Category: Europe

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Europe Sweden

A Night in the IceHotel

The Icehotel was one of the most amazing experiences I’ve ever had!  We flew up in the morning to stay there for a single night.  The airport is tiny, with one runway surrounded by snow and ice.

Once we had transferred to the hotel itself, we checked in and started exploring.  We were spending a night in one of the ice rooms, although it’s possible to stay longer and spend nights in warm rooms as well.  They have cabins and a main lodge, as well as two separate ice structures.  During the day, all the ice rooms are open to the public so that everyone can see the incredible snow and ice sculptures.

There’s a portion that’s “IceHotel 365,” which is ice rooms inside a building that are available year round and the Ice Bar.  Then there’s another ice structure that’s just available during the winter.  They build it in October or November and then it melts down in April.  For this one, they invite anyone to submit ideas for rooms, regardless of whether they’re artists or have ever worked with snow or ice before.  From the submissions, they pick the best and invite those people up there to design the rooms.  They change every year in what’s essentially a temporary museum of ice, which is so cool!  We stayed in a standard room, not an art room, but I think I’d like to come back and splurge for one of the art ones.

After we were done looking through rooms, we borrowed some snow suits from the hotel so that we could walk around.  They let us borrow boots, mittens, hats, and full body zip up snow suits, which kept us nice and warm.  It wasn’t as cold as I expected – I think the temperatures were around 15 degrees for most of the time we were there.

There are tons of activities available up there as well.  We saw people go by on a dog sled, which is still one of my bucket list goals, but there are options to bobsled, take a reindeer-drawn sleigh, ride on horseback, and try to see the Northern Lights.  Although we’d hoped we might see them while we were there, it started snowing shortly after the sun set.  We didn’t do any of the activities since we weren’t there for long, but I’d love to go back and try some of these out.

We had a late dinner reservation, so we went to the Ice Bar beforehand for a drink.  It’s been a dream of mine to go to an ice bar for a long time.  Sarah and I tried to go to one in Helsinki, but it had closed down.  It was worth waiting for, though, because I got to drink out of an ice glass and it was amazing.  We talked around our ice table until it was time to go to our dinner reservation.

Dinner was at the cheaper of the two options, which was about a 20 minute walk from the hotel itself down the only road in Kiruna.  We initially passed it and had to backtrack, since it was in a section that looked residential.  We had a great meal over candlelight and enjoyed our last night traveling together, since the next morning I had an early flight to Rome and Anna and Laurel were heading to Copenhagen.

Once dinner was over, we headed back to our room.  They had given us orientation earlier.  We got down to our base layers, locked everything into our locker, and took heavy sleeping bags into our room to zip ourselves up for the night.  In the sleeping bag, I felt pretty toasty.  Because the room itself is so cold, they don’t recommend bringing in electronics, so they do wakeup calls for everyone.  Since my flight was so early, I slept fairly poorly and got anxious, imagining I would miss my flight, so I ended up going back to the lodge earlier than I needed to and getting coffee and breakfast.  I had arranged a transfer back to the airport, and when I got there, I don’t think there were any other passengers there.  I had a flight to Stockholm and then a second flight from Stockholm to Rome, which was a long day of travel!  But it was so worth it to get up to the IceHotel – it was an otherworldly experience, and I want to go back someday.

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Europe Sweden

Stockholm: Viking Ships and Singing Along to ABBA

I sometimes think about what it would be like if I had gone to DIS Stockholm instead of Copenhagen.  It wasn’t an option when I was applying for study abroad, but it was opened right after, and they had a Forensic Psychology class so I likely would have considered it.  Anyway.  I liked Stockholm, it was very nice.

We visited the Stockholm public library, which I had seen on some sort of social media on a list of cool libraries.  We tried a couple cafés that Anna and Laurel had found as well.  My favorite place we tried was a place on Gamla Stan that was down in a basement.  There were candles lining the stairs, and it was so cozy.  Anna and I also had wine at a swanky bar near our hostel, which was nice.  It was good to catch up with her, since she’s currently living in Scotland.

We also explored the main shopping street and visited the island where all the museums are.  The first one we went to was the Vasa Museum, which is where they excavated a Viking ship and reassembled it in the museum.  It was massive, with intricate carvings on the bow.  There were a number of exhibits on what life was like in that era, and they even had skeletons they recovered from the wreck that told them more about the types of people on the ship.  It was pretty incredible.

From there, we went through a park, which was covered in snow and ice, and worked our way over to the ABBA Museum.  We had a fantastic time there.  It started with a room full of guitars from famous musicians, where Anna and Laurel played several rounds of Guitar Hero.  Then we went into the ABBA portion, which started with a hype video.  I think whoever edited the video was on acid mixed with cocaine, because it was very fast-paced clips of various ABBA music videos, but I did leave it wanting to go watch all of their old music videos.  The museum was interactive, so there were areas where we could sing in a mock sound booth and pretend to mix the audio for their tracks.  The best part was the one where you can take a selfie and then it photoshops your head on their body, and then you dance around and it makes it look as though you are dancing around on the screen in an ABBA costume.  The program didn’t work that well, and we ended up laughing so hard we were all in tears by the end of it.  It was amazing.

From there, we took a ferry back to Gamla Stan and spent some more time wandering the narrow streets.  It’s a beautiful area, and it was a nice place to end our time in Stockholm.  We had a casual night drinking wine and eating dinner back at our hostel before heading up to Kiruna.

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Europe Sweden

Uppsala: Viking Burial Mounds and Circus-themed Dining

I recently got back from a two week trip to Europe!  Sweden was the first stop, where I met up with a few of my friends from high school.  The flight to Europe went smoothly, and I ended up running into Anna in the airport in Amsterdam.  For our first whole day in Sweden, we headed out to Uppsala, which is a town about 40 minutes outside of Stockholm.

Our first stop was Gamla Uppsala, which is a site of Viking burial mounds.  We took a bus outside of town and started at the museum, where we learned about the lifestyle of Vikings.  Apparently, it was used as early as the 3rd and 4th centuries, and every 9 years the Vikings used to sacrifice people in this area.  We walked out to the burial mounds themselves and climbed most of the way up them until it got too icy to keep going.

From there, we took the bus back to town and wandered around Uppsala, stopping at the cathedral and walking around the entire city center.  We stopped for dinner at a circus-themed app-based tapas restaurant, which was a strange dining experience.  When we walked in, they made sure that we had downloaded the app and then gave us popcorn at the table before leaving us alone to use the app for the rest of dinner.  It was rather nice.  Afterward, we walked back through the city to try to find the perfect picture angle that Anna had found online before heading back to Stockholm for the evening.  Overall, it was a great day trip from Stockholm, and I would recommend visiting!

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Europe United Kingdom

Scotland: Aberdeen, The Loch Ness Monster, and Even More Harry Potter

When we landed in Scotland, we took a cab to Kelcy’s apartment, and she had to leave to work on a project and go to class.  I took a good half of the day to catch up on sleep, which allowed me to not feel like I was a zombie, and then I wandered around the University of Aberdeen campus for a while.  It’s quite lovely, especially in the fall with the ivy.

After that, we headed to the beach, walking past a golf course along the way, and I accidentally wandered too close to the water and ended up with some very cold feet.

The next morning, we explored Aberdeen!  And by that, I actually mean that Kelcy gave me a tour, because she has Tuesdays off from class.  She took me through the Maritime Museum, where she’s a tour guide, and told me all about the history of Aberdeen.  The city is mostly monochromatic, and the architecture is beautiful but very similar.  A big difference from London, where the modern architecture is placed among the older monuments.  We went through a museum on toys, and walked through a graveyard, and ended our night at Slain’s Castle, which is an excellent Dracula-themed bar where they have cocktails named after each of the deadly sins.

The next morning, Kelcy had to go back to class, and I took a trip to Inverness.  I had signed up to do a Loch Ness cruise, where they drove us from Inverness to the pier, took us on the water for an hour or so, and then gave us some time to explore the castle before dropping us back off in Inverness.  They also took us to a museum exhibit on the history of the Loch Ness Monster sightings, which provided a host of theories on what has caused the images and speculation.  I ended up talking to an American couple who had booked their vacation because of Outlander, and were very excited to see another American who they could commiserate with over the accents and driving on the wrong side of the road.  I also got to walk down to the edge of the water, where I watched a little girl through cookies into the water so she could “feed Nessie.”

I wish I’d had a little more time to explore at the castle, but otherwise I was very satisfied.  The views going to Loch Ness and from the boat were stunning, and the Loch Ness Monster is a great quirky urban legend.  Our bus driver was hilarious, and it was the perfect day trip.  If you’re in the area, the tour company was Jacobite.

From there, I got to explore the rest of Inverness, which is a lovely town.  When it started to rain, I ducked into a restaurant, where I was the only one- I guess that’s what happens when you try to eat a meal at 3pm.  Anyway, it ended up being the first time in my life that a bartender has given me a free drink, because they were trying to test a new cocktail and wanted me to be a guinea pig.  Also the first time in my life I can remember enjoying a drink with gin.

I finished the afternoon with a trip to a bookstore down the street that Kelcy recommended, which was giant and stuffed to the brim with old and beautiful books.  Then I caught the train back, and spent a last night on Kelcy’s couch.

After another quiet morning, we took the afternoon train to Edinburgh.  I finally tried my first Pizza Express, which was honestly way better than I expected for a fast food pizza place, and then we ended up trying the Frankenstein-themed bar.  10/10 would recommend, the drinks were cool and the atmosphere was fun too.

The next day we got to explore.  We started the day at the Elephant Café, famous for being the “birthplace” of Harry Potter because J.K. Rowling used to do her writing there.  Fun fact, that picture above the title is the location that inspired Diagon Alley.

Then we wandered up and down the Royal Mile, took pictures up at the castle, and went on a tour of the area underneath the city, Mary King’s Close.  They described a lot of the history of Edinburgh, how it used to be filthy and people walked through human waste, and how the plague spread rapidly through the city.  Which only underscores how crazy that woman in Outlander is to strongly prefer staying in the past.

We also went to an art museum, a park, and finished off the evening with a literary pub crawl.  The next day, it was another morning of getting up insanely early followed by a long day of travel.

Edinburgh’s a great city, and I can see why many of my friends have raved about it.  It was fun to visit Kelcy and get a sense of her life in Scotland, and it was nice that we were able to check off several of the experiences on my list while I was there.  I missed being in Europe, and it was nice to be back for a little while.  Especially London, which is one of my favorite cities.  I’m excited to see where my adventures take me next!

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Europe United Kingdom

London, Harry Potter, & Stonehenge

My friend Kelcy is studying in Scotland, and so I decided I would use up this year’s vacation days by visiting her!  I booked a trip through London, and we spent the first weekend there before heading up to Scotland.

Getting there was a little complicated than I planned.  I woke up in the morning to a text saying my flight was delayed, which would have left me with a whopping 45 minutes to catch my flight to London.  In O’Hare, of all places.  So I went to the airport early, got my flight switched, and ended up flying through Houston.  Luckily, I still got there close to the same time, and I found Kelcy in the airport.

Once we had found our hostel, we went to the British Museum and then wandered around near the Tower of London.  We ended up eating dinner in the basement of a bar, where we were alone for the first half of our meal.  Since I was somewhat jetlagged, and Kelcy was tired from a busy week of school, we went to bed early so that we could get up early for our next day.

Remember how I said I was coming back to London for a Harry Potter Studio Tour?  This is it.

Yes, I am a little obsessed.  I’ve been a fan since I was six, so…. this was an incredibly exciting experience for me.  I got to see a full replica of Hogwarts, and walk down Diagon Alley, and walk through the Hogwarts Express, and eat Butterbeer ice cream.  It was everything I hoped it would be.

We had to hurry, though, because we had also booked a matinee performance on the West End!  We saw Les Mis, which is an awesome show.  While I’ve liked the music for a long time, I had yet to see it live.  They had this rotating stage that they used very effectively throughout the production, and of course the talent was amazing.

The next day was another busy one, this time to Stonehenge.  Kelcy found this great all-inclusive package that started in Salisbury.  We started at the Salisbury Cathedral, which is the home of the best preserved manuscript of the Magna Carta.  There are only four remaining.  The cathedral is beautiful, but it was extra special to see such an impressive piece of history.  You have to go in a special room where it’s in a tent, and no one can take pictures or let in any light because it’s so old.

After that, we took the bus out to Stonehenge.  I was excited to see the stones in person, although I admit there’s not a whole lot out there besides the stones.  But the mystery of them is fun, and they’re such a well-known landmark.  We headed up to the fort after, which was a lot of low walls indicating where buildings had once been.  The views from the hill were beautiful as well.

After that, we headed into Salisbury for dinner, where I accidentally ordered a pitcher instead of a glass of the drink I wanted.  Or rather, I ordered a drink and the new, confused waitress made it in a pitcher and then just handed me the pitcher.  Nice to know these things can happen even when everyone is speaking the same language during travel…

After that, we took the train back to the city and went straight to bed.  Kelcy had class the following day, and our flight was at the crack of dawn.  It was totally dark when we waited for the bus to take us to the airport, which continued to mess with my circadian rhythms.  Probably not the proper way to beat jet lag….

To be continued with Scotland in the next post.

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Europe France Research Grant

Paris, Pt 2: Crêpes, Champagne, and My 21st Birthday

Ok, time to finally post about my 21st birthday.  I know, it’s actually been several weeks since I did the beginning of my trip, but since then school has started and I’ve been dragged into having real responsibilities, like homework and work and applying to jobs.  So here it goes.

On Monday morning, Christine arrived to a rainy Paris.  After she took a quick nap and I ran an errand, we headed out to the Louvre for a little culture.  The line was long, but we waited it out and then wandered through the halls aimlessly and saw some cool statues, beautiful furniture and jewels, and some French artwork.  Some of the places I remembered going the last time I was there, although the Louvre is so huge I’m confident that we wandered to some new places as well.  We headed over to Opera Garnier once we’d had our fill of art, and then stopped by Galleries Lafayette to marvel at the designer clothing.

At that point, it was getting close to dinner time.  For my birthday present, Christine had surprised me with tickets to the Moulin Rouge!  We had dinner with champagne, which was lovely, and then watched the show, which was unlike anything I’d seen before.  Partially because it was topless, but it also had some pretty crazy acts.  There was the rollerskating couple that did the kinds of lifts that you see in ice skating, but they were just twirling in a circle on a raised platform.  And there were acrobats who had incredible strength.  The man lifted the woman above his head and then got all the way down to a laying position, keeping her above his head the entire time.  The dancers did the can can, a woman danced in water with some boa constrictors, and they brought ponies out onto stage.  There were black lights, feathers, light up costumes, and giant headpieces.  It was a cool experience.

After the show, I wanted Christine to see the Eiffel Tower and L’Arc de Triomphe at night, just as Kelcy had done for me with my first night in Paris.  They’re stunning when they light up.  We started at L’Arc de Triomphe, and then walked down Champs Elysée for a while until we got close enough to the Eiffel Tower to see it sparkle.  It was magical, as always.

The next morning, we started with one of my goals, and climbed Notre Dame.  Which is a lot of stairs.  The view is incredible, though.  Totally worth it.  The gargoyles were a lot creepier than they seem in the Disney animated version, by the way.  A lot of them were eating small animals.

From there, we walked around and took in Paris.  We went to Le Marais, where I got my gift from my parents- a ring with my birthstone- and we wandered into an exhibit on Paris Fashion Week.  Then we headed across the Seine to the Latin Quarter.  The theme of the afternoon was to feel parisienne, which I think we accomplished.  The Latin Quarter is the epitome of Paris to me, with the cafés and bookstores, the boxy shops along the Seine, and that fountain when you get off the metro near Odéon.  I actually remembered my way around this time, and took us to the place where I had eaten crepes nearly ten months before since it’s reasonably priced and delicious.  We also got ice cream and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere for a while.  From there, we went to one of the other places I remember as feeling Parisian, which is the Jardin de Tuileries.  It didn’t disappoint.  The whole day was perfect.  It captured the essence of the city, with the café culture and magic of Paris.  As the sun set, we found our way back to the metro and headed back to the apartment.  Both of us had to pack, since I was leaving for the US and Christine was heading to a hotel the next day.  Although I wanted the trip to last forever, I’m so glad that Christine joined me for my last two days.  I still don’t quite believe that I got to spend my 21st birthday in Paris with such an amazing friend!

À bientôt.

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Europe France Research Grant

Paris, Pt 1: Monet’s Garden and Modern Art

Paris is special enough that it deserves two posts.

Here’s the thing about Paris: everyone romanticizes it.  You watch Midnight in Paris, for example, and see the city devoid of people, with tranquil, clean streets where everything is in its place.  And certainly, before I visited, that was my view as well.  It’s not quiet, though.  It’s a proper city, with noise and dirt and crowds of people moving rapidly through the metro and cars that honk all the time.  And I think if Paris was exactly like my romanticized imagination, I wouldn’t like it very much.  I love that it’s alive, bustling with movement and culture and even tourists.  It’s that atmosphere that draws me in and makes me want to keep returning.  Paris is the perfect blend of romantic beauty and realism, livable and yet still mysterious.

For those of you who have been following me for the past year, you may remember that I’ve already traveled to Paris, last November (x), and loved it.  This was the first trip I booked after the initial details for Strasbourg were taken care of.  Due to the timing of the quarter system, I arranged to spend my 21st birthday in Paris.  While I originally thought I would be alone, my oldest and very dear friend Christine arranged to fly in on my birthday, so I’m splitting these posts into my time before and after she arrived.

I arrived Friday afternoon by TGV and quickly made my way to my Airbnb, which was adorable but made me feel terribly out of shape with its seven flights of stairs.  I had done some research on reasonably priced shops in Paris since I had a lot of shopping to do for family Christmas presents, which led me to the 6th and then into the Latin Quarter.  I stopped by Shakespeare and Company, walked along the Seine, stopped in Notre Dame, and got a cinnamon crepe.  I ended up in Le Marais for the first time and went grocery shopping on my way back to the apartment.  It was so strange to see some of the places I had visited last November.  They looked the exact same but so much has changed in my life.  This time, I didn’t get lost in the Latin Quarter, and I even managed to find my old hotel… nice to know that mental map took 10 months to develop.

Saturday was a day trip out of the city!  Back when I visited Berlin, I took a bike tour with Fat Tire, so I had checked out their Parisian tours and found one to Giverny.  We all met up at the train station, and of course it started raining.  I apparently don’t have great luck when it comes to bike tour weather.  Our group ended up being me and nine Australians.  We all took the train to Vernon, where we went to a market and shopped around.  I wish the US had bakeries the way France does.  After we had all gotten our provisions for lunch, we headed to a picnic spot by the river.  It was gorgeous, and as I ate my bread and cheese and strawberries, our guide explained how impressionists were the punk rockers of the art world.  Although I’ve already learned about impressionism through DIS, I found the information about how art has evolved from these paintings very interesting.  For the first time, I actually saw something in a Jackson Pollock painting beyond meaningless paint splatters, so that has to count for something!

From there, we biked out to Giverny, which is a tiny town that seems to only have bed & breakfasts, art galleries, and one token café.  We headed to Monet’s garden, which was stunning.  I think if I lived somewhere like that, I’d take up painting!  It was split into two parts, the water lily area that contained the Japanese bridge and plants growing freely, and the area near the house with neat rows of flowers organized by their colors.  When it started raining, we headed into the house.  His studio was the best part of that because they had recreations of many of his pieces on the walls.  After we were all done in the gardens, we visited his tomb and then headed back to Vernon to catch the train.  During the course of the day, I had befriended an Australian family and they invited me to dinner with them, so we found a place near the train station between our two apartments.  It was great to have an intellectual discussion about our cultural differences; we talked about politics, education, art, and how our countries handled their indigenous people.  I learned a lot about Australia (which is still on my list of places to go!)

The next day, I left the apartment relatively early and went to a flea market, Marche aux Puces de la Porte de Vanves.  Side note, I’m terrible at restraining myself from buying breakable things… but I was pretty productive and got a lot of Christmas shopping done!  It was a nice little market, with a good variety of objects and decent prices.  Personally, if I lived somewhere that had markets like that, I’d never buy a regular dish again when I could get something beautiful.

I stopped back at the apartment to drop everything off and then I headed out again.  I finally walked around the two islands, starting with Île Saint Louis and then crossing the bridge toward Notre Dame.  I ended up finding Saint Chapelle, which I had read about due to its stained glass.  As anyone who reads this blog knows, I love stained glass, so I figured I should check it out.  After waiting in a very long line, I made my way up the stairs into the high tower.  Wow.  It was AMAZING.  Truly beautiful, and well worth the wait and the cost to get in.  As much as I would have loved to just sit in the stained glass room all day, my time in Paris was unfortunately limited and I had other places I wanted to go!

So I headed off to Centre Pompidou, the modern art museum in Paris.  I remember learning about the architecture in high school, about how they wanted to take the parts of the building that are supposed to be on the inside and put them on the outside.  The views from the top are pretty great, with views all around Paris.  I spent a long time wandering around the various pieces, trying to see what caught my eye.  A few I liked:  the strange reflective red glass, the three dimensional mirror, the teal stained glass piece, the dark carpeted room with a loop of rain sounds in the background, furniture aesthetic of the 80s.  The works that made me think the most were a series of pieces by a photographer dealing with the uncanny valley, where she would take mannequins and manipulate them to look realistic, and make models and celebrities and turn their photos doll-like; through the pieces she considered what makes people alive.  Creepy, certainly, but also intriguing.  After a meal at the café, I headed back to the apartment to repack and skype my parents, because the next day was my 21st birthday!

I’ll talk about that on another post, though.  À bientôt!

Categories
Europe France Research Grant

Colmar: Straight Out of a Fairy Tale

Bonjour, mes amis!  The above pictures are from Colmar, France.

So, it’s my last week in Strasbourg!  Since my last post in Bordeaux, I’ve been wrapping up my research, including writing myfinal report.  I’ve also taken the time to revisit my favorite places in Strasbourg.  Including, but not limited to: that ice cream place that scoops ice cream into a flower design, the Jardin de l’Orangerie, Place Kléber, the square around the cathedral, the Galaries Lafayette, and of course the lovely cobblestone streets of Petite France.  I even went in one of the fancy jewelry shops and pretended to be wealthy and tried some of it on.

Today, I figured I would try to see a little more of Alsace, and so I headed to Colmar, which I’m pretty sure I saw on a list of “fairy tale towns in Europe” once.  And I can see why!  From the train station, you walk through a beautiful park with statues and fountains to get to the centre ville.  I spent most of my day wandering, although I had a few memorable interactions with the French…

1. Since I didn’t have a map, I asked the lady in a Guess store where the “plus belles endroits” are, and she told me how to get to the area by the canals.  She also told me about her children and how she considers talking on the phone in a store to be rude.  She was probably disappointed I didn’t buy anything.

2. At a bookstore, a woman asked me to find a psychology book for her on this one shelf (at least I think that’s what she was asking?  I had a hard time understanding her) and so I picked out one on psychiatry.  Hopefully she’s satisfied with that……  I’m still confused about that exchange.

3. And at another store, I was searching for Christmas gifts (get excited, family) when two salespeople came over to ask if I needed help finding anything and if I’d been there before and if I was satisfied with their service.  Considering I still have a stress reaction when people unexpectedly speak to me in French, the encounter was a bit overwhelming, but I answered all their questions and (I think) they even complimented my speaking ability!

Colmar is charming and beautiful, and I’m glad I took the time to do a day trip there before I left.  Everyone I interacted with was incredibly nice, and I definitely recommend it if you’re in the area.  Tomorrow, I’m packing up for the summer, because Thursday I’m off to Paris!  I have three days by myself and then my friend Christine is joining me for my last couple days before I return to the US.  If you told me a few years ago that I would be spending my 21st birthday in Paris, I would never have believed it!  It feels like a dream come true.

À bientôt.

Categories
Europe France Research Grant

Bordeaux: Biking Through The Vineyards

I’ve always imagined Bordeaux as wine country, to the point that I was quite surprised to find myself in an actual city.  I took a walking tour my first day, where our guide explained how their current mayor had made an effort to clean up the city by incentivizing citizens to power wash their homes and the streets in the city center were transformed to be mostly pedestrian.  In fact, Bordeaux actually has the longest pedestrian shopping street in Europe.  I also learned that Bordeaux was under British rule for a while, the main bridge was built because Napoleon got angry about having to move his troops by boat, and whoever built the statues in Bordeaux was very into mythology.  Our guide was great, she brought us some pastries that Bordeaux is known for to try as well.  There were only 4 of us on the tour, so it felt more like someone showing us around the city as opposed to being herded around as part of a tourist group.  After visiting some of the monuments and churches on the tour, I did some exploration on my own.  I did a little shopping, saw a few more monuments, and got a pretty good sense of the city.

The next day was my bike tour through the vineyards!  This was the real purpose of my trip, and I had actually structured the dates around being able to go on this tour.  So my morning started early, meeting the tour guide at the office.  There were twelve of us in the group, and everyone I talked to was incredibly nice.  We took vans to St. Emilion, where we got our bikes and started off through the vineyards.  The countryside is stunning, and I can’t imagine a better way to see it.  The vines seem to stretch forever.  Here are a few takeaways about the Bordeaux wine region:

1. There are between 7,000 and 8,000 chateaux in the wine region.  This sounds a little fancier than it actually is, because a “chateau” is not defined by the fanciness of your house but by whether the entirety of the wine production is done on your estate, from the growth to the bottling.  Our guide said she was very disappointed at her first chateau because it was only a farm….

2. The naming system is super complicated.  It was explained to me several times and I still am not sure I understand enough to even attempt to explain it here.  Just know that there are a lot of rules and restrictions, including on the types of grapes you grow.  Additionally, each chateau can’t make more than one type of wine per classification, so their better wine is “Chateau [estate name]” and their lower tier wine has the estate name but is “jardin de…” or “plaisir de…” or something to that effect.

3. The best soil for grape growing is actually the least fertile soil.  This is because it forces the roots of the grapes to go very far underground to look for moisture.  Also, grapes for wine production are very different from the kind that you buy at the grocery store.  They want a higher ratio of the skin of the grape, which has more of the flavors they want.

We got to try grapes straight off the vine while learning all of that.  From there, we went to our first chateau of the day.  This one was a family-run place, so we got to tour the bottom floor of where the family lives.  With their library and Picasso collection… I can’t imagine having that level of wealth.  Then we toured the area where they make wine, where they explained how the process worked.  It was a bit of a review, since we’d toured a wine place in Spain (throwback to that time I almost got stuck there x).  This chateau was a much smaller operation, and a lot less industrial than the one I’d seen before.  After the tour, they led us out into the garden, where we had lunch and a tasting outside.  We tried both tiers of their wine, which were both very good!  We also had bread and cheese and ratatouille, so the whole thing felt very French.  It was lovely to sit in the sun with good wine, good conversation, and good food.

When our lunch was over, we got back on the bikes and headed back to St. Emilion.  Pro tip: if you drink wine before biking, rehydrate!  The bike ride back was a lot more difficult than it needed to be because I didn’t drink enough water.  But I was feeling better by the time we got back in the village.  We took a quick tour around St. Emilion, which is a charming little town that feels as though you’ve gone back in time.  From there, we got back in the vans and were driven to our second chateau of the day.  This one was corporate owned, so it was a bigger operation that practically oozed money… even the elevators had fancy benches in them designed to match the original style of the chateau.  They brought us to a fancy tasting table, which you can see in that photo above and literally lit up with a white background so that you can get the best view of the color of the wine.  They gave us two types as well, and I liked the second one we had better.  Once all of that was done, we were driven back to Bordeaux, where I had a nice quiet night with some pizza.

I spent my last day wandering around a bit more.  I went in a few churches, including Basilique St. Michel.  Fun fact about that one: something happened to all the original stained glass, so they replaced it in the 1960s.  With 1960s style.  Which is pretty great, because it totally doesn’t seem to fit with the church, which is a classic gothic cathedral.  As I’ve probably mentioned before, I think stained glass is really cool so it was fun for me to see a different style.  The St. Michel area of Bordeaux is the older neighborhood, so the streets are narrower and there are plenty of interesting squares with cafés and shops to explore.

All in all, a very nice trip.  I’m hoping to do a day trip in Colmar before my time in Alsace is up, and I’m definitely looking forward to my trip to Paris in a couple weeks!  I’m down to less than three weeks in France, and then it’s back to school and normal life…

À bientôt!

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Europe France Research Grant

Strasbourg: History Museums and Bees

Hello again from Strasbourg!

First of all, I’d like to talk about how nice everyone here has been.  Out of the many emails I’ve sent out requesting interviews, it’s true that most of them never got responses.  But of the people who did respond, they’ve been amazing.  This week, I met a man who’s an expert in furniture, and he printed out all of the French expert rules for me, told me about all of his cases, and showed me his furniture workshop.  And then, at the end, he asked me if I’d been to the Musée Historique, and upon finding out I had not, he called up a friend of his there and got me free admission!

And the Musée Historique was very cool.  Their headsets were location based, so when you stood near a section of the exhibits, that piece of information would play, and it would keep moving on as you walked through the museum.  Plus, I learned a lot about the history of Alsace.  Although I knew it was culturally partially German and partially French, I hadn’t realized how much the territory had actually changed hands!  In particular, the section on World War II talked about how Alsaciens were seen as Volkdeutsch instead of French, but many Germans didn’t consider them to be German enough.  There were also some pictures of places in Strasbourg where they’d had Nazi rallies.  It was strange to see the same places I’ve taken touristy pictures in the museum as part of the exhibit.

I’ve also done a few other touristy things this week, including walking around the European Institution section of the city and going to the Alsacien Museum, which was overall a little disappointing but had a lot of artifacts from Strasbourg through the ages.  I also went to the Parc de l’Orangerie, which is currently my favorite place in Strasbourg!  It had a mini zoo that contained storks, flamingos and a lot of other birds, a small lake where you can rent boats, a garden area with beautifully arranged flowers, and a lot of cafés.  I went to a café for lunch and I got a sugary drink that attracted a lot of bees, much to the chagrin of the other customer at the restaurant, who spent half an hour laughing at me as I flailed around and attempted to swat the bees away with my napkin.  That incident aside, I will definitely be returning to that park again before I leave Strasbourg!

Anyway, I’m off to Bordeaux on Monday, so my next post will be about that trip!  À bientôt.