ValerieInFrance

Today I amazingly woke up at 8 am feeling fully rested! I went downstairs to start my day with the standard homemade bread with honey and a small yogurt and found my host mom in the kitchen in the middle of making a new batch of bread for the week. We chatted for a bit, and then I went back to my room to attempt to write my paper on the French environmental policies. After being less than productive, I met Allison for lunch at our favorite pasta place—Francesca’s—in Place Plume. We mapped out today to see Tours a little better—we went to the Museum of Natural History, the Wine Museum, and the Chateau in Tours—all of which were hilarious in their own way. The first floor of the Museum of Natural History seemed like a ... read more

Allison, Denise, and I didn’t want to miss our last excursion with the whole BEF gang, so we tried to catch up with them in the Perigord region of France. The excursion was Friday through Sunday, and while we were flying Friday, we still thought it was possible to make it to most of the excursion. We landed at Charles DeGaulle and took a TGV straight to Bordeaux, getting there about midnight. We stayed in a hotel with the most comfortable beds ever (or maybe that’s just compared to Hotel Rachel in Aegina—I think I forgot to mention that all three beds there were so horrible in their different ways that each night we rotated beds, so each morning we would wake up sore in a different way. But alas, we were only in this new ... read more

We got back to Athens Sunday night, met up with Michael and Mackenzie at an Athens hotel, and played cards to pass the time since the next flight they could find out was Thursday and our flight for Tuesday was most likely going to be canceled due to the volcano. Allison, Denise, and I still had to see the acropolis, so Monday we got up and checked it out—pretty cool…we climbed up, took a few pictures, attempted to take pictures without massive amounts of the no-doubt original 400 BC scaffolding, failed, then climbed back down. We went in a bunch of little gift shops around there just to kill the time, but it was kind of annoying because every store-owner in Greece talks to you in broken English for the entire time you’re in their store, ... read more

Thursday, we decided to make a quick day trip to Santorini—the island where they filmed Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants! The ferry schedule didn’t actually give us that much time there—only about four and a half hours—but this was long enough for us to do what we had come for…riding donkeys! We took the cable car ride down from the main town to the water (Allison and Denise were terrified) and then we rode some donkeys back up some 700 steps! It was fabbbbbbbbulous, although far less organized than we had been expecting. Basically we walked by all these donkeys that were just chillin’, then the guy helped me climb on one, and then my donkey just started going. I was a little concerned (should there be someone in front of me? Shouldn’t my donkey wait ... read more

Saturday morning, as hinted at in the end of my last entry, we woke up after a less than peaceful night’s sleep at met Mackenzie and her boyfriend Michael outside our hostel at 5 am to split a cab to the airport. After the 30 or so minute ride to the airport, we all get our money to pay the cab driver. Michael pulls out his wallet, opens it, and says “This isn’t my wallet…” Turns out he and a friend of his had bought the same wallet in Florence and Michael unknowingly took his friend’s wallet of the nightstand that morning and had left his own behind. He had his passport with him still, so we could get through security. He tried to leave his friend’s wallet somewhere so that he could come by later ... read more