The blaaaahg

Salut Meara!

I hope you're out there reading this (and checking for my inevitable typos). I wish you were still here (and not just cause you let me stay in your hotel room, but tell your mom thanks again). Hope you've enjoyed some time back at home. I would also say enjoy Iowa, but you know...

Paris is a nostalgic city. When you throw in friends you haven't seen or talked to in a while, the combination of looking to the past gets even stronger while the future continues to press on.

Having you here made me think of all the previous times we'd traveled together with our families. My memories of Paris the first time that we went in 2007 have been intermixed and replaced more accurately now. Time passes strangely, especially with travel, but also at this point in life when everything seems to be changing so rapidly. Seeing you made me realize that I am more of an "adult" than I thought, and we are growing into our lives in much different ways than planned...and that's scary, but I guess everything will work out in the end.

The whole week wasn't a giant stress fest about life and the ambiguous future and existential crises. There was also a French midterm and classes to be stressed over, too! Just kidding...kind of. The flowers, sun, and conversations were greatly enjoyed. Your visit was perfectly timed, too, since this weekend has turned windy and rainy again.

Even though we're growing up, I'm happy we can still have stupid, fun times together. I mean, I got to bounce on a cow in the Louvre...bet not too many people can say that. By the way, Rosalie the bouncing cow is also on my wishlist, right under "unicycle."

More fun jumping in and out of bushes at the Jardin des Plantes.

Thanks for the delicious gelato (Amorino's vanilla and speculoos pictured above), sharing your unidentifiably flavored macarons, and all the amazing cheeses.

Here are some pictures from my museum visit to the Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine, while you got to sleep in and leisurely stroll through the Orangerie, Orsay, and Musée Rodin (still embarrassingly have not been to two of the three, but I will go soon!).

There were complexly carved doorways from various buildings, including one from Chartres. We got through the entire class and a good portion of the museum before the professor explained that everything in the museum was molded replicas.

Even these dancing statues...

Tip for next time: Incredible views of the Eiffel Tower from this mostly empty museum. I still want to visit that park below.

Sorry about the lack of cat when we visited Shakespeare and Co. I'll send you some pictures next time...and I might add a weird cartoon (Caesar? Hamtaro? Pete popping out of a chocolate egg?) to your note, if I find it.

Can you feel your legs again?

Thanks for taking me to the zoo! We spend a lot of time at zoos, no? Remember when we fed those giraffes with black tongues? Was that the same place that we watched porcupines eat for a half and hour?

I still think it's funny that the French are obsessed with squirrels and raccoons, the "hats of Davy Crockett."

Keep in better touch, okay? Don't be a creepy ninja spy all the time.

Miss you lots and hope to see you soooon!!!

Love,

Julie

P.S. Send me your high-quality-fancy pictures (especially all the ones I took of socks and garbage in the hotel room) and I will post them up here, too!

Sorry for temporarily dropping off the face of the internet, but I have been extremely overwhelmed and busy--in a good way! The crazy week began with a weekend trip to Barcelona...

Backing up to March 14, I managed to submit my final college application (yes!!! *crosses fingers*); shoved about 10 pounds of snacks into a backpack; experienced problems with a delayed métro; met with travel buddies at Port Maillot; waited an hour for a bus shuttle to drag us out to Beauvais (which should NOT be advertised as Paris, as it is in the middle of NOWHERE...it is also essentially one giant parking lot where they launch planes from); found out Ryan Air is equivalent to a flying crazy Megabus/party bus full of crying babies, children on the loose, and rowdy drunk 40 year old men having a bachelor party (in the row behind us, wahoo); Ryan Air is also the airlines known not for its exceptional service, but being completely average. Their redeeming quality is they are cheap and they try their hardest to be on time. When they do arrive on time, they play a little cheer over the speakers and everyone shouts "olé!" regardless of which country they land in (I thought it was just Spain, but no, it's everywhere). It's also an Irish company, so I was thrown off by the fact that everyone was speaking English and I was understanding nothing. Their menu also amused me, with their 5 euro hot dogs, squeeze soup, bowls of milk and cereal, boxes of chips, and odd ratatouille combinations.

Upon arrival, we immediately got lost. We took a bus and the metro in search of our hostel. Being immersed in complicated Spanish (Catalan) and unfamiliar surroundings was slightly jarring, but it made me realize how comfortable I've become in Paris and with the French language. Traveling to Spain also forced me to brush up on my Spanish skills, as one of the few who could limitedly communicate in our group. I'm estimating, but I think I'm 70% literate in French and maybe hovering around 35% in Spanish. Maybe more will come back when I go home. After confusing a waiter who asked about where we were traveling from (different parts of California, Pennsylvania, and Florida, but also New York and Paris?) he easily shifted from Spanish to French to English. I need these magical language chameleon skills that everyone here seems to possess.

Barcelona has a much different feeling to it than Paris despite seemingly large French influences (parallels to the Champs Élysées, Arc de Triumph, Montmartre, opera house). Barcelona seems to be the Las Vegas of Europe. We encountered more drunk people than you'd ever seen in Paris, where public drunkenness is illegal. There were a lot of bachelor parties going on.

We appreciated the fun colors and crazy architecture of Barcelona. It was such a change from Paris's even yellow houses, gray cobblestones, and perfectly square trees. Haussmann would probably freak out if he saw the wild buildings, especially the Block of Discord.

This is what happens when the wealthiest people of Barcelona decided to try to out-do each other by hiring different architects and holding insane competitions.

This is basically Willy Wonka's house. If you look more closely at the details, there are bunnies stirring pots of chocolate and monkeys gathering cocoa beans.

I don't understand how anyone let Gaudí build anything either. He's a crazy genius, but he seemed to enjoy messing with people and starting impossible projects. In the building above, Gaudí nearly got the commission taken away from him because he would not concede to add a piano room, the single request by the family who asked him to build their house. In the end, there was a piano room, but it was exactly the shape of the grand piano. Gaudí then bought the piano from them.

Gaudí also designed this complex pattern to be chiseled by hand into all the tiles along the main road when the king decided to visit Barcelona. Obviously it was impossible to finish in time, so they built a red brick Arc de Trompf to distract the king from the dirt road that he had to travel down. Eventually, the tile pattern was finished. Gaudí based it on the golden ratio and God. Everything was this complicated with him, it seems. He's awesome.

He also designed and began construction on the incredibly detailed Sagrada Familia Cathedral. However, he calculated that it would take 700 years to finish. As you can see, it's still under construction. Gaudí's plans were also lost, so they've hired someone else to finish the backside of the church. He changed up the style completely, so the front looks like a drip sandcastle and the back sharply contrasts with its harsh cubist style and fruit turrets.

We had dinner outside. These pictures do not accurately capture the insanity of that first day of travel.

The hostel was funky and eclectic

Day two of the trip went much better than the first. We hiked up mountains (i.e. rode escalators between boulders) to get to Parc Güell, containing more of Gaudí's mosaics and architecture.