My Precious Choir

This weekend was the weekend of our last choir concert in France. It was in Orleans, about 1.5 hours from Tours, and each day we would meet at a parking lot about 20 minutes from my house to take the bus together. The bus rides were fun, especially with a new friend I made. I never caught her name but she was really sweet and we spoke French all the way to Orleans. We also sang songs while everyone in the bus watched us. They thought we were pretty funny. When we got there we warmed up for maybe 20 minutes with the other choir, then we worked on our songs for maybe an hour. Then they sent us home. It was the most useless rehearsal I've ever been to. Mainly, because it was shorter that the time it took to get there.

All the French were prepared for the bus ride home, but us "étrangérs" missed the memo. Everyone whipped out their food so all of us were so hungry. Before we got on the bus, my friend Miriam from Sweden said loudly, "Je meurs de faim!" (I'm dying of hunger). And literally all six people that were walking in front of her turned around and started pulling out sandwiches and other types of food from their bags. It was the funniest thing! And Americans doing think French people are nice. Ha! When we got on the bus we were bombarded by people trying to give us food. They were all so sweet and we got home full and happy.

The next day was the same thing except we were prepared this time. It was a real concert but this time we warmed up for 20 minutes got on stage and sang for 15 minutes and then got back on the bus and went home. I ate my sandwich that I had on the way home so I didn't have to bum food of anyone this time around. On the way home the people sitting in the back seat started singing a really pretty hymn. It was so nice just to listen to them. Then one of the women from choir took us home like she had done the night before. She's a really sweet lady that is a Professor at our university in Tours. She is also Aaron's teacher. She dropped us about 15 minutes from our house and we walked the rest of the way. It's getting so warm out it was a really nice walk.

Then today we met earlier that usually because it was a matinée showing. The same thing again, 1.5 hours to get there, 20 minutes warm ups, 15 minutes on stage, 1.5 hours ride home. After our concert in the bus our director, Hervé, made an announcement that it was all of our last concert with them, and he thanked us for being here. They all clapped for us and then, on the bus, they broke our the wine and crackers!! Everyone got a little cup of wine and the crackers, cookies, and nuts were passed around and around until everyone was happy. I hadn't eaten much when I had the wine so it knocked me out and I slept the rest of the way home to the sound of the students in the back singing :)

When we arrived back in Tours everyone got off the bus, and as I was getting off they all started to sing Auld Lang Syne (the French version) to us. I had to hold back my tears. It was the first goodbye I've had to say yet, and they were just so sweet to us. Hervé came up and gave us biz forts (big kisses) goodbye and then someone got a picture of us with him. Then we said goodbye to all the individuals and took off in our own directions. Miriam and I started "fake" crying after we left, but that's all I really wanted to do, but I knew if I did I would never hear the end of it from Grant. So I held it in.

We went to the bus stop to wait for the bus, but then Romain called me and said they were on their way to pick me up and take me home, so I just went with them. Now I'm sitting in my room realizing how much I'm going to miss France when I leave, and trying to think of ways that I can make it thought the goodbyes. But I'm sure dinner is just around the corner so I'm going to sign off.

Bisous mes amis!

Travel Day

April 15th, 2010

Up early to catch the train. We ate one more croissant and nutella before we left and we checked out by 9:00am. We took the train to the station in Pisa, a bus to the airport, a plane to Paris, bus to the metro, metro to the train station where we thought we only had 3 minutes to make our train...then come to find out it was cancelled because of a train strike and we'd have to take the next one to Tours. However, so would everyone else on that train...

It was so full everyone was standing in the isles. I found a nice little spot by the door and popped a squat. It was actually really comfortable and I didn't mind a bit. The big lady standing in front of me was Indian, I think, so she had on this elaborate outfit. Her skirt had little brown furry balls hanging from it, so when no one was looking I would play with them. Ha. I thought that was pretty funny. She eventually sad on the ground by me.

Then one stop everyone got up to get off. She couldn't get back up so I got up to help her, then everyone unloaded at that stop so I got a seat. I'm alone because Mamie and Valeria thought it would be at platform 1 so they went to stand there but I was skeptical so I stayed by the sign that said where it would be. It was in 16, all the way across from where they were. I'm surprised they even made it on. But it's been a nice quiet ride home and I'm ready for some home made food cooked by our very own Jackie in Tours, France.

Uffizi

April 14th, 2010

First thing we did after our croissants and nutella was go to our reservation at Uffizzi. It was literally 2 minutes and we were inside. Worth the money there! We went upstairs where we saw lots of art. Little of which I know but it was still nice to see. I did recognize a few, such as the birth of Venus and some others painted by Leonardo de Vinci. And I also picked out my new favorite painting: Musical Angel by Giovan Battista. Look it up, it's cute. SO then we went to the train station to buy our tickets for the next day. We found a nice little plaza that we decided to go back to later, but Mamie still wanted to buy some art. We headed back to the market where I got a new cashmere scarf, and then the girls went to buy some art. We grabbed some pizza nearby and ate it on the steps of the cathedral where we stayed for a very long time just soaking up the sun. We even went back after getting gelato to eat it on the stairs.

We decided to go back to the plaza after taking our stuff back to the hotel. The girls wanted to stay at the hotel but I wasn't about to miss out on a sunny day in the grass when back in France it was cold. So we went and layed in the grass till the sun went down, then it got a little chilly, so went back to the hotel again.

There the girls took a nap and I looked at all 906 pictures that I had taken thus far on the trip. It is ridiculous but they are all so priceless! I can't wait to get them on my computer!

When the girls woke up we went back to that restaurant we ate at the first day. We had to wait 1/2 hour but the food was great. Afterwards I was the only one who was craving gelato so I got one last one. 7 gelato in 4 days. Mmmm.

Saving Florence

April 13th, 2010

Today we got up a lot more reluctantly. We'd seen most of the city the day before so we were planning on doing museums today. We went to the l'Accademia Belle Arti where the original David is. The line was forever long and we heard the only thing to see in there was David so we decided we'd rather spend our money on the Galleria di Uffizi. It has more art that Val and Mamie wanted to see so we headed over there and took pictures of the David outside of that museum instead. This line was even longer than the last one so after some investigation I found that we would be waiting 2 hours in that line, but if we made a reservation for tomorrow it would cost 10.50 euro but we could go right in. So we decided time was money and we would pay the extra euro to go tomorrow. We thought we'd try to get in for the European Union student price so we went up to the window and spoke French accents and showed our French IDs but he didn't buy it. He wanted to see our passports, so we just said we would pay the full price. Too bad.

From there we went to get lunch. We shared a little pizza and a bottle of water and our waiter sang to us. He seriously spoke every language. I've decided I'm going to live there and work as a waitress. I could learn Italian and speak English, Spanish and French with all the tourists.

We wandered over to Santa Croce after lunch where we saw some musicians and got some pretty good gelato. We were all tired so we decided to head back to our room and take a nap before heading back to see the city at night. We slept for about 1.5 hours then we went to find a place to eat. The food is so good here. I could eat it forever. We then walked up all those stairs again to see Florence at night. It was beautiful. You could see the stars and all the city lights. All the big monuments were lit up and it was just a beautiful sight. We got our 5th gelato up there and ate it on the stairs before coming back to the hotel. But on our way back we were walking past a plazza and saw a trash can smoking. I pointed it out to the girls and we decided we should tell someone. Seconds after it burst into flames. A woman came to hand us a flier about her bar and Valeria said, "No thanks, but do you know someone we could tell about that?" The woman immediately ran to tell a group of cops one street over and they all came running. One ran to the nearest restaurant and got a waiter to bring out a bucket of water. There must have been 15 cops there.

And that is the story of how I saved Florence from burning to the ground!

Flying through Florence

April 12th, 2010

We woke up early and went to our included breakfast which was croissants and nutella...yum. First we went to the Duomo. We paid 8 euro to go up into the dome but it was so worth it. 463 stairs and you could see the whole inside of the dome and all the incredible paintings. Then we walked the rest of the way up to the top, on top of the dome where you could see all of Florence. It was gorgeous. The green mountains surrounded the city of red roofs. So pretty.

After the Duomo we walked down the Italian street to the Vecchio bridge. It was so pretty! Just as I always imagined it. We bought our first gelato on the other side of the bridge. It was the best stuff I've ever tasted! Right after that we were looking at post cards and we heard a girl behind us say, "Hi." We turned around and there was Anne Solyst, a girl from Concordia. She had lived on Valeria's and my floor our freshman year! She was late to class so we didn't talk to her long but it was need to see a familiar face in another country!

We then walked down to the Palazzo Pitti where we were hoping to see the Boboli gardens but it was 10 euro and we are all broke with all the fun we've had so we decided not to go. Instead we bought another gelato and ate it in the Piazza de Pitti. Yum!

Since we couldn't see the Boboli gardens we decided to see if we could find some other gardens close by. They were too expensive too but we got a beautiful walk up and down a hill that gave us a good view of the city. The road we were on took us straight to the Piazzale Michalangelo. We had to walk up a lot of stairs of course but the view from up there is gorgeous. We could see everything we had visited that day. We shared a hot dog up there and then we headed back down to the market we saw the day before. I bought a beautiful picture of the bridge, an Italian flag and a shirt I had been eyeing before.

We came back to the hotel to look at our good and rest a while before going out to dinner. When we were looking for a place to eat 3 Italian guys dressed in suits stopped us and asked us how to find the Duomo. We pulled out our maps and were about to show them when they said they were just kidding. They just wanted a reason to talk to us. I was watching my back and ready to bite and kick if they tried anything, because I always hear about those really wealthy, nice looking men who ask for directions and then shove you in a can and you are never heard from again. But they honestly just wanted to talk to us. They were quite funny telling us all the places we could eat and then they said good night and gave us bisous (which they to backwards, opposite cheeks from the French) and went on to find a place to eat. And of course we got gelato after that. 3 gelato in one day! Means we were having a good time.

The Flying Tower of Pisa

April 11th, 2010

We woke up early and got ready to go to the Leaning Tower again. The weather didn't look promising so we brought out umbrellas and warms coats. When we got there we ran to the ticket office because the wind was so strong. We got inside, bought out tickets and put our bags in the security lockers, but when we looked out the doors we were greeted with hurricane-like weather! It was so bad, and the flag on the top of the tower was blowing away. The Italian workers kept coming of and looking out the doors and then looking at us like we were crazy. On of them said, "Da tower, it fly away!" And another said, "You go get your money back." And pointed to the ticket booth. Then some people ran in that had just come down from it. They were drenched and windblown, they said it was worth it, but hold on because the wind is strong. We made a unanimous decision not to go. We got our money back but then we had to run back to the bus stop in the rain and it was so wet! It was too windy to bring out our umbrellas so we wrapped our scarves around our heads and ran for it. Every umbrella man we ran by tried to sell us umbrellas. We waited in the rain for the bus, and when we got on we didn't even buy a ticket. We were soaked and frazzled. Valeria said I looked like the Virgin Mary in my Scarf, but it didn't come off until we got back to the hotel.

When we got back to the hotel we asked the little Italian man in a purple shirt how much breakfast was. He asked us our room number and hesitated and then said: "It's free." So we got breakfast included :) After that we finished packing and went to the train station where we caught our train to Florence!

When we got to Florence Mamie realized she didn't have the sheet with our hotel's name or address on it. I had to call Romain and give him Valeria's email address, password, and instructions on how to get onto the Concordia website so he could look it up on her email. He text me back with the address so we found a map and figured out how to get there. Since we couldn't figure out the bus schedule, and we couldn't speak the language we decided to just walk. It didn't look that far. It was raining a little so we pulled out our umbrellas and took off in the direction we hopped our hotel was in. We found it pretty easily. We also found that it was located right above a serial killer museum that plays scary music until 10 o'clock at night. Funny! But the hotel was really nice.


We went searching for some lunch then and ended up eating at this self serve place that was really cheap and super good. Afterwards we went to the market right down the road from our street. It is an awesome market with so much leather and some really great touristy stuff. We wandered around there and somehow ended up at the Duomo, a huge cathedral with the world's largest brick dome. We took some pictures and walked around the find the entrance for the next day.



We came back to the hotel for a little while and planned our next day. Then we went searching for dinner. We ate at a small restaurant by the Duomo and quickly found out that we could share our meals instead. We also found that there is a "cover" charge which is more or less equal to our tip. So now we know in the future not to order so much. After dinner on our way home we bought a bottle of wince, but we realized too later that we didn't have a corkscrew. So we went home and tried to pull the cork out with tweezers, our room key, a brush and a dirty sock. When that failed we decided to just push the cork into the bottle, which was not much easier. But it was hilarious and the wine wasn't even that good!

The Leaning Tower of Pisa!

WE woke up early to go to the airport. We took the 7:59 train to get to our bus that took us to the airport. We were there really early but that way we didn't have to feel like we were in a hurry, and the sunrise on the train to Barcelona was beautiful!

The airplane flight was the bumpiest I've ever been on but it was fun. I feel asleep soon after but not for very long because then we were in Italy. I realized how much we had missed when we fell asleep on the plane from London though! They were selling things, walking up and down the isles, making announcements about the things they were selling over the intercom. It was incredibly annoying. Our landing was rough so when we landed everyone clapped. Val and I went to find our hotel and got settled in before going back to pick Mamie up at the airport an hour later. Our hotel was cute and it was right next to the train station. Once Mamie got there we impulsively went to see the Leaning Tower of Pisa. The sun was setting and we took some awesome pictures! We decided to come back the next morning before our train to Florence and go up into it. Then we went to find some food, which was of course, pasta :) and went to bed fairly early. I think seeing the Leaning Tower of Pisa that night was one of my favorite parts of my trip!