albi: part 2

Third stop: Maison Natale de Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec's childhood home isn't far from the museum, so we ran up the street and saw it. It's not really a tourist attraction. People still live there; there's just a plaque by the door saying Toulouse-Lautrec's childhood home (only in French, of course).

Fourth Stop: crepe stand!

We bought delicious nutella crepes from a surly crepe stand guy, who did not put nearly enough nutella on Noemi's crepe. Side note: I have never once seen a crepe rolled up like we do in the US. They're always folded, either in a triangle or in a rectangle.

Fifth Stop: St. Salvi Cloister

I love, love, love cloisters. This one was very small, but absolutely adorable. It had a big herb garden in the middle, so it smelled so good in there.

Sixth Stop: cute little kitchen stuff store

I have a weakness for cute kitchen stuff. This store happened to have the perfect carafe d'eau that I've been searching and searching and searching for since I left Paris. No matter that I paid 10 euro for an empty glass bottle, and that it'll add at least a pound to the weight of my suitcase...the lady who rang me up asked where I was from and when I said the US, she told me how she had just been in Chicago with her husband. We then had a nice little conversation and at the end she complimented my French. Victory!

I've found that for the most part, my feelings after a conversation have nothing to do with content and everything to do with how well I just spoke French. For example, on Friday we had 5 visits, which is way, way more than our usual 3. We thought it was going to be too hard to get to everyone and be able to spend enough time chatting with them, so I called up Madame Cacheux to see if we could switch her to Monday afternoon instead. She was way ticked because apparently Pierre had already changed the date of her visit a couple times, so I ended up being like, "Ok, fine, we'll find the time to come visit you today as planned." Bad outcome, yeah? More work for us. But. For the duration of the entire conversation I was speaking awesome French; she understood me, and I understood her. When I hung up the phone I was smiling. 

Anyone who's picked up a second language ever feel that way? 

albi: part 1

Albi is about an hour away from Toulouse by train. It is famous for its beautiful brick cathedral, Saint-Cecile, and for being the home of the artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

First stop: Saint Cecile

Brick is a very common building material in Toulouse, and I think south western France in general, but we had yet to see a cathedral made out of brick. St. Cecile is, and it’s huge! The interior is painted, wall to wall to ceiling, in gorgeous, bright colors. The ceiling paint is all original from the middle ages. I couldn’t believe how colorful it was! It was also kind of cool because there was a huge wedding going on when we got there so we listened to their vows and also got to hear the organ play “Ave Maria”. Awesome acoustics. 

Second Stop: Musee Toulouse-Lautrec

This museum houses a ton of the artist’s work. The building is called the Palais de Berbie and was completed in the 13th century. Behind it is this incredible little garden and a great view of the river Tarn. It was kinda funny, because as we were leaving we saw the couple from the cathedral. Talk about a great location for wedding photos. Unfortunately no pictures were allowed inside at all, but he is famous for lithographic prints for Moulin Rouge, as well as some really cool paintings. 

adventures on the road of the bull

After three weeks of being in Toulouse, I finally stumbled upon an open air market! Noemi and I were walking over to Rue du Taur to see St. Sernin basilica and a few other sights (to be discussed in subsequent posts), and as we passed through Place du Capitole, there it was-rows and rows of people selling clothes, shoes, used books, jewelry, etc. etc. I bought a book of Jacques Prévert poems for 2.5 euro. Pas mal!

We then proceeded down Rue du Taur to see the ever so lovely St. Sernin Basilica and Toulouse's museum of antiquities.

St. Sernin is a beautiful, romanesque church. No angry priests this time around, even though I was reading my Jacques Prévert book instead of scripture while sitting in the pews. 

The museum was free (of course, Toulouse is a student's paradise), so even though we're not particularly interested in Toulousian antiquities, we ran in. It was actually really cool! We spent maybe 30 minutes just breezing through it, and it was quite enjoyable.

And, it is 2:00 AM here, and we are tired from a day spent in Carcassonne, so I will continue this little narrative later. Fireworks, Olivia Ruiz, more random pretty shots of Rue du Taur, food, fun, excitement, everlasting joy to come!

everything is illuminated

I've been meaning to write this post for a while:

A Collection of Stained Glass Windows from Cathedrals in Europe.

Downham, England

York Minister, York, England and the town hall of Dundee, Scotland

Les Jacobins Monastery, Toulouse, France

St. Maire Eglise, Normandy, France

Amboise, France

St. Etienne Cathedral, Toulouse, France

The crown jewel of all stained glass windows, in my opinion: St. Chapelle. 

It's a tiny cathedral not far from Notre Dame in Paris. You walk upstairs and into the chapel, and it's like being inside of a kaleidoscope. Every wall in the entire cathedral looks like the photo, telling a ton of Old Testament stories, panel by panel, and then something about the relics of the chapel (?).  It is awe inspiring. So beautiful!

sometimes i run around monasteries and think about airbending monks.

Toulouse. is. so. hot. all. the. time.*

I can't remember if I mentioned finally purchasing a fan from Auchan so I could actually sleep at night in my sweltering room, but I'm a little nervous that little baby 12 euro fan isn't going to make it through the next four weeks. It makes slightly unsettling mechanical noises, like the plastic blades are off balance or something, and alternates between blowing really nicely and not moving air much at all.

It being so hot makes you not want to do anything (including going running in the morning, although the fear of rape and death also makes you not want to do that. I'm paranoid, what can I say?). 

I like visiting old cathedrals, because they are very very cool inside...both literally and figuratively. This weekend we went to Le Musée des Augustines, which used to be a monastery, and the Jacobin monastery. So cool. The museum had this great gothic sculpture wing with beautiful medieval art. There were two sculptures of Mary that I particularly liked. They were beautiful. Both monasteries had cloisters, or a courtyard with a covered walkway all the way around it. The Jacobin one had these little hedges trimmed into designs. When we walked outside I gasped. Haha, I don't even know why, I didn't know what a cloister was and was expecting a chapel or something. To walk into this beautiful, arch-surrounded garden was a shocker. It was so quiet there too, the walls of the monastery keeping all the Toulouse street noise out. If I was a student here I'd go there all the time and read. Toulouse is a major student town, so students get into a ton of stuff for free, including both the museum and the Jacobins. We rejoiced in that greatly as we just spent 15 euros each on dinner at a tapas restaurant (Tangent: I tried calamari! When did I get so adventurous with food? This summer I've eaten haggis, eggs (don't mock, I hate them), salmon, marmite, lamb, and now calamari! I'm so proud of myself.).

Cue photographic evidence:
(Notre Dame de Grasse, both landscapey shots from les Jacobins)

*Ok, it's probably the same temperature as Utah. Maybe. I never really know how hot it is since everyone throws around temperatures in Celsius. Maybe one day I'll stop being lazy and look up a conversion online. Or I'll just keep pretending I know the difference in feeling between 30 and 35 degrees.

St. Etienne is rolling in his grave over your lack of charity

A couple of days ago Noemi and I went on a little excursion and saw St. Etienne cathedral. This cathedral is particularly interesting because it's an eclectic mix of a bunch of different architectural styles...and now I don't remember what they all are...but I paid 0.05 euro for a little English brochure, so I can go find out anytime I feel the need to know.

pretty organ!

Here is a tale about how I got yelled at by a French priest while we were here. There was this slot in the wall and a keyhole underneath it, but it looked liked if it had been some sort of little door that it had been plastered shut. While Noemi and I were discussing possibilities of what it could be for, I was touching the little slot and this priest (maybe just a worker at the cathedral? je ne sais pas) was like, "Qu'est-ce que vous cherchez la?" (what are you looking for?) And I said nothing and then he went off about how this isn't America and you can't just something something something (didn't understand what he was saying/I just start tuning French people out when they're upset). I think the slot was for money, and he thought we were going to steal it? Listen French priest, Noemi and I are the last people who'd steal from a Catholic church.We found it kind of amusing.

I think being in France has made me realize just how very much American I am.

3 castles in 14 hours

getting really lazy with the pictures here.
My mom and I took a bus tour down to the Loire Valley where we saw Amboise (bottom 3 photos), Chenonceau (middle photo), and Chambord (top). Amboise is where Leonardo DaVinci is buried. It's an adorable little town. We ate lunch at a cafe, sitting facing the street French style to enjoy the people watching. Chambord has this awesome double staircase where if you go up one side of it, you'll be able to see your friend going up the other periodically in little windows, but you'll never meet until you get to the top or bottom. It was a fun little adventure.

a day in which science and art collide

So Marie Curie is my hero.

Because she was a girl and a chemist. 

And she won the Nobel Prize twice and discovered two elements (radium and polonium) and did a ton of stuff with x-rays (and then died because of it).

She is buried in the Pantheon in Paris.

I got to go there.

And pay my respects.

Thanks Marie, for all your inspiration.

Her husband Pierre, also a scientist, is in the tomb underneath hers.

After the Pantheon, my mom and I went to the Rodin Museum. I loved, loved, loved it. It's really small, in the house where he lived (more like a mansion, big for a house, small for a museum), and then in the gardens behind the house as well. All of his sculptures looked like pieces I would actually want to display, because they were beautiful. They looked so alive! I loved all of the ones of hands, like The Cathedral (below) or The Secret (right). I also really liked any of the ones that looked unfinished, like they just emerged from the stone. And of course, the Thinker was great. I even bought a little Thinker eraser (like it's a man thinking...and you can erase pencil with it...bwahaha). 

a day in which we almost miss a train and see lots of flowers

these posts are all out of chronological order...this was our last day in Paris


The day before we checked out of our hotel, my mom and I went to Giverny to see Monet's house and gardens. We literally bought our train tickets two minutes before the train pulled out of the station. It was intense. Monet's house/gardens were beautiful and worth the stress, though. The lillies here were the inspiration for the paintings from the last post. Giverny is such a cute little village. It kind of reminded me of Bayeux, the city we stayed in while we were in Normandy (that city deserves a post of its own...maybe I'll get around to doing that sometime).

Apparently Monet was obsessed with Asia, because there are a million Asian drawings in his house. Also, lots of bamboo in his garden. 

a day in which we see water lillies and get a surprise!

We finally made it to the Musee de L'Orangerie, where Monet's water lilly paintings are and a bunch of other impressionists. It's quite small, so it only took us maybe 45 minutes to go through the entire thing. The lilly paintings were beautiful. There are maybe 8 (?) of them in the museum, all at different times of day (my favorites were the night ones). They're huge! We loved this museum...

except for the naked fat ladies.

So a few days before this when we were walking through Notre Dame, someone comes up behind me and grabs my shoulders. Wouldn't you know but it's our neighbor Brother Wilkes who was in France with his wife Sister Wilkes. It was the BYU Blackpool 2010 jacket I was wearing that caught their attention. Then, the same day we were at the Orangerie we went across the river to the Musee d'Orsay and happened to run into them again! We spent the rest of the afternoon with them getting gelato and then hanging out in the park in front of the Louvre (pretty much the only grass in Paris you can actually sit on. All of the lawns have signs saying "pelouse interdite" or "grass forbidden"). What are the odds?

joyous reunion!

a day in which we saw 6 million dead Parisians.

(sidenote: I am uber behind, as we left Paris yesterday, and I'm currently in Toulouse. I still have so much to stay about Paris!)

And not just their graves, but their actual dead skeleton bodies.

Welcome to the catacombs-aka tunnels under the city that used to be used as mining tunnels, but after it was decided that the dead bodies in the cemeteries were still carrying disease, they dug them all up (6 million of them, as stated in the title of this post) and carted them down into the tunnels. Now people can walk through for a few euros (8? 10? whatever it was, it was worth it). It was really cool. You walk through dark tunnels of nothing for like 15-20 minutes and then you get to this entry way that warns, "Arrete! C'est ici l'empire de la mort!" or "Stop! This is the empire of death!" and then you see stacks and stacks and stacks of bones for another 20ish minutes.

Sweeeeeeeeet.

(no flash photos allowed in empire of death, so please pardon the blurry bones)

a day in which we GI Jane (and GI Joe) it up

In the middle of our sejour in Paris, we took a little trip to Normandy to see the American D-Day sights. These included St. Maire Eglise (church in city where paratroopers landed), Utah Beach, Omaha Beach, Pointe du Hoc, and the American cemetery. Our French guide, Bertrand, took us all over the Norman coast in his little Peugeot. It was awesome!

Best part: crawling on our stomachs to climb inside a real life WWII tank and adjust the gun.