Une autre semaine est passée...

Bonjour!!
Another week and some days have gone by, so I have lots of updates!
Last Friday all of the Paris programs went on an excursion to the Loire valley (sort of central France, about a two hour drive south of Paris) to visit two châteaux: Blois and Chambord.

First we had a guided tour through the Château Blois, which has four wings encircling a courtyard. The oldest section was built in the 13th century, one wing was built in the 15th century by Louis XII, one in the 16th century by François I, and the last wing built in the 17th century by Gaston d'Orléans, who was Louis XIII's brother.
This is the courtyard:



Notice the staircase, which was highly ornamented and jutted out from the building so that when the king was residing at the Château, everyone could see him as he moved from floor to floor.

Excursions like this have been a pretty big reminder that I didn't learn anything in AP European History in high school. Or at least that I had retained very little information.
Apparently, the French court was nomadic through the Middle Ages and the French Renaissance. This is mainly because the monarchy wasn't powerful enough to be able to rule from one city, so the king had to move around and take his court of thousands with him. This is the reason there are so many Châteaux scattered throughout France, so the King had lots of seats from which to rule.

Here is the Salamander, which was the emblem of François I:



Salamanders were believed to be able to live in flames and to swallow them. Also look how cool the ceiling is. The whole château was incredibly colorful and ornamented like that on the inside.

Here's the Porcupine emblem of Louis XII:



This is the oldest and coldest part of the Château, the Medieval room:

Apparently there have been a few movies filmed here over the years. Nothing that I had heard of. But, one remnant of a film shoot is the newest thing in the entire château, this throne:

Tourists were encouraged to do whatever they want to the throne, said my snarky tour guide, since it was obviously of no historical value.

After lunch, we hopped back in the bus to go to Château Chambord. This is the type of castle that ends up being the subject of those 1000-piece jigsaw puzzles:


Incredibly cool from the outside, pretty sparse on the inside. The center of the castle is a double-helix spiral staircase, and off of each landing is a stone room that leads to more rooms and more rooms, many of which are empty and undecorated. Very easy to get lost.
Here's a nice view of the "backyard" :

(That's John, a kid in the Math program this quarter. He's also in my French class.)

And so ends a nice day in the Loire Valley.

The next day I went to the Musée d'Orsay with a few friends:

Apparently, it used to be a train station before it was converted to a museum in the 1980's.
My favorite exhibit was about French Art Nouveau furniture and décor.
Seriously.
Look at this dining room:
Or this couch:
This couch was actually designed by Hector Guimard, who also designed all of the Paris Métro signs that are so iconic:


A few other things of note:
One evening, I was trying to hail a cab home with a couple friends. There were plenty of cabs, but they all had fares already. While waiting at the corner, a girl walks up to us and starts a conversation. Her name is Élaine, and from what I could gather of her poor English and rapid French, she is a novelist, and she has a meeting with her publishers coming up but nothing to show them. So, she's out on the streets of Paris, drunk, looking for stories. She told us she'd help us hail a cab if we just talked to her for a few minutes. By "help hail a cab," she apparently meant running into the middle of the street and waving her arms at oncoming traffic. I feared for her life, but fortunately nothing happened.
She asked me if I was Parisienne, telling me that I spoke with no American accent.
I mean, this is just not true, but it was nice to hear nonetheless. Drunken compliments from strangers are still compliments.

I still love my Astro class. We have remote access to a private observatory in Sonoma, California and I've been taking images in class for my final project. I'll post a few once I accumulate some good ones and add color. It is SO much fun. And I don't mean I've just been taking pictures of Mars or things "close to home," but entire galaxies and things that are well beyond the Milky Way. It's awesome.

My mom requested info about the food, so this section is for you Mom :)
Yes, food is expensive. But just like anywhere, it just takes some searching to find affordable (and delicious) places to eat.

The day we were in the Loire Valley, we had lunch at an expensive restaurant (paid for by the University) near Château Blois. As it was Friday in a Catholic country, and still during Lent, all of the courses were fish. But hey, I love fish, so I was happy. The first course was a small fillet of raw salmon on an unsweetened waffle, served with some sort of dill sauce. The main course was a baked white fish in a cream sauce with rice and spinach and nuts that I think were filberts. Very yum. Dessert was first a plate of fresh citrus fruit (grapefruit, tangerines, blood oranges) and a small scoop of a fruity sorbet. Then they gave each table another plate full of sweetness: macaroons and little cakes and meringues and candies and it was actually just too much.

Down the street from the Cité (where I live), there's this great little place called Planet Food that sells Greek sandwiches (pitas) stuffed with meat and with a side of fries for €4.00-€6.00 depending on the meat you get. They are DELICIOUS and completely filling.

Crêpes are delicious anywhere, anytime. A non-dessert crêpe is usually called a Galette, and they come stuffed with..almost anything. Potatoes-carmelized onions-Bacon-Swiss. Tomatoes-Basil-Mozzarella. It's hard to go wrong.
And dessert crêpes? I'm in heaven. Fruit. Nutella on everything. Cream. I'm drooling just typing this.

Lots of bread. So much bread. Bread everywhere. Fortunately, my diet has been mostly carbs for years anyway, and now it's just part of the lifestyle.

Fortunately, grocery shopping is pretty cheap. It's very easy to get good, fresh ingredients inexpensively. I keep my room stocked with usually some granola, some sandwich ingredients, and maybe fruit or something. Wine is also very cheap (although not actually cheaper than water, which is a popular misconception. Well, maybe it's cheaper if you compare the cheapest wine to the most expensive water, but in general, no).