So it's finally here! I took my last exam, and I'm flying home in five days exactly from today! I can't believe it's happening so soon!! Being busy with the end of classes and finals, I haven't been able to update in a while, so here is the basic rundown of everything I've done recently. So on my first reading day before finals (more proof that AUP isn't a real school: we had 3 reading days) some friends and I ventured to Chateau de Vaux-le Vicomte, which is definitely in my top three for castles I have seen so far. It is a little more inconvienent to get to (especially if you go the round about way that I led us- sorry guys!) but definitely worth it! Vaux Le Vicomte was originally Nicholas Fouquet's mansion (he was the superintendent of finances, and is rumored to have been the real man in the iron mask-- although that's also basically been disproved) and so one day Fouquet was like I want to invite all of my friends over to see my awesome house, and so King Louis XIV is there and so is his number one guy, Colbert and Colbert is like, "hey, wow this house is really nice he must be stealing from you in order to do this." and Louis locks him up and steals his house. The End. But, when you're there you see where the envy came from: the Chateau was absolutely beautiful!
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| Vaux-Le-Vicomte |
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| Horse/Carriage Museum |
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| Horse/Carriage Museum |
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| Vaux-Le-Vicomte |
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| Interesting Candle Holder |
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| Fables! |
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| Old Fashioned Potty |
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| Gross Old Fashioned Potty |
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| The View from the Dome! |
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| not really sure who these pictures are of/why they are there, pretty sure these weren't around in Louis XIV's time.. |
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| ROBOTS |
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| The Man in the Iron Mask & I |
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| ROBOTS |
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| Vaux-Le-Vicomte |
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| Basically a Post Card |
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| Creeeeeeepy |
So anyways since then there have been a couple of random of food experiences that I thought deserved sharing. First up: Tartare de Boeuf: basically raw beef with eggs and vegetables (eeeeeek). It wasn't terrible, but the thought of raw beef just freaked me out a little, ok kind of a lot. I'm glad I tried it, but to be honest, probably never again, hahah. Later in the week some friends and I ventured to Le Chateaubriand (which is ranked the #9th best restaurant in the world) for lunch, when we got there it was closed, but they informed us that the chef makes lunch at the place next door & I will say while it was interesting looking, it was certainly delicious tasting! I'm not even quite sure what I ate, but I do know it was very, very, very good.
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| eeeeeeeek: Tartare de Boeuf |
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| Chateaubriand Appetizer: some kind of fish (cod peut-etre?) and salad |
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| Spanish White Pork with Mashed Potatoes (nooot exactly sure hahaha) |
So anyways, since I'm only here till May 19th, I decided not to get a metro pass for the month and instead just buy one carnet (a packet of 10 metro tickets) and walk everywhere for the month. So far, this has worked out really well and it's forced me into seeing a lot more. The following is my random discoveries (a lot is from my walk to school, which I know is super corny, but I needed to document it because I will miss it so much)
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| The Seine @ Sunset |
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| Invalides (best part of my walk to school) |
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| Someone Stuck a Traffic Cone on Republique |
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| Porte St. Martin (from Charles V's wall around Paris) |
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| Porte St. Denis (Little Known Fact: creepy prostitutes are srsly all over rue st. denis, avoid at all costs) |
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| First the traffic cone, now a motorcycle, statues all over Paris are not safe |
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| Part of my walk to School! |
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| TOO PRETTY |
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| One Ugly Thing on my Walk: Montparnasse (BOOO) |
