“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand different circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will.” –Lawrence Durrell

Okay, now, I have been secretly quite proud of myself for eating all sorts of different foodstuffs while I have been overseas. This includes smoked salmon, various spreads made from fish eggs, foie gras, raw miniature crawfish (complete with heads and antennae; oh yes, we just pop them in our mouths whole like popcorn), duck parts, oysters, beets (also known as slimy tasteless disgustingness), a vaguely fishy-tasting doughy thing in an unidentifiable white sauce, and an assortment of smelly cheeses from every animal imaginable including Roquefort, which I will eternally detest and yet choke down almost every night. Tonight’s meal, however, takes the cake. Oh yes, folks, 20 minutes ago I was eating boudin, which is, wait for it – a “sausage” made out of congealed pig’s blood, chestnuts (or sometimes onions, as I was informed, as if that would make it better), and oats. YUM. The taste was, well, bloody, and the texture was pasty and…bloody. Aaaahhh! I can’t think about it being in my body. It is quite the delicacy apparently, and oh, lucky me, it’s the season for it right now! If you are ever in France and hear the word boudin, run. Fast.
Okay, now I feel bad for complaining. Tasting regional specialties is all part of the experience, right? And it is cute how Madame wants me to explore les goûts de France. As far as I’m concerned, though, I’ve done my duty, tasted the tastes, and I’m ready for my good old-fashioned peanut butter and jelly, or pretty much any dish that doesn’t involve the eyeballs, organs, or the blood of an organism.
On a slightly less vomit-inducing note, Neuilly, my town, has a Christmas market coming up! It’s so cute – all around the church across the street there are these little wooden huts and starting December 2nd they will be selling all sorts of goodies for Christmas and yummy food like hot spiced wine and roasted chestnuts. I can’t wait. Hopefully they don’t sell boudin.

Lesley and Steph have left. We had such a fun week! Now the stressful part of my life begins – next week is finals time. I can’t believe it’s already here! I have so much studying to do, because in some of my classes, the entire grade is based on the final exam. (This is apparently how the French do things – no papers, no tests, just one make-it-or-break-it final exam. Yikes.) But, first things first. Here are some highlights of my week with the girls:
After some trouble with lost luggage, lost people, lost minds, etc., we finally rendezvous-ed at the hotel and then had dinner at Café Le Depart by Notre Dame, which everyone who has come to visit me has been to, because it is delicious.
I hadn’t seen Les in over a year, and Steph in over 4 years, but I knew we would still get along very well when I asked them what they wanted to do and they immediately said: “shop.” We did a lot of that, and I continued to feed my obsession with Longchamp bags.
We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at night when it gets all sparkly and amazing. Night time is really the best time to go – there are absolutely NO lines, and the city is gorgeous all lit up. We took pictures proposing to each other, and I think we seriously disturbed our fellow tourists. There was one snafu – it was terrifyingly windy. I’m really surprised we weren’t blown up against the grate or even off the tower itself, like the Kelly bag in Le Divorce. So, dear reader, beware of the gusty conditions if you ever find yourself up there.
Steph left on Thursday (Thanksgiving) morning, but Lesley was still in town, so we made reservations at this restaurant called Joe Allen, which had a special menu for Thanksgiving. We had turkey, sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and pecan pie, and it was glorious. I missed my family, though. Just a little bit. Okay, a lot.
Last night, Les’ last night in town, we went to Kong, which is the restaurant that Carrie goes to in Sex and the City when she has lunch in Paris with Alexsandr Petrovsky’s ex-wife. It’s really cool, but kind of almost too cool. I felt like the wait staff was walking around and saying to themselves, “Alors, I am zo cool because I work eer and it eez cool, so zat makes me cool. Plus, I am French, weech eez zee coolest.” No, in all honesty, it’s a beautiful restaurant, with a glass ceiling and these Philip Starck plastic chairs with models’ faces on the backs of them. And the food is amazing!

Today, I went with the Accent Center to the Loire Valley to see two chateaux. We saw Cheverny and Chenonceau, and they were both magnificent! My favorite thing about chateaux is that they are all so different from each other. I’ve seen five different ones here now, and I keep expecting it to be more of the same, but I’m always surprised!
Cheverny is a chateau that has been owned by the same family of nobles for hundreds and hundreds of years. The current owner (part of that same family) is only 41 years old and is a Marquis. Sixteen of the rooms in the chateau are open to the public and he and his wife and their three kids live in the other 34 rooms. Life is rough. The five-year-old son will inherit the chateau after his parents kick the bucket. Talk about winning the genetic lottery.
Cheverny is also famous for its stag hunts – they have one every Tuesday and every Saturday, and so they have kennels with over 100 hound dogs. Apparently each dog has a name, and the guy in charge of the dogs (pretty sure it’s not the Marquis) knows each of them by name. Although it was Saturday, we didn’t see them hunting. We smelled them, though, which just wasn’t as nice.
Chenonceau is the other chateau we visited. It was a royal chateau and at one time it belonged to Diane de Poitiers, Henri II’s mistress. Old Henri was quite enamored with her and so he gave her the chateau, but when he died, his wife, Catherine di Medicis (who was very jealous of Diane and also much uglier) made Diane leave and then she took over the castle. Ah, intrigue. During World War II, the owner converted it into a hospital, and one half of the chateau was located in occupied France, and the other half was in the free zone. I thought that was pretty cool. Now it’s decorated like it was back in the time of Catherine and is completely fabulous.
It was a good day. Now I have to get some sleep so I can study my face off for the next week.

"Good wine is a good familiar creature if it be well-used." -William Shakespeare

Happy Beaujolais Nouveau! Yesterday was a big day here in Paris – the release of the first wine of the year. Beaujolais Nouveau, if I understand correctly, is a wine from the Beaujolais region near Lyon that is made from grapes that are harvested very early. (The sooner you drink it, the better.) Everyone freaks out on an annual basis when the first bottles are released to the public, and yesterday was the day. All the restaurants put up big signs in their windows that say “Il est arrivé!” (“It has arrived!”) and the supermarkets have huge displays of it for sale. The best, however, was when my French professor brought in three bottles of it and we all drank wine and ate cheese crackers during class. If I wasn’t already in love with France, I would be now.
My buzz was a little dampened, however, when I got home and wished Madame happy B.N., and she sniffed, “Oh, but that is market wine. Pas très bon, eh?” I guess when your boyfriend owns a chateau/vineyard, you can afford to be a little bit of a wine snob.
In a way, she’s right – it’s actually very inexpensive and not known for its quality, but I find it delicious. I guess that’s proof that drinking a lot of wine does not a wine connoisseur make…
My childhood best friends Lesley and Steph are coming to visit me tomorrow. Their trip was a little spontaneous, which makes it all the more exciting! I can’t wait to see them.

When I die, Dublin will be written in my heart. -James Joyce

I have returned from my journey to the homeland! Dublin was great. Blair, Gideon, and I flew out on RyanAir (crummy service, really cheap) on Friday (my birthday) morning. We were supposed to meet my friend Madi (flying from Rome) at the airport – her flight ended up being cancelled due to fog. (But more about that later.)
So, Madi-less, we took a bus to city center and found our hostel. It was, in a word, foul. Okay, maybe not complete squalor, but pretty gross. Welcome to la vie bohème. Blair and I were staying in a 12-bed female dorm with one(!) bathroom for all 12 girls. (Gideon stayed with his friend Kate, who goes to Trinity College in Dublin.) The girls in the dorm were pretty nice. Most of them were Canadian, and they had been living in the hostel for a MONTH while they were working and looking for a flat. That’s insanity, in my book, but they didn’t seem to mind.
After getting somewhat settled, we went and got the most delish fish and chips for lunch (with lots of salt and vinegar – yum), and then walked around the campus of Trinity College, which is just beautiful and for about an hour I was seriously contemplating transferring there. In the Trinity library there is the Book of Kells, which is this old beautiful manuscript, copied by monks hundreds and hundreds of years ago.(It’s one of the “1000 Things to See Before You Die,” so I figured we had to go.) We looked at that for a while, and then Blair and I walked around the city, and did some shopping, of course!
We found this store called Carroll’s which was totally dedicated to all things Irish – no joke, three floors that looked like a leprechaun threw up on them, chock-full of any kind of souvenir you could imagine. I think we spent an hour and a half in there. Pretty sad.
After a delicious dinner in a pub, we experienced Dublin nightlife. Allow me to share some things I learned:
Only losers go out before 11.
There are no such thing as bars for the younger set. Even at the trendier pubs, there is a mélange of people ranging from age 16 to 65. It’s actually a little disconcerting to watch, ahem, the more, shall we say, “mature” set try and get down and party. Not pretty.
When someone asks you, “What’s crack?” they are not inquiring about illegal substances. They are saying, “What’s craic?” which is Irish for “fun.” (You ask it when you want to know what fun things are happening.)
Irish men are awkward. Painfully awkward. Blair and I were hit on by the following men:
- A boy our age, who was so drunk he forgot his command of the English language. He came up to us, told us we were pretty, and then started swaying back and forth with a blank look in his eyes. When we looked confused, he resorted to sign language and starting pantomiming something that I think was, “I like to jog. Penguins are nice. Toilets.”
- A chubby balding man with a dimple in his chin of epic proportions, who asked us if we were on holiday, but couldn’t seem to wrap his head around the fact that we were Americans studying in Paris. We left him to ponder that one a while.
- My personal favorite, an Irish guy who, when he found out we were Americans, told us he was actually from Louisiana and started speaking in the poorest approximation of a Southern accent I have ever heard. He started spouting nonsense – I’m still not entirely sure what he was trying to convey, but he used the word “critters” a lot, told us that we need to listen to our “Commander in Chief,” and said he knew Donald Rumsfeld, the “fecker.”
- A guy whose opening line was to point to our drinks and ask us if we knew they had 7% alcohol in them. Yes, thank you, genius. (It said so on the bottle.) He then immediately proceeded to ask me if I had ever seen the movie “Unfaithful” with Diane Lane and Richard Gere. I said I had only seen parts of it, why? Einstein replied, “Oh. I don’t really know…It’s a good movie.”
Needless to say, by the end of the night, Blair and I were really good at making a tactful, yet hasty, exit. This was very disappointing, as I am a huge sucker for an accent. However, even the hottest accent can’t cover a complete dearth of social skills.
Don’t let Riverdance fool you – most Irish people can’t dance. In fact, I’m pretty convinced that this extends to all Europeans, but the Irish brand of dancing seemed particularly heinous. More field research may be necessary.

Despite all this, we had a blast. I love how everyone just piles into the pubs and it’s noisy and crowded and every one is sloppy and tipsy. It’s great, and made me proud to have the third most common last name in Ireland.
The next morning, Mads FINALLY arrived. (She actually had to take a plane to London and then connect to Dublin at 6 in the morning. Ouch. But, she was determined to get to Ireland!) The three of us actually found a tour to go out into the countryside, and we went and visited Malahide Castle, which is outside of Dublin. It is a medieval castle that was owned by the Talbot family for 800 years until they sold it to the state in the 1970s. It was so cool, and the grounds it was on were unbelievably gorgeous. It was also kind of misty outside, so the pictures turned out really neat-looking.
After the castle tour and a scone with clotted cream (so unhealthy, so good), the tour took us up the coastline, where we saw beautiful green cliffs – just like the postcards! Unfortunately, my camera didn’t quite capture how vividly green they were – the girls and I were getting quite faklempt.
Upon our return to Dublin, we enjoyed fish and chips again, and then went and toured the Guiness factory! It was pretty neat, although after the Heineken factory in Amsterdam, we were already pretty much beer experts, so it was a little same-old, same-old. At the end, though, we got to go up to the Gravity Bar for a free pint of the black stuff, and the bar had a gorgeous view of all of Dublin at sunset. Fabulous.
Speaking of Guinness, the “blonde in the black skirt” is really growing on me! I’ve been drinking a lot of the stuff lately. (I mean, not like, alone in my room in a sad pathetic way, but when I go out. You get what I mean.) It’s so dark and full of bitter goodness, and plus it kind of makes me feel like a badass. Okay? I admit it.
After Guinness, funds were kind of low, so we enjoyed a delicious dinner at…Burger King. Don’t knock it – after almost two and a half months without, a char-broiled meat patty really hits the spot.
At that point, Madi had been up for 48 hours straight, so she went to bed and Blair and I headed out to a bar called the Porter House for more awkward encounters. It was glorious.
I’m back now, and exhausted since we got up so early. The good news, though, is that I am 21! Woo hoo! And, I have been to Ireland! And, they actually stamped my passport this time!

"Amsterdam...is a dream of color and tender tones." -M.E. Sherwood, 1897

Oh, I am a little bit in love with Amsterdam. I spent the weekend there with 5 of my friends, and it was great! I wasn't really sure if I would like it or not, since I envisioned a kind of seedy city full of prostitutes and potheads, but it was actually really clean, beautiful, and very quaint. Some parts of it reminded me of Georgetown, oddly enough, with the row houses and such. Amsterdam has many canals in concentric circles in the city, so it's full of cute little bridges and pretty walkways. Also, everyone there rides bikes! It's so cute - they have special lanes for people on bikes, and they will not hesitate to run you over. But, everyone rides their bike, which I think is just fabulous. Also, the Dutch are so friendly, and they speak perfect English. It was a really nice change of pace.
We took the Thalys train on Friday morning and arrived in Amsterdam around 2 p.m. We went to our hostel, which was perfect - it was relatively clean, and we had a room with 3 sets of bunkbeds in it - great for the six of us, and we had our own bathroom. The first thing we did (typical college students that we are) was go to the Heineken factory. It was so neat! They walk you through and show you how it's brewed, and there's this little ride that jostles you around as if you were a beer bottle in the factory - kind of cheesy, but fun. You also get three free beers with the price of admission, which was nice. :) Ooh - outside of the factory, I ate the most delicious doughnut I had ever had, called an appelbollen. It was rolled in sugar and had warm apple compote in the middle - I highly recommend them if you ever make it to Holland.
After the Heineken factory, we walked around a bit and then went to an Argentinian steakhouse (weird, but there were a ton of them there) for dinner. It was pretty good. We asked for a carafe of water, and they only had bottled water, but the waitress went in the back and made one up for us. We couldn't believe it - in France, they would have just said, "screw you" and moved on!
Post dinner, we went to a coffee shop, which actually doesn't sell coffee. I'm pretty sure I don't need to explain. I then enjoyed a typical Dutch baked good, about which I won't elaborate. It was definitely a learning experience.
Saturday morning found us at the Anne Frank museum, which was very very tiny, but so well done! It was very moving to see where and how she lived. They still had the pictures of movie stars up on the walls of her bedroom where she pasted them. They also had her actual diaries, which were really neat to see. After Anne Frank, we went to the Van Gogh museum, which was also interesting. We were disappointed to find out that Starry Night, his masterpiece, is actually at MOMA in New York. Whatever.
For the rest of the afternoon, we walked around the city. I saw the flower market, with thousands of tulips, and the Red Light District, which was one of the most bizarre things I've ever seen. Basically, each woman (I wouldn't call them ladies) stands in her own window in her underwear to conduct her business. (I'm trying to be polite, here.) All of them were hideously unattractive.
That night, we went out again in Amsterdam. We found a Guiness pub and played a lot of foosball, among other things. Everything there is so much cheaper than in Paris, which was super.
I guess that's about it for Amsterdam. I've (finally) put up the Rome photos, so check them out!

"Be kind to thy father, for when thou wert young, Who loved thee so fondly as he? He caught the first accents that fell from thy tongue, And joined in thy innocent glee." -- Margaret Courtney

My Daddy left today. I had so much fun with him! He arrived in Paris on Friday, surprisingly coherent despite the jetlag. We pretty much did tourist-y things all weekend: Notre Dame, the Louvre, etc., but he told me that he liked just walking around and people-watching and taking in everything the best. It was neat to see Paris again from an outsider’s perspective – after living here for two months, I sometimes forget to notice a lot of the things that make Paris really special.
I would have to say the highlight of his visit was the dinner cruise on the Seine that we took last night, his last night in Paris. It was amazing! If you visit Paris, you must do it! (The company, for reference purposes, is called Bateaux Parisiens, and is found at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on Quai Branly.) We got on a big beautiful boat and had a delicious dinner while going up and down the Seine for 2 and a half hours. (I had escargot and spinach fritters, five-pepper pan-fried beef with courgettes, and a chocolate melt with raspberry coulis for dessert. Très fancy.) Included with dinner were two bottles of wine and a kir aperitif. Very nice! They also had a singer on board who sang songs in French and English. It was so lovely. They slowed the boat down when we passed the cathedral of Notre Dame, and the lady started singing Ave Maria, and I teared up – it was so beautiful! Funny stories:
There was this guy walking around taking pictures of everyone on the boat to sell, and while he was taking pictures of a French family across the way from us, a Japanese man went up to him to ask him where the restroom was. The Japanese man tried to communicate in Japanese, then broken French, but finally had to resort to using sign language – he grabbed his crotch and jumped up and down to indicate that he had to faire le pipi, and then photographer finally understood. I’m pretty sure the French family was mortified.
Also, at the end of the cruise, they started playing disco music, and people were dancing. My dad and I went to dance, and this funny little man got out on the dance floor and was dancing like a maniac. I come from a family of very enthusiastic dancers (Barr family functions, anyone?), but I have never seen an adult get into it like this man did. It was hilarious.
While my dad was here, on Sunday night, we also had a petite degustation du vin (wine tasting) with Mme. de Billy and Jean Claude, and then my dad and I took them out to dinner. It was so fun! We had wine from Alsace and from Jean Claude’s chateau. I also, by the way, found out that Madame has a chateau as well. I saw a drawing of it, and it’s gorgeous! It amazes me how they both play it off as no big deal – I’m pretty sure if I had a chateau, I would tell everyone I knew about it and show them pictures nonstop. But, then again, that’s what makes me a gauche American…We had dinner at a lovely seafood restaurant called Auberge Dab, and Dad and Jean Claude talked politics for three hours straight. Amazingly, Jean Claude did not manage to work Rudy Giuliani into the conversation…Nonetheless, it was a great evening.
Today after my dad left, I went to the Salon du Chocolat with Blair. It was awesome!! It was basically this big chocolate convention at the Paris Expo. There were chocolatiers from all over the world with booths set up where you could get samples. I ate so much chocolate I felt sick. There was every kind of chocolate you could imagine. We had truffles, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, chocolate liqueur, dessert wine (to go with chocolate), this spicy chocolate sauce from Mexico, and so on. Blair even ate a foie gras sandwich on chocolate-dusted bread with a cacao-onion compote. A little too exotic for my tastes, but she enjoyed it! They had candy sculptures, cooking demonstrations, and even a fashion show where the models were eating chocolate on the runway. (Leave it to the French to work haute couture in there somewhere…) It was so neat.
It’s really getting scary, though. Time is passing by so fast! It wasn’t even sad when my dad left today, because I’m going to see him again in a little over a month. I really need to take advantage of the time I have left here. I really have no free weekends until the time I leave, so it’s going to start going by even faster, I think!