Sete!

Another mini day trip to a small town just outside of Montpellier – from what I remember of my Languedoc history lessons, it used to be a really important port for the region. Not a whole lot to do there, but it’s so pretty and is perfect for an afternoon stroll in the sunshine!

A personal highlight of being in Montpellier: finally getting to go up the Arc de Triomphe to get a fantastic view of the town in all its glory!

A cultural day in Arles

Seeing as exams are over and Paul Valery is a long and distant memory, we all have quite a large amount of time to fill in order to stave off any potential boredom that may ensure. With our Erasmus days numbered, it's only natural that we would try to fit in a sneaky day trip here and there. This time, we went for Arles, another one of the small towns in this area with the classic cute side streets, abundance of cafés and the particular charm of southern France.

The town is mainly known for its Van Gogh (Go/Goff/Gok?) connection, as the light in the town makes it an ideal place to paint. I seemed to get very excited about this and my inner art-appreciation suddenly came out (this has never really happened before, just to let you know) and I went a tad crazy buying postcards of the artwork.  We saw some of the locations featuring in the paintings; felt very cultural at this point, as we stood admiring it all and pretending we knew what we were talking about…. Like true tourists, we headed straight for the café where Van Gogh painted “Le café le soir” and had a coffee there, just because.

Again, this is another town I probably wouldn’t have ever thought of visiting if I hadn’t been here in Montpellier. Or if I didn’t have copious amounts of free time, of course. All in all, well worth the visit!

The current leading topic of conversation amongst everyone is the fact that it is now April and the end of Erasmus is looming ever closer, leading us to repeatedly ask ourselves and all around us “how on earth has this happened??”, to which no one really has the answer. All I know is that time has certainly flown, Concorde-style.

I would be lying if I said Erasmus was an easy ride the whole time. I’m pretty sure that everyone, at some point or another, has had that moment where you just want to pack your bags, book a flight home and never come back. Not least for the fact that doing that would signal the failure of our degree, everyone has simply had to stick it out and wait for things to pick up. And, unsurprisingly, it does get better and you come to realise that being on Erasmus really is, on the whole, an amazing time. Looking back on my time here now, I’m aware that I’ve got my rose-tinted glasses on; remembering the great things and glazing over any memory of the low points. Even so, the good times outweigh the bad several times over. We’re all getting to the stage now where we realise we haven’t really got all that much to complain about; the most stress I had this weekend was that it was too windy at the beach and I got completely covered in sand. Not quite the essay-deadline-library stress that awaits me next year. It’s safe to say that our perspective of what things like “stress” and “responsibility” are has been severely skewed.

A lot of people will tell you that going on an Erasmus will be the best year of your life, which can set you up with some pretty high expectations that may or may not be met.  For me, I’ve absolutely loved it, but I can’t speak for everyone on that front. I can also say that it has certainly been the most important year of my life so far; without sounding like I’m on the X Factor and how I’ve been on such a “journey”, I’ve certainly come a long way in the time I’ve been here. I can now handle French administration (learn to expect the unexpected, and that everything takes a great deal longer than it should do), French men (I will describe them as “direct” and leave it at that) and French Sundays (learning to deal with the boredom that they bring due to the whole country shutting down for the day is an achievement in itself).

It seems like a lifetime ago since I first arrived and the stress of the day I left is engraved into my memory; the near breakdown the day before, where the last minute packing and preparation all became too much and I simply stopped doing anything, sat down and claimed I was no longer going Everyone knows they’re going to do a year abroad from the moment they decide to study French at university – for me, this was during the first year of A-Levels. In other words, this moment had had a good few years of build-up. Suddenly, the morning of the Big Move To France Day was upon me and nothing can quite prepare you for it; saying goodbye to everyone, setting off to the airport wondering what majorly important item I’d forgotten, the realisation on the aeroplane that this was a one way journey, and then landing in my new home for the next 10 months where I knew I had to pretty much like it or lump it. Just to add to the drama, I hadn’t written down the address of where I was going to be living: STRESS. The image of my Dad dragging my two broken-from-being-too-full suitcases along the road, while I was desperately trying to find my new address and work out how on earth I was going to survive in my new life, will live with me for a very long time.

Somehow, it’s now 7 months on, and I have to consider booking another one way journey, this time in the France-England direction. Not something I really want to think about in much detail, if I’m honest...

Allons à Lyon!

With the end of Erasmus approaching a lot faster than any of us like to talk about, it was about time that we got round to visiting Lyon, which is the major city to see after Paris (or so I’d heard).

When we first arrived, if I’m totally honest, none of us thought much of the place. The bit around the train station is very industrial and city-like; tall buildings (one of which is very ugly), lots of cars and generally a great deal of city noise, none of which we’re used to in Montpellier! It initially felt strange to be in a large city, especially given that Montpellier is so small in comparison.

We spent most of our time in Vieux Lyon, which is probably now one of my favourite areas in France out of all the places we’ve visited. It was so French-feeling, which may sound like a stupid thing to say (it’s in France, of course it’s going to feel French), but in some cities, the place can feel more cosmopolitan or touristy, and you get the feeling that you could be in any city in any country. This was most definitely France; lots of small streets with an abundance of cafés, restaurants (“bouchon Lyonnais”) and boulangeries – my idea of heaven! We were definitely going to make the most of being in the gastronomy capital of France…

Fuelled with cake from one of the salons de thé, we set off towards the Cathédrale Notre Dame de Fourviere, ready to climb the hill to get to the top and see the whole of Lyon. The trek was pretty tiring but, like with all these things, it was worth the effort. The view across the city was stunning. There’s even a metal tower up there, some sort of mini-Eiffel Tower that even lit up at night – obviously not as impressive or exciting as being impressive, but it made us happy nonetheless.

That evening, we experienced the “bouchon Lyonnais” – the typical restaurant of Lyon. The gastronomy capital did not let us down. We were all felt leaving rather full, sleepy yet very content after the 3 course meal of great French food. Our day in Lyon had been a success.

On Sunday morning, we treated ourselves to Starbucks; despite the fact that we live in France, where the coffee and patisseries are infinitely better, it just had to be done. The rest of the day was spent enjoying what Lyon had to offer us on a Sunday, and thank God it was a lot more than Montpellier ever does! This being a huge city, not everything had closed down completely for the day (as seems to be the norm everywhere else in France), so we wandered round the market (tasting a lot of fruit and cheese along the way), listened to a brass band playing on the bridge (they kept jumping up and down to make the bridge shake, had to leave pretty quickly after that) and, of course, had one more meal to end our gastronomy experience.

I was surprised by how much I fell in love with the place. I didn’t have many expectations of what it was going to be like – I’d been told by people that it was just another city, not much else, so I wasn’t prepared for it to be as gorgeous as it was. I’ll definitely be going back at some point in the future! 

Carcassonne!

So, I finally got round to going to Carcassonne - quite an important historical town in France, apparently! Despite having to make detours in Beziers and Narbonne (turns out if you buy the cheapest train ticket and get on an expensive train line, you WILL get chucked off), we eventually made it, thankfully with plenty of time to see the main site, the Cité de Carcassonne. It’s HUGE.

I feel like I’ve explored this region as much as I can now. The small towns are all very similar; small, ancient streets, cute little cafés and shops, the standard cathedral, often a river or a canal… And they’ve made for some great day trips!

Rome: incroyable sans effort

The second week of the vacances universitaires was more productive than the first – casually spent a few days in Rome, as you do! The prospect of pizza, pasta, gelato and cappuccino (as a break from wine, bread, cheese and pain au chocolat) was too good to turn down.

We were up bright and early at the delightful hour of 5.30am and set off to Marseille to catch our flight to Rome. This being Ryanair, naturally we didn’t land in Rome as we know it, but rather in a random, middle-of-nowhere airport located 40km out of the centre. No hassle though, we reached our hostel by the afternoon, the sun was shining and we were raring to go and see what Rome had to offer us!

First of all, we had to find a church in order to pick up tickets for our Date with the Pope (as we decided to call it) the next morning. Now, not sure if you know, but there are hundreds of churches in Rome, and trying to find one of the smaller, lesser known ones is not altogether that easy. The particular area we were looking in was full of them. We spent ages searching and even had the bright idea to “follow that priest!” who happened to walk past us, or perhaps ask the nuns who were casually strolling along. We decided against both of these ideas and made do with a map. Thankfully, we found the church, collected our tickets and we were free to enjoy our first evening in Rome. 

It turned out there was a carnival going on while we were there – nicely timed! In Piazza del Popolo, there was some sort of horse show going on, with men dancing horses around an arena, as well as the occasional flame-thrower, flashing lights and lots of music (the Pirates of the Caribbean theme tune was a particular highlight). The man next to me persisted in providing a running commentary of the event, even when it was clear that I spoke no word of Italian and hadn’t a clue what he was saying to me. I just nodded, a lot. To round off the event, there was a firework display, with a theme of red, gold and green – very patriotic and a great welcome to Italy for us! 

Wanting to continue our success so far, we set off to find the perfect restaurant; the food was going to a fundamental part of this trip, let me tell you that know. Sadly, the first night was a disappointment (perhaps a “gastronomical fail”, Serena?) of stodgy pasta, overpriced bread and water (we’re too used to living in France where this is provided for free) and initially friendly but soon to become rather creepy waiters. Not the best of starts to our culinary experience of Rome! But not to worry, the night still wasn’t over yet. We walked to the Piazza di Spagna and the Spanish steps, where I was able to put my pre-trip research into action. For example, did you know that, every summer, a fashion show is held there and the steps become the catwalk? After all this, the search for a good gelato was ON. After much wandering, we found a late night ice cream parlour – chocolate mousse profiterole flavour for me, delish. The first day/evening had kicked off the trip in style!

The next morning was our Date with the Pope! Or, to give it its proper title, “The General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI ”. This was a real highlight of the trip, such a great experience to be able to see the man in action! My very Catholic, Pope-loving Grandma would have been so proud. Held in a hall in Vatican City, it was a lot more informal than I was expecting. Countries were grouped into their common language and then a representative from that group would stand up and read something to the Pope. The speaker would then “shout out” (best way of describing it) to particular groups in the crowd from those countries. So, for example, there would be groups of students from the University of Milan, or a Catholic Girls High School from Brazil, or a convent from Canada. After each group was mentioned, they would cheer (if they were students) or sing (mainly the nuns). The Pope would then make a little speech in their respective language and thank them for coming – pretty impressive! As tourists, I can’t say that we appreciated the experience as much as those who were there for religious reasons, but it was still one that I won’t forget any time soon. 

After the Date, we walked around St Peter’s Square and enjoyed the sunshine. We went into the Basilica, which is truly stunning but so huge that it’s difficult to really take it all in and appreciate it. I also found that, while it is impressive, some of its magic has been lost as there are so many tourists trying to take hundreds of photos (I include myself in this, of course). It feels more like a tourist attraction than a holy place, but I suppose that can’t be helped. Nonetheless, it’s still worth the visit and is beautiful inside.

The way down was painful, required a brief sit down and a lot of chocolate.Next mission: climbing the 551 steps to the top of the Dome. The first “rest stop” is inside the Basilica, so you can look down from above and see the people milling around. Then it’s onwards and upwards, only a few hundred more steps to go! The stairway gets really narrow and steep in some places (not good if you’re claustrophobic) and it’s very tiring, but when you get to the top, it’s definitely worth all the effort! The view across Rome is amazing.

In the afternoon, we went our separate ways for a couple of hours as we all wanted to see different things. I walked down to Castel Sant’Angelo, across the bridge, along the river and enjoyed Rome in the late afternoon sunshine. Perfecto! So much walking though…

That evening, we went to Trastevere for dinner, a really cute area on the other side of the river, which feels completely different to the busy centre – much calmer and quieter for one thing! It would have been good to have spent more time there. Dinner was much more successful than the night before: “the best pizza in Rome” definitely lived up to the hype! Rounded off with a calzone filled with nutella and ricotta, can’t really go wrong there. Great way to end the day.

The next day was spent at the Colosseum. I rolled out more of the fun facts to pass the time in the queue – can’t say I didn’t do my research! I took millions of photos inside, all of pretty much the same thing, but it’s impossible not to. Afterwards, we went for a LONG walk around the Forum area, stopping every now and then to rest and take silly photos of each other (“act like you’re a tree!”), all the while basking in the sunshine and, of course, the ruins of ancient Rome. Again, it felt like we were in a completely different Rome than the day before. This one was more ancient, historical in a different way – not religious, but in the daily life, old ‘centre of town’ kind of way. This is where the men in togas used to hang out! We only managed to walk around half of it (and even that took us a good couple of hours) until we gave up and decided to go for lunch. After all, there’s only so many ancient ruins you can take in one go! 

Great finds of the afternoon: the amazing chocolate shop (too hard to choose) and the delicious patisserie/ice cream place around the Piazza dei Monti area. We continued to stroll around, seeing even more ancient ruins in the process, Piazza Venezia and the huge museum, Il Vittoriano. During our evening wander, we came across a square where some sort of event was going on, but we didn’t stay to find out more or have a proper look around. Turns out that in that square is the very famous statue of Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf; we had managed to completely overlook this. Oh well!!

MORE walking (can you seem the theme here), this time along the river to enjoy the lights. We slowly but surely made our way to the Pont Sant’Angelo and looked across to see the Basilica. Stunning view. 

By this point, we had literally walked across Rome, taking a lot of small streets in along the way, and dinner was calling our name. After trailing round, we ended up in Piazza Navona, a gorgeous square that we were too tired and hungry to truly appreciate! We found a great, cosy little restaurant just behind the square. The highlight here was the HUGE calzone with nutella and banana – a challenge we accepted and accomplished! We deserved it after all that walking! Needless to say, the sugar rush on the metro home made us look a tad crazy…

And so to Friday! First stop, Fontana di Trevi. Again, lots of photos (some normal and touristy, some silly ones) and sunshine – perfect blue skies! Of course, we threw a coin in the fountain, so here’s hoping I’ll go back some day. From there, we headed to the Pantheon, where more fun facts were to be had. There was also a certain irony in the (rather loud) voice-over saying “Silence, please” in several different languages, on repeat. Sort of defeating the purpose really… Again, I felt that however impressive the building, it has become more of a tourist site than an ancient temple to worship gods, but we enjoyed it anyway. 

We went back to Piazza Navona, this time to see it in daylight and perhaps appreciate it a bit more! Impressive fountains, some great painters and everyone strolling around looking happy – one of my favourite places that we visited.

By the afternoon, we were all exhausted from the past couple of days. We settled ourselves in a café for a few hours, read a book (Siri), drank cappuccino (me) and napped (Serena). A much needed rest after all the sightseeing and walking! It took forever to find a restaurant in the evening as everywhere was so busy; one guy even told us to “come back next year”, which wasn’t really very helpful. And that was our last day in Rome over!

Rome as a place is fascinating, yet crazy at the same time. You take your life into your own hands whenever you cross the road – there are so many cars and motorcycles whizzing by! We found the best plan was to wait for a bold Italian to casually stroll across and then just follow them, they seemed to be braver than us! We found that mostly Italian people are very friendly, but that the men can get slightly ‘intense’, shall we say. People on the street will shout shamelessly at you: “bella! Bella!” and “beautiful girls!” were heard quite often.

Another lesson learnt was that the best Italian restaurants are not the pretentious, posh-looking ones (first night experience taught us this), but that the more cosy, reasonably priced places are more authentic and serve much better food. We had rules when it came to finding a restaurant: no “tourist menus” (to be avoided at all costs) or ones that felt the need to declare that they served “typical” (often spelt “tipical”) Italian food. Any waiters who tried to entice us in by shouting “pizza pasta carbonara” at us were instantly a no-go. Other faux pas were menus with pictures (always makes me suspicious), places which were completely empty and anywhere with flashing neon lights outside. On the other hand, restaurants with Italian people inside were considered a plus!

Rome is incredibly overwhelming; everything is on such a large scale, the crowds are so busy, the cars so fast. It is an amazing city in that it feels like, everywhere you turn, there is some impressive monument or some ancient historical building just sitting there. We kept saying that Rome was effortlessly amazing, and it really is! We managed to cover pretty much everything in 3 full and tiring days, but it’s hard to appreciate just how impressive it is. We had the cultural side covered and we definitely made the most of its culinary delights! I felt very inspired to learn Italian, so maybe once I’ve mastered French, this could be a new challenge…

Rome, a la prossima!!