Bonjour mes amis!
I hope all is well with all of you and that you haven’t been too cold – I hear it’s absolutely freezing in many parts of the US! As I may have posted earlier, it’s been miserably cold here for about the past month – I think that’s how long there’s been snow on the ground, too! It finally got above freezing today (I think the high was in the upper 30s) and it felt SO warm! Other than the cold, I’ve been doing well since my last post, and of course I’ve had more adventures since then!
Hilary and I went to Limoges this weekend, which was snowy and cold, but really fun! For those of you who are thinking, “Hmmm… Limoges… That name sounds familiar, where have I heard that before?,” Limoges is world-famous for its china and its porcelain. We arrived on Saturday around lunchtime and then spent the afternoon exploring the city and doing some shopping. The French only have sales twice a year – in January and in July – so we had to seize the moment! It would have been irresponsible not to, right?!? We visited several churches, all of which were (to our surprise and delight) heated and had lovely stained glass windows. Most of them also still had their Christmas decorations and Nativity scenes up, so that was nice to see as well. We did have a sad moment when we tried to go to one of the city’s museums to see their collection of porcelain and art and couldn’t find a way to get into the building. They were doing work on the building, so there were big work sites up all around it – we walked all the way around the entire building and never once saw a door through which you could enter! We never found a sign explaining if/why it was closed, either, but then, I guess we ARE in France! We walked through the older section of Limoges after that, and found a cute little half-timbered street called rue de la Boucherie (literally, the butcher’s street) with a tiny chapel dedicated to St. Aurelien, the patron saint of Limoges’ guild of butchers – very different, but pretty cool!
On Sunday we visited the Musée National André Dubouché, a great collection of porcelain in a beautiful building. It was completely dedicated to porcelain, but it had a video about the production of porcelain that was actually legitimately very interesting, and it had a lot of cool stuff! For example, I saw a plate that was made in 1345 in China and is now one of the most valuable pieces of porcelain in the world. They’d also made reproductions of [past and present] heads of state from countries around the world, so I got to see what Abraham Lincoln’s plates looked like! (The have a bald eagle in the middle, then a ring of purple around the edge of the plate, in case you were curious.) Our trains back to Nevers from Limoges were slightly delayed on Sunday night because of bad winter weather, so I was glad to get back to my warm, dry apartment after so much time spent outside!
My teaching schedule changes on Monday, so this is my last week with my current classes. While I’m certainly glad to be done with a few of my classes, I’m pretty sad I won’t have some of them anymore – they’d grown on me! I’m sure my new schools, classes, and teachers will be fine, but I definitely don’t relish the idea of starting all over again and of having no idea how things are run! I hope all is well with all of you, gros bisous de Nevers!
Showing posts with label cold. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cold. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Paris, Bruges, Moulins
Dear friends,
Bonne Année! Happy 2010! The rest of my Christmas break in England was very enjoyable, and I got to see lots of family and do quite a few fun things. As I said briefly in my last post, I went into London with 3 of my cousins on the Monday before Christmas. It was absolutely freezing, and while we were in Camden Lock it started snowing SO hard – it was really pretty though! That night we went to see Avenue Q, a really funny musical with puppets – it’s kind of like a rude, inappropriate version of Sesame Street. We ended up spending the night in a hostel in London (not the nicest place I’ve ever stayed, but I guess you can’t expect too much for £7 per night…), so we also spent Tuesday in the city, shopping on Oxford Street, walking through Hyde Park, and checking out the Christmas displays at Harrod’s.
On the Wednesday before Christmas I went to Harpenden, another city near where my aunt lives, to see another one of my cousins and her darling 3-year old son, Ben. The last time I saw him he was very young (it was almost 3 years ago), and he’s gotten so big and adorable! We went to St. Albans (one town over from Harpenden) to walk around and have a coffee – it was so pretty in the snow, even if it was super cold.
On the day before I left England, Kathryn and I went to Bletchley (a town about 40 minutes from Bedford, where I was staying) to visit Bletchley Park, where British intelligence was able to crack the Germans’ Enigma code during WWII. My dad is a big history buff and told me I had to go visit it – even though I still don’t really understand how the actual code-breaking machine worked (it seemed really technical and confusing), it was actually a really interesting visit. Bletchley Park is a mansion with big, pretty grounds, and they had a good permanent exhibition about life during the war and, of course, the codebreakers. The work done at Bletchley Park during the war was kept a secret until the 1970s, so it was pretty cool to see something that was so top secret for so many years!
I flew back to Paris from London VERY early on the morning of New Year’s Eve and conveniently met Hilary at the airport (our flights landed shortly after each other). Of course it was very cold and grey in Paris, but we managed to walk from our hotel near the Centre Pompidou to the Louvre, so we visited the Louvre before it was time to get ready for dinner and New Year’s Eve festivities. Our original plan had been to watch the Eiffel Tower (which sparkles for about 10 minutes starting at midnight) and fireworks from Montmartre, the big hill in Paris where Sacré Coeur is situated, but it was too foggy and cloudy to be able to see anything from up there, so we had to change our plan of attack. We ended up just eating dinner at Montmartre and then walking to the Champs Elysées with a couple bottles of champagne to ring in 2010 (France doesn’t have open container laws, so no worries there!). We found a side street with a good view of the Eiffel Tower, and it was so pretty when it started sparkling! Overall, it was a great (and pretty laid-back) way to spend New Year’s!
On Sunday we headed off to Bruges, Belgium, which is definitely now high on my list of favorite places – it was ADORABLE! We got there in the afternoon and spent a few hours just wandering around – it kept getting cuter and cuter, and I didn’t see even one thing that wasn’t completely charming. It has lots of canals and bridges, and the architecture is gorgeous as well. On Saturday we got up and went on a great tour of De Halve Maan Brewery – we had a hilarious tour guide, we got to climb up on the roof for a great view of Bruges, and it ended with a beer in the brewery’s café – not too shabby! We then visited Bruges’ Church of Our Lady, which was a Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo, which obviously was pretty cool. I also really enjoyed the Gruuthuse Museum, which is essentially a collection of mostly-secular objects from daily life in Bruges in centuries past. It’s in an old private residence of someone who was very rich, so it was great to get to go into one of those beautiful homes that are so common in Europe! I REALLY enjoyed Bruges, and I also found all the Belgians I encountered to be very friendly, so I highly recommend it!
Hilary and I got back to Nevers on Sunday night, and I had classes Monday and yesterday. They’ve gone pretty well, although it’s definitely hard to get back into the routine of work after so much time off! Luckily my next vacation starts on February 5, so I have something to get me through all this tough work… I don’t work on Wednesdays, so today Hilary, my friend/fellow assistant Mari, and I went on a day trip to Moulins sur Allier, a pretty little town about a 30-minute train ride away. We saw 2 lovely cathedrals and got a private presentation on a beautifully-painted triptych at the Cathédrale Notre Dame. Moulins also has a pretty cool museum dedicated solely to stage costumes from theatrical productions, so we saw an exposition on costumes from early 20th century Russian operas. Kind of random, but still very cool – we spent quite a bit of time playing in the “children’s museum” portion of it – they had lots of fun things to try on, like furry Russian hats! We also had a much-needed coffee at Moulins’ Grand Café, a beautiful Belle Epoque café that hasn’t changed its interior décor since 1899 – it was beautiful!
Sorry for the monstrously long post, I hope all is well with you all – Happy New Year!
Bonne Année! Happy 2010! The rest of my Christmas break in England was very enjoyable, and I got to see lots of family and do quite a few fun things. As I said briefly in my last post, I went into London with 3 of my cousins on the Monday before Christmas. It was absolutely freezing, and while we were in Camden Lock it started snowing SO hard – it was really pretty though! That night we went to see Avenue Q, a really funny musical with puppets – it’s kind of like a rude, inappropriate version of Sesame Street. We ended up spending the night in a hostel in London (not the nicest place I’ve ever stayed, but I guess you can’t expect too much for £7 per night…), so we also spent Tuesday in the city, shopping on Oxford Street, walking through Hyde Park, and checking out the Christmas displays at Harrod’s.
On the Wednesday before Christmas I went to Harpenden, another city near where my aunt lives, to see another one of my cousins and her darling 3-year old son, Ben. The last time I saw him he was very young (it was almost 3 years ago), and he’s gotten so big and adorable! We went to St. Albans (one town over from Harpenden) to walk around and have a coffee – it was so pretty in the snow, even if it was super cold.
On the day before I left England, Kathryn and I went to Bletchley (a town about 40 minutes from Bedford, where I was staying) to visit Bletchley Park, where British intelligence was able to crack the Germans’ Enigma code during WWII. My dad is a big history buff and told me I had to go visit it – even though I still don’t really understand how the actual code-breaking machine worked (it seemed really technical and confusing), it was actually a really interesting visit. Bletchley Park is a mansion with big, pretty grounds, and they had a good permanent exhibition about life during the war and, of course, the codebreakers. The work done at Bletchley Park during the war was kept a secret until the 1970s, so it was pretty cool to see something that was so top secret for so many years!
I flew back to Paris from London VERY early on the morning of New Year’s Eve and conveniently met Hilary at the airport (our flights landed shortly after each other). Of course it was very cold and grey in Paris, but we managed to walk from our hotel near the Centre Pompidou to the Louvre, so we visited the Louvre before it was time to get ready for dinner and New Year’s Eve festivities. Our original plan had been to watch the Eiffel Tower (which sparkles for about 10 minutes starting at midnight) and fireworks from Montmartre, the big hill in Paris where Sacré Coeur is situated, but it was too foggy and cloudy to be able to see anything from up there, so we had to change our plan of attack. We ended up just eating dinner at Montmartre and then walking to the Champs Elysées with a couple bottles of champagne to ring in 2010 (France doesn’t have open container laws, so no worries there!). We found a side street with a good view of the Eiffel Tower, and it was so pretty when it started sparkling! Overall, it was a great (and pretty laid-back) way to spend New Year’s!
On Sunday we headed off to Bruges, Belgium, which is definitely now high on my list of favorite places – it was ADORABLE! We got there in the afternoon and spent a few hours just wandering around – it kept getting cuter and cuter, and I didn’t see even one thing that wasn’t completely charming. It has lots of canals and bridges, and the architecture is gorgeous as well. On Saturday we got up and went on a great tour of De Halve Maan Brewery – we had a hilarious tour guide, we got to climb up on the roof for a great view of Bruges, and it ended with a beer in the brewery’s café – not too shabby! We then visited Bruges’ Church of Our Lady, which was a Madonna and Child sculpture by Michelangelo, which obviously was pretty cool. I also really enjoyed the Gruuthuse Museum, which is essentially a collection of mostly-secular objects from daily life in Bruges in centuries past. It’s in an old private residence of someone who was very rich, so it was great to get to go into one of those beautiful homes that are so common in Europe! I REALLY enjoyed Bruges, and I also found all the Belgians I encountered to be very friendly, so I highly recommend it!
Hilary and I got back to Nevers on Sunday night, and I had classes Monday and yesterday. They’ve gone pretty well, although it’s definitely hard to get back into the routine of work after so much time off! Luckily my next vacation starts on February 5, so I have something to get me through all this tough work… I don’t work on Wednesdays, so today Hilary, my friend/fellow assistant Mari, and I went on a day trip to Moulins sur Allier, a pretty little town about a 30-minute train ride away. We saw 2 lovely cathedrals and got a private presentation on a beautifully-painted triptych at the Cathédrale Notre Dame. Moulins also has a pretty cool museum dedicated solely to stage costumes from theatrical productions, so we saw an exposition on costumes from early 20th century Russian operas. Kind of random, but still very cool – we spent quite a bit of time playing in the “children’s museum” portion of it – they had lots of fun things to try on, like furry Russian hats! We also had a much-needed coffee at Moulins’ Grand Café, a beautiful Belle Epoque café that hasn’t changed its interior décor since 1899 – it was beautiful!
Sorry for the monstrously long post, I hope all is well with you all – Happy New Year!
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