So I'd like to tell you all about how I've become a total food snob here. I'd love to say nothing short of AOC wines and cheeses flips my fancy, and that if it doesn't have duck in it, I just say no. But that's not true at all. Honestly, I've tried to keep away from United States cuisine and chains, and I've been doing well. Until this trip.
This trip I discovered something.
Subway.
Subway is delicious, even in France.
When you are living skinny on a trip, wondering if you'll ever see the color green in your food for the next week, you deal with it. After several months here, I don't expect the French to load on the vegetables when I ask for a sandwich a typical small boulangerie. I will enjoy the bread and the cheese and that will be that. I just expect to not eat as healthy on vacations (maybe I'll just pick up an apple at Monoprix).
In Paris, I was swept back into what the States call a veggie sandwich. We were on our way to the Eiffel Tower late at night, and as our hunger crept in, we realized we were in the middle of tourist country. No cute ma n pop places here, just fast overpriced crepes and wildly expensive pizza. Matheus suggested Subway. Even a matter of blocks from the Tower, it keeps its menu prices fixed at 2.90 for the 15 cm (6") and 5 euros for the 30 cm (footlong). I grumpily agreed, sad to be ending my streak without any American fastfood but also very hungry. I love Subway in the States, but I did not expect to get suddenly excited as I started my order (yes, I am learning my different vegetables in French). The breads are generally similar, and there were all the same veggies available (except spinach). When I got back to the table, I devoured it. I felt so new, so re-energized from the fresh produce making its way to my stomach.
We got Subway twice more on the trip to the South. I don't regret it at all. They were meals we would have eaten French fastfood anyway (questionable meat and an abundance of fries), so these sandwiches kept me energized and full of nutrients.
We tried getting Subway as our last meal when we arrived back in Compiegne. Matheus was teasing me, because I'd never eaten at ours here -- he was shocked. We were so happy to see the closing time was 11! But, alas... on a Friday night, when it was supposed to be open until 11, the doors were locked and the restaurant cleaned at 10:20.
That's so French.
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
A Lesson in Portuguese
Matheus, from Brazil, is fighting an uphill battle to help me learn the tiniest bit of Portuguese. Needless to say, I don't know a lot, but here I thought I would give you some of the basics I've learned.
eu = I
você = you
ele/ela = she/he
a gente = we
vocês = you (plural)
eles/elas = they (shes/hes, plural)
sim, não = yes, no
obrigada (f), obrigado (m) = thank you
de nada = you're welcome (well, more literally "of nothing" -- but don't say "você é bem-vinda" after someone thanks you in portuguese)
There are two different verbs "to be" in Portuguese: ser and estar. The first is used for permanent characteristics, like "I am a girl." The second is used for transient descriptions, like "I am in France."
A few useful phrases:
Eu estou com fome = I am hungry
Eu quero comer = I want to eat
Eu gosto de você = I like you
Now imagine saying all of that without making any English sounds. A very, very, very difficult language...
eu = I
você = you
ele/ela = she/he
a gente = we
vocês = you (plural)
eles/elas = they (shes/hes, plural)
sim, não = yes, no
obrigada (f), obrigado (m) = thank you
de nada = you're welcome (well, more literally "of nothing" -- but don't say "você é bem-vinda" after someone thanks you in portuguese)
There are two different verbs "to be" in Portuguese: ser and estar. The first is used for permanent characteristics, like "I am a girl." The second is used for transient descriptions, like "I am in France."
A few useful phrases:
Eu estou com fome = I am hungry
Eu quero comer = I want to eat
Eu gosto de você = I like you
Now imagine saying all of that without making any English sounds. A very, very, very difficult language...
Entirely Scattered
Quick note:
I have been the world's worst blogger for the past two months. In order to get back into the swing of it (since the prospect of owing five huge posts is wilding intimidating and has induced a writer's block), I'm going to post several slightly shorter posts completely out of chronological order, as you can see from the last couple posts.
In the past two months, I have been to Madrid, Amsterdam, Rennes, Caen, St Malo, Mont St Michel, Chartres, Barcelona, Paris (a few times ;)), Nîmes, Montpellier, and Dijon. I want to have detailed accounts of each journey on here, but I've found myself stuck when I go to write about them. It is much easier to focus on the cities separately (instead of giving you a huge post about Chartres, Rennes, St Malo, Mont St Michel, Caen all together, give you each one, one at a time).
So, all will come in good time, but be patient with the sudden influx of posts. I will try to tie them together with titles, so you can have an idea of which trips were back to back.
Bisous!
I have been the world's worst blogger for the past two months. In order to get back into the swing of it (since the prospect of owing five huge posts is wilding intimidating and has induced a writer's block), I'm going to post several slightly shorter posts completely out of chronological order, as you can see from the last couple posts.
In the past two months, I have been to Madrid, Amsterdam, Rennes, Caen, St Malo, Mont St Michel, Chartres, Barcelona, Paris (a few times ;)), Nîmes, Montpellier, and Dijon. I want to have detailed accounts of each journey on here, but I've found myself stuck when I go to write about them. It is much easier to focus on the cities separately (instead of giving you a huge post about Chartres, Rennes, St Malo, Mont St Michel, Caen all together, give you each one, one at a time).
So, all will come in good time, but be patient with the sudden influx of posts. I will try to tie them together with titles, so you can have an idea of which trips were back to back.
Bisous!
A Train Ride to Barcelona
19 Avril 2012
Compiegne, France -> Gare du Nord, Paris, France -> Gare de Lyon, Paris, France -> Figueres, Espagne -> BARCELONE, Catalogne, Espagne
En route to Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
This was a long journey, so I'm writing a short post about it. For me, this train ride was a part of the trip; I really enjoyed it. I didn't want to make my Barcelona post too long, so I am separating this from it.
This was my first trip out of Gare de Lyon. It is a newer gare, and I was not familiar the concept of "Halls." I arrived a comfortable hour early, and on the monitor I saw that the TGV 6213 would depart from Hall 3.
My first task was to search for a bathroom - .5€ for the toilet? I can hold it, I decided.
I looked around at the sandwich stand before searching for this mysterious "Hall 3." My mistake, I should have done this at Gare du Nord. The selection here was smaller and much more pricey! Gare du Nord is huge, with tons of selection -- lesson learned.
Upstairs, I find Hall 3 and resign to the sandwich. It was tasty, but certainly pricey for its size. When the "Hall 3" showing on the monitor for TGV 6213 finally changed to Voie (Platform) A, I gathered my things and walked past several train cars to reach my assigned seat in voiture (car) 15, place assise (seat) 85. I settle in for a five and a half hour journey.
I slept steadily through the middle of France, but woke up early enough to enjoy the ride through the vineyards, fields of gold, mountains and past Montpellier and Nîmes (destinations for les vacances the following week).
The mountains were breath taking. Before seeing those peaks, though, we rode along a string of land in the south of France, with water on both sides. Used only for the railroad!
On the last leg of the journey to Figueras as we crossed the border, for my entertainment, there were two women and a little girl speaking rapid Spanish; from their accents, I assumed that they were native to Spain. Halfway through the journey, the girl began practicing her French. The whole group began speaking beautiful, flawless French. It was cool to witness such a young girl switching so perfectly between two accents.
Needless to say, I was jealous.
From Figueras (in Spain) to Barcelona, there was a special connection high speed train specifically intended to bring in international travelers. On this train, there was a monitor about to tell you how fast the train was travelling.
I saw this monitor get up to 159 km/h, but I know the TGV is able to reach much higher speeds. When the monitor reaches ~115 km/h, the speed begins to blink and disappear; they aren't interested in telling you just how slow they go.
The entire ride, though filled with pleasant scenery, did not seem promising weather-wise. I passed dark cloud after dark cloud. The worst was on this train. I was facing a completely black cloud, the scenery blurred with rain. Not much further on, people started looking to the windows, pointing...
I've decided it's the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. Doesn't it look like there should be a pot of gold back in those trees?
Not only a full rainbow,
but a double rainbow. It was like a promise that my weekend would not be stormy at all, but sunny and warm.
That it was! The weather in Barcelona was perfect; sunny and without rain. A wonderful escape from the dreary, cold weather up north.
Coming soon: Barcelona.
Compiegne, France -> Gare du Nord, Paris, France -> Gare de Lyon, Paris, France -> Figueres, Espagne -> BARCELONE, Catalogne, Espagne
En route to Barcelona, Catalunya, Spain
This was a long journey, so I'm writing a short post about it. For me, this train ride was a part of the trip; I really enjoyed it. I didn't want to make my Barcelona post too long, so I am separating this from it.
This was my first trip out of Gare de Lyon. It is a newer gare, and I was not familiar the concept of "Halls." I arrived a comfortable hour early, and on the monitor I saw that the TGV 6213 would depart from Hall 3.
My first task was to search for a bathroom - .5€ for the toilet? I can hold it, I decided.
I looked around at the sandwich stand before searching for this mysterious "Hall 3." My mistake, I should have done this at Gare du Nord. The selection here was smaller and much more pricey! Gare du Nord is huge, with tons of selection -- lesson learned.
Upstairs, I find Hall 3 and resign to the sandwich. It was tasty, but certainly pricey for its size. When the "Hall 3" showing on the monitor for TGV 6213 finally changed to Voie (Platform) A, I gathered my things and walked past several train cars to reach my assigned seat in voiture (car) 15, place assise (seat) 85. I settle in for a five and a half hour journey.
I slept steadily through the middle of France, but woke up early enough to enjoy the ride through the vineyards, fields of gold, mountains and past Montpellier and Nîmes (destinations for les vacances the following week).
The mountains were breath taking. Before seeing those peaks, though, we rode along a string of land in the south of France, with water on both sides. Used only for the railroad!
On the last leg of the journey to Figueras as we crossed the border, for my entertainment, there were two women and a little girl speaking rapid Spanish; from their accents, I assumed that they were native to Spain. Halfway through the journey, the girl began practicing her French. The whole group began speaking beautiful, flawless French. It was cool to witness such a young girl switching so perfectly between two accents.
Needless to say, I was jealous.
From Figueras (in Spain) to Barcelona, there was a special connection high speed train specifically intended to bring in international travelers. On this train, there was a monitor about to tell you how fast the train was travelling.
I saw this monitor get up to 159 km/h, but I know the TGV is able to reach much higher speeds. When the monitor reaches ~115 km/h, the speed begins to blink and disappear; they aren't interested in telling you just how slow they go.
The entire ride, though filled with pleasant scenery, did not seem promising weather-wise. I passed dark cloud after dark cloud. The worst was on this train. I was facing a completely black cloud, the scenery blurred with rain. Not much further on, people started looking to the windows, pointing...
I've decided it's the most beautiful rainbow I've ever seen. Doesn't it look like there should be a pot of gold back in those trees?
Not only a full rainbow,
but a double rainbow. It was like a promise that my weekend would not be stormy at all, but sunny and warm.
That it was! The weather in Barcelona was perfect; sunny and without rain. A wonderful escape from the dreary, cold weather up north.
Coming soon: Barcelona.
A Note About You
Ok, Ok, I know I'm supposed to be working on my blog, but I found this FASCINATING.
6 (less than 1%) of you are Opera users, and 2 (also less than 1%) of you are UBUNTU users. My guess is that 98% of you haven't heard of these two things.
I've discovered the statistics feature to Blogger. I now know the following:
Only 46% of you are Windows users; I'm happy to see diversity! 42% are Mac users, but 5% and 2% are accessing from iPhone and iPad respectively. 1% are using Android, and 1% are on Linux (cool!). I'm dying to know who the less than 1% UBUNTU users are.
The largest part of my readership is using Firefox (40%) -- I love this browser, largely because Mozilla is a nonprofit organization whose values I respect. Safari comes in second at (28%), followed by Chrome at 24%. Interestingly, 4% of you are on IE (hopefully 9!) and a little over 2 percent are on other mobile browsers. Again, most curious to me is the 6 views (<1%) coming from Opera.
Lastly, your countries from which you are reading.... (Drum roll please) :
États-Unis (US)
France
Espagne (Spain) ( ;) thanks, Krista Maria)
Russie (Russia)
Suède (Sweden) (Mr. Hinz has read all 8 posts, it would appear)
Allemagne (Germany)
Norvège (Norway)
Portugal
Brésil (Brazil)
Canada
You all are fantastic.
6 (less than 1%) of you are Opera users, and 2 (also less than 1%) of you are UBUNTU users. My guess is that 98% of you haven't heard of these two things.
I've discovered the statistics feature to Blogger. I now know the following:
Only 46% of you are Windows users; I'm happy to see diversity! 42% are Mac users, but 5% and 2% are accessing from iPhone and iPad respectively. 1% are using Android, and 1% are on Linux (cool!). I'm dying to know who the less than 1% UBUNTU users are.
The largest part of my readership is using Firefox (40%) -- I love this browser, largely because Mozilla is a nonprofit organization whose values I respect. Safari comes in second at (28%), followed by Chrome at 24%. Interestingly, 4% of you are on IE (hopefully 9!) and a little over 2 percent are on other mobile browsers. Again, most curious to me is the 6 views (<1%) coming from Opera.
Lastly, your countries from which you are reading.... (Drum roll please) :
États-Unis (US)
France
Espagne (Spain) ( ;) thanks, Krista Maria)
Russie (Russia)
Suède (Sweden) (Mr. Hinz has read all 8 posts, it would appear)
Allemagne (Germany)
Norvège (Norway)
Portugal
Brésil (Brazil)
Canada
You all are fantastic.
Retour à Normandy & Bretagne - Chartres
06 Avril 2012
A Four DayWeekend Challenge Begins
Destinations? Chartres, Rennes, Mont-Saint-Michel, St Malo, Caen
Partners in Crime? Florencia & Macarena (My beloved Argentinian ladies)
Thursday night, I trekked over to Florencia's after packing my back so that my morning journey to the gare would be much shorter. We left the apartment early, arriving in Chartres before noon. Our first question getting off the train was where to find the cathedral with the world-renowned windows -- our question was answered as soon as we walked out of the gare. Soaring above the rest of the town, we could see the towers all the way from the gare.
What we found there wasn't totally different from other churches we had seen from the outside. It was beautiful, of course, but here it is what is inside that counts. We walked in and we began to take in hundreds of windows. Beautiful windows, with unbelievable colors. The windows were huge and many depicted intricate bible stories.
When we stepped outside, we found lively architecture on the backside as well:
Behind the church, there were beautiful grounds with lively gardens and a magnificent view. We passed through a gate and found ourselves looking out over the whole town.
After, we explored Chartres, which we found to be more than just the church. It was a small town, a bit smaller than Compiegne, but there were several interesting sites, a large medieval neighborhood, and lots of shopping. Our main destination was the church, so we spent the afternoon wandering in and out of shops, looking at the architecture around the city from several different centuries.
Some of the shops were more bizarre than others. We found an awesome toystore, and I fell in love with a line of stuffed animals... in particular, a certain unbelievable soft hippo. It turns out the brand, Histoire d'Ours, is some sort of designer stuffed animal collection. Who knew? The hippo I was looking at for my new nephew Jackson was priced around 45€.
Histoire d'Ours
Another store was very large, a chain. I found shoes and a sundress for 8€ each, as well as a new summer top. The most bizzare though was the shop across the street: we didn't go in. We were too unnerved by the strange mannequins in the window with paper faces taped onto their bodies.
In another shop, we found cool old tins and signs, tiny glass and decorated statues, miniatures, and old hats. A lot of the things carried a vintage pricetag, but I snagged a couple excellent little things for excellent little prices (these things I can't reveal to you -- they're surprises for the folks back home ;)).
We continued through the old town,
finding old churches,
(some falling apart)
finding old houses with romantic bridges behind,
finding these people have many of the same ideas as me,
and finding new friends.
The rest was more of the same exciting things. We made our way back to the train, stopping for a tasty sandwich and a new almond pastry I had never tried. Back in the station, we passed some grand opening of a monop-something in the station, a convenience store sort of thing. There were tiny French flags everywhere. We ended up standing on the TGV to Rennes, because the train was full. Onward I went with my lovely Florencia, happy as can be on another grand adventure.
To be continued...
A Four Day
Destinations? Chartres, Rennes, Mont-Saint-Michel, St Malo, Caen
Partners in Crime? Florencia & Macarena (My beloved Argentinian ladies)
Thursday night, I trekked over to Florencia's after packing my back so that my morning journey to the gare would be much shorter. We left the apartment early, arriving in Chartres before noon. Our first question getting off the train was where to find the cathedral with the world-renowned windows -- our question was answered as soon as we walked out of the gare. Soaring above the rest of the town, we could see the towers all the way from the gare.
When we stepped outside, we found lively architecture on the backside as well:
Behind the church, there were beautiful grounds with lively gardens and a magnificent view. We passed through a gate and found ourselves looking out over the whole town.
After, we explored Chartres, which we found to be more than just the church. It was a small town, a bit smaller than Compiegne, but there were several interesting sites, a large medieval neighborhood, and lots of shopping. Our main destination was the church, so we spent the afternoon wandering in and out of shops, looking at the architecture around the city from several different centuries.
Some of the shops were more bizarre than others. We found an awesome toystore, and I fell in love with a line of stuffed animals... in particular, a certain unbelievable soft hippo. It turns out the brand, Histoire d'Ours, is some sort of designer stuffed animal collection. Who knew? The hippo I was looking at for my new nephew Jackson was priced around 45€.
Histoire d'Ours
Another store was very large, a chain. I found shoes and a sundress for 8€ each, as well as a new summer top. The most bizzare though was the shop across the street: we didn't go in. We were too unnerved by the strange mannequins in the window with paper faces taped onto their bodies.
In another shop, we found cool old tins and signs, tiny glass and decorated statues, miniatures, and old hats. A lot of the things carried a vintage pricetag, but I snagged a couple excellent little things for excellent little prices (these things I can't reveal to you -- they're surprises for the folks back home ;)).
We continued through the old town,
finding old churches,
(some falling apart)
finding old houses with romantic bridges behind,
finding these people have many of the same ideas as me,
and finding new friends.
The rest was more of the same exciting things. We made our way back to the train, stopping for a tasty sandwich and a new almond pastry I had never tried. Back in the station, we passed some grand opening of a monop-something in the station, a convenience store sort of thing. There were tiny French flags everywhere. We ended up standing on the TGV to Rennes, because the train was full. Onward I went with my lovely Florencia, happy as can be on another grand adventure.
To be continued...
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