vacation part 2

I spent last Sunday here just sort of putzing around when Florence invited me to dinner at her friend's. It was amazing! It was actually a dinner for the réveillon which takes place Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, but we were a day early. We drank champagne and wine, and we ate foie gras, a big roasted rooster ( or some beast on that order, I believe), stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, and for dessert the traditional bouche de noel, which is basically a delicious cake... ours was ice cream! I had such a great time that night, and the dinner lasted for hours. I feel so lucky to have been invited to take part.

Monday, New Year's Eve
I pulled myself out of bed to catch a train to Paris where I met up with Mira. Together we took the TGV to Lyon where we met up with Rose, another assistant. Let me just start out by saying that I love Lyon as a city! It's great! It's big and yet has the small neighborhood feel. Definitely could see myself living there. Anyway, we walked around the city a bit New Year's Eve and then found a Chinese restaurant for dinner. Yes, Chinese, but all of the traditional French restaurants had ridiculously expensive menus for the evening. I felt the Chinese restaurant was even a rip-off, but whatever... we had to eat.

After leaving the restaurant, we saw flashing blue lights. We run to see what is happening, and there are a bunch of firemen! (What is it with us and pompiers?) It took awhile to figure out what was going on, because we just saw them pulling people from the building, but then, we saw all of the smoke. It turned out to be a huge fire! The fire burned for a good part of the next day as well (and maybe even the next?). How sad... what a way to start the new year and a very pretty old building is destroyed.

After being shooed away by the pompiers, we went to look for someplace to ring in the New Year. Unfortunately, that ended up not happening. We all had different ideas of what we like to do, so yeah... not so much of a celebration. I was hugely disappointed, because I had been looking forward to going out in France for the New Year Eve thing. Oh well. I really missed my Chauny friends that evening.

Tuesday, New Year's Day
Not too much was open, so we did some wandering around and took some pictures. We also visited the Basilica Notre-Dame de Fourvière, which is on top of a huge hill that had amazing views. We then went to Cathédrale Saint-Jean-Baptiste which had an astronomical clock... not nearly as impressive as the one in Prague. Mira and I also spent some time in a cafe (which was not following the new smoking ban laws... oh well) and had a delicious (and long) dinner.

Wednesday
We went to the Centre d'Histoire de la Résistance et de la Déportation, which is a very interesting museum about the region's participation in the French resistance movement during WWII. It also spoke a lot about the deportation that took place during that time.

After the museum and lunch with Rose, Mira and I did some shopping. I didn't have any luck, but it still felt nice to be out and about in a big city where I understood the language (sorry Prague and Barcelona). We then found a nice little cafe and spent the rest of the afternoon there until we had dinner.

Thursday
We had to drag ourselves out of the hotel at a decent hour for check-out. We then wasted time at a brasserie near the train station where we had a way too expensive lunch (sensing a theme for this vacation?). When I have to eat out, I like to keep my lunch cost around 5 euros and dinner around 10.... unfortunately, that rarely happened. Now, I have only enough euros in my account to cover rent and hopefully most of my meals in Chauny. Nothing else. And the soldes (huge sales) start soon! Anyway, back to the day... we took a train to Dijon after our lunch. Dijon was a very cute city though the centre ville was a little too small for me, but I enjoyed it. We just did some sightseeing and had dinner.

Friday
We went to the archeology museum. Some of it was interesting, other parts got redundant. Though I was happy to see how much of my French history class I remembered. I was reading things about the Gauls and Romans, and I already knew all of it!

I took some time to myself and had a small lunch and did some shopping. I bought a few things at Sephora, but that was it. We all met up again for dinner, and then we went to some bar in Rose's guidebook. It had a very cool atmosphere, but unfortunately, we were there far too early for there to be anyone else, and we left before others came as well. Sad. I am looking forward to going out in Chauny this coming Friday. That'll be fun!

Saturday
Mira and I took an early TGV up to Paris. We stored our bags at the Gare de Nord and then hopped the metro to Breakfast in America. I've been craving American breakfast for so long now, that I decided to introduce Mira to the restaurant like Alyssa introduced it to me last year. It was just as good as I remembered! I had French toast and eggs and bottomless coffee (unheard of in France!). It was yummy! We then wandered up to Ile Saint Louis (tiny island behind Ile de la Cite).

I then got in contact with Wilfried, so we met up with him and his friend Deb and some other random Burkinabe. They wanted to go to KFC, so I dragged poor Mira along to her first experience ever at a KFC. But I enjoyed it! It was so nice seeing Wilfried again. Best part of deciding to spend the day in Paris!! It might even be the highlight of my week! I caught up on some of the happenings back home at BW and chatted about France. It felt really good. If it weren't for being surrounded by a bunch of French people, I could have believed that I was back at home hanging out with Wilfried. Anna arrives in Paris the week(!), so hopefully, the three of us will be meeting up before Wilfried goes back to Berea.

Afterwards, I caught a train back up to Paris, where I got to see some people questioned on the train. A sans papiers (illegal immigrant) who thought it would be smart to get on a train without a ticket and then run smack dab into the controler. Oops. Anyway, I got back to Chauny and hung out some with Viany. She shared her travel experiences with me. Poor girl has the worst travel luck ever! A bomb scare at Beauvais airport that caused her to miss her train and spend the night on a floor of a train station in Paris! Poor girl!

And that was my vacation. Tomorrow, it's back to class. Fun. I can't wait for the other Chauny assistants to return!

I have a ton of photos to upload, and I will hopefully be doing that within the next few days.