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!!

1st March, 21 degrees, at the lake!

Vamos a la playa! Day trip to Spain.

If there is one other thing that France does very well, it’s holidays. The stereotype that the French love a good bit of time off from working seems to be holding up well – 2 weeks off from university in the middle of February isn’t half bad in my book. Les vacances scolaires are an Erasmus student’s favourite words, as they can only mean one thing: time to travel.

Living in the south of France has many advantages, not least because of its (mostly) glorious sun and blue skies. It’s also handily close to Spain…

So we headed off to the border, unable to get our heads around the fact that we were going on a day trip to a different country – to me, going to another country means at least several days, a suitcase, a passport and 9 times out of 10, a certain level of stress. Not this time round. Breakfast in France, lunch in Spain, all very simple and stress-free!

First stop, Figueras, and some delicious tapas to kick off our Spanish trip. We saw the Museum of Dali, weird and wonderful as you’d expect, and later we walked past a man casually taking a siesta in his car, in the middle of town. Nice to know we got both ends of the cultural spectrum covered right there. 

After lunch, we made our way to the coast and the journey along the way was stunning – windy country roads and views of the sea. We had to make several stops to keep taking photos…

Destination: Cadaqués. I hadn’t heard of it before either. It’s a small town on the sea, gorgeous, very Spanish-feeling and best of all, free from tourists. It was so peaceful and quiet, so we were able to wander round and enjoy the view. Our collective lack of Spanish knowledge made things a lot harder, I have to admit. When needing to say something in a language other than English, we found that out instinct was to say it in French, which in all honestly was just as, if not more, pointless. I can tell you now, just don’t do it. Thankfully, we managed to get ourselves understood through the international language of pointing and a reliance on the broken English of the locals. 

The whole day felt very surreal and we kept repeating “we’re in Spain, we’re in Spain” to try to make it sink in. Waking up in France, spending the day in Spain, going to bed in France; to me, it still seems crazy. Oh, the Erasmus life! 

So just to write a bit about general progress and goings on in France – I can’t fill my blog up completely with day trips to pretty places, I promise that’s not all I do!

After all my bragging about the sunshine awaiting for me in France, it turns out that Montpellier can actually get pretty chilly at times, especially in the evening! I wasn’t expecting to have to bring the hats and the gloves out; it’s the south of France, right? It does feel quite weird walking along all dressed up warmly to brace the cold whilst seeing palm trees everywhere – something just doesn’t add up there.  The daytime does often bring some pretty good sunshine; I even managed to get a little bit of colour the other day just by sitting under the sun for an hour or so. Not bad going! Saying that, at the moment the temperatures have gone right down to what feels like Antarctic levels – it even snowed on Tuesday,  not what I was expecting to see! Monty, I didn’t sign up for this.

In and amongst all the fun and games, there are inevitably times when things are stressful and can drive you round the bend. Ask anyone here and they’ll instantly tell you that one of the most annoying things about France is, yes, its crazy sense of bureaucracy and endless administration. Every time you think you’ve got all the admin sorted, another document pops up demanding to be filled in, sent, returned to be completed again, then signed by someone else, until finally it is done. I really wish I was joking. It never stops!

Something else that never ceases to amaze me is the increasing number of cases where services, shops, tourist attractions and all manner of things that involve people will be closed between the hours of 12 and 2, because clearly it is some sort of national crime to do anything other than eat and drink during these 2 hours. Truly brilliant when you have nothing you need to do, as it’s the perfect excuse to do absolutely nothing and, in most cases, enjoy the sunshine. On the other hand, it’s incredibly frustrating when there’s something you have to get done, someone you need to see or an attraction you want to visit. Lesson learnt: just go for lunch instead.

So just to write a bit about general progress and goings on in France – I can’t fill my blog up completely with day trips to pretty places, I promise that’s not all I do!

After all my bragging about the sunshine awaiting for me in France, it turns out that Montpellier can actually get pretty chilly at times, especially in the evening! I wasn’t expecting to have to bring the hats and the gloves out; it’s the south of France, right? It does feel quite weird walking along all dressed up warmly to brace the cold whilst seeing palm trees everywhere – something just doesn’t add up there.  The daytime does often bring some pretty good sunshine; I even managed to get a little bit of colour the other day just by sitting under the sun for an hour or so. Not bad going! Saying that, at the moment the temperatures have gone right down to what feels like Antarctic levels – it even snowed on Tuesday,  not what I was expecting to see! Monty, I didn’t sign up for this.

In and amongst all the fun and games, there are inevitably times when things are stressful and can drive you round the bend. Ask anyone here and they’ll instantly tell you that one of the most annoying things about France is, yes, its crazy sense of bureaucracy and endless administration. Every time you think you’ve got all the admin sorted, another document pops up demanding to be filled in, sent, returned to be completed again, then signed by someone else, until finally it is done. I really wish I was joking. It never stops!

Something else that never ceases to amaze me is the increasing number of cases where services, shops, tourist attractions and all manner of things that involve people will be closed between the hours of 12 and 2, because clearly it is some sort of national crime to do anything other than eat and drink during these 2 hours. Truly brilliant when you have nothing you need to do, as it’s the perfect excuse to do absolutely nothing and, in most cases, enjoy the sunshine. On the other hand, it’s incredibly frustrating when there’s something you have to get done, someone you need to see or an attraction you want to visit. Lesson learnt: just go for lunch instead.

VIP dans le Village

An ordinary day out to watch the tennis somehow become more eventful than I was expecting…

We managed to get tickets to the Open Sud de France, not quite the French Open, granted, but it was still pretty fun – plus when it’s only 12 euros for a day tickets to watch professionals play, you can’t really say no to that. Naturally, we decided to go in armed with enough food to last us the entire day: with sandwiches, crisps, several boxes of cookies, some random bits of fruit, we were good to go. Imagine our horror when we get to the door only to be informed that food was interdit in the arena, therefore we’d have to chuck it all. You weren’t even allowed to take in the lid for your water bottle, “just in case you threw it at the players”. Great start to the day.

Undeterred, we set out on a plan of action. First step: eat as much as you can. So we sat ourselves down in the car park, at 11.30am, and attempted to work our way through what can only be described as our FEAST. After cramming in as many sandwiches and crisps as we could, we were still faced with 4 boxes of cookies, packets of sweets and a lone banana. 

Second step: find all means possible to sneak the rest in. And boy, we did ourselves proud. Coat pockets, hidden zips in bags and even space up jumpers were filled with cookies. A plan which was potentially brilliant if it worked, and extremely embarrassing if we were to be caught: “oh sorry, I didn’t realise those cookies were in my bra” wouldn’t really wash. Third step: walk back to the door, waddling, carrying a huge bin bag of empty cookie boxes and repeatedly say “on a trop mangé, on a trop mangé” to make them think we’d eaten the whole lot. Worked like a charm. I even sneaked in a bottle lid, just for good measure.

As for the tennis, despite the fact that during the course of the day we only saw one player that any of us had ever heard of, it was fun to watch, especially when you suddenly decide to start rooting for a particular player (in this case, it was simply because he was Canadian) and genuinely start wanting them to win. We managed to see 4 matches, 3 singles and 1 doubles. Not bad going!

Highlight of the day was undoubtedly managing to get entry to the VIP area – at first, we hadn’t realised what it was, and had casually wandered over with our arena tickets, thinking that we could go straight on through. Yeah, it turns out you have to be slightly more important than that. We saw a competition stand, where if you filled in a crossword, you had the chance to win free VIP tickets and get to go into “The Village”, this wonderland of the rich and famous (or so we thought).  Through a mixture of luck and turning on the pure English/Irish/foreigner charm, the women running the competition decided that they liked us enough to both give us the answers and then declare us the winners. Brandishing our blue VIP wristbands, we ran (very civilised) over to the Village and sat around drinking free champagne and some very nice wine, trying to pretend that we were rich and important, but all the while looking, very obviously, that we didn’t belong there.

I decided this would be the perfect “mingling” opportunity, but when it became apparent that no one really wanted to talk to us, we just carried on drinking the wine and watched all the pretty people walk around. “Famous” people check: the Montpellier football team (apparently a big deal), Miss Languedoc Roussillon and some other model-like people (pretty, but they don’t do anything other than look good) and one of the tennis players that we then saw on court later that evening. It’s probably the only time I’ll ever get to go into a VIP area – such a great time!