Last Night in Vichy

Wow this month has passed by so quickly...and it's such a shame that it has to end.  Tonight marks my last full day in Vichy, so I'm going to take the time to review my experience here.  CAVILAM is a great program taught by charismatic and energetic teachers.  Aside from being immersed in French language, you also meet so many other students from across the world since the school tries to arrange classes with a good mix of nationalities (unfortunately English is so prevalent that sometimes it's hard to force a language barrier that only permits French).  Vichy is probably the perfect town for program: it's small enough that the locals know that there are students about but large enough so that there are a variety of shops to visit and practice your French.  I'll definitely miss the school and everyone I've met here.  Best wishes to the CAVILAM alumni!

For a few more photos, click here.

Morning class with Celine.

Hubert! Awesome teacher. "But I am French, of course I don't speak English."

Atelier class.  Miss everyone already.

View from atop the CAVILAM tower.  Great view of Vichy.

All the Americans -Kasey who went on this trip.  I'm not looking at my own camera.  How embarrassing.

Fête de la Musique

On the first day of summer every year (for about 30 years or so), the French take to the streets to celebrate music.  Everywhere in France, amateurs of all ages and skill levels line the roads and fill the squares to share their talents with the world.  For someone who has lived in a quiet Vichy filled with gray-haired people, it was quite unexpected to see the city come to life last night with jazz, choral, rap, and rock performances and to see the streets jam-packed with both the old and the young.

For more photos, click here.

Hurdy-gurdy, accordion, bagpipe combo.  Awesome performance.

Free performance by the opera house orchestra.  First-rate stuff.

Geneva

This weekend, Gaston, Mélody, and I visited Geneva, a beautiful city set on the landscape of Lake Léman and Mount Blanc.  We caught a bout of rain, but for the most part the weather was very agreeable.  We went to all the major tourist attractions including the Palace of Nations, the Jet d'Eau, the various Jardins, and the floral clock.  Of course we had to make a tourist mistake though: we looked at the map and saw "Eaux Vives," which means living water if you translate it directly, so we walked for around thirty minutes to the place only to find out it was the name of a residential quarter! Unfortunately it totally slipped my mind to go visit the CERN research center.  All-in-all it was a good trip.  My only complaint about Geneva: everything is crazy expensive there. At the first restaurant that we went to, we were charged 6 CHF (~5 Euros/7USD) for a bottle of water because they didn't offer regular water!

For more photos, click here. 

 

I guess it wouldn't be a trip to Geneva without visiting the Palace of Nations.

And of course you could never miss the Jet d'Eau.

 I did experience a bit of a hiccup on my return to Vichy:  my train from Lyon to Vichy was cancelled for unknown reasons.  I had to take a half-hour late train to Roanne and from there, I took a bus to Vichy.  I would try to say that the silver lining was that it was a scenic trip, but then I'd be lying about the scenery.  There was however, a yo-dawg roundabout system.  I think we went through five consecutive roundabouts at one point.

Paris and Dijon

Drat! I've run out of space to upload photos onto blogger, and there's no way for me to upload nice pictures to flickR with this crummy connection.  Therefore, I will unfortunately have to return to using Facebook as my main visual.  Bah.

RINK TO MOAR FOTOZE


Anywho, Paris was great.  The city that is.  I didn't really much like the people.  We took the metro and walked all over the place with the major hyper-tourist destinations in mind but strayed away from the path any time we saw anything that looked remotely interesting, which is to say every fifteen steps in Paris.  The street vendors, called vendeurs a la sauvettes (literally vendors on the run), were quite the nuisance.  A few of them even had the gumption to push me back after I told them I wasn't interested in their necklaces and kept moving.  I wouldn't have any of that, so I pushed them back and kept moving toward Sacre Coeur.

Notre Dame.  We found the center of Paris nearby.

 Jen and Daniel met up with Matt and me on the second day and we went up to Tour Montparnasse, which has a fantastic view of Paris.  We also toured through Jardin des Plantes, which turned out to be a geological and zoological destination as well.  Paris was unusually crowded this weekend because of the French labor day, which put extra stress on the metro system, but we got around.

Montparnasse.  No building in Paris is allowed to be taller or "uglier" than this one.

The Louvre.  Need I say more?

I woke up early the third day to catch my 7:20 train to Dijon.  I stopped by the Eiffel Tower right before dawn for the sole purpose of pleasing the photographer in me.  Luckily for me, they were testing the lights on the tower, so I got a free light show, and on top of that, the sun rose just as the show ended, resulting in some satisfactory pictures.

Light show! At an unorthodox time.

Dawn!

Dijon looked like a scene out of a movie.  The streets were paved with white stone and the ambiance was really rich and vibrant in color.  I did, of course, try Dijon mustard, which comes in a great variety of colors and flavors, each with their own cracker and cheese recommendation.

The plaza in front of the royal palace

Several of the different types of mustard.  There was one for every color pretty much.

I spent the rest of my day in Lyon with my family who up until the point when they saw me, thought I was starving and homeless.  In any case, I think it's one of their most important missions to feed me beyond the point of recognition while I'm here.  We went to what I can only guess to be a super-Carrefour.  It was basically a Mega-Walmart + Sams + Part of a Mall.

Mes cousins!

On the way to Paris

After morning classes, I hopped on the TER (slow trains) rail to Lyon where I spent some time with my awesome cousins.  The Lyon train station was incredibly crowded because Monday is the French equivalent of Labor Day.  As such, my train to Dijon was delayed by 15 minutes, which worried me because I only had 22 minutes to transfer trains at Dijon.  Everything worked out though.  The trip was scenic and the chairs were comfy.

There were many turbines along the way.  Most of France is nuclear powered, though.

Smaller cities like this were sprinkled all throughout the train trip

When I arrived at my final destination in Paris, La Défense, that's where the real trouble started.  The metro map made it seem easy to find my hotel... just exit and take a right.  HOWEVER, the metro station really lets people out into the mall plaza and courtyard, which is across a deceptively simple-looking road.  Turns out the maps in the area are 2D for 3D concepts, so I was wandering around lost for over an hour (I'm already bad with directions as it is).

La Grande Arche.  First thing I saw as I came out of the metro.

The mall was really pretty a night.

More or less, after 15 minutes, I found my way to the "VOUS ETES ICI."  The rest of the journey took over an hour.  I found myself in creepy alleyways, under bridges, and in vacant areas.

Riom, Chatel-Guyon, Mozac

Today Matt and I went on an impromptu trip to Riom.  The only planned thing was boarding train number TER 75707 at exactly 1:22 p.m and mounting return train TER 73642 precisely at 8:39 p.m.  It was so unplanned that I forgot to put my battery into my camera before leaving.  Luckily, I had Matt's to borrow.

We were greeted by the town's monument to fallen heroes.

As usual, the most noticeable landmark is a church.

Former seat of the Dukes of Auvergne and sanctuary to Saint Amable's relics, Riom is now but a shadow of its former self.  Once a flourishing center of commerce, art, and ideas, it's now a small, quiet town with rich history.

Riom keeps most of its old architecture, so most of the buildings are very colorful.  Should you ever need good backgrounds for something like senior pictures, Riom is a great place to go.

Matt and I wandered around town, following a sign that pointed to the GYM OF FRIENDSHIP.  Our little excursion led us over to Chatel-Guyon, the next city over.  On our way, we got a neat glimpse of a technical school in France.  In France, after collège (equivalent to our middle school), you get the choice of either going to lycée général (high school) or lycée technologique (a trade school).  The philosophy is that not everyone is cut out to enter academia, so why not formally teach them to be good at something else.


Unfortunately, our walk to the GYM OF FRIENDSHIP ended in disappointment as there was nothing particularly interesting about the building.

I did, however, finally find a neat graffiti wall.  Les Charms is the name of the street.

Our adventure took us to Saint-Amable basilica next.  The inside, you see, is about the same as any other church of the time.  The stained glass windows, however, were magnificent nonetheless.

We then got a little bit distracted by a little sign that said "Chateâu Tournoël 7km."  This prompted a forty-five minute walk past yet another city, Mozac, into the French almost-countryside.

The result? We never reached Chateâu Tournoël, but we found this really cool, partially excavated monastery called Mozac Abbey, founded by Saint Calminius some time in the 6th or 7th century.

Wandering around, we stumbled upon a chateâu! Unfortunately, it wasn't open to the public yet.

We must have looked quite bizarre, walking around as American tourist in such a random non-touristy part of France. To top it off, I had to take a picture with this tree of ridicularge leaves.

Our next stumbleupon was the Notre-Dame-du Marthuret church, a Languedoc gothic style church.  Random fact: turns out it was saved from one of the French revolutions by the butchers of Riom.

The building with the X patterns on it is considered a place of interest in Riom.  It's marked on the map as "The wooden house."  Its description? "Has withstood both earthquakes and fires." Where do I sign up to be a landmark?

French Art:  "The Kiss of Glory,". Not quite, IMHO. Located in the town hall.

Our final stop before we dropped from exhaustion was the Garden of the Court of Appeal.  The building behind me is The Sainte-Chapelle, the last remaining trace of the ducal palace from the late 14th century.