Chartres Day Two, Part Two

I only hung out in my room for about an hour, before heading back out again on the long walk to find the Maison Picassiette, which is the second biggest site in Chartres. I didn't realise how far it was, though. I walked, and walked, and finally found a sign, and walked some more. When I checked my map, I realised that it would be faster to cut through a cemetery that's just nearby. It turned out to be several city blocks wide, though, I swear, so it was more walking until I finally came out exactly where I needed to be!

The Maison Picassiette (or Picassiette House) used to be where Raymond Isidore and his wife lived in the early to mid-1900s. He was a basic manual worker, but some passion, insanity, or inspiration drove him to cover his entire house in paintings and gorgeously complicated mosaics made from crockery, bits of glass, and other random things like shells. They don't allow pictures (which seems stupid to me; what are they protecting? They don't have a gift shop or anything), but I sneaked a couple anyway. The amazing thing is that you don't expect every single thing to be a mosaic, but it is. The sewing machine, the stove, the walls, floors, flowerpots, *everything*. A lot of it is depictions of Biblical stuff and Christian iconography, and there are also world monuments, and a whole area full of designs and models of the various sites in Chartres (he seemed particularly preoccupied with the cathedral, which he apparently visited every year on his birthday). They had a couple of records written by his wife, along with pictures and the basic history, and she said that he basically just always wanted to live surrounded by beauty and couldn't imagine why people wouldn't, and so he made that beauty himself.

The house is pretty small, and doesn't take long to circuit through, so I was done quickly and headed back to town. I went through the cemetery again on my way, and this time wandered through at leisure and took some pretty pictures. People think it's weird, but I do love cemeteries; they're peaceful, and beautiful.

When I got back to the town center, I was dog-tired and my feet were killing me from all the walking, so I went back to my hotel for a nap. That evening, I ended up deciding that between the fact that it was raining, how full I still was from lunch, and the little bit of food I had left over from my lunch on the train the previous day, I would just stay in for dinner and not worry about it. I set my alarm (properly this time) and went to bed.

The Queen's Guard and the Cold

Friday morning I got up fairly early and headed out to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard. I went to the Green Park Tube station, which meant that I had a decently long walk through Green Park in order to find the Palace. It was pretty, though, and nice and tranquil. When I got to the Palace, it was around 10am, but there were still a few other people wandering around, taking pictures, and claiming spots by the fence. I found a spot just to the right of the main gate, and stayed there for the 1 1/2 hours until the actual ceremony started. It was actually really cold, and my boots were still a little damp from the rain Thursday night, so it was kind of miserable. The people with young children kept fussing over them, and everyone was really cold while we waited.

I had a really good spot, though; right up by the fence, so I could take pictures through the bars. The ceremony itself was both more and less interesting than I expected. The Guards weren't the typical red-coated, fuzzy-black-hat-wearing ones you expect to see. The Old Guard had the hats, but grey coats, and the New Guard was completely different. They marched in, and there was a lot of marching and forming up and walking around and shouting orders. Then the two bands played, and that was my favourite part. The first band (the Old Guard's band) played the theme from Star Trek, some jazz piece that I recognised but couldn't name, and the theme from Star Wars. Then the New Guard's band played a bunch of songs from Les Misérables, in a kind of mini-medley thing. Then the Old Guard band played St. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, and the New Guard's band finished with a bunch of songs from Mamma Mia. It really surprised me; I was expecting the bands to play "God Save the Queen," or something, and certainly not ABBA! I did really enjoy it though, since both bands were really good.

After they played there was a bit more marching and formation, and then the Old Guard's band, the Old Guard, the New Guard's band, and half of the New Guard marched away, and the rest of the New Guard (apart from the four that had already taken up their posts guarding the doors while I wasn't watching) marched away back to wherever the rest of the company hangs out. After the ceremony was over, I took a few more pictures and walked towards Victoria for lack of anywhere else I knew of to find something to eat. I was freezing still, so I ducked into the Queen's Gallery Shop, and wandered around, looking at stuff and warming up a bit.

Along my way, I also found a centre for the Girl Guides of the UK, which was a fun coincidence! The Girl Guides are basically the UK version of America's Girl Scouts, and seeing as I was a Girl Scout all the way through high school, I of course had to check it out! It was basically just a store selling stuff for girls who are Guides, but the groups of various girls standing around and the general atmosphere brought me back... it was kind of fun.

When I got to Victoria I was absolutely starving, so I decided to go to an actual restaurant and get actual food. In the food court on the top level there was a restaurant called Garfunkel's, so I went there and got a chicken wrap sandwich and some lemonade. The lemonade was kind of strange, since it was less like squeezed lemons and more like flavoured water, but it wasn't bad. The sandwich was a little dry, but the fries that came with it were good, and I was really hungry anyway. I was far too full for dessert, so I just asked for the bill. And when I glanced at the dessert menu while I was waiting I was glad that I was full; almost every thing on there was about 5 pounds by itself; way too expensive for me!

Afterward, I took the Tube to try and find the Museum of London, which has free admission and basically goes over the history of the city itself. It was difficult to find, as I was beginning to discover everything not marked by a specific Tube station was. Eventually I got there, and wandered around inside. It was decently interesting; a lot of cool artifacts and history. It did seem to be somewhat geared towards kids, and the hordes of childlings wandering around inside did nothing to quell that suspicion. After I'd looked at it, I figured I would just barely have enough time, if I hurried, to see the British Museum.

If I had thought the Museum of London was hard to find, the British Museum was ridiculous. I ended up walking around in circles three or four times, and all about a block away from the entrance. I ended up going in the back entrance, since that was the one I found, and it steered me straight into an exhibit of Islamic ceramics and pottery. Since that was not exactly my area of interest, I ended up following the signs in the stairwell all the way up to the top, where there were Egyptian artifacts and mummies. From there, I wandered through into Ancient Near East stuff, including some Greek and Roman artifacts. It was a lot of fun, because a few times I came across things that I had studied in my Art History class, and I liked the chance to get to see them in person. I was really excited by the Greek vases; I managed to find the one depicting Ajax and Achilles playing a backgammon-esque game, and took a bunch of pictures. Since that was my favourite amphora in class, it made me really happy. I also saw some other fun stuff, like statues of gods, various mummified animals, and a phalloi/herme in the shape of a wind chime. Unfortunately, the museum was closing soon, so I had to leave before I'd seen very much.

When I left, the sun was going down and it was going to be night soon. I hadn't yet just gone and walked along the Thames and seen the sights to see, so I went to Embankment station, walked across the bridge there, and then walked up by the London Eye and the Aquarium. There was a beautiful carousel, and everything was lit up and gorgeous. I took a bunch of pictures, although being as it was night not all of them turned out. I walked back across at the Westminster Bridge, where there was a bagpiper busking in the middle of the bridge. You could hear him all the way back at the Eye, but I really enjoyed listening to him. I gave him what money I had left in pounds, since I knew I'd be leaving the next day. Then I went back by Big Ben, got on the Tube at Westminster station, and went back up to Katie's house. I got some more dinner at that little Waitrose grocery store, and started the process of packing up all my souvenirs and clothes so that I would be ready to leave the next day.

Vacation Already

I've really been slowing down on blogging, mostly because not as much has been happening recently. This past week I've had classes and stuff, of course. Except for Science; that was canceled this week since the professor was gone, and we're just going to have to add time on to subsequent classes to make up for it. I need to start writing a journal for school outlining what I do in each class; Rawson wants it so that if we end up with a bad grade or something doesn't transfer, she can give us the benefit of the doubt and add on points from the journal.

Sunday we four girls kind of hung out. The Musée des Beaux Arts (which is a museum that's literally a five minute walk from our house) has free admission on the first Sunday of every month, so we went over there after brunch. The first thing that really strikes you is the giant tree in the courtyard; at some point I need to put the pictures I took of it on facebook. The actual museum itself was a little boring; lots of random paintings. There were some kind of interesting sculptures of fish and animals and things that were pretty cool. One of these days I need to go back and walk through the grounds, though; there are these gardens that people wander through and walk their dogs and stuff, and it looked really pretty through the windows. On the other side of the courtyard from the entrance is a random little exhibit with what might very well be a fake elephant. It's supposed to be Fritz; a Barnum & Bailey circus elephant that went crazy in 1904 and had to be put down. The circus donated the body to the city, and the skeleton was in some museum until it was lost in a fire. It was kind of cool, but random. Most everything is closed on Sundays, usually, but we wandered past the little park in front of the museum and saw that there was a little antiques market in the street. We also found a patisserie that was open. It's a really cool place; they make gigantic pastries but charge about the same as any other patisserie in town. We bought a little chocolate & cherry tart thing for a treat and shared it between the four of us back at the house. Then we decided to watch The Notebook, which I had never seen before. It was an interesting experience; any girl who's seen it knows that it is impossible not to cry at multiple points throughout that movie. Unfortunately the bell for dinner rang just as the movie was finishing, so we all had to go down with tear stained faces; of course that would be a night that Daniel would come to dinner! They all thought we were crazy emotional females, but whatever; dinner was paella again and that made me happy.

The rest of the week was less interesting, so I'll just give quick rundown of the highlights:
Monday was relaxing; in Greek I decided that my professor is cute (lol!), but only when he's talking about Greek. Linguistic passion? Definitely a turn-on. After class, I was talking to Giovanni on the way back towards home, and we made a date to go get a drink after class when we come back from vacation. That should be fun; he really seems to like talking to people from all over the world.
On Tuesday Valeria was sick, so she stayed home most of the day. I kind of missed my day of solitary relaxation, but that's okay; I have vacation coming up!
Wednesday was nice, since I didn't have Science. My translation class continues to be slow, and actualités continues to require no actual work, so that's good.
Grant decided to come with me to the Italian class on Thursday, which was fun. It was really cold and snowy, though; the temperature has plunged again this whole week, and I really want it to be spring finally. We ended up walking through some little shopping centers to warm up on our way back home from class. Thursday was also when Valeria left for Paris to meet up with her family, who had flown to Europe to visit during our vacation.
Friday I had class early, as usual. There were just six of us; I'm guessing most of the others had already left to start their vacation. She had us listen to some weird songs in French, but the class went fine.
Yesterday I did very little; Xavier and Jaqueline woke me up early wondering where Mamie and Sierra were, since they'd stayed out all night with the French boys. So I spent my day enjoying vacation, relaxed, and worked a bit on planning my trip to London. Yesterday evening was also when Alexandra came to the house. She's also a Cobber, but she's been studying abroad in Germany and is only here for a couple months during her school's vacation.

Today one of Geneviève's friends (I think her name was Michelle) came to brunch to meet us all. She was really sweet, and really talkative. Xavier kept going on about how much she talked, but I think that's just because she's the only person I've met so far who can talk more than him. She asked us all what we were studying, and told us about her life and her family. Apparently she was 18 and had three kids when her husband died, and in France at the time the age of majority was 21. So she was telling us about the house she had her son build, which has a bedroom for every one of her kids in case they ever need to come home. She kind of reminded me of my own grandmother, and I really liked her. After brunch, Grant and I took Alex on a tour of the city, to start her getting oriented. I finally took a bunch of pictures, since I haven't really gone around and done that much yet. We went inside the walls of the Musée des Beaux Arts, although not in the actual museum, and also looked at the cathedral. One whole section is closed off for construction and upkeep work, but it was still beautiful. I'm nothing near a Catholic, but I absolutely love cathedrals. Tonight, Daniel visited again and we had puréed vegetable soup and quiche for dinner, with tiramisu that Daniel had made for dessert. He's really good with desserts; it had too much cream and kind of fell apart, but it tasted really good. After dinner, I stayed downstairs for a little bit and watched some of Ice Age 2 in French with Mathias.

Tomorrow, I need to pack and make sure I'm ready for London, since Tuesday is when I leave! I'm really excited!

Catching Up

So Tuesday we did not, in fact, get classes. We went to the Université for our meeting with Caroline, and she took us on a tour of the building on the Rue des Tanneurs, which is the Department of Letters and Languages. That's where most of us have most of our classes, theoretically, if we have classes yet. She also showed us books of classes related to various majors, which wasn't really helpful because we didn't know what we were looking for or how to find it. But she wrote down what we told her about what classes we wanted, and we were given the impression that she would figure them out for us and email us with her findings. That or we would just wait until our other meeting on Thursday. So we were all pretty upset that we had gotten almost nothing accomplished. On our way back to the house it was snowing pretty hard, and the cobblestones were really slick, and it was altogether miserable. We finally got back to the house, holed up, and were just glad to get off the streets. That night we had ravioli for dinner, which was really good. We didn't do much that evening besides hang out and worry about classes.

The next day, Wednesday, was absolutely gorgeous. We had thought about going to the Musée des Beaux Arts, which is an art museum that's really nearby the house. But by the time everyone was awake and ready to go, we had kind of lost the urge. We decided that since the Musée is free every first Sunday of the month, we'd just wait until February and visit the Musée then. The second we went outside, though, we saw that it was an absolutely gorgeous day. We took a bunch of pictures of how beautiful things were. There's a marché that sets up on the Boulevard Heurteloup a couple times a week, and it happened to be there that day. There were several stalls of flower-sellers, so we got Jacqueline a bouquet from all of us. Then we went up Rue Nationale, which is where most of the shopping is in Tours, and wandered in and out of stores. On our way back to the house, we went into a couple antique stores that we pass by fairly often. One of them had a lot of old books, and I found one called "Celebration of silence" (in French, of course). The beginning of it explains sort of the value of silence and how rare it is, and then the rest of the book is full of blank pages. I thought it was pretty cool, and it was only 3 Euro, so I bought it. Dinner that night was roasted chicken and green beans. Mathias sort of threw a tantrum in the middle of it, which was really awkward. Xavier had to talk to him about it, but they both seemed pretty upset. Then after dinner I asked Mathias if he was done with his water so I could take it to the kitchen, and Xavier gave me a short lecture about how I'm an adult, and I should treat Mathias like a child. It was weird. I also sliced my finger open on my razor when I reached into my showering basket in the bathroom. It bled a lot, but isn't anything serious. Now it's healing up just fine.

Yesterday was Thursday, and we finally had our meeting to (supposedly) sign up for our classes. I'll leave that to a whole post on its own, though, since it was pretty eventful and frustrating.