Mom's Visit!

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Mom came to visit a couple weeks ago! I was so excited, I had been looking forward to her visit since I arrived in France! She got here Easter Sunday and I picked her up at the airport, from there we walked to the train station and got to Cannes fine, then we walked to my college. I thought the walk was shorter than it actually was since I've done it so much I guess I'm used to it but it turned out to be a bit longer, and especially not fun with suitcases, so I felt bad because she was pretty worn out from the long plane ride! She took a nap once we got in and felt better after that so we went out and had a nice Easter dinner near the beach.
The next day Mom and I went to Monaco! That was really fun and very beautiful! We saw some huge ships and the Monte Carlo Casino. I'll always be impressed with how clean everything is there but it's so expensive! We spent six euros each on Coke Light, it was a bigger glass of Coke, but still. I guess we paid for the view Mom said. We got back to Cannes and tried a plate of different French cheese for dinner, I liked them fine but Mom said she still preffered butter. Maybe France is rubbing off on me just a little. We also ended up sitting right next to a couple kids from my college that were on a date. That was pretty awkward because they were literally right next to us when the rest of the place really wasn't that full. We tried not to listen to their conversation too much though.
On Tuesday I had class in the morning and then again in the afternoon so there wasn't too much free time. Mom and I did have lunch at a nice place right on the beach. It was kinda weird food though! I ended up getting something random and it was basically a pile of salmon with a couple sticks coming out of it, it was ok on bread. Mom had a cauldron of fish soup. She said it was ok with bread too. That night we took my roommate Lea out for dinner. She was only here for two weeks and didn't have the dinner meal plan either. She's a really nice girl and we had a lot of fun with her! She's from Switzerland and was here studying French for two weeks while she had a break from her school there.
Mom sat in on part of my class on Wednesday! I had a presentation with my friend Maribel about cosmetic surgery so Mom listened to that. She said she could follow part of the conversation, like when we talked about Michael Jackson. That was fun, I'm glad she got to see how the class works and meet my crazy teacher! Later Mom and I went to Biot, a town a little north of Antibes that specializes in glass making. I had been there before on a day trip with my friend Katie and had boughten a wine glass which had been broken at the bar. I really wanted to show my mom the verrerie where I got the glass though because it was really cool and they had a lot of neat stuff. She was impressed too! That night we had a nice dinner at the Suquet, the oldest part of town, that was really good. I was really full for the second night in a row and we ate so late it didn't make my stomach too happy!
Thursday I suffered through the first part of class but then cut the second half to pack for Paris! That also have Mom and I more time to shop a little and see a little more of Cannes and visit the church in the Suquet where I went to church that Easter. We left for Paris and made it there just fine without any problems. Finding our hotel was a different story though! We were in the Opera section and it was the most confusing area I've ever been to! Streets don't parallel eachother, each intersection has like five or six streets going off in all directions. The thing was we lost our reservations somewhere so we had to go off of memory on what our hotel was and what street it was on. We found a map on the street and found where we thought the hotel was, once we got there though, it turns out it was another Best Western on another street that had the same name in it, but wasn't the same street. The guy said it was really close though so we could walk! So we tried walking and got nowhere and eventually hailed a taxi, and the taxi guy said it was really close and we could walk but we figured we had enough of that! So we finally made it to the hotel and were extremely happy to have found it finally!
The next day we had to see as much of Paris as possible because we had a really short time there. We began by walking from our hotel to the Notre Dame which was pretty far. The Notre Dame was beautiful and just huge! There was a girls choir singing so that was cool. Afterwards we had some tea and coffee to warm up before heading to the Eiffel Tower. We took the metro there which isn't too bad once you figure out how it works. The Eiffel Tower was cool, we walked around but didn't go up because it was pretty windy and we didn't want to deal with crowds and pay a lot to be up there for a couple minutes freezing to death. So we ate some lunch and then headed to the Montmartre. The weather was getting worse and worse at that time and by the time we found the Sacre Coeur, the church in that area we were drenched and freezing! That was a beautiful church though! I liked it more than Notre Dame for sure! We spend a bit of time in there and then found some nice gift shops. We wished we had more time to look around Montmartre because it seemed like a nice and cute area but we had to make it back to the city center to visit the Louvre. Monmartre is where the Moulin Rouge is by the way, we didn't find it but that would have been interesting to see! Once we got to the Louvre we walked around a bit and found the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo. We saw other paintings and they were cool but we were pretty tired so we didn't spend a ton of time in there. It's so huge, I heard it would take three months for someone to really look at everything. I bet my dad would take a year!
The next day Mom and I walked to the Louvre, which was close to our hotel and then up the Tuileries and onto Champs Elysees. We eventually made it to L'Arc de Triomphe. That was a pretty walk and the Champs Elysees has some nice stores along it. We couldn't do too much that day since we had to catch our flight back to Nice. We made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare and the flight was fine to Nice. We got on a train at a decent hour but it stopped in Antibes and everyone had to get off! We had to take a bus to Cannes from there which wasn't the funnest thing. We got to Cannes ok though and had a nice last meal and then went back to the college. We had to pack that night, Mom to go home and me to go on spring break! We were up til about 2am and it was the spring forward time change so we didn't get much sleep that night!
So the next day we got up early and were all ready to catch our train but when we made it to the train station we found out we had to take another bus to Nice! Later we came to the conclusion that work was being done on the tracks so that must have been why trains weren't running. We got kinda stressed about whether we would make our flight ok but luckily the bus driver was really nice and dropped us off right at the airport! Of course once we got there we found out our flight was delayed so we ended up having plenty of time anyway! Mom and I were on the same flight because I flew into London and visited for a day before heading out to Ireland to catch up with some friends there for the rest of spring break. It was sad saying good bye to her at the airport but I had a really good time with her and will see her again in just a couple of months!

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