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Archive for the ‘Travels’ Category

St. John, USVI – January Term

Posted in Third Year, Travels on February 2, 2014|

This may have been the best January term of my life. The trip to St. John was one that I will remember forever and I’m already thinking of ways to return. Much like the connection I developed to a new home during the semester I spent in Paris, I’ve developed a similar connection to VIERS on St. John. For a look at the course blog visit it HERE. By the way,  you’re in for a long one. The trip was 10 days and we did SO MUCH. I won’t be offended if you just scroll through for the pictures.

If you read my previous blog post you’ll know that I was delayed in returning to Roanoke from Wyoming because of the winter storms, those same storms which are still hanging around and making it absolutely frigid everywhere. The flights to Roanoke from DC went something like this that Sunday: Delayed-Further Delayed-Cancelled. That happened three or four times before I found my way to a lovely hotel and slept. Monday, the same Monday I was supposed to be in class, I finally got on a flight around dinner time and made my way back to Hollins around 8pm. I was finally back but felt perpetually behind as I had to do laundry and study, while also catching up on what I missed that day. It was a bit rough.

The rest of that week went well, and we all left for St. John on Thursday the 9th. I abandoned all forms of communication from then until the 20th. It was quite nice. The flights were uneventful and we were incredibly lucky to get out of Charlotte as the winter storm proceeded to close down the airport after we took off. And stepping off the plane into the St. Thomas sunshine and heat was a very welcome change from the below freezing states we just left behind. Half of the adventure of Friday was getting everyone together, loading an open-air taxi with all twenty of us, plus our bags, and making across the entirety of St. Thomas to the 6pm Red Hook ferry to St. John. The drive was peppered with local artworks placed on the retaining walls alongside the road and the ferry ride was punctuated by our first island sunset. Once the drivers had gathered rental cars it was time for our first winding drive along mountain roads in the dark of the night to our new home, VIERS.

Sunset from the ferry - January 10

Sunset from the ferry – January 10

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Lyon: Food, Silk, and Film

Posted in Paris, Study Abroad - Fall 2012, Travels on November 12, 2012|

Day 1: We left from Gare de Lyon around 10am on the 19th. Due to some unexpected Metro malfunctions Maggie had to sprint to make the train and Melissa missed it entirely and had to take the next train. So we got there around mid-day after some beautiful scenery. We grabbed some lunch, I had packed a sandwich, and walked to the top of Lyon, taking a lot of stairs on the way up. We saw a lot of interesting things including the Basilique Notre Dame de Fourvière, the streets of old Lyon and the ancient Roman ruins, the astronomical clock sang for us, and we finished our tour with the house of the Lumière brothers (which I don’t have a great photo of). They were the first filmmakers in history and their home is now an amazing museum to film and movies. For dinner, instead of having Lyonnais specialties, Lauren and I went to an Asian restaurant which was very good. Not long after that I sat down and wrote some cards and then it was back to Paris!

Day Two: We started the day at Les Halles de Lyon, which is a giant indoor market with bakeries, restaurants, cheese shops, butcher shops, and fish mongers. It’s incredible. We had a tasting of local Charcutries (cold meats), including pâtés, cheeses, wine, and apple tarts. It was quite good and I enjoyed the pâté en croute the most out of all of those. And dessert. From there we made our way up to La Croix Rouge and went to a silk artisan’s that has been around for centuries: La Maison des Canuts. It was incredible. The amount of time it takes and the level of concentration needed is indescribable, but the end product is absolutely stunning.

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Monet and Impressionism: Day Trip to Giverny

Posted in Paris, Study Abroad - Fall 2012, Travels, tagged on November 9, 2012|

The weekend of my twentieth birthday (yes, two decades already!) started with a Friday trip to Giverny, which is about 45 minutes outside of Paris by train. For those of you that don’t know the name Giverny, you may know of some of the famous paintings produced there:

Water Lily Pond, by Claude Monet

Water Lilies, by Claude Monet

Monet’s Garden is amazing. It is dense with flowers and your eyes are overwhelmed by beauty and color everywhere you look. The property, which fell into disrepair after the artist’s death, is now owned by the Claude Monet Foundation and was restored with much work to its former glory. Giverny now welcomes 400,000 visitors every year, and I am so glad that this year I was lucky enough to be one of them. The pictures do not do it justice, but they try. If you come to Paris, go to Giverny. We also visited the Museum of Impressionism, which has a wonderful collection of art. Two very good reasons to take a day trip!

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Hello Normandy!

Posted in Paris, Study Abroad - Fall 2012, Travels, tagged on September 25, 2012|

Everyone has finally arrived and the Hollins Paris term has begun! We started off with a bang and visited Normandy for four days to get acquainted with each other and allow the others to recover from their Trans-Atlantic flight all while learning French history! Lots of multitasking. We stayed in Caen, the capital of the region of Basse-Normandie and located in the Calvados department of France.

Day one was really light as Lauren, Catherine, Maggie, and Melissa had all just gotten off of the airplane and were entirely exhausted. We did a short walking Tour through Caen with Marie-Laure, our fantastic guide. We finished the night with crêpes and an early bed time.

Day Two: We visited Mount St. Michel, probably one of my favorite places to photograph simply because it is absolutely breathtaking. It is built on a rock island and as the tide comes in it is completely surrounded by water, but at low tide you can see the sand all around it. We walked all the way up to the Abbey, which is still  used by male and female Monks. From Mount St. Michel we went to Bayeux to see the famous Bayeux tapestry, the 1000-year-old hand embroidered work that tells the story of William the Conqueror (Formerly known as William the Bastard, but then he won England in war, so he became the Conqueror). Once back in Caen, we enjoyed a lovely dinner and I had Moules Frites. Delicious.

Day Three: D-Day Day. Or in French: Jour-J. I didn’t realize until this day that the “D” in D-Day stood for day. Day-Day. Which makes since because it was the Day of the Day and Day Zero just sounds depressing. Subsequent days were called D-Day Plus 1, D-Day Plus 2, etc. We spent a couple hours at the Caen Museum for Peace, probably the best WWII museum I have been to. It was very thorough and to really see everything it would need an entire day or two. It was interesting to see the war from all sides instead of just the American perspective that I have grown up with. From there we made our way to Arromanches, where we lunched. Arromanches is where the Allies constructed the Mulberry artificial harbor, giant floating concrete docks that the Allies brought in to create a base of operations after D-Day. The St. Laurent American Cemetery was also on the trip. I’d visited before, but the immensity of the fields of crosses will never make less of an impact. We took a moment at Omaha Beach and then we were off to Pointe du Hoc, the location where the Rangers climbed rope ladders up sheer cliffs to stop the deadly long range weapons of the Germans.

Day Four: Last day in Normandy! Our first stop was Deauville, the site of the American Film Festival that had just finished days, if not the day, before. There were still crews dismantling the lighting and signs were still up everywhere. The beaches were covered with the multicolored umbrellas that many recognize from photos of Deauville. A short drive away from Deauville was the city of Honfleur, a very important port city and the site of large salt barns that held a large amount of salt and therefore wealth. We had lunch there in one of the many cafés surrounding the beautiful old port. Our last stop was at Christian Drouin’s Calvados distillery for a tour and tasting. Calvados is an apple brandy that is exclusively made in the Calvados region of Normandy, and that is made only with apples grown in the region. Then it was back to Paris to meet out host families!

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Adventures on the Mediterranean: South France

Posted in Study Abroad - Fall 2012, Travels, tagged on September 4, 2012|

As I may or may not have already mentioned I had a break from August 25-September 6. At the Institut de Touraine I met a fellow American who was also interested in traveling. We made arrangements to travel to the south of France August 25-31. Marie offered to allow me to leave my bags at her home and to stay there on August 31st and September 1st as she didn’t have a new student until September 3rd.

We bought our tickets at the train station in Tours and ended up spending far less than if we had purchased them online on our own. I also purchased a 12-25 travel card which is good for one year and allows me discounts on train travel. I highly recommend it. The bill for transport was under 250 euro. I recommend that you to go a station and book your ticket with a person who books train tickets for a living. I saved well over 200 euro by NOT booking online through RailEurope.

The first city we visited was Toulouse, France. I highly recommend visiting this city. It’s rather tidy and has a great atmosphere. I can’t say that I ever felt unsafe while I was there, even when walking alone down the street, though I didn’t stay out after dark. We booked our hotel through Hostelworld and saved quite a bit. We shared a double bed for two nights at the Hotel des Ambassadeurs and only spent 85 euro total. If you go to Toulouse, walk down the side streets. I found a charming little tea salon called Le Bolbu. They made great crepes,  we each had tea, and we met some very nice people. For dinner we went to another good crepe restaurant called Pastel et Sarasan, which was also quite good. We had originally been looking for Le Sherpa, a well known creperie in Toulouse, but I mistook the closed Le Petit Sherpa (their lunch restaurant) for Le Sherpa so we went to Pastel’s instead. The next day we really just had a lot of time to burn before I train that evening so we walked around a bunch and explored the other side of the river and found a lovely park. We also wound our way back through the streets of Toulouse and found Le Sherpa. It was quite a good creperie and I can see why it has so many good reviews.

Marseille was probably my favorite of all. Not necessarily because of the city, which was quite nice, or the sea, but because of the people I met at our hostel. To start with I will admit I was a bit scared of Marseille for the simple fact that online you read lots of horror stories and there is a lot of conflict there in the outer areas. I must say that you shouldn’t believe everything you read online because in retrospect it seems that only people with bad experiences post reviews. I didn’t have a single problem there and felt safe the entire time, granted I was in the touristy area at the Old Port. And I even went out late with a group. We used the Marseille Metro to get from Marseille St. Charles, the train station, to the Vieux Port and back there the day we left. It was really cheap and easy to use.  We stayed at Vertigo Vieux Port and I really loved it. In the dining room (of the second building, B, I didn’t spend time in building A) there is a giant table that is perfect for meeting people. It was a fabulous hostel (with breakfast included), and I met some really great people I hope to see again. If you do go to Marseille I highly recommend going on a boat tour to one of the islands. My host mom recommended that I go to Cassis but there wasn’t enough time there to do everything we wanted to do. Instead I decided to go to Chateau d’If, the island castle built by Francois I for his prisoners and made internationally famous by Alexandre Dumas in the Count of Monte Cristo. The views from the island are amazing and the water is the most beautiful color of blue. It is understandable why it is called the Cote d’Azure. It was quite a lovely boat ride and we even saw some dolphins. For the rest of that day we walked about and saw some very pretty churches with stunning murals and mosaics. My last night in Marseille I went out for bouillabaisse. It was pricey, but delicious. And there was enough there that it could have been shared two or three ways.
Nice was our last stop and we got there around 4:30 on Wednesday and had a long walk after the tram stop to Villa St. Exupery Hostel. This hostel is a member of Europe’s Famous Hostels and the staff is from all over the world, and the primary operation language is English. So if you want to go to Nice but you don’t speak French, have no fear! Many of the signs are in English also because of Nice’s popularity as a tourist destination for English speakers. It is also just short bus or train rides away from Cannes, Monaco, and even Italy. The Villa also has an affordable restaurant (under 10 euro), bar, and music at night. There is also a Villa Beach location so you can visit there or change your stay to that hostel. A note about the beaches though: they are covered in rocks. And I don’t mean pebbles. Literally rocks that you can only hold in your hand one at a time. But they’re not uncomfortable to lie on with a beach mat, so have no fear. My traveling partner went scuba diving with the Villa and I chose to see the city since we really only had one full day there. I used the tram system and saw quite a bit of Nice and wound my way through the streets of the old town and spent some time on the beach writing. Unfortunately, it was a bit rainy on and off but at least it wasn’t the sweltering  heat that I’d expected.

The return trip home was a bit of an ordeal, but it all turned out in the end. We took the train from Nice to Marseille, but the train was delayed on the way and we arrived too late to catch our train to Paris. We went to the information office and were put on a train to Paris Gare d’Lyon that left few hours later. Luckily our entire journey was upgraded to first class! Once we arrived in Paris we had to change train stations to Gare d’Austerlitz. Since we got there after dark and we were to walk, I thought it would be scary and long, but the stations are just across the river from each other and the route has crosswalks and is clearly marked on street signs. It was maybe a ten-minute walk and a nice little jaunt across the Seine. We arrived back in Tours at 1 am September 1, and parted ways. My host mom was so kind and picked me up at the train station. Such a wonderful lady. I did notice that it was a bit cold though. It seems that summer is over and fall has arrived with September.

I was going to put a slideshow of each city after it’s paragraph, but alas I am not that talented with WordPress. So instead I tried to caption everything. Enjoy!

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