On a roll with these blog posts!

I've been so good about posting! Though after I write about the end of my trip and what I did this weekend, I'm not so sure I'll have that much to write about. At least until my next trip. But as of now, my next trip isn't until the beginning of February (to Milan), so...there might be a lull. But I'll try to avoid that. Maybe I'll go see Karen before then!

Before I write about Paris and my trip with Mark, I have big news: I bought my plane tickets home! I'll be home in D.C. on Saturday, May 18, a little over four months from now. But before I get back to D.C. I'll be stopping here:

Reykjavik, Iceland.

I was looking at plan tickets Friday evening with my friend, Katie, and they were either ridiculously expensive or they stopped in Iceland. And then we realized, "Hey. Iceland. That could be pretty cool." So we'll be flying from London to Reykjavik on May 14 for about $80 (Katie was smart and checked the EasyJet fares) and then from Reykjavik to D.C. on May 18 for only $262. Meaning I am flying home for less than $400...and stopping in Reykjavik, a place I've heard only good things about so far. Pretty exciting!

But back to the present. Or, rather, past. Paris!

The last leg of the Burke family vacation was in Paris because a. Paris is great and b. Mom and Colleen had never been there before. I've been lucky enough to have been to Paris several times now, and I always love it. I told Mark that if I were to live in France again, I'd want to be in Paris. This time Dad found us a really great hotel/apartment close to the Champs-Elysées; we actually had to drive through the traffic circle around the Arc de Triomphe, which was an experience in itself. When we walked into our apartment in the hotel they had left us gourmet chocolates, two free books about Paris, a card addressed to the Burke family, champagne, and juice. They also gave us macaroons on New Year's Eve.

Since we were close to the Champs-Elysées, we went out and walked it that evening so we could see the Christmas decorations and the Arc de Triomphe all lit up at night. It was windy and raining so Mom, Colleen, and I all went out with matching umbrellas from the hotel, but there were still thousands and thousands of people out. Which, frankly, is always a relief for me after Périgueux.

Arc de Triomphe - which I much prefer at night. It's cool during the day as well, but it's very pretty with the yellow lighting at night.

Lights on the Champs-Elysées and on the Cartier store. Love the lit up tigers.

I loved the rings of lights on the trees. They changed colors continuously, all in snyc with one another. Also in the picture on the right you can see the Arc in the background - and also some of the thousands of tourists who were doing the same thing that we were.

The next day we actually got some sunlight (some of the only sunlight I've seen in weeks), which was good since we wanted to walk around the city. Paris has a ton of museums and monuments, but it's also just as great to just walk around and see the buildings and the city itself. It's a very gorgeous city - there's a reason that people love it! Also I don't have a ton of pictures because I've taken lots in the past, but I did get some good ones.

Our first stop was Sainte Chapelle, a church fairly close to Notre Dame in the middle of the city. Sainte Chapelle is known for it's amazing stained glass and the fact that it contains Jesus's crown of thorns (which is not on display at all times, so we didn't see it or anything). It's a Gothic structure, started in the 1200s, so it's pretty amazing!

The lower level of the cathedral. This is where the commoners had to go to church while the upstairs was reserved for royalty. It's not such a shabby place to be relegated to.

Christmas decorations were still up at the back of the lower floor. 

 

I couldn't get the greatest picture of all the windows because half of them were covered for restoration purposes - but you get the idea. The entire story of the Bible is told in all of the stained glass. The round rose window at the front is the story of Judgment Day.

It's seriously one of the most elaborate and decorated cathedrals you'll ever see.

One thing to add is that there was a line to get into Sainte Chapelle. It wasn't too bad - probably only half an hour or so. But it's important because we waited in a lot of lines that day. After Sainte Chapelle we went over to Notre Dame, in front of which there was an enormous grandstand with signs about the cathedrals 850th anniversary. Pretty incredible, right? I guess they had grandstands up because they'll be having events at the cathedral this year. Just to get into the cathedral (which is free), you have to wait in an enormous line. Of course it is packed inside as well. But Notre Dame is a pretty amazing place, and we were there on a Sunday, so there was a service going on. It was very cool to actually see a service in the most famous church in France! And it was neat to see how quiet it was. There were signs telling the tourists to be respectful of the worshipers and to be quiet, and people really did make sure to whisper.

All the priests in white at the front.

Priests + the heads of tourists.

It's a massive building, and it's very beautiful. Most cathedrals are, but Notre Dame is particularly gorgeous because it is so well maintained. They have to keep the most famous church in tip-top shape!

Walking around the back of the church. I was trying to get a good picture of all the arches and columns.

Saints outside the front door. That's John the Baptist holding his head. Also a shot of Colleen and me out front.

We walked around Paris a bit after visiting Notre Dame and had lunch in a typical Parisian cafe. We'd decided that we would visit the Eiffel Tower that evening. The Eiffel Tower is really where the lines started. I knew there were going to be lines to wait in: I've done the Eiffel Tower twice before, and there are always thousands of people there. But I did not at all expect the lines to be like they were that night. It's not really a monument that you can skip, though, so we stuck it out and waited for about two hours at the bottom, rode to the second floor and checked it out, waited about 45 minutes to get to the top, checked out the top, and then waited in lines to get down twice more. It was a looot of waiting. Nobody was feeling particularly chatting.

Also, I've been up the Eiffel Tower at night in the middle of July. It was pretty chilly. But the top of the Eiffel Tower, 1050 feet in the air, on the 30th of December...brutal. It was freezing and the wind was crazy. One side of the tower was being completely avoided because the wind was so intense. But the pictures don't show all that.

Looking down the Champs de Mars (Paris's version of the National Mall). The big yellow building lit up on the left is Napoleon's tomb.

I mostly only have shots of this side of Paris because the other side was the windy side.

The moon was really bright and full that night!

Looking back at the tower from across the Seine. This was on the way back to the hotel. We all went back and pretty much collapsed because we were so tired and cold!

Which brings me to the last day in Paris (another long blog post, I know, but at least it's mostly pictures!) Mark arrived on December 31, so I went and met him at the airport early that morning. We headed back to the hotel and went out to walk around with my family. We had another meal in a typical French cafe (which was delicious) and mostly just walked around. (Still not sure how Mark did it since he was majorly jet-lagged. He was starting to fall asleep while we were walking, I kid you not.) Anyway, we did make a stop at Napoleon's tomb since my family hadn't been there before, and we also checked out a bit of the war museum that's attached to his tomb. It's all housed in Les Invalides, which is the old hospital for soldiers. I've talked about it before in a blog post from when I visited in 2011 - it's the museum with thousands of suits of armor. Plus a whole bunch of other stuff.

Family picture in front of the Eiffel Tower. I think this is the one that made the Christmas Card. Or the New Year's Card. Whatever you want to call it.

Mark and me also in front of the Eiffel Tower, just a different location.

Napoleon's tomb.

And finally, of course, to mention New Year's Eve. We went back to the hotel and rested and ate dinner (since we had a kitchen in our apartment) before going back out to watch the Eiffel Tower at midnight. It wasn't a big show this year. I think that sometimes it is, but there weren't any fireworks or anything. But we got to go down and watch the Eiffel Tower light up at night with tons of other people, hear everyone honking their horns, and drink a bottle of champagne. So it was a definitely a good way to bring in 2013!

It's not a great picture because it was raining and I was trying to keep my camera dry, hold a glass of champagne, and hold an umbrella (well, Mark might have been holding that for me), but I wanted to show the view that we had on New Year's Eve!

Mom, Dad, and Colleen left the next morning, and I was definitely sad to see them go. It's nice that next time I get to see them, it will be because I'm back in the U.S. and I won't have to say goodbye for four months at the end of it again! I think that's definitely a bit of a relief. The end is in sight here, so now it's easier to focus on the good things (basically all the traveling I'm going to do and working on my French and seeing my friends) and not worry about the bad things as much.

Tomorrow's post: my trip with Mark.

P.S. I have no one to root for in the playoffs now. Maybe that's a good thing since I'm missing it all anyway.

Museums, cathedrals, and castles

That title could be used for just about any blog post about Europe...

Two days in Spain were not enough. It's good that I've made Spanish friends here, because now I have an excuse to go back to Spain - and I have my own personal tour guides. If I go to Spain at the end of the program here I'll go to a totally different region, but after seeing the Basque Country and Bilbao, I think I'll probably like it! Plus I always like going to new countries!

It was a long drive down to Bilbao from the region where I live, and Bridget the GPS made it a longer trip than it needed to be. We stopped in Bordeaux on the way with the goal of getting lunch and seeing the city a bit, but it ended up raining and we missed the lunch hour in the restaurants, so it wasn't particularly great. Plus when we tried to leave the GPS sent us a crazy way through the city and down one-way streets - in the wrong direction. But eventually we did make it to Bilbao. And the moment we drove across the bridge into the city, we knew it was a good idea to go. The bridge abuts the Guggenheim, which is a truly amazing structure.

We came in across that bridge right there. This is a view of the Guggenheim from the hotel restaurant the first evening we were there.

And a better view of the museum itself.

So, of course, the Burkes are particularly crazy for modern architecture, but most people think the Guggenheim is pretty amazing. It's just so monstrous and almost impossibly weird. Frank Gehry based the museum on the idea of a fish, and it does almost seem like a giant, moving creature. It was pretty exceptional.

As evidenced by the pictures, we were staying directly across from the museum (and because it was Christmas-time, the hotel gave us vouchers for tickets at the museum). The hotel was pretty swanky! After about 10 minutes inside, Colleen said, "I love Spain."

She was a big fan of our monstrous beds.

Of course, the first thing we did the next morning was go to the museum. Colleen and I kept "imitating" Dad; this essentially consisted of us hyperventilating and sprinting toward the museum and saying things like, "Just look at those lines!" and taking pictures. But, as I've said, the museum was pretty great. Check out some pictures:

Entrance/street side of the museum.

Entrance and the famous puppy flower statue - which Colleen loved of course.

Some inside shots: a giant art installation (that is permanent, no surprise) and a bridge on one of the upper levels.

Looking up at the ceiling of the museum. I don't think there are straight lines anywhere in the museum.

The museum from the opposite side of the river. This also shows the side of the museum where there is a small courtyard. Colleen "sneezed" in that courtyard (Colleen sneezing is more like yelling) and it echoed off the curve of the building and scared the pants off just about everyone in the courtyard. One guy burst out laughing (as did Mom and I) and when we glanced at him, tried to cover his mouth. He was utterly unsuccessful and just kept laughing uncontrollably.

We didn't actually see that much else of Bilbao. We walked around the museum area and then went to the shopping area in the evening, where I went on a mad hunt for the store Zara because it is way cheaper in Spain than any other country. We were pretty beat from driving and everything, so we did hang out a lot instead of trekking over to the old part of town. But that was okay. Though it would have been nice to have a few more days in Bilbao - and in the region in general.

After Bilbao we headed back into France and stopped overnight in Tours (again with some unwanted "help" from Bridget. It was after some annoying detours in Tours that she got ditched). Tours in is the Loire Valley region, or the region in France that is known for all it's chateaux, or castles. We only spent one evening in Tours, so we didn't see a ton, but it's a very old city. At one point in time Tours was once the capital of France...a long time ago. And it was apparently also the site of an important battle during the Crusades according to Mark. But he tells me a lot of things. Sometimes I have to make a call about how much of it is necessary to retain - the details of the Battle of Tours did not make the cut.

Tours, however, was also the site of a very cool and very elaborate cathedral. It was also a little creepy because it was really dark. But the coolness factor outweighed the creepiness one.

Tours cathedral: inside and out.

And one of the main pedestrian roads of Tours.

And this is a giant tower built by Charlemagne (yeah, Charlemagne, like the Roman Emperor who converted everyone to Christianity and the guy who lived in the late eighth century) in honor of his dead wife.

Now I'm at the point in the blog post where I need to decide whether to continue or to cut it off until the next post. I definitely underestimated how much space it would take me to write about my vacation - but it was three weeks long almost, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. I also went out on a trip today, so I have all kinds of blog posts stacking up in my brain. I think I'll finish off with a little bit about Versailles because I don't have a ton to say about it. And, yes, I know that typing out my internal thought process is terribly interesting for all of you to read.

So I don't have a ton to say about Versailles not because I'm snotty, but because there were so many people that it was almost impossible to see anything. And it was winter so the gardens weren't that impressive. If I knew someone considering going to Versailles when the gardens weren't in bloom, I would probably tell them it wasn't worth it. The gardens are at least half the reason to go to Versailles - and after going, I may say that they're 75% of the reason to go to Versailles. Don't get me wrong, the castle is unbelievable; Dad kept asking how the French monarchy got so impossibly rich. But it was unbearably crowded. It was hard to see much of anything because there were so many people everywhere. I didn't learn that much as a result as well. It's probably best to go in September when the gardens are still in bloom and people are in school. But here are some pictures that I got off the castle and the gardens:

Main entrance to the castle. This doesn't begin to show how enormous this place actually is.

The famous golden gates.

The even more famous Hall of Mirrors!

This was pretty cool...

The Hall of Battles - filled with paintings of famous French victories and battles.

The famous Versailles gardens and statues.

Can you imagine this in the spring when everything would be green and in bloom? Maybe I'll try to make it back up here in the spring! The gardens are free to get into!

So that almost sums up my trip with my family. It's everything but Paris. But I didn't want to rush through Paris at the end of the post, so that will just have to start off tomorrow's post. Which will probably get written when I'm avoiding preparing for my classes for the week. Part of my weekly Sunday routine!

I. Don't O. U.

I'm thinking that catching up on my blog posts will probably be a several-part process, but I finally have time to sit down and write! Also, all my company is gone, so I don't have much else to do.

Judging by the list I just copied from my December 26 post, I'm supposed to start this post off by talking about Christmas day. (Oh jeez, this is going to be a test of my memory for details more than anything else.)

Oh, except I don't think I mentioned that Christmas Eve (or maybe it was December 23), Dad and I went out for a drive from Sarlat and visited one of the castles/towns that I had visited with my friends in the fall. Colleen wasn't feeling well, so Mom stayed with her in Sarlat while we went over to Beynac for a few hours.

Remember this one?

I will say that it still feels a bit weird that Christmas and New Year's even happened because it never really felt like the holiday season to me. Yes there were lights in the road and presents and Christmas markets, but since none of it was anything I was used to, it didn't feel very Christmas-y. That's not to say I didn't have a nice holiday season, it just feels strange to think that the holiday season is over when I hardly feel like it even happened.

But Christmas did happen, and here's what we did:

We opened a few presents and ate a picnic-Christmas meal in Mom and Dad's hotel room the morning of Christmas. In the afternoon we decided to go out and see a few towns that were fairly close to Sarlat. We decided on Cahors, because pictures showed us that there was a very cool and very old bridge in the town, and Rocamadour, because pictures showed us that it was awesome.

Here's the thing about Cahors: it does have a very cool, very old bridge. It is also a sad and ugly town. It was a very depressing place - even more depressing when you think that it was Christmas day and it was empty and gray and closed up. Unfortunately the bridge was not quite cool enough to cancel out the ugliness of the town, so it was kind of a bust. But still. Pictures! (But only of the bridge. Didn't take any of the town...)

The bridge was built in the 1300s to keep the British out of Cahors. I don't know how a bridge keeps people out of a city - to me it seems like more of an invitation to march right in - but I'm no defensive bridge-builder, so what do I know?

And despite being built in the 1300s, the bridge was apparently used by cars until fairly recently. Must be pretty structurally sound.

I climbed up some stairs to get up to a higher wall (in the picture above this, the little wall/arch toward the front of the bridge) which were pretty freaky. They were concave from being walked on for 700 years - and also had no hand railings.

So, yes, Cahors wasn't great, but it doesn't really matter cause I did still get cool pictures of the bridge. Luckily our second stop wasn't disappointing.

Get why I said that?

That's Rocamadour. It's an old town and a pilgrimage site built onto a cliff face in a valley. It's been a pilgrimage site for centuries, ever since they found the very well preserved body of Amadour (get it? "Rocamadour" = "roc" "amadour" or "Amadour's rock") in a cave of the cliff, a guy who they decided must have been a holy hermit and therefore worthy of a pilgrimage site. Clearly I'm a little hazy on these details, but basically the important thing is that it's a bunch of really old chapels built on a cliff face.

Old chapels and Colleen looking at old chapels.

It was all very cool and very interesting. And probably much nicer than it is in the summer. In the summer it is apparently swarmed with tourists. Our only company was a bunch of French families who had gone to walk around as a Christmas outing.

Looking up at the chapels and buildings from the "main street" of the town. (I used quotation marks because there is only one street in said town.)

Some skeleton paintings on the side of a church. Creepy!

We liked Rocamadour a lot. It was a very cool place to see and wander around. And as we were leaving, there was someone playing a trumpet across the valley along one of the ridges. We eventually spotted him (it looked like maybe a teenaged boy and a few friends) - but it was very cool to hear Christmas carols wafting across this valley containing a little town and an ancient pilgrimage site.

According to my list from two weeks ago, I am also supposed to mention our terrible GPS system, a British-accented disembodied female voice that Colleen named Bridget. No matter how many times we told Bridget we wanted the "shortest route," she seemed to be determined to take us on the "most scenic" one. Or "shortest route if you mean using only back country roads and no highways." A few of our trips probably had about an extra hour or two added to them because of Bridget. We eventually ditched her and used the iPhone, which seemed to have a much better grasp on what people want when they put in point A and point B in a GPS.

We left Sarlat the day after Christmas to go to Bilbao, Spain. On the way, however, we stopped in a nearby little town called Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil (how's that for a back-country French name?) which is home to some Cro-Magnon cave paintings. AKA cave paintings from 17,000 B.C. (I was off when I said they were 40,000 years old. But 19,000 years old is still pretty old.) The oldest Cro-Magnon skeletons were also discovered in Les Eyzies. (As an aside, the Cro-Magnons were the race that trumped the Neanderthals and eventually evolved into, well, us.) There are tons of cave paintings all over this region of France, but the paintings in Les Eyzies, which are in the Font-de-Gaume cave, are the only multicolor paintings that are still accessible to the public. Other multicolor paintings have been replicated in museums in the area, but the real caves are closed to the public. The only other original caves/paintings open to the public are one-color ones. And if caves are ever discovered now, they're immediately closed to the public and only accessible to historians/archaeologists. And they only let 80 people a day in to see the Font-de-Gaume paintings. So, needless to say, we were lucky to see these caves. (Also that it was winter, because you have to make reservations months in advance during tourist season. We just got to walk right up and buy tickets!)

I think that the Font-de-Gaume caves might have been my favorite part of our family trip. The caves themselves were very cool and then the drawings were incredible - mostly because they're just so old and it was so interesting to hear about them. I'd known about the cave paintings in this region since high school French, so it was great to see them in person. I found it incredibly fascinating.

Walking up to the caves and the entrance to the caves themselves. We couldn't take pictures inside or anything, so I'm going to get Google to do that work for me...

Buffalo! And reindeer! We saw lots of buffalo and reindeer and also a wolf. Apparently the cave is also home to tons of pictures of mammoths, a tiger, some other animals (that I don't remember) and even a picture of a Cro-Magnon (which is one of the only pictures like that that has ever been found) but those areas aren't open to the public. Partly because they're really hard to get to, and partly because it's just so hard to preserve everything. But what we saw was super cool.

I could keep talking about Font-de-Gaume, but I'm getting tired. I went to the pool today with friends (a story for another blog post) so I'm ready to get in bed early. Also this blog post is getting pretty long.

I still have lots to write about though, so I'll make sure to keep posting this weekend. And, to make sure I don't forget anything, here's a list of what's to come. Sorry, I just really like lists.

1. Bilbao and the Guggenheim
2. A slightly creepy cathedral
3. Versailles (and oh my gosh the crowds)
4. Paris (and oh my gosh the crowds) and New Year's Eve
5. Mark!
6. A city made of bricks
7. A giant fortress cathedral

And more. I'm sure I won't write about all of that in one post, but this will make sure I get back into blogging! And it will keep me occupied and not feeling sad about everyone leaving!