Two and Twenty

Today is my birthday. I woke up to lots of rain - the kind I love when I can sit with a book or a movie and a cup of coffee. After hiding in bed for a while I got up to get some birthday breakfast. Colleen, Christine, and I took the metro downtown to Le Pain Quotidien, where we met Georgie, Katie, Laura, and Stephanie. 

I don't think I could have asked for a better way to celebrate my birthday in Lille. The restaurant was really comfortable, and made cozier by the cold rain outside; the food was great; and the company was wonderful. I also had the biggest cup of coffee I've seen since arriving in France. 

Oh, and Georgie taught me how to eat a soft-boiled egg, a skill I will practice and bring home to the States with me.

Journées du Patrimoine

If I were better at this - or less lazy, this is yet to be decided - I wouldn't attempt to recap a busy weekend in one post. It's a little daunting, which is why it has taken me so long to finish. 

Anyways, let's do this.

This weekend was les journées du patrimoine. It's an annual event that started in France in 1984 as a way to encourage people to go out to the cultural monuments, locations, events, etc. Now it happens annually throughout Europe - 49 countries participate. Many places have special prices/events or free admission (http://www.journeesdupatrimoine.culture.fr/presentation/les-journees-europeennes-du-patrimoine).

With this in mind, a few of us decided to go to Palais des Beaux Arts (http://www.pba-lille.fr/). I joined Marianna and Sara - from my Defi language course - and their friend Suzanne at the metro and we spent the afternoon in the museum. 

Palais des Beaux Arts is second only to the Louvre in a contest of large French art museums. We didn't even come close to seeing all of it. Instead, we spent some time in the sculpture wing and took advantage of the free guided tour that was part of the journées du patrimoine events there. The tour took us through the parts of the building housing sculptures, ceramics, medieval and renaissance art, and city models. After the slightly exhausting tour, we enjoyed some coffee and comfortable chairs. We looked around the little gift store before calling it a day, since the workers were trying to get people out so they could close.

Wandering in Lille, part one

The other day - Thursday, more precisely - I decided to go downtown and explore a few streets, see what kinds of shops were around and that sort of thing. It worked out that I was able to meet up with Colleen at the metro stop at the center and we had the evening to check out the places I wanted to see before getting drinks with the other ISEP students and our student ambassador. 

We found a discount bookstore and a restaurant, which specialized in bubble tea and crêpes, on Rue Pont de Comines that we decided called for a return trip. We then stopped by the ticket office at the opera house, where I found out that I had misunderstood the youth pass. I won't be getting a pass, but I'm still certainly going to see Orlando in October. Handel - need I say more? More than that, though, I'm excited for the Wednesday evening recitals. Every Wednesday there is a small ensemble performance in the foyer and almost all of them sound great to me. And hey, I found out today that I don't have classes on Wednesdays. If you're reading this, then you probably know what my next words will be. 

Cool. Beans.

An update, plus le Jardin des Plantes

I'm not quite sure where to start because it seems as though there is so much to update you on, but I can't think of any of it now that I'm sitting here. My intensive course is over now. It flows into a semester-long French language course, so I will only have it for two hours on Mondays, starting this week. I'm beginning to get my bearings and to feel comfortable with the city and the metro, etc. Readjusting to dorm life is a bit more uncomfortable than I expected - in part because French dorms are different from American dorms. I have no oven or microwave, only a stovetop that requires you to continually hit a power button - boiling water has never been more tedious. But I'll get used to it soon enough.

Friday evening a group of us (mostly American and British exchange students) went to Les 3 Brasseurs, a very cool restaurant and microbrewery. I liked it a lot and definitely hope to go back. Also, I decided to inaugurate my year in France with a glass of red wine. It was lovely.

Yesterday I went to the botanical gardens with Marianna, a girl I met in my French class. We wandered around for a couple of hours, enjoying the park, before heading home on the metro. After doing some laundry and a little grocery shopping I decided to be a bum and watched Sense and Sensibility (the 2008 BBC miniseries). Je l'aime. In the process, I consumed large quantities of Lay's rotisserie chicken and thyme-flavored potato chips and chocolate. I realize that, at this moment, you are trying to decide which of those things to make fun of me for first. I have no defense. Chicken-flavored chips, as it happens, are delicious. And while I don't need to justify eating chocolate in Europe, I can't justify the amount of chocolate I ate. And as to the nutritional concerns regarding eating a ton of chips and chocolate for dinner? You're absolutely right, it was a bad idea. A terrible, delicious idea.

Good thing I get to start running again this week! My self-prescribed six weeks off ends Wednesday, but I might start tomorrow so I can have a routine for the week...

I hope this week goes smoothly. It's a really good thing they had us in class for four hours a day this past week - even though I didn't care for it at the time - because it gave us a routine right away. But now that it's over and the craziness of the French university system takes over, I'm starting to feel a little lost without a schedule. On the bright side, if anything, I might end up with quite a lot of time this week to read and possibly explore the city some more. I think this week will be an interesting little circus, so I'll be sure to post an update somewhere along the line.

Next weekend Marianna and I are planning to go to the Palais des Beaux Arts - I had planned to go this weekend, but the museum is actually free to get into next weekend. In the meantime, here are some pictures from our trip to the Jardin des Plantes...

La Braderie

La Braderie is an annual event in Lille. What is it precisely? An enormous flea market. Enormous is an understatement, actually, because la Braderie is spread out all over downtown. Traffic is shut down and le centre ville is navigable only by foot and metro.

http://lilletourism.com/info-3-90-0-fr.html

http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braderie_de_Lille

We spent the whole afternoon wandering around and only saw a few streets worth of vendors. Some of the narrow areas were very crowded, but others were fairly comfortable in spite of all the people. Many of the vendors had knock-off designer brands, second-hand things, food, and handmade jewelry. There was also a surprisingly large number of native North and South Americans, which seemed a little strange, playing new age music and selling t-shirts that people in the U.S. ignore at gas stations.

I found a couple of things to buy - we all did - and it was a great day in general. The weather was lovely, there were good food smells everywhere, and we didn't get there so early that we were all crabby by the end of the day. We were pretty tired of standing and walking after several hours, so we took the metro back and stopped at a restaurant called Hippopotamus. It was a nice place and we were able to eat and talk - and eat desert and talk some more - before walking back to Triolo.