franglais, the skinny, adventures, Places, foodie diaries, books that I love | Comment (0)The Return: A trip to Lyon
Last weekend I went back to Lyon for the first time in four years! It was a whirlwind. I went with a few of my friends and we had a great time. We took the train to get into Paris then onto Lyon. The tickets weren’t very expensive because it was a trip we had planned way in advance!
We got into the city around 1 and looked for my friend Laura who had flown in from London to meet us. Tanya and I looked around for her for about 5 minutes and then we hatched a plan of epic proportions. We would call her on the loudspeaker. Because who doesn’t want to be called on a loudspeaker in a foreign train station. It was brilliant. But we then realized that it would be a tad difficult to find the plan where the loudspeakiness comes from. Just when we thought we were getting near to the epicenter of loudspeaking, my phone rang. It was Laura. We told her our plan and she still wanted us to call her on the speaker. We didn’t. We reunited and then headed over to the house we would be staying at for the weekend.
The Northeastern students in Lyon live like kings. I mean seriously. Their apartments are so nicely furnished in the same tradition as my most favorite place in the world: Ikea. We ate at a fun little joint where we got a barrel of french fries.
Then the night began. The Lumière is an amazing celebration of light, Lyon et art. It is a spectacular way to see the city illuminated with all good things and each building kissed with beautiful combinations of color and light. I am in love and I think it will be my goal to go every year. I just love Lyon. I’ve put some photos up (on flickr) because I don’t think my descriptions could do the immense beauty of the installations justice. The rain, cold, and crowds couldn’t hold us back from enjoying such an amazing sight. One thing I love about the Lumière is the participation of the city. In the windows all over the city there are candles put on the windowsills to celebrate the promise made to the Virgin Mary during the black plague.
I spent the afternoon lazing around with my host family, watching a movie and playing with my host sister’s baby! It was a really good time. They are really good people.
I went back to find my friends who had moved into the Auberge de Jeunesse and we then decided to go get dinner. We had found a friend. A fellow traveller who had just decided to go off on her own and see a bit of Lyon. She told us that she had been on a “cheap ticket frenzy” and this is where she had ended up. She was nice and we ended up eating at this hilarious Italian place. I forgot how much Lyon is centered around pork. It was the first time in France that I had had a problem finding food.
The next morning we got up and set off to finish our last mission. To find me a dress for the Christmas Ball. I had found a backup dress but I didn’t really want to wear it. So we looked. And looked. We didn’t really find anything spectacular. So I knew where we had to go. The Gap. There is always something at the Gap. I am totally a Gap person or maybe Gap Corporation person. But I like their clothes. I like that they don’t have a brand on them and that they are somewhat plain. I dig it.
I found two dresses. I bought both. I’m wearing one to the Ball and one to my first interview.
One was even in purple.
The weekend ended in a bar in Paris with margaritas, chips, and salsa. Badass. It was even happy hour. Even more badass.
Hello, I'm me., Franglais, Places | Comment (0)London: a series of mumbles and awkward events
I love London. Be it the carefree atmosphere, the prevalence of vegetarian food, or the international spirit, I love it all. London is magical. I didn’t know what to expect and really we didn’t have anything planned (as we planned the trip on a Friday and left on a Wednesday). This trip spoke to my interest in living the moment, my interest in seeing one of my dear friends, and my interest in seeing a bit more of the world.
We took the TGV from Reims at around 1pm. We were excited as neither of us had ever been to London and didn’t know anything about what to see at London besides Buckingham Palace, Platform 9 3/4, and Newton’s memorial. But everything worked out. We got into Waterloo Station after experiencing the Chunnel which was dark and had my ears popping at random intervals.
It was a whirlwind. We walked from the Tower of London along the Thames where we saw the likes of Shakespeare’s Globe, the Tate Modern (which I’m in love with), and the ugliest building in Britian: the National Theater.
We did a bus tour, and I’m totally glad we did because - like I said - I had no idea what to see, no real scope of where things are or what one does whilst in London. Highlight: I got to see the bank that they used for Gringotts while filming Harry Potter. But I also learned a lot of other practical things, some things about the black plague like the fact that they killed all the cats and in doing so let the rat population thrive. Payback is a bitch, I say, a mighty bloody bitch.
I also got to see one of my dear friends, Misha. It was so good to see her and when we hang together I always feel very comfortable and at ease. She reminds me of the small home that I carry with me always a sense of home I started to carry when I moved to France five years ago.
I saw so much and had such a brilliant time. We went all over and by the night we were so exhausted our feet hurt. But when my feet hurt like that I feel like a million dollars, I feel like I’ve actually done something and I feel like I got somewhere.
Leaves were changing and rustling about in London. Scraps of red, gold and brown billowed about us in the city and it made it even more magical. I’m a fall baby and I feel natural in the months between September and November. The sun was shining and we only had one day when we were cursing the gray skies that oh-so-northern-France-like weather.
I also never realized how different British English is. I obviously knew that it would be different as in sounds totally different and they spell things in the obviously wrong manner, but I didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to function like a normal member of the English speaking community. As we were leaving London, Kristyn and I were still flabbergasted about our inability to feel completely at ease and we marveled over the extremely awkward moments that had passed while we were there. For instance , I have never felt so awkward buying a sandwich whilst speaking English. There have been tons of times when I’ve awkwardly ordered a sandwich in French, but as I got up to the counter to order my take-away sandwich and my white coffee (that’s with milk), I totally froze when the woman asked me a question. Also on the bus I almost got us killed; take that as awkward moment number 8,000 of our London trip.
The story:
We had just gotten on a bus headed towards Waterloo station; it was fairly packed and we had our big bag, me- my REI travelpack and Kristyn - her roller carry-on. We were slightly obtuse as we struggled and squished onto the bus. The bus started moving and we went a few stops. We stopped. I saw a man push a button on the top of the door to get off. Then an old man mumbled (read: spoke British English) and I’m pretty sure he asked to get off. I did the natural thing. I pressed the button. As I pressed the button the bus started moving. The door still opened and we were moving in a big double decker bus BUT WITH THE DOORS OPEN. A stream of curses came out of the bus drivers mouth as the doors closed. I caught: “YOU BLOODY IDIOTS…DOOR OPEN…ON MY BUS…” But that is about all I did catch because at that point my heart had dropped and I was trembling with a mixture of embarrassment and disbelief. I realized what had happened as I looked up at the button above the door, clearly marked: emergency button.