Day Eight: Not Nice

30 Dec. 2009

I really need to figure out a more interesting way to start these posts. So, for right now…

Salut!  (“Hi”)

After yesterday’s touring of places close to my new home, Dad and I decided that we needed to go explore further away. So we woke up early and lazed around until we decided that we’d try breakfast at the hotel. That was strange; this hotel is kind of small, and they only serve breakfast to a set number of people, so they don’t really  have extras for anybody. It’s not free, either; and beyond that, it’s just a French breakfast.

 Our hotel in Fréjus

At home, we’ll have cereal, pancakes, waffles, eggs, or basically anything (cookie cake… Chick-Fil-A), for breakfast; here, breakfast is bread. I don’t mean toast-bread, either; a chunk of baguette, a croissant, and a cup of café or fruit juice. This is served with butter and jam of some sort (prune, apricot, cherry, strawberry…), so by my standards, it wasn’t particularly filling. Oink. [I think that the bread thing is standard, but I maintain the right to correct myself later on :)]

After we brushed all the bread crumbs off ourselves, we set off to Nice via la bord de la mer, because the thought of a French highway is very frightening, and we’d rather take the long route… seemed less confusing.

Nice is about 75 km (about 46 miles) from Fréjus when travelling along the coast, as we did. The trip is only supposed to take an hour and some, but for us, it took two hours… and some because we kept stopping to take pictures. We can’t really help ourselves; there were so many beautiful sights.

  Even though it was a cloudy day, there were still areas of the coast where the water was this beautiful shade of azure (this being the Côte d’Azur, after all).

We got lost along the way, and ended up in a town called Antibes, where we had AMAAAAAZING egg rolls. Nearly perfect, by Dad’s standards! So we bought more to eat later (and share with the Chassons).

We saw Cannes and Nice, but I have to admit, neither of us was that interested in either place. They are both very commercial, but we took pictures for the heck of it anyway. xD

Nice is a nice town, but we feel as though we missed the point of it (for the first thirty-or-maybe-more minutes we were there). Everybody says (not just Madame Marks) that “Nice is nice”, but I’m a bit confused. Nice (the city) is not that nice. The coast is prettier, honestly, and (maybe this is because we never found the office de tourisme?) it didn’t seem to have anything to do except go shopping. It had a lovely Christmas village filled with plastic fake-snow covered trees… with a huge sunny Ferris Wheel! xD (We found this quite humorous, but you may think we’re crazy.)

So, Dad and I were not that amused by Nice. This may or may not have to do with the fact that we don’t like (nor are we good at) shopping. We would both rather be exploring some interesting bit of coast or the mountains than wander around overly-crowded streets looking at shops. Especially shops where we can’t afford anything because the exchange rate is killer.

However, we were very amused when we somehow wandered (in the car) to the edge of town and saw one of the signs saying that you are no longer in so-or-such town/village/city. We read it as “Not (Name of Town/Village/City)”, so it was “Not Nice”. Not nice. hehe. We were going to take a picture of the sign but we forgot soooo… here’s a picture of a Not-City sign for Antibes.

The exclamation point sign! Still not sure exactly what this means, but it comes in the yellow-orange/red variety and normal black/white/red variety. It makes me smile, though. I kinda want one.

  NOT Antibes.

Finally, we made our way back to Fréjus. We should have paid more attention though (we can just say it isn’t well-marked. Always blame the signs! ALWAYS!), so we wandered in circles in some random edge-of-some-town for a very long time, eventually making our way to another road… that was not the road we came in on.

We followed this nearly completely randomly-chosen road up into the Alps, without realizing what we were doing. Soon, the roads were twisting and winding, up and down mountains. It was dark by then; the trees surrounding the roads made the potentially-very-scary slopes near the edge of the road even more ominous, especially since guardrails were very rare.

We continued down this road until we figured out where we were (actually, that “we” was “me”, because I tend to figure such things out! xD) and discovered that we were just taking the scenic-route-which-wasn’t-so-scenic-but-was-much-more-confusing. Did you get that? I kinda lost my train of though somewhere in the middle of that not-a-word. (I must stop hyphenating. BAD.)

Finally, we called Nathalie to tell her that we would be a bit late for dinner because we needed to stop at the hotel to pick up my laptop so we could test if the internet would work at their house.

Dinner was pizza—Margherita  (spelling? Uhh. I don’t know.) pizza is not the same here! It involves olives (YUM!) and not tomatoes (ew.)! Oh, and the delicious eggrolls from lunch.

[The internet took foreverrrrr to set up. But it works now and we don’t have to restart it every time, so that’s good.]

So, that was a nice day, and Dad and I are such tourists!

-Aly

Day Seven: “Boring like the Musée”

29 Dec. 2009

Bonjour!

[Still currently Day Eleven, but once again… :D you should be an expert at pretending it’s the actual day now. Does it help when I include the day I was *actually* supposed to post this?]

This morning, Dad and I woke up at 8:something, and began a quest for a boulangerie/patisserie for breakfast. We wandered through Port Fréjus, looking at all the sailboats and (few) yachts.

Nathalie and Olivier came to pick Dad and I up at the hotel at 10:30 so we could go pick up our rental car. Like every other car in France, it’s a stick shift… which Dad hasn’t driven in a while, so combined with the insanity of French driving, I didn’t ride with him immediately.

Olivier rode with Dad to remind him how to drive (not sure how that went, as Olivier doesn’t speak much English) and show him the way to Carrefour, which is like Wal-mart but Carrefour has a centre commercial attached (kinda like a mini-mall with a huge Wal-mart stuck on). They were just showing us around so we would know where to find all my school supplies.

After we finished up at Carrefour, we drove to the Chasson’s apartment to eat lunch and pick up Quentin. They had me try a lichi (not sure about the spelling), which I did NOT like (I’m fairly certain it’s some sort of citrus? It’s this tiny little bumpy pink fruit, the center is white), so of course Dad and Olivier thought it would be funny to take a picture of me tasting a lichi.

We all piled into the Chasson’s car and drove up to Fréjus-Centre  (downtown Fréjus), where we popped into the Office de Tourisme to pick up maps before walking up to the main square. The main square is based around a Cathedral, which is right next to what is now the mayor’s office.

The nativity scene at the cathedral; those are santons that are about 2 feet tall.

  We were walking through the Christmas village; the peach building is the mayor’s office.

  Once we’d looked around the main square of Fréjus, we drove to my school, Lycée Albert Camus, and then down to Saint Raphaël-Plage, where we parked in an underground lot and made our way up to the Christmas village there in front of the Casino. Saint Raphaël is a resort-town; there was an ice-skating rink, shopping, the casino, and even a small antiques market, which Quentin insisted was boring, though I don’t think he thought it was so boring when we were teaching each other the words for things in our native languages. [He said the market was “boring like the Musée d’Orsay, to be precise.] xD

And then we had dinner (late, like 9 or 10) and discussed boring things like school, while watching French television, which is sometimes quite funny. :)

(Honestly, that’s what we did in the abbreviated form; I’m getting tired right now so I’m going to bed. Sorry for lack of elaboration!)

-Aly

Day Six: Gare

28 Dec. 2009

Hello!

I promise that I’ll get caught up with my posting and fill you in on all the details of my overly-busy life! If you want to know all the mundane details, that is… and I assure you, I have plenty of those to share.

So, until I catch up (today is Day Eight Eleven), except posts like Day four/five; just PRETEND I posted this on time! ;)

D’abord (first of all), I’d like to say that le matin was not very interesting. Our NaviGo passes (for the bus and metro in Paris) had expired the day before, so our only form of transportation was our feet!

Dad had discovered that there was a Roman arena near our hotel in Paris, so after we had breakfast (some pastry; I didn’t like it), we walked until we found it. That was pretty cool; something so old (older than Notre Dame de Paris, I think), right in the middle of the city (MORE OR LESS; Paris is a very large city.) It was kind of like the “beautiful ruins” I told you about before, except these weren't exactly ruins and they were incredibly old… I would still say they are “forgotten”, though. There weren’t any tourists (except for us, of course) standing around admiring it.

A few locals were wandering around; there was a small playground behind the arena, and small families with young children were there. It was otherwise empty, which I guess is a good thing because for once in Paris, we weren’t two of the hundreds of people. The emptiness allows you to imagine the arena not surrounded by buildings and instead, filled with throngs of people watching some sort of likely-inhumane entertainment. xD

Anyway, we continued walking past le Jardin des Plants, which apparently has a menagerie. Unexpectedly, looking through the the bars of the fence surrounding the park, trying to catch sight of les animaux is quite time-consuming.

We took pictures of some of them:

(uhhh… just kidding. You can’t really see the REALLY CUTE ANIMAL in it. Silly animals, walking around being cute where we couldn’t get a good picture of them…)

Eventually, we found a way into the actual Jardin! (I think. Again with the not knowing what something or other is.)

*about to sneeze*

Once we had made our way out of that small portion of the Jardin, we returned to the hotel to pick up our bags and walked awkwardly (it’s impossible to NOT walk like an ape when you’re hauling far too many things) to the bus. Soon after, we had arrived at Gare de Lyon, where our train was arriving an hour and some later.

Quick side note: When’s the last time you took a train? Not a subway/metro/underground/etc., but an actual TRAIN?
The only time I’ve ever taken trains has been in Europe, and if you never have… you should experience it sometime. The confusion, chaos, and everything… it’s quite fun and you don’t have to go through security like at airports! You don’t even have to arrive an hour early! (Thirty minutes will do just fine, if you can figure out the signs, that is.)

Right. So, after a longgggg wait, during which we ate gaufres (waffles!) for lunch, the platform was finally displayed on the screen (they only show a color, for which area of the train station a certain train will be in until the train actually arrives) and we struggled through the crowd to the near the front of the train (which is the farthest away, naturally), and found our car.

(hahaha at the guy next to me.)

(this wasn’t our train, nor was it even the correct area of the train station. I’m just throwing this in there because it shows a bullet train and the station.)

Our train was actually two trains connected together, near where I’m standing.

When we found our seats (after dumping our excessively huge bags on the storage racks), we discovered that they were taken! Luckily, the guy sitting there spoke English so we could communicate the mistake. Trains are confusing like that; there are multiple cars with the same seat numbers, and sometimes, like with our train, there are two different trains and you have to pay attention to know which one you SHOULD be on. xD

Finally, we started moving; through the beautiful French countryside, heading to Nice. There wasn’t internet on the train, but they had outlets, so I wrote the Day Four blog while on the train, which took up most of the ride when I wasn’t staring dreamily out the window, listening to music on my iPod (Owl City, probably; I’m only a little obsessed), or watching Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince :)

The entire ride, Dad was trying to get a picture of the trains that would pass us. It was rather funny; he’d reach across me, holding his camera near the window, just waiting for another train and then jumping when one passed before finally trying to take the picture. He mostly just watches the countryside, though; this time, he was talking a lot to the people across from us, who seemed to be playing musical chairs, as there were three different people that sat in those seats at different points in time. Apparently they (the two women whose seats were actually across from ours; the other one was this guy although I don’t know why he was sitting there) live in a town near mine.

The sky got darker, and at last, we arrived in Saint Raphaël, the town next to Fréjus, where my host family was waiting to greet us.

I admit, I had no idea what they would look like, but I guess Dad knew or they knew or something, because when we reached the end of the escalator at the main entry, they were standing there waiting for us and smiling. Immediately, they took the suitcase that Dad was hauling (the heavier one xD), and gave us bisous. (That was unexpected, though it shouldn’t have been.)

[I will explain bisous more later on in this post or another, but what you need to know is that bisous are the air-kisses on either cheek.]

We all piled into their car (a Ford Focus) and drove to their house for dinner. Nathalie (pronounced “Natalie”), my host-mother, was worried that I would be picky, but I’ve kind of promised myself (and my dad) that I would at least TRY everything. Nathalie’s daughter, Alexandra, came to dinner as well—she was on holiday from university in Paris, where she is studying to become a translator (so she knows French, English, Spanish, and a little bit of Russian). Quentin acts just like a younger brother; in fact, I think he would get along really well with my “other” little brother, being Molly’s brother Christopher. Olivier is a bit of a goofball; he and Dad get along with signs and broken phrases.

Anyway, it was nice to finally meet them, and it looks like (from here) I will get along with them quite nicely.

From the top left: Nathalie, Olivier, me, and Dad.

-Aly

Bonne Année!

Hey everybody!

I’m just about to have a marathon of blogging, and I know that I’ll forget to say this later, but…

It’s 2010! WHOO!

This is the year that a lot of my friends will be graduating :( [aren’t you guys EXCITED, though?! How many days to go?], and I’m really excited for this year myself.

Dad and I saw a fireworks display in Saint Raphaël (which I’ll tell you more about later… after I write about it, that is), and that was a great way to bring in the New Year. I’m quite excited for the next six months, that I’ll spend in France… I don’t have a resolution yet! Unless you count learning to speak French fluently. Is that a resolution?

ANYWAY! I hope you all are having a great New Year’s Day!

[Molly, sorry I’m missing the Beans and Greens Party. Does it count if Dad and I hear the Black Eyed Peas all day? ;)]

Bonne Année!

-Aly