Virtually Home

Grace decided to come visit me on her spring break. And so she arrived, after having missed her international connection in Atlanta due to weather and about five hours late, for a pretty calm evening. We walked around the city a little. We ate delicious crêpes (galettes, really) at a place very near my house. We drank cider. And then we slept until she no longer felt tired. Her resiliency to jetlag, on a first time abroad, was to be commended. That afternoon, we had a lunch of thoroughly French cheeses (some of which were growing Penicillium) and bread, and Vianney met us, complete with rollerblades, at my place. He brought a milk bottle full of canelé dough, which was delicious and which inspired us to get some canelés while we were in Bordeaux. We climbed the 231 stairs of the Tour de Pey-Berland, which is associated with the cathedral right next to my apartment. The view was spectacular, though there was some considerable haze obscuring the horizon line. We walked to Place des Q...

On the 30th, Rachel and I took complicated, multi-change train ride to Paris. We couldn't get a direct train, so we had to go from Zurich to Basel, Switzerland and from Basel to Mulhouse, France. We went from Mulhouse to Belfort and then changed trains for the last time in Belfort to get to Paris. We ended up either on trains or in train stations all day. I do like riding trains a lot, but the lugging of luggage and the cold were a little unpleasant. And we rolled through northern France after sunset, which caused us to miss out on what the countryside looked like. I was curious, since I had considered studying abroad this year in Strasbourg instead of Bordeaux. That would have been a different experience entirely, I'm sure. Arrival in Paris was a trial. We took the metro from Gare de l'Est to the southwest part of town, where we were staying at the Aloha Hostel for one night. The hostel was cramped ad ecclectic...all decorated in bright colors and with lots of cheery New...