Paris

So this weekend being Valentine's Day, we decided what better place to celebrate the day of love than Paris? So, on Friday the 13th (another special occasion?! perfect!) we were on our way. The train to Paris, for one reason or another, is one of the few trains where you have to book a reservation. With our Eurorail passes, we can usually just hop on and hop off whenever we please, but for Paris we had to book reservations several days before. We probably should have even booked them sooner, because we were forced to split up onto two different trains.

There were about 8 of us girls on the first train to Brussels,  and then Jazzy and I had to rush to catch our train to Paris. Brussels is a French speaking city in Belgium, and a lot of the people, even if they know how to speak English and Dutch will refuse to do so. So we spent a good 20 minutes trying to figure out why we weren't being allowed on the train, and we never really figured out why, but our train ended up leaving about 45 minutes late. 

Once on the train, we read and slept, pretty typical. It's funny how at the beginning of the trip I was so alert and looking out the windows trying to see everything and now even if I try to stay awake, I am slowly rocked to sleep. There were some cute/slightly annoying kids sitting next to us who kept creeping up to us and trying to scare us by whispering next to us while we were sleeping. If they had been American, I would have thought they were brats. But theres something about kids speaking in another language that makes them cute. 

Once we arrived in Paris, we got directions to our hostel from a lady. We rode the metro one stop and then switched lines to our stop, which was Les Gobelins. I'm guessing it might translate to The Goblins or something which is kinda creepy...maybe not. Our hostel was a lot easier to find than the one in Amsterdam, which was nice. Plus, we got their in the daylight this time. We checked in and then went next door to a Turkish restaurant for lunch. No one spoke English so we pointed to what the guys next to us had ordered and it ended up being very good. It was like some sort of sandwich with beef in it...kind of like a philly cheesesteak but not exactly. By the time, we were done eating, Christina and Brisa (our hostelmates) had arrived. Their train had been on time...So we went to our hostel and checked out the room. 

Our room number (and also my area code)...A good sign? I think so. 

Our little tiny bathroom. Yes, that shower is really that small.

So after we had gotten freshened up, we decided to go exploring. Jazzy and I needed to buy a multiple day metro pass, because we didn't want to keep paying 1.60 Euros every time we rode the thing. So we searched for the station who sold them, which we finally found. But not before seeing a crazy French lady getting pulled over in a roundabout and throwing a huge fit. She was slamming her head on the steering wheel and then got out of the car and ran into the nearby park with the policeman following her. Lesson learned. Road rage is universal. 

The next little hitch occurred once we had gotten on the metro. We got onto one of the subway cars and were greeted by the absolute worst smell I have ever smelled. I told Christina after that I wanted to blog about it, but honestly didn't know what words could accurately portray how awful it was. Brisa, Christina, Jazzy and I are all trying to be calm and not obvious in the fact that we are literally trying not to breathe. I honestly though for a minute that this was a normal thing for the subway car to smell this bad. And I had already spend 20 Euros on the dumb pass, dang it! Slowly, we start to notice that everyone in the car is covering their faces and then we discover the source of the stench. In the back of the subway car, there was a homeless man laying on the floorboards, with feces all over his pants, and body odor that makes a certain family member (you know who, mom and dad)  smell as good as homemade cookies. 

At the next stop, we ran, not walked, out of the subway car onto the car in front of us and for the next ten or twelve stops watched as people boarded the car and then followed our exact steps from trying to ignore it to the sprint off at the next stop. 

It was about 4:30 or 5 o'clock by this time, and Brisa and Christina were hungry so they got a sandwich and Jazzy and I got Gelato. We walked around a little bit, and went into a perfume shop, which reminded me that I want to invest in some good perfume when I get home to the States. By then it was a little after 6, so we headed over to the Louvre museum. On Friday nights, the Louvre is free to people under 25.  First, we took the infamous photos outside and it was absolutely gorgeous. See!

So then we ventured inside. The museum is huge! Apparently if you spent 30 seconds at every piece of artwork inside, you would be in the place for nearly 4 months. 

And of course, you can't go to the Louvre, without seeing the Mona Lisa. Honestly, kind of a letdown. Its like the size of notebook paper an you can't get within 20 feet of it. But hey, I can cross that one off my bucket list.

The Crown Jewels

And then we were bid farewell by some interpretive dancers wearing skirts. 

Overall, we spent 3 hours in there and probably didn't even put a dent in it. It was really neat though, a very beautiful museum. My favorite so far this trip.

So by this time, it was about 10 o'clock at night and we headed back to our hostel, but we were all starving so we asked our hostel front desk person where the supposedly hoppin' Latin Quarter district was so we could get dinner and drinks. He pointed us in the right direction, but after a little ways of walking, we decided we were too tired to walk that far and had an inkling that were were lost so we headed back to the pizza place near our hostel. It's a good thing we did. 

Pizza Navona was the name of the restaurant and it was amazing! We all ordered the house wine, which was the best wine I've had here and the best part, it wasn't expensive! Then I got the Quatre Fromage pizza which translates to four cheese, for you people who aren't up to date on your French. It was by far, the best pizza I've ever eaten, hands down. After another couple glasses of wine, we were thinking that our hostel beds were sounding pretty awesome, so we called it a night. 

Goodnight Brisa and Christina. Goodnight Paris.

The next morning we woke up bright and early and ate our hostel provided croissant breakfast and made our way to the St. Michel fountain to meet for our free tour. Gotta love us college travelers, getting everything for free eh? The above picture is in front of the fountain waiting for the tour to start. 
This is our tour guide James. He was on the TV reality show Big Brother a few seasons ago. I never watched that show, but hey here's to the first (pseudo) celebrity sighting in Europe. He's a freak though. If you can't tell from his pink mohawk (not just in honor of Valentine's), they called him "Crazy James" on the show for a reason. Don't google image the guy, I made that mistake yesterday, R-rated. 

The tour was good though. We saw the Louvre again during the day time. 

We saw the Roche Cathedral (sp?)

We saw the most expensive street in all of Europe, where this chocolate shop sells chocolate for $250 Euros

We saw the U.S. Embassy, ironically the most guarded building in all of Paris. We saw some pretty gardens and lots of other stuff too. The tour got done around 2, so a group of about 8 of us girls then headed to, you guessed it, the Eiffel tower!

On the way, we saw this couple taking wedding photos. A depressing reminder that we were spending Valentine's day single in Paris. Okay, maybe don't feel TOO sorry for me. 

Finally, we have arrived!

It was a lot bigger than I though it would be! Some of the girls decided to wait in line and go to the top. I opted out since the line was 2 HOURS long! I mean who would have known that Valentine's day at the Eiffel tower would be so busy? 

On the way back to the metro we grabbed some sucre citron (sugar and lemon) crepes and then I snapped this photo.

After the Eiffel tower, we headed back to the hostel and of course, went back to our favorite pizza place. The owner, an Italian man in in 50's, gave us free Valentine's Day cocktails, but then made us kiss him on the cheek to thank him.. Not exactly the Valentine's kiss in Paris I was dreaming of but I guess we got to get used to these flirty Italian men sometime right? 

Then we ordered Chocolate Mousse and Tiramisu. Good decision. After dessert, we went down the block and saw "He's Just Not That Into You" in English, with French subtitles. It was the perfect chick flick to end our fabulous Valentine's Day in Paris.

The next morning (Sunday) , a girl Katie and I met up to head to the train station for our journey home. Several of the other girls were staying until Monday because they don't have classes on Monday, so they were going to stay and see Versailles and such. I wish I could have seen Versailles because I hear it's truly amazing. Maybe next time. It was nice to get back and have some time to get things done and relax before classes started on Monday. 

Paris, you truly surpassed all my expectations. I guess, after a somewhat stressful weekend in Amsterdam, and all the negative comments I've heard about French people being mean to us Americans, I wasn't expecting much from you. But you proved me wrong. You are beautiful and I promise I will be back someday.

This upcoming week is Carnaval, it's like the biggest thing to hit Maastricht since the invention of cheese (oh yes, these Maastrichtonians love their cheese). But really, its like Halloween and Mardi Gras combined, but bigger, and crazier. Thousands of people travel here for the festivities and the entire town shuts down for a 5 day long party. The pre-festivities started this weekend, and on next Wednesday, they actually have a "The party is over until next year" party. 

My friend Julia and a couple of her friends are coming into town on Thursday for Carnaval and we don't have school next week at all so on Monday I'm traveling to Gryon, Switzerland (a cute  little mountain town) for 6 days to go skiing, hit up some thermal pools, partake in some wine and chocolate tasting, and who knows what else? This study abroad thing really isn't so bad.

Anyways, don't be too jealous. Go eat some good Mexican food and sleep on an extra fluffy pillow tonight, and rub it in my face via blog comment.  It will make you feel better, I promise.

With Love (and a Valentine's Day that will be hard to beat),

Tay

Amsterdam

Sorry about not posting in awhile.

The first week of classes went well. My two dutch classes are interesting, but I probably like my Intercultural Philosophy and Communication class better than my Dutch Art History class so far. The professor for Dutch Art History is a very stern Dutch woman and staying awake while she talks monotonously in the dark about slides of paintings is quite a challenge. Sorry to mother who was an art history major. The philosophy class is much smaller (both of them are all Baylor students though) and the professor is a funny Dutch guy who seems really interested in his subject matter. 

On Tuesday night they had a end of "welcome week" party for all the international students at a dance club called Kadans. It was a lot of fun, even though Europeans dance weird. We stayed out pretty late, maybe thats why Dutch Art History was so difficult to stay awake in. 

On Thursday, six of us girls rode the train to Amsterdam and got there in time to check into our hostel and meet up with my friend Mark who I know from my business fraternity at Baylor. He graduated in December and just started graduate school in Amsterdam. He did the same study abroad program in Maastricht 2 years ago and decided he wanted to go back to Europe to get his Masters in European Studies. The seven of us walked around and decided to eat at a Thai restaurant. Then Mark took a few of us to a lounge/restaurant place called Barney's. 

On Friday, we dropped our stuff off at Marks apartment because we didn't have a hostel booked for Friday night and then went to a little cafe for lunch. After that, us girls went to the Van Gogh museum, which was pretty cool. I liked the Rijksmuseum better, but more on that later. The other girls wanted to spend more time at the museum, so Christina and I went exploring we went to this park and took pictures and got Dutch waffles with powdered sugar. The best part is that there is no feeling guilty because we burn so many calories from walking :)

We then met up with the other girls  and went to Leidseplein area to buy tickets for an American comedy show called "Boom Chicago." After we bought the tickets, we were all excited because we found a Mexican restaurant nearby. We went and were thoroughly disappointed. It was extremely overpriced and not very good. Silly kids, thinking we could find good Mexican food in Europe. After dinner, we went to the show. It was a very funny "Who's Line is it Anyway?" type improv show, with a few rehearsed pieces as well. It got a little political which kind of made me mad, but overall it was fun. They made fun of Americans and Dutch people as well as some just general funny stuff. 

Afterwards, we went to Barney's again to get drinks and dessert and then went back to the hostel to go bed. 

Yesterday (Saturday), Christina and I split up from the rest of our group and had lunch with Mark and then went shopping a little. We then spent some time at the Rijksmuseum, which was really awesome. It had a better environment than the Van Gogh museum, a lot less stark and serious and more friendly to people who don't know a lot about art (giving really good descriptions and fun facts about things). They had a lot of Rembrandt's work and many other artists.  

Then we went to the Heineken Brewery which was really fun. We got to see how they make the beer and it had fun virtual reality ride and some other fun stuff. After that, we walked around and then Christina and I checked into the hostel and freshened up and then met up with the rest of our group for dinner at an Indonesian Restaurant. Amsterdam is known for their Indonesian food apparently because Indonesia was founded by the Dutch. I had some Chicken in coconut sauce..Yum!

Afterwards, Mark, Pana, Christina, and I went to walking around and saw the sights of Amsterdam nightlife in Rembrantplein and the infamous Red Light District. It was worth seeing, a little seedy, but not as dirty or scary as you would expect. After that, we went to an Australian bar whose slogan was "Lousy food and warm drinks." It was so fun, the music was so different than what were used to and everybody is dancing goofy rather than all sexy like at clubs in the United States. The bar closed around 1 or 2 and then we navigated our way back to our hostel. 

This morning we woke up and caught our train back to Maastricht. Unfortunately, they were doing construction on the tracks going to Maastricht so we had to get off in a city called Eindhoven and take a bus to another city called Roermond where we got on another train to Maastricht. It was actually kind of nice because we got an unofficial tour of another area of the Netherlands.

After we got into the train station, Brisa, Christina and I got a late lunch and then I came back to the dorm and changed into some comfortable clothes and have been trying to get some other stuff done before classes tomorrow. It's so nice how Maastricht feels like home now. Just pulling into the train station, it felt so familiar and nice to be back somewhere where I dont have to feel stressed out or lost all the time. 

Well that's all for now. Ill try to update more this week than last week. Sorry!

Miss you!

With love (and a craving for Chipotle),

Taylor

A few pictures..not in any order, up until Day 2 in London. More to come.

Christina, where are we?

All the reporters outside of Downing Street.

Katie and I outside of parliament

Big Ben 

Beatle's immitation picture to come.

Chicago in London. How ironic.

Christina before we saw Chicago

Christina and I in London

My friends :)

Tralfagar Square outside of the National Gallery.

Fish and Chips

Our hotel in London

The Maastricht train station.

Salad with Brie cheese at dinner in Maastricht

Our Japanese owned dorm/doctor's office facility. Weird.

Foggy in Maastricht!

Group picture after the tunnel adventure in Maastricht

Typical Maastricht street.

Part of the University of Maastricht. I think the Entrance to the School of Economics. 

Canned Water. Yes please!

Dutch countryside on the way from Amsterdam to Maastricht

So London was a success!

Thursday:

We woke up early and rode the bus to the train station. From there we rode a train to Brussels and then got on the Chunnel. We arrived in London at St. Pancras station (Harry Potter's platform 9  3/4). We then navigated our way through the "tube", London's version of a subway. 

We checked into our hotel which was located near South Kensington, a really nice part of town with easy tube access to pretty much everywhere. The room was quaint and we freshened up and then headed to get a late lunch at a place called "Fish N Chips" across the street from our hotel. Judging from the name, it sounded like a great place to have our first meal in the UK. And it was! 

We then rode the tube to the place where they sold discount theater tickets. We got tickets for "Chicago" for pretty cheap and then went and found the National Gallery. It was really neat to see Van Gogh's sunflowers up close and personal. After that, we walked to the theater area and walked around. The show started at 7:30 and was very good. Believe it or not, I had never seen Chicago, the movie or the musical. It was a fun show with good catchy songs. 

After the musical we had a late dinner at a Portuguese restaurant. A chicken pita type thing. 

We headed to bed early because we were all so exhausted. Story of the trip. 

Friday:

Woke up early to a continental breakfast at the hotel. We (Christina, Claire, Pana, and Katie) rode the subway to Abbey Road where we took the typical Beatles crossing the street imitation picture. It was the 40th anniversary to the date of the Beatles last performance on an Abbey Road rooftop, so there were a lot of tourists. The picture was hard to snap because the cars don't have much intention of stopping at the crosswalk. Silly Brits. Tourist girls just want a fun little photo op. 

We then road to train to Westminister and walked around Parliament, Westminister Abbey, and some other places my brain can't recall right now. Katie, Pana, and Claire went inside Westminister Abbey but Christina and I decided to venture to see the Churchill museum that my mom had reccomended (mainly because it was free, and the Abbey wasn't).  The plan was to meet back up with the other girls at Buckingham palace at 12:15. 

Christina and I walked in pretty much every direction but the right one. We accidently stumbled on Downing Street, which to be honest I didn't even know what it was until we asked someone. We saw all these media people with big cameras waiting outside of an iron gate, so we asked what was going on and they were like "Well this is where the prime minister lives. Were going in to do an interview and some filming."

We never found the Churchill museum, but it was okay because we had some fun experiences anyways. I tripped and had a group of local guys laugh at me. We saw the horse guards. We went to St. James park and walked around and watched people feed squirrels. We laughed so hard we were nearly crying and then accidently watched the changing of the guards.

Christina (a former drumline captain): I hear a marching band.

Me: Hmm weird lets go see what's going on

Marching guys walking down the street filled with thousands of people: dum dum di dum dum

Christina: Cooool! What was that? Some special ceremony?

Taylor (to London Police officer): Excuse me, can you tell us what just happened?

Police officer (looking at us like we have stupid written on our foreheads) : What just happened? Umm..I dont know, the changing of the guards. 

We waited at Buckingham palace until about 12:45, 30 minutes past our planned meeting point. Note to self: Next time said meeting points should be a little less vague than a huge palace filled with thousands of tourises. Christina and I finally decided to leave and try to find a bathroom and a place to eat lunch. We walked in one direction and ended up in a London business district with nothing but office buildings that required keys to enter and a couple very crowded pubs. We used the restroom in one of the pubs but there was no room to eat lunch so we found the nearest tube station and asked a guy where was the best shopping/dining district. 

He sent us to Oxford Circus which is like 16th Street mall on steroids. We had a sandwich and a class of lemonade at a cute little Italian deli. The two of us then walked down the streets and went in several shops and found this amazing department store called Primark. It was very inexpensive and I bought a shirt and an big purse for 11 pounds (like 15 dollars). I needed a bigger bag to carry my books in to my classes, and the shirt was really cute.

We ran back into Pana, Claire and Katie at Primark which was like finding a needle in a haystack honestly because the store, along with the rest of the city is soooo crowded. After that we came back to the hotel and hung out in Christina's room watching weird European music videos.

We got ready and then headed to Picidilly Circus, (the "going out" type of area in London). It almost has a times square type of feel to it with lots of neon lights and people. The five of us (same girls from earlier in the day) navigated our way to an Italian restaurant where we met my friend Julia, who lives in London but went to high school with me, and one of her friends. After dinner we went next door to the Absolut Ice Bar which is a bar made of ice. Its made by the same people who own the Ice Hotel in Sweden. You wear these ridiculous huge parkas and get one drink with admission. We stayed in their for 45 minutes and then tried to find our way back to the hotel. Someone had told us that even though the tube stops running at midnight, the buses which are free, run all night. However, we could not find the right bus and eventually just got a taxi back. The nicest man flagged the cab down for us because we weren't having any luck. Then the taxi had to turn back around and turned down a bunch of customers so we could run up to where he could park. 

We went to bed when we got back to the hotel. Go figure.

Saturday: 

We boarded our private bus at 8 am. It was kinda cool because we were seperated onto two different busses, so we got a chance to get to know some people that we hadn't spent a lot of time with. We road about an hour to Salisbury, and most everyone was rocked to sleep by the movement of the bus. We toured the Salisbury Cathedral which was absolutely breathtaking. Their were graves in the floors and tombstones dating back to the 1200's. Our tour guide, an English woman in her 40's, was very nice and very informative.

After Salisbury we drove/slept our way to Stonehenge. It was neat to see, but freezing outside and there are only so many pictures you can take so most of us headed back to the bus earlier than the guide had told us. 

Next was the town of Bath, which was aside from Maastricht, my favorite place we have visited so far. The town dates back to Roman times, and boomed again in the Georgian era as a "Hollywood" of England for the rich and famous of the 1700's. It is famous for its hot springs (how the town got it's name) and for being home to Jane Austen and the setting for several of her books. 

The buildings are all made from a type of Limstone and they were gorgeous. Two girls (Kristin and Amber) and I had lunch at a pub in Bath and then walked around and watched a crazy street performer ride a unicycle and juggle flames. Neato.

We then reluctantly hopped on the train back and surprise, I slept the whole way back to the hotel!

When we got back Brisa, Christina, and I asked the front desk lady for the name of a good Indian food restaurant. When in Rome, right? Or in this case, London.  We walked down the road to a place called Memories of India. There was a young group of students, about half were Indian nationality. We saw them drinking a big bottle (like 3x the size of a normal beer bottle) of an Indian beer called Cobra something something. I asked them what it was and they said it was really good and asked if we wanted a taste. We laughed and politely said oh no we didn't mean we wanted to try it.  But they insisted. So we ordered one to split between the 3 of us and the waiter was so nice. He offered to take a picture of us and then gave us another bottle of beer "on the house." After dinner, we stopped at a convenience store and got some Skittles (and a jelly donut..Brisa was having a weird craving). We hung out in their hotel room for the rest of the night and just talked and had fun :) It was probably the best day yet.

Today we slept in a little, which meant tile 8:15, not exactly my definition of sleeping in, but still nice. We rode the train back and met two nice groups of Belgium people (Beligiumese?).

When we got back to Maastricht we dropped off our bags and then had dinner at a weird Mediterranean "frittur" meaning grill I think. If anyone actually knows, let me know. The guys working there kept talking about Obama and Bush to us in broken English, and my rule of thumb has been to not talk politics with Europeans while I'm here because well, it's just not a good idea.

It was fun skyping with my family and friends (and even my puppy) when I got back tonight. 

Classes start tomorrow. Not til 3:30 in the afternoon so were probably gonna get some errands done in the morning. I'm so excited to be back in Maastricht. It felt like coming home tonight :)

Well that's all for now. 

With love (and tea and scones),

Tay