Cannes

One day of Miki's stay we visited nearby Cannes, which is of course known for its International Film Festival that's held in May each year. 

We even saw some celebrities when we visited in March! 

Cannes is like the more expensive and less culturally-diverse version of Nice. It's pretty though, and there's a lot of shopping if you've got euros n' euros to burn. 

After taking the 30 minute train (the bus is about 2 hours), we explored the city a bit. It was a beautiful day! Miki tried his first real French macaroon.   

For only 25 euros, it was a steal in Cannes! 

We visited the  Musée de la Castre. The Musée is located in a medieval chateau complex. It had a lot of ancient Mediterranean artifacts as well as more modern paintings of the region. 

No, this isn't a painting of a beautiful Mediterranean princess; it's just little old me. 

There was a large tower in one part of the museum that gave great views of the city and the water. The stairs were a bit scary going up, but it was well worth it. Miki kept repeating that I was living in one of the nicest places in Europe. 

I know it. 

Getting our French culture on. 

For lunch, we had a picnic on the beach. 

We bought some fresh bread, strawberries, oranges, and camembert cheese. And wine, of course! 

Thank goodness Miki had his Swiss army knife, or else we would have had to slice the cheese with our fingers.
 I never! 

A lot of the beach in Cannes is sectioned off for the hotels or fancy restaurants to use (ugh, rich folk), but we found a nice section that was sandy rather than rocky. I'm assuming they bring the sand in.

 I tasted quite a bit of it during the picnic, and it didn't taste very French...

Cheap white wine = regret. 

Our picnic food was a little disappointed by our wine choice as well.

After our lovely and sandy picnic, we walked along the beach then explored the port area a bit.

 So many huge yachts! I plotted several schemes in my head as to how I will get onto one of those boats one day, most of which are elaborate ruses that involve me wearing wigs. 

I'm not sure what the function of these blocks are, but they were fun to climb on!
They will be utilized in my yacht-jacking mission. 

Taking applications for trust-worthy and fearless look-outs for Mission Silver Otter. 

Must provide own Swiss Army Knives. 

Potluck de Pâques

My first Easter away from home! 

Easter happened to be on the weekend that Miki visited me although he had to leave midday to catch his train/flight back to Hungary.  But we did have a nice breakfast and pastries on the beach to celebrate Easter a little. 

Fruity-chocolate tart.

 Beautiful day!

School was canceled on Monday, and my Canadian friend Angela organized a potluck dinner for some of the international students who lived in our student residence so that everyone could celebrate away from home. She was quite the Nervous Nellie about it, but it turned out to be a great success.

We had so much food! 

I made jambalaya, because I figured it'd be relatively easy and cheap if I didn't get chicken. 

I ended up having to make it in every pot/pan that I own (which is just two...) because I had bought so much sausage (hooray for almost-expired meat discounts!). 

The Hogwarts Back-to-School Feast. 

I didn't think the jambalaya tasted that great, but everyone LOVED it. 

Like. Really. 

And it didn't even have cayenne pepper. They just don't even know. 

A few people even asked me for the recipe. 

Small sampling of the food. Pot in the middle is part of the jambalaya. 

We had pretty much anything you could think of: ratatouille, fruit salad, two green salads, bread, cheeses, wine, sushi, rice, duck, and probably more that I've forgotten! 

We also had some kind of delicious Italian cake and tiramisu for dessert.

The Anglophones: Blair, me, and Angela. 

It was a very lovely dinner, and a nice substitute for a family Easter. 

Tout le monde!
Breaking world records with 3 redheads. 

Biot

Some days in France, they have random holidays and/or school events that require all classes to be canceled! This happens a lot! 

One such day was "la Ronde des Facs" on March 21st (La ronde means 'round'; Facs is short for facultés, which is what they call the different colleges within the university. All of my classes are within la fac de lettres). It was actually a good excuse for no school, because it's the school's annual walk to raise money for disabled students. .....But I mean, who schedules a school-wide event for a day of classes and then all of the teachers have to reschedule their classes at times that ruin people's (my) social lives? Université de Nice, that's who. 

The girls of the other American exchange program at our school planned a trip to the charming little town of Biot and kindly invited us with them for our free day. 

Biot was only a short train trip away, and then an even shorter bus ride up a hill to the actual city. Biot is a petite ville that is known for its glassblowing.

And glassblowing is AWESOME!! New career. 

We brought along picnic lunches to be as cute as possible. 

Taking a quick sandwich break while the others who were less-prepared searched for a grocery store.  

We also got some delicious macaroons at a small shop near our final picnic spot in the middle of the town. The store had kooky macaroon flavors, and anything kooky has a place in my heart. 

Being a biddy, showing off my sweets. 

After lunch we went to two different glassblowing studios. The first one was more intended for tourists and was a lot larger. We saw a guy blow a glass cup. The gallery also had some really amazing stuff. The second studio was a lot smaller, but it was a lot easier to see the men working. They made it look so easy! 

We also went to a gallery that had really awesome stuff, stuff that was much more complicated than the normal vases and cups. 

Including these Blibbering Humdingers (and the globes at the top of the page).

It was a lovely little day. The weather was beautiful, and I got to hang out with the American girls who I didn't know very well. We did a bit of shopping afterward, and I got some very delicious fig aperitif (that I saved to share with a later guest). And, of course, we ended the day with a few glasses of espresso and wine.

The whole group at the first studio:

I just so happen to be in the middle.
 Hooray for companions near my height! 

BRB, quiting school now; Becoming a glass blower, TTYL. LOLZ  

Wine O'Clock

Wine is super cheap (and delicious) in France! End of story. 

And don't worry Mother, I shared most of these bottles and it was over 4 months. 

Vin Rosé

Wine with guests. 

Vin rouge

Vin Blanc

This one was just awful. 

Vin Rouge

Vin Yummy

Organic! 

Wine is Vin in French....

Vin vin vin vin vin vin vin

Genève: Un pour tous, tous pour un!

Who decides to take a weekend trip to one of the most expensive countries in the world???

We do!

We being Mary Catherine, Erin, and me. 

And we went to Geneva, Switzerland for three days and had just a splendid time and there were lots of girlie moments and giggles and gluten-free candy for everyone. 

Posin' pretty.
Gluten-free candy not pictured. 

We arrived early Friday morning and got settled into our hotel, which was actually just over the border into France in a town called Ferney-Voltaire where Voltaire lived for a while and bossed everyone in the town around. We were all starving by this time so we went set off to Geneva to find food and see the city.

The water is so blue because Swiss women throw their sapphires
 into the water when they become last season. 

Let me just emphasis again: Geneva is SO EXPENSIVE. We wandered around for a good while trying to find a restaurant that offered gluten-free dishes and/or that didn't cost 25 euros/francs/rubies for a lunch plate. We finally found a pub that had croque monsieur sandwiches and omelettes that wasn't extremely expensive. 

I was seeing double at that point, and it was very yummy. 

Fancy ham & cheese plus salad. I love ham. 

After lunch, we explored the town more and stumbled upon--I mean, purposefully discovered--Cathedrale de Saint-Pierre, which is a very large Reformist church that John Calvin adopted when he lived in Geneva. Geneva was where all of the Protestant leaders, including Calvin, sought refuge during the Reformation. 

The church was cool on the inside, although it was markedly devoid of much decoration because the Protestants weren't big proponents of those kinds of things. 

They didn't mind imposing columns. 

There was one room inside that was decorated very lavishly. I forgot what the actually story was, but I think they recently restored it to how it looked before the Protestants took over? I may be making that up, but it was a nice room. 

 

We walked up a few thousand narrow spiral staircases to get to the towers that gave an awesome 360 degree view of Geneva.

My "the stone walls are all starting to look the same" face (à la The Yellow Wallpaper). 

Annnnd, then we did more wandering and talking and sitting in parks and wandering. Yay Geneva!

Mary and Erin playing checkers in one of Geneva's many parks.
They soon abandoned their game, because we remembered how boring checkers is if it isn't raining. 

For dinner, we had kebabs and fries. 

Because every good European loves a good ol' kebab from an immigrant-owned restaurant. 

In our hunt for cheap food the next morning we happened upon the Saturday markets in Ferney-Voltaire. The market was very impressive; I think it took up the whole town. We had delicious strawberries, and I had an excellent slab of gingerbread that lasted me the whole day. 

For our lunch we purchased a roasted chicken and potato combo for only 3 euros! We were very proud of ourselves and split two between the three of us. 

(Sharing is caring; one of many lessons I've learned in Socialist France, Daddy.) 

We took the bus into Geneva to find a picnic spot, but we got a little desperate and classily had our lunch in front of the United Nations. We hoped that people would not assume we were hobos and think that a) we were protesting something, b) just having lunch, or c) protesting Israeli apartheid by having our lunch. 

.

Palais des Nations in the far background;
Middle-ground: Giant chair with broken leg was an homage to the effort to ban land mines;
well-coiffed wanderers making plates out of paper bags in the front. 

Chicken n' potatoes, sold by a jolly man who told us they were beautiful chickens for beautiful girls. 

No photo-shoot would be complete without a picture featuring a chicken carcass!

After devouring our meal like rapid dogs, we embarked on a quest to find the Patek Philippe Watch Museum that was advertised everywhere. We mistakenly entered into the extremely fancy Patek Philippe Watch Store, but the lady gave us free tickets to the museum so it worked out well. We found the right museum and took a very long but interesting tour of the company's building and watch collection. 

The tour guide informed us that Geneva is so well-known for its watchmaking because...way-back-when, Geneva was a very popular transit stop for businessmen traveling through Europe, who would often buy artisanal presents there to bring home. Thus, there was a large population of specialty craftsmen and the like. But then the Protestants came in and forbid people to wear jewelry so now the artisan class didn't know what to do with themselves. But then Calvin decided that people could wear watches since they were functional, so all these different types of tradesmen (painters, jewelers, engravers, etc.) devoted themselves to making beautiful and intricate watches instead! 

And that's that. 

Speaking of the Reformers....This is the Reformation Wall, in front of which we hung out for a while with some sketchy Swiss teenagers. (We saw one of them put a cigarette through her gauge hole.) 

One of the well-known dishes of Swiss cuisine is fondue so, naturally, we jumped on board that bandwagon. We walked for a while looking for a place and just as we were about to give up, we found a restaurant with not-too-pricey fondue. 

So. much. cheese. 

I got the fondue aux bolets, which has mushrooms. It was pretty good, with a strong wine taste. It came with dried meat, bread, and tiny cocktail pickles and onions. 

I could make it at home with my fondue pot though, not to be a cheese snob...

Yum. Yum. Yum. 

On Sunday, we took a train ride to nearby Lausanne, which is situated further north on Lake Geneva. It was a lovely little town, one that gave us a great view of the mountains and the lake and cute Swiss buildings. We hiked across (nearly) the entire town in an attempt to eat lunch by the lake (i.e. have our sandwiches frozen in our hands). We also visited a photography museum with a really moving exhibit of a 1960's war photographer's work. 

Just the Alps behind me, no big deal.
Not like I was excited to see where the von Trapp family finally escaped the clutches of the Nazis. 

On the train ride home, we made a quick stop in Morgues, a quaint lil' town, to see how the view there was (and to say we've visited three Swiss cities).

This is my best Maria von Trapp impression. It included a half-spin. 

We sang a lot of Sound of Music that weekend. 

For our final meal in Geneva (my wallet was so sad), we ate a Swiss cuisine restaurant that looked just like what one would imagine a Swiss restaurant to look like. Everything was wood, there were lots of dead animals on the walls, and, overall, a very cozy atmosphere. 

We got 'la raclette', which is a plate, served in individual portions, of cheese that has been melted while still on the wheel and then scraped off. So it was basically like fondue put on a plate for you, without the wine base. Also there were the crunchy edge parts that were soooo yummy. 

With it, they gave us a lot of meat, tiny potatoes, pickles, onions, and bread.

For the food-lovers that find themselves too clumsy and/or impatient to fondue. 

So in summary, melted cheese.

Plus lots of fun with fun friends! 

Our photo-booth picture from the photography exhibit: 

(there was no screen on the inside so we had no idea what was going on). 

This is way cuter than any poster for the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. We know. 

Prague

For the second half of our break, we went to Prague! 

I visited Prague for a few days when I visited Europe the first time, but we only had one free day (really like four hours) to walk around. I also didn't remember that much about it so I figured that a return visit would be a worthwhile venture. It was just a five hour bus ride from Berlin, and our bus was SWEET. The seats were super comfy, everyone had their own TV, and we got free coffee. Which is basically everything I want in life. 

It was just a teeny-tiny-miniscule bit warmer in Prague, but we still had to take lots of breaks from walking outside.

Poising awkwardly on the Charles Bridge. Prague Castle in the background. 

Our hostel was super nice also. It was called the Czech Inn, oh you pun-y people. We had breakfast in the hostel every morning and it was a very nice buffet. If only I could have that every morning...

It was in the bar, where we also enjoyed some tasty Czech beer. 

Even the ceiling impressed me. 

For our first dinner we went to a restaurant down the street at the recommendation of the hostel attendant. It was 'bohemian' food, because apparently the Czech Republic is part of a region that was the original Bohemia. Our food was amazing and super cheap and we were most pleased with ourselves. 

I had roasted boar with a rosehip sauce and dumplings. ROASTED BOAR. Boar. I felt like I was a princess in a period piece film or something. It was tasty, with texture like normal pork. 

This is what Belle was first served at the Beast's castle but then got weirded out because it was never clear what kind of animal that Beast actually was. 

Blair and Erin both had wild hare, which I tasted a lot of. It was also amazing and delicious and made me feel like a fairy tale princess. (I don't think usually that's people's reactions to eating weird meats but whatever). 

Hare's the hare. 

However, the most exciting part of the night was that Miki came to meet me. Of course his train was late because it broke down because of Hungary. But it was still great!

Look at how cute we are. 

Some of us smile for pictures, while others pretend that Europeans are better than everyone else. 

We took a walking tour one day and learned a lot about the city's history. Basically the history of Prague is just a long string of dudes being jerks to one another and then getting revenge. There were also two really devastating fires and several defenestrations. Our tour guide was this hilarious Greek student who would say things like "and then he did suicide;" his English wasn't the best but he made up for it with flair. 

After the two hour tour was over, we needed to warm up naturally. We had lunch with our tour guide (because we were the friendliest) and two German girls on the tour. We ate in a restaurant that was pirate themed but had typical Czech food. I had roast beef and dumplings. 

Dumplings were unintentionally a thematic element of the trip. 

Prague has a lot of cool buildings, which they work really hard to keep in good shape because some lady had a dream once about a fancy city named Praha. More history for you. 

Cool building that made me want to draw shapes. 

After not eating for thirty minutes, we of course had to get a snack. We had the same kind of sweet dough columns that they sell in Hungry although these weren't as delicious. But still a good snack. 

This is one of our many attempts to smile more like Europeans for pictures. 

Miki also found a monastery where they brew beer, because we hadn't had any beer for a whole 45 minutes. There were a lot of buildings on the monastic complex but we only went to the bar/restaurant. We met a very nice old man who has apparently lived everywhere and knows everything. He told us that the monastery's IPA is the best in all the land (of the Czech Republic). Miki was very excited about the huge beer brewing containers and kept trying to get us to take a picture in front of them.

But what he really wanted was a picture of himself in front of them. 

The next day we went to Prague Castle, which is actually a huge castle complex with ten different museums and/or exhibits within it.  It took us nearly all day to visit everything, and we even stopped reading the very wordy accounts of Czech history half-way through. 

Lots of historical artifacts though! 

Like real suits of armor! One such suit pictured here with a wax model of a 15th century dodo bird. 

The rooms inside of the buildings were colder than it was outside that day. I can't imagine how people lived there. They must have been fans of layering their chain-mail and lace corsets and whatnot.

We all forgot our chain-mail so we had to take a medieval coffee break to warm up. 

The architecture in the castle complex was very awesome. One building was a former house for single ladies, which sounds like it would be a brothel but was just for classy rich women. Inside was an exhibit on all of the gargoyles of the castle, and they were all freakishly awesome. 

My impression of a Czech gargoyle. 

Afterwards we went to Lennon's Wall. No one really knew what the purpose of the wall was, but according to Wikipedia, it was a symbol of artistic expression and free speech during the country's communist years. There was originally just one portrait of John Lennon, but it's been repeatedly covered by graffiti and other paintings of John Lennon. A lot of the graffiti that we saw featured snippets of John Lennon songs (like every other graffitied wall).

All of the fellow tourists were so excited to take pictures in front of it. 

We had lunch/dinner at a random local restaurant, where I had 'duck in a pan' with red cabbage and assorted dumplings. It was delicious of course. 

They weren't kidding about the pan. 

Since we knew it would be our last meal in a real Czech breakfast, we had dessert. I had apple strudel, which was on practically every menu in both Germany and the Czech Republic. It was super yummy. Strudel is pie's cool cousin. 

Our final day we did a little shopping and meandering. Miki and I bought a padlock to put on a bridge somewhere (we've been meaning to do that for as long as we've been dating). We finally put it on the Charles Bridge. The grid that we put it on is apparently some kind religious icon, because as we were trying to lock it on a MILLION other tourists came up to take their pictures next to it. They would put one hand on the cross thing on the stone ledge and then their other hand on the iron dude in the center, arranging their fingers a certain way. Then they would wait for their friends to take a picture of them. I don't know if it is some kind of pilgrimage thing, but it kinda looked like it was some nonsense that a tour guide made up one day. Anyway, three cheers for our love lock! 

Five dollars to whoever can find which one is ours. (excluding Miki)

Overall, our trip was very lovely. Prague was very charming. 

Still, it was nice to get back to Nice, mostly because we hadn't seen the sun shine in a week. 

Please once more look at how cute we are. 

(Ignore how my coat made me look a little chubs)