March and April: Travel!

So March was relatively lowkey until the very end... when I went to Morocco for the weekend! I went to Fez, which while it's not the capital of Morocco, it's got a very famous medina [or market]. In fact, the medina of fez is the largest unmapped area in the world, with as many as 50,000 streets. I, for one, wouldn't doubt this. Our hotel is amazing, it was this super cool old villa which had been converted into hotel for tourists, but still had amazing fountains in the courtyard and mosaics. The medina is huge, and it is very much NOT a culture sight which caters to tourists. In fact, for every tourist in the medina, there was at least 10 moroccans. They sell everything in there too, from camel meat to rose water, to the traditional fez. I only spent 140 euros for the whole weekend, and that included my hotel, all my food, transport to and from the airport and every stupid souvenir I bought [including my not so stupid leather hand bag :)]. So now you're wondering, photos? Well I have a ton up on flickr, and frankly it's easier to send those interested to flickr because uploading photos always screws up the format on the blog.
Click Here for pictures!

Anyway, I had a few days at school before Spring Break! My spring break was pretty relaxing, eventhough I did travel a fair bit. I went to England for Easter and the first week of break. I saw Hastings [a beach town], Lullingstone Roman Villa and Hever castle which is where Anne Boelyn grew up. After that, I went to Amsterdam for a couple days to meet up with some friends, and I went to the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh Museum, the Heineken Experience and wandered around the city a great deal. This is the second time I've been to Amsterdam, and I think it's such a beautiful city. It's a shame it's only really known for prostitutes and weed, given that the canals and the beautiful houses are so wonderful to enjoy! Not to mention all the flowers and the rich history of the city. After my weekend in Amsterdam, I went to Paris for a few days, but because of the train strikes, I was unable to see the gardens at Giverny - what I was REALLY looking forward to! - and the weather was pretty dismal, but I made the best of it, and went to Versailles, the garden of Luxembourg and all around Montmarte. Oh well, I guess I'm not too bothered because I'll go to Paris again, and I feel like the more sights in Paris proper I see now, the more I can focus on just traveling the rest of the north of France when I come back.

Anyway, I arrived back in Aix the day before the volcano erupted! What luck, right? I was taking a train anyway, but it was a very good coincidence anyway, given how packed the trains reportedly were after the volcano grounded flights - some tickets were over 700 euros! Since then, I've just been in Aix, preparing and taking exams. I leave France May 30th! How crazy!

February!: Exams, Venice, and Cardiff!

February was still a cold month. A very cold month, considering that all of my teachers have been saying for ages that it should be warming up by then.
Anyway, I finished the last of my exams in the first week of February just in time for winter break, which was a week in the middle of the month. For the first weekend, I hopped on a train to Venice for carnival with 4 of my friends. This train journey took 12 hours and opened my eyes to how different european trains are! I've taken trains in England, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. English trains are amazing. They're clean, efficient, decent restrooms. Italian trains are horrible.

The bathroom literally consists of a toilet seat over an open hole. So when you walk in, you are greeted to shit all over, and a great view of the train tracks whizzing by. No bueno. Plus, our train from Ventimili to Milano was 30 minutes late, so we missed the connection to Venice. Too bad that everyone on that train was trying to catch the same Venice train, so the next train was so packed we had to stand in the corridor for the 3 hour journey! Insane!

In Venice, my friends and I had rented an apartment for the weekend, which was actually a great idea, since the cost each night for all of us was 20 euros - way cheaper than the 50 per nite each hostel in venice wanted! Venice for carnival was great; tons of people, and lots of families too, so it's not really the drinking/wasted/24 hr party i was kind of fearing. Loads of people in masks and beautiful costumes. The canals are really just as pretty as they look in all the pictures, it's soo cool! Plus, we did see the city start to flood a bit when the tide rose, very cool indeed! And, during the 2 week carnival period, it's the only time you can wear a mask in Venice. So of course, i bought a mask and wore it constantly!

After the weekend, I flew to Cardiff and spent a really awesome week with Luke. It was your general Cardiff trip: meeting up with old friends, nights out to fun bars, walks around the nice parks, and shopping.

December and January in Aix

So school wise, I had a ton of exams waiting for me in early January, which meant that early December was just for finishing up classes and trying not to freeze! Luke came to visit me during my last week before break, and so I showed him around Aix, including the adorable Christmas market they set up here.

Each craftsman sets up a little booth and they sell everything from hand painted ornaments to cookies to art. The Christmas markets are a big deal in Europe, and pretty much every major city has one.





Luke and I then embarked on a journey to Brussels in Belgium, where it was not just snowing a lit bit, but snowing a lot! And apparently, it doesn't snow in Belgium... ever. So I guess Europe had it out for me this winter, because I've been snowed on more in the past 2 months than I have been in the past 5 years. We stayed close to the Hotel de Ville [or, City Hall as we know it english] and it looked like this...
We wandered around a lot in Brussels [it's got a rather small centre ville, which is nice, easy to see everything rather quickly and easily] but it was so so cold! It didn't snow during our sightseeing days, but it did on the day we were supposed to fly out, which resulted in us having to spend the night in Brussels' airport.

Anyway, here's a nice photo of the snow...



Anyway, I could go on for ages about Brussels, it's one of my new favorite cities, I could totally live there. And contrary to the popular notion that everyone speaks English, I actually spoke and used my French more in Brussels than I do in a given day in France. Go figure.




So after Brussels, Luke and I returned to the UK for Christmas. And a blizzard struck. Literally as we drove from the airport. So, apparently in the UK, people don't use chains on their tires, so there were all these cars abandoned at the bottoms of hills. It doesn't make any sense to me. Oh, and people salt their driveways with table salt. teehee. Anyway, this was the blizzard...

Christmas with Luke's family was pretty cool, it was very english, complete with christmas pudding, a turkey cooked with bacon, and followed by like 4 more days of intense eating [christmas just never ends there!]

After Christmas [and it's subsequent 50 billion days] was done, Luke and I rang in the new year in London, which is a lot cooler than it sounds, given the sheer amount of people with the same mission!
That being said, Bonne Année!

After New Years, I was in the UK until January 4th, and returned to a finals period lasting 3 weeks. During which, some of my teachers just decided to give us a second final. Just because. I think they get tired of having exams for so long too, it's just plain ridiculous!

So I got snowed on in Belgium, England, and finally France. In Aix-en-Provence, it never snows. It's kind of like San Diego in a way, except it generally gets a bit colder in the winter. But this has been a freakishly cold winter in Aix, with many days hovering around 1 or 2 degrees celcius [so mid 30s farenheight] and it DID actually snow here! enough to make a tiny snowman! How crazy!

Anyway, that's pretty much the very quick story of how things have been, the next few months should be pretty interesting, there's a lot of travel planned!

Photos

I'm uploading more photos because I've taken a lot.

This is the view from my apartment window, and that is my friend Robert.














These are my friends, next to me is Robert again, then Jessica, Brandon, Nathan and Jose. We're all CSU kids.














This is the beach in Marseille. There's technically only one beach close to the center of Marseille, and it's this one, Plage des Catalans. It's not super nice, and it's definitely a locals beach, but the water is amazing, there must be a higher salt content because you float so easily here.















This is Cardiff Castle in Wales. It's not a proper medieval castle, but it's still very pretty :)

So 3 months of absence...

Right. I fully intended on writing personal emails to everyone I know, detailing what I've been up to while in France, and that these emails would be timely to say the least. And I'm well aware that did not happen, so I've decided to quickly sum up the first 3 months here, and attempt to do a monthly update from here on out [because lord knows I can't be counted on to update as things actually happen!]

I arrived in Aix-en-Provence, France on August 18th, and since then I've been to the UK 3 times [can you really fault me? It is beautiful there, aside from being the land of my boyfriend], I've swam in the mediterreanean in Marseille as well as St. Tropez [oui oui, c'est chic - and very overpriced!], I've been to Arles and seen the famous cafe which inspired Van Gogh to paint "Cafe Terrace at Night", I've also been out hiking in lavendar fields, and made a journey to Monaco to see the beautiful rivera and also to see the famous Monte Carlo museum.

So I share a fairly large studio apartment with another girl named Jessica from San Luis Obispo. We've got 3 big french windows [teehee] with really great little, ledges I guess you would say, which we can sit in to enjoy warm sunny days. Of course, now that winter is here, my poinsettia lives out there, because it's far too cold for me to be sitting out there!

I live about a 30 minute bus ride from Marseille, so when the weather was warmer, we would go down to go swimming or just enjoy a nice ocean breeze, and thus visited Marseille now 3 times.

It's very beautiful in the Vieux Port District, but Marseille is very worn down in a lot of areas, and it's not advisable to be the intrepid explorer and branch off into natives only areas - you'll be surprised how much arabic you hear on the streets in comparisson with French - sometimes it's much much more!

I've got to visit Luke 3 times now, but each time ended up seeing a site I hadn't seen before! The first trip, we ended up at Downe House, former home of Charles Darwin that's been set up as a sort of Ode to his life. It was very interesting, but I mainly went because I know it means a lot to Mom - and Luke happens to live less than 5 miles from it.

-This is a photo of some venus fly traps. Apparently, Darwin liked to do experiements and see in which conditions plants would thrive, and which would change the plant itself. He also liked to collect and study exotic plants - as this surely was back in days before international shipping and greenhouses every where. The black ones have been touched by humans, it kills them.

St. Tropez was very very overpriced, and honestly, I prefered Monaco 100% more. Monaco is more beautiful, the people are much nicer, it's not as overpriced, and there's actual sites to see! Monaco is just amazing, so I have no idea what St. Tropez is considered the jewel of the Cote d'Azur, it really should be beautiful Monaco.

So the CSU program comes with some pre-paid trips, and the two I've been on so far were really nice! We went to the old Roman capital of Arles, and then on a separate trip went out into the lavendar fields [!!!] They weren't in bloom [boo] but still beautiful! Arles is also a city Van Gogh was eternally inspired by, and it serves as the inspiration for a number of his paintings, including Cafe Terrace at Night.

I also got to spend some time in Cardiff, Wales, where I did study abroad in 2007, as well as London, and I got to see some things in both places I hadn't before - Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff and I walked Tower Bridge in London at night. Very fun and very cold!

So that's the update for now! As I go more places and do more things, I'll update more. I'm really really sorry it's taken me this long just to do this! But I've been busy trying to learn French and I keep getting sick! It's unfortunate, but hopefully I'll acclimate to the cold before winter strikes!

A bientot!

-Katie