Europe update, June 12
Jun. 12th, 2005 05:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eveglassGreetings again, all my faithful readers! And you too, the people who pretend but only skim! (It's okay. I don't mind. I'd probably skim too if I wasn't writing it!)
I am, still, in Arles. I have been in Provence since last I wrote on Friday night. My general impressions of Arles are not particularly favourable. I find it run-down, dirty, and somewhat unsafe. In many ways it reminds me of Verdun with more interesting architecture. (Appologies to any Verdunites reading this who actually like their neighbourhood.)
Which isn't to say that all my experiences here in Arles have been bad ones. I went to a HUGE open-air market yesterday. It took me 45 minutes to walk end-to-end, and I STILL hadn't walked the whole thing! They sold everything, too: food (obviously), both cooked and raw, clothes, soap, pottery, kitch, live animals, leather, etc. etc. It was great!
I wound up chatting with a lot of the stall-owners, especially the guy who made me some fresh-squeezed orange juice. (Yum!) In yet more cases of mistaken ethnic identity, two of the stall owners thought I was Italian. One, when I said I wasn't, guessed that I was Morrocan. Add that to the Spanish and Irish I've already been mistaken for, and I'm getting quite a collection of these!
After the market I went and saw some of the sights of Arles: the Amphitheatre (cool, but not necessarily worth the admission price), St. Triomphe church, and the St. Triomphe cloisters (very nice statues but the garden was nothing special). All three only took about 2 hours, so I spent much of the afternoon killing time. (Well, at least mocking time. I'm against killing in general.)
I stumbled across a small outdoor concert last night. The lead-in was a Capoeria demonstration. One of the guys was REALLY good, and couldn't have been older than I am! Then there were two sets of performers, and one was actually not bad. She reminded me a lot of my stepsister. At the concert, I started feeling VERY homesick: I was surrounded by people who knew each other and were just hanging out together, and I miss that.
So I went to dinner. While I was eating, a fist-fight broke out down the block. The man of the couple sitting at the table next to me when to investigate, and I asked him what was up. That broke the ice, and the three of us chatted for a while until their 2-year-old daughter fell asleep and they had to leave. Chatting re-energized me, and I felt much better.
Having seen everything in Arles I cared to see, I went to Avignon on a day-trip today. On the way there, I ran into a group of Floridian students and spent the morning with them. We didn't do much, but it was nice to feel like part of a group again.
I went off on my own in the afternoon. I tried to find an English bookstore because, calamity of calamities!, my CD player has broken and I can't listen to music! (I'm still hoping it spontaneously starts working the same way it spontaneously stopped working, but I don't have high hopes.) The English bookstore was not open.
Instead, I found a French bookstore. They had a small English selection that wasn't very interesting. Instead, I found their bargain section (2 euro paperbacks) and picked up an anthology of Arthurian legends, and Book 2 (of 4) of The Arabian Nights -- both in French. Given that I read a LOT slower in French than in English, they should definitely last me the train ride to Chamonix tomorrow (8.5 hours!), and possibly the ride out of Chamonix on Thursday.
I also went on the Pont d'Avingnon. It was fun. It was bridge-y. It was broken in the middle so it only spanned half the river, but hey, you can't have everything, right? The jump didn't seem THAT long... *grin* Incidentally, a random fact: the song about the Avignon bridge originally started "SOUS le pont d'Avignon..." (under the Avignon bridge) and not, as now, "SUR le pont d'Avignon..." (on the Avignon bridge). This is because the dancing took place in dance-halls on man-made islands under the bridge and not on the bridge itself. The bridge was both too narrow for dancing and also in danger of collapsing.
I hung around in Avignon for a while when I was approached by a kid no older than 2 years old. (ie: old enough to walk and make her will known, but not old enough to talk yet.) Her name, her mom told me, was Julia. Good name! Julia decided she wanted to play with my necklace, and I (never one to deny small children) let her. I wound up playing with her and chatting with her parents for about 20 minutes. Yay for small children!
Then I watched a mime for a while. He was (surprisingly) funny. And then I came back to Arles. I like Avignon more than I like Arles. But my hotel is here.
Tomorrow I leave for Chamonix in the Alps, and am there until Thursday morning. I'm planning on spending a lot of money (about 50 euros) to ride the lift to the top of Mont Blanc. I figure, how many chances will I have to do this? If I don't, I'll regret it later. So, there you go! I'm also planning on doing some easy hiking and just enjoying the sublime beauty of the mountains. I flew over the Alps on my way to Munich, and all I remember thinking was, "I've GOT to go there!"
Also, after 3 nights of my own room, I'm ready to go back to a dorm-style place and meet people, so that's where I'm staying in Chamonix: the Red Mountain Lodge. It's dorm-style, but cheap (16 euros a night). Yay for cheap. It will help cover the costs of the Mont-Blanc lift.
And that's what I've been up to so far. I come home in 9 days, counting today and the day of my homecoming. I can't believe I barely have over a week left! On one hand, this trip has gone by really fast. On the other, Italy seems like ages ago and I'm ready to come home and be in my own house and see my friends again.
So, many hugs to everyone! Many, many hugs! (I'd appreciate some hugs back, BTW. When I was homesick yesterday I wanted hugs so badly my shoulders and back ached!) And love to the people who need and want it!
Until next week,
Julie the wayward wanderer
I am, still, in Arles. I have been in Provence since last I wrote on Friday night. My general impressions of Arles are not particularly favourable. I find it run-down, dirty, and somewhat unsafe. In many ways it reminds me of Verdun with more interesting architecture. (Appologies to any Verdunites reading this who actually like their neighbourhood.)
Which isn't to say that all my experiences here in Arles have been bad ones. I went to a HUGE open-air market yesterday. It took me 45 minutes to walk end-to-end, and I STILL hadn't walked the whole thing! They sold everything, too: food (obviously), both cooked and raw, clothes, soap, pottery, kitch, live animals, leather, etc. etc. It was great!
I wound up chatting with a lot of the stall-owners, especially the guy who made me some fresh-squeezed orange juice. (Yum!) In yet more cases of mistaken ethnic identity, two of the stall owners thought I was Italian. One, when I said I wasn't, guessed that I was Morrocan. Add that to the Spanish and Irish I've already been mistaken for, and I'm getting quite a collection of these!
After the market I went and saw some of the sights of Arles: the Amphitheatre (cool, but not necessarily worth the admission price), St. Triomphe church, and the St. Triomphe cloisters (very nice statues but the garden was nothing special). All three only took about 2 hours, so I spent much of the afternoon killing time. (Well, at least mocking time. I'm against killing in general.)
I stumbled across a small outdoor concert last night. The lead-in was a Capoeria demonstration. One of the guys was REALLY good, and couldn't have been older than I am! Then there were two sets of performers, and one was actually not bad. She reminded me a lot of my stepsister. At the concert, I started feeling VERY homesick: I was surrounded by people who knew each other and were just hanging out together, and I miss that.
So I went to dinner. While I was eating, a fist-fight broke out down the block. The man of the couple sitting at the table next to me when to investigate, and I asked him what was up. That broke the ice, and the three of us chatted for a while until their 2-year-old daughter fell asleep and they had to leave. Chatting re-energized me, and I felt much better.
Having seen everything in Arles I cared to see, I went to Avignon on a day-trip today. On the way there, I ran into a group of Floridian students and spent the morning with them. We didn't do much, but it was nice to feel like part of a group again.
I went off on my own in the afternoon. I tried to find an English bookstore because, calamity of calamities!, my CD player has broken and I can't listen to music! (I'm still hoping it spontaneously starts working the same way it spontaneously stopped working, but I don't have high hopes.) The English bookstore was not open.
Instead, I found a French bookstore. They had a small English selection that wasn't very interesting. Instead, I found their bargain section (2 euro paperbacks) and picked up an anthology of Arthurian legends, and Book 2 (of 4) of The Arabian Nights -- both in French. Given that I read a LOT slower in French than in English, they should definitely last me the train ride to Chamonix tomorrow (8.5 hours!), and possibly the ride out of Chamonix on Thursday.
I also went on the Pont d'Avingnon. It was fun. It was bridge-y. It was broken in the middle so it only spanned half the river, but hey, you can't have everything, right? The jump didn't seem THAT long... *grin* Incidentally, a random fact: the song about the Avignon bridge originally started "SOUS le pont d'Avignon..." (under the Avignon bridge) and not, as now, "SUR le pont d'Avignon..." (on the Avignon bridge). This is because the dancing took place in dance-halls on man-made islands under the bridge and not on the bridge itself. The bridge was both too narrow for dancing and also in danger of collapsing.
I hung around in Avignon for a while when I was approached by a kid no older than 2 years old. (ie: old enough to walk and make her will known, but not old enough to talk yet.) Her name, her mom told me, was Julia. Good name! Julia decided she wanted to play with my necklace, and I (never one to deny small children) let her. I wound up playing with her and chatting with her parents for about 20 minutes. Yay for small children!
Then I watched a mime for a while. He was (surprisingly) funny. And then I came back to Arles. I like Avignon more than I like Arles. But my hotel is here.
Tomorrow I leave for Chamonix in the Alps, and am there until Thursday morning. I'm planning on spending a lot of money (about 50 euros) to ride the lift to the top of Mont Blanc. I figure, how many chances will I have to do this? If I don't, I'll regret it later. So, there you go! I'm also planning on doing some easy hiking and just enjoying the sublime beauty of the mountains. I flew over the Alps on my way to Munich, and all I remember thinking was, "I've GOT to go there!"
Also, after 3 nights of my own room, I'm ready to go back to a dorm-style place and meet people, so that's where I'm staying in Chamonix: the Red Mountain Lodge. It's dorm-style, but cheap (16 euros a night). Yay for cheap. It will help cover the costs of the Mont-Blanc lift.
And that's what I've been up to so far. I come home in 9 days, counting today and the day of my homecoming. I can't believe I barely have over a week left! On one hand, this trip has gone by really fast. On the other, Italy seems like ages ago and I'm ready to come home and be in my own house and see my friends again.
So, many hugs to everyone! Many, many hugs! (I'd appreciate some hugs back, BTW. When I was homesick yesterday I wanted hugs so badly my shoulders and back ached!) And love to the people who need and want it!
Until next week,
Julie the wayward wanderer
