One last post...

To finish off le Cote d'Azur, we spent a day in Nice going to museums and walking around.  It was quite lovely.  We went to the Matisse Museum and saw some Roman ruins as well.  Our last day in the South we went to Cannes.  It was just a few days before the film festival began, so we got to see the red carpet.  We also took a ferry over to a small island called Ile Sainte Marguerite off the coast of Cannes.  On this island is the fort where the Man in the Iron Mask was held.  We got to go into his cell and everything.  Really a beautiful island though. We walked around and picnicked in the sun.

At the Fort in Cannes

The cell of the Man in the Iron Mask

Paris the second time around was wonderful.  We stayed in Camille's grandparents' apartment on Ile Saint Louis, right smack dab in the center of the city.  It was wonderful.  The train ride from Nice to Paris was fantastic.  The most beautiful train ride I've ever been on for sure.  All along the southern coast, it was insane.  Apart from getting slightly separated at the train station coming back from Nice, all of our transitions went quite smoothly!  In Paris I met up with my friend Evan from high school who had been doing his own traveling around Europe, so that was fun.  Of all the times I've been to Paris, this was my favorite.  I had already done and seen most of the touristy things, so I could just sort of relax.  I didn't feel like I needed to fit anything in.  We walked around a lot.  Still did touristy things, but the pressure was off.  And the weather was fantastic!  It was a wonderful trip.

Shakespeare and Company

Notre Dame 

So, 7 plane rides, 5 countries, and 4 months later, I'm back.  I'm home and it's so good to be here.

Dublin and the French Riviera

I love Ireland.  So much.  Holy moly. 

We were lucky enough to be able to stay with two of our family friend Gillian’s brothers while we were staying in Dublin.  We got to the airport on Friday afternoon and took a bus down by where we were staying.  John and Ricky picked us up and took us for a pint and then to get some of the best Indian food I’ve ever had.  They took us to their beautiful house and we washed up and got settled. We met two of their kids, Ricarda and Brian, who are close to our age.  It was a pretty low key night because we’d been traveling all day, so we pretty much just went to bed after that.

The next day we went into Dublin city.  Ricarda drove us down there because she works at a café down there.  We ate there for breakfast and the food was amazing!  So far on this trip, to this day, I’ve had the best food to eat in Dublin, which I honestly wasn’t expecting!  We didn’t have too much of an agenda.  The weather was quite nice so we walked around St. Stevens Green for a bit.  We wandered our way over to Trinity College.  Let me just say right here and now, my new goal in life is to go to graduate school at Trinity.  I really just fell in love with the place.  It’s kind of hard to explain.  Beautiful buildings, lots of history, I love the way people talk there! Plus, they have programs in education and psychology, so whatever I want to do in life, they have it there! Anyways, we took a tour of Trinity and saw the Book of Kells, which was pretty cool.  We walked around a bit more, then met back up with Ricarda, who took us to Gerard and Lucy’s (Gillian’s other brother) to stay there for the night.  Their house is also absolutely breathtaking! After dinner, Ricarda came back for us and we went out with her and some of her friends.  We were still pretty tired, so we didn’t stay out too late.  It was pretty fun, not too eventful.  Ricarda’s friends were really nice, so that was good!!

St. Stevens Green

Me at Trinity, my future college?

Bridge over the River Liffey

On Sunday we took the train to Howth which is North of Dublin.  A lovely little port town with a great view of the bay and mountains.  It was a little rainy, but we had some sun breaks and it wasn’t bad.  It was pretty relaxing.  Gerard is a great cook.  We had a pork roast with potatoes and veggies and it was all just amazing.  Gerard and Lucy have two daughters, Sarah and Rachel, but they were studying for exams most of our time there.  Very nice girls though.  

Some roof dogs in Howth

On Monday there wasn’t much open because it was a bank holiday, but we went back into town to see the Guinness Storehouse and the National Gallery.  The storehouse was cool.  We learned all about how Guinness is made, and of course, the tour came with an all-inclusive pint at the end.  The National Gallery was pretty cool too.  They had an exhibit set up with paintings and photographs to go along with quotes they’d picked out from James Joyce’s “Dubliners”.  After the gallery, we went back to Gerard and Lucy’s for another incredible meal.

Our first proper pints of Guinness

Christ Church

On Tuesday we transferred back to John and Ricky’s.  They drove us, with Ricarda, out to a place called Newgrange.  It’s a giant Neolithic dome that’s about 5,000 years old.  It was built by Neolithic farmers as some sort of tomb/religious place.  At the winter solstice, the sign shines directly into a little “roof box” above the door.  Pretty cool place.  That night, after another wonderful home cooked meal, Grace and I went down into town to go out with Brian because he had just finished his exams.  Unfortunately, the club he was meeting his friends at was 21 and up, so the three of us just went to get pints at a different bar and then Grace and I headed home.

Newgrange

We left early Wednesday morning for Nice.  Nice is insane.  So so beautiful.  We walked around a bit last night to get our bearings.  We went out to dinner and were able to eat outside.  Such perfect weather!  Today we took a bus out to Monaco, which is actually just unreal.  So pristine and beautiful!  Unfortunately, I’d left my memory card in my computer, so I only have pictures from today on my disposable camera, but that’s okay!  It was beautiful though.  We saw the prince’s palace, Monte Carlo, and the aquarium.  The Grand Prix is there next weekend and they have a sort of “historic” run that starts there tomorrow, so the whole place was bustling.  On the way back from Monaco, we stopped in a small town called Villefranche to eat ice cream and lay on the beach for a little bit.  I’d recommend that everyone sees the Mediterranean Sea before they die, because really, it’s out of this world.

Nice

Nice and the Mediterranean

And now we’re all caught up! Not sure yet what the plans are for tomorrow, but hopefully I’ll get on here at least one more time before home.

Amsterdam Part II

Before I catch you all up on my European adventures, I just want to put out a little announcement.  I’ll be returning home in about a week and I will have about two weeks in Seattle before moving to Portland for the summer.  In those two weeks, I would be more than happy to babysit!  I’m not entirely sure who all reads these posts, but if I babysit for you already, or if you want me to start, know that I will be available from about May 20-June 1.  So it’s not much time, but it’s better than nothing! Just shoot me an email and we can work something out: moliver@lclark.edu.

The next day in Amsterdam we went back into town to meet up with our friend Hannah who’s been traveling around on her own.  We met up with her at the Anne Frank House, which was pretty incredible to see.  I guess when Otto Frank wanted to make the house into a museum, he asked that it remain how it was after they had been found and essentially removed everything.  They had preserved the photos and posters that Anne had put on the walls.  The rest of the day we pretty much just walked around the city.  Some people that had been on the study abroad trip to London were also spending some time in Amsterdam, so we met up with them and kept walking around.  Before meeting up with the London guys, Grace, Hannah and I went to get some food.  We got some noodles to go and were eating them by the side of a canal with chopsticks.  A group of about 15 Chinese tourists came up and started taking pictures with us.  It was super weird.  We were just cracking up the entire time.  So funny.  Luckily we were able to get them to take a picture with my camera too.

There are nearly as many bikes as there are  people in that town

Hannah with some bikes and a canal

The following day, our lovely hosts took us out to a small Dutch fishing village.  It was pretty touristy, but cool.  After that we went to look at a whole bunch of windmills.  That afternoon we were dropped off down in Amsterdam again because we wanted to hang out with Hannah and the London kids one last time.  The guys from London had rented an apartment so we had dinner there.

Fully functioning Dutch windmills

All in all, Amsterdam was great.  The canals and bridges are so cool.  The people were very nice.  It was a very successful leg of the journey!

Amster Amster Dam Dam Dam

Grace and I arrived at Charles de Gaulle what we thought was 2 hours in advance for our plane, but somewhere along the way we mixed up the time and ended up being 4 hours early.  The flight from Paris to Amsterdam was pretty much just take off and landing.  I swear we were in the air for less than an hour, which was great because we had some of the worst turbulence I've ever experienced!  We arrived in Amsterdam Sunday evening and Grace's neighbor's parents were there at the airport to pick us up.  They are incredibly nice people and live about twenty minutes outside of Amsterdam in a town called Huizen.  They live in an amazing apartment with a view of a little yacht harbor.  It's decorated with a very contemporary style.  Lots of sleek white pieces of furniture, but also very comfortable.  They are retired, in their late 60s, and so so cool.  They gave us wine (the dad, who's name I can't quite pronounce or spell, sipped on some vodka, no big deal) and made us a wonderful home cooked dinner. Turns out that there are a lot of words in Dutch that sound very similar to a lot of words in Wolof, but other than that, the language is absolutely foreign to me!

Yesterday was Queensday, which is one of the biggest holidays in the Netherlands.  It's a day to celebrate the queen, whether that be by singing and dancing for her, wearing orange, or riding (dancing, really) in a boat down one of the many Amsterdam canals, drinking beer.  I've never seen anything like it!  Grace and I went into the city in the late morning, and literally every street was packed with people.  It's the only day all year that people are allowed to sell things (like a garage sale) in the Netherlands, so everyone has tables set up with things to sell.  There's beer and food everywhere you look. Loud music coming from bars, bands, boats (unintentional alliteration). On top of everything, the weather was fantastic.  Apparently the first real sunny day of the year. 

Crowded street with cool old buidlings

Packed boats and bridge on a canal

We didn't have much of an agenda for the day.  We wanted to see the Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum, but mostly we just wanted to walk around.  We ended up walking to find the Anne Frank house, but we didn't go in because the atmosphere didn't seem quite right (we're going back there tomorrow).  We did, however, go to the Van Gogh Museum and it was amazing.  That was one talented and interesting man!  I wish I could go back and spend an entire day there.  After the museum we decided to make our way back to the apartment.  It was about 4:30pm.  It took us until about 6 to walk to the train station (partly because it was very far away, partly because we had to wade through hordes and hordes of increasingly drunker Dutch thirty-somethings).  We managed to buy tickets and find where (we thought) the train would come.  We got slightly confused, asked one of the train station workers for help, and he told us which train to get on.  Turns out it was not the right train and it took us about 30 minutes in the opposite direction than we wanted.  So we got off, took a different train back to Amsterdam, and finally made it home by 9:30.  Crazy crazy.  The train was PACKED.  People were sitting on the luggage racks above the seats! When we got home, our wonderful hosts ordered us a pizza for dinner.  It was very nice of them.

Today we went to a tulip garden called Keukenhof.  It was really cool! More tulips than I ever knew existed.  We walked around for quite some time and took loads of pictures.  The weather wasn't quite as nice as it was yesterday, but the rain held off for the most part.  When we got back from Keukenhof, we walked around the harbor by the apartment and then sat in the bar of a fancy hotel and had drinks and coffee.  They ordered us a typical Dutch snack called bitterballen, which is like a croquette I think, a little fried ball of creamy potato and meat.  It was pretty good! Now we're just resting up after a long day of walking around.

Tulips!

...tulip...

...tulip...

...tulips!!

Normandy is a very cold place

Cold but quite lovely! I made my way from Nantes to Bayeux, a journey comprised of three different trains, and finally met up with Grace and her parents.  They picked me up at the train station and took Grace and I to the hostel where we were planning on staying.  The hostel had pretty decent reviews online (though it didn't have it's own website, and when we called, it never rang) and it was suggested in Grace's relatively new guide book, so we thought all would be fine if we just showed up and tried to get a room.  We found the hostel, but there was a sign in the window saying that it was closed "definitively" so we had to go a different route.  It was a very senegalese-esque moment, inconvenient and for most people probably pretty frustrating, but just comical for us.  We did some searching around guide books and pamphlets and found a relatively reasonably priced hotel right in town.  The owner was very nice and the hotel was served it's purpose perfectly. There was a heater and a hot shower. What more could you ask for? Plus, we really got to practice our French! Sometimes in France when a non native French speaker tries to speak it, they'll just speak to you in English, but the people at the hotel actually spoke to us in French and it worked out very well.  It was quite enjoyable.

The first full day there, we drove out to Utah Beach where Grace's mom's father had landed five days after D Day.  The weather was actually pretty nice in the morning, so the beach was enjoyable.  There was also a really nice D Day museum there and I learned a lot.  After the beach we decided to go down to Le Mont St. Michel.  It started to pour down rain, but we went anyway!  It was packed with tourists, of course, but charming still.  Because I'd been there twice before, I opted out of the tour of the Abbey this time, but Grace and her parents went.  It was kind of cool because it gave me an hour or so to just wander the island alone.  Such a cool place!

 Horse carts on Utah Beach...a la Senegal.

Lucky sun break

Grace at Le Mont St. Michel

Our second day in Normandy, we went to the big outdoor market in Bayeux and walked around a bit.  Lots of smells and sights, it was pretty fun.  We saw a man selling pants that they also sell in Senegal and Grace and I almost got up the courage to talk to him and see if he was Senegalese, but we chickened out.  After the market we went to see the Bayeux Tapestry, which is 230 ft of embrodiered cloth, telling the story of William the Conquerer and the Battle of Hastings.  Here, check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayeux_Tapestry.  It was pretty cool.  After that we went to Omaha beach and the surrounding areas.  It was very very windy and cold that day, which made the beaches less desirable, but it also gave a pretty good idea of what those soldiers were experiencing when they landed.  It was a lot to take in. Such a beautiful landscape, but so much history of pain and loss.  Hope too, I suppose!  We went to visit the American Cemetery as well and that was incredible.  Very beautiful and respectfully done. 

All and all, our trip to Normandy was very fun.  I saw a lot and learned a lot, which was great.  On Sunday morning Grace and I hopped on a train to Paris, then another train (and another train) later, we were at the airport to catch our flight to Amsterdam!

The ocean and a field of mustard at Longues Sur Mer

At the American Cemetery in Normandy. "Here rests in honored glory, a comrade in arms, known but to God"

Monument at Omaha Beach

A sun break over the Seine.

Notre Dame and some cherry blossoms.

I realized for the first time last night that Senegal did nothing to improve my "sit and listen in on French people having conversation" skills.  Whenever we were with a group of Senegalese people, they would speak Wolof, unless they were speaking to us.  Last night I went and hung out with Rachelle (my French exchange student from Nantes) and some of her friends.  I could pick up on most of what was going on, but I definitely needed Rachelle's translations frequently.  French French is SOOO fast! I have some work to do.

This is Rachelle's dog Vioki, hanging out on my bed.

It was very rainy in Nantes.  The most rain I've seen in months.

One more day in rainy Nantes and then it's off to, likely rainier, Bayeux in Normandy to meet up with Grace and her parents again. I'm looking forward to it! But Nantes has been really fun too.  I went to a couple of Rachelle's classes at University yesterday.  She's studying English, so it was Translation class first, then literature (talking about Allen Ginsberg and the Beat Generation) and then another literature class where they talked about Frankenstein.  All in English! So that was fun.  Not entirely sure what's in store for today, all I know is that it includes going to one of Rachelle's favorite cafes to get dessert after lunch.  Doesn't sound too bad to me!

Today, I took a bath.

 

Yesterday, on my last day in Dakar, some of us went to the beach in the morning.  It was actually kind of cold out, so we just hung around there for a bit then went home for lunch.  My last cebb!! After lunch I went over to Camille’s house to say goodbye to her family.  I ended up spending a lot of time at her house and got to know some of the kids pretty well, so I’m glad I got to say bye.  When I got back to my house I did a bit more packing, then most of the family (everyone except uncle Amadou, Cheikh Rouna, and Moustapha) went to the hospital to visit Mohammed.  Obviously, I couldn’t go because I was leaving, but I felt bad.  So I said goodbye to most of them as they were leaving.  Then I had about two hours to kill.  I ended up letting the little boys sit on my bed and watch Ratatouille on my computer.  It was pretty cute and I’m glad I got to spend some quality time with the little ones! A van from ACI came to get me with Sarah, Izzy, and Grace to take us to the airport. 

                It wouldn’t be Senegal without a little disorganization and confusion, so we made sure to end on a Senegalese note.  After waiting about a ½ in a line that would’ve actually taken us on a plane to Lisbon, we finally asked someone and found out that we were supposed to print our tickets at the little machines.  We then had to go into another super long line for luggage checking.  The computers were broken or something and we were probably in that line for over an hour.  By the time we got through customs and security, it was already well past our departure time, but luckily they were stalling the plane because of all of the craziness.  So we were supposed to leave Senegal at 10:35 pm but the plane didn’t leave until around midnight.  C’est la vie!

                They served us dinner on the plane at about 1 am which was just kind of weird.  After dinner Grace and I took some sleep aid pills and just about passed out.  I swear that is the first time I’ve ever slept on a plane.  It was weird, and disorienting, and uncomfortable, but necessary.

                We arrived in Paris early this morning.  Sarah and Izzy both had family members picking them up, so Grace and I were on our own.  We managed to figure out the whole metro system and took the train and two separate metros and finally ended up in Montmartre.  I love Montmartre.  We didn’t have directions or anything written down about where her parent’s apartment but luckily she had remembered the address. We wandered around for a bit then whipped out our freshly honed French and asked someone for help. We found the place and it’s just so wonderful.  On the top floor of an old apartment building with a view of the city and an old wind mill.  It’s actually just perfection.

                Grace’s mom greeted us with bags of soap and wonderful smelling bath goodies! I took a hot bath that smelled like raspberries.  I literally have no words.  I’m very much excited for my time here.

                I go to Nantes to visit Rachelle and her mother tomorrow!