My bad! Also, Scotland part deux

Hey friends/students/family/anyone who's reading this!  I CANNOT BELIEVE I LET THIS HAPPEN.  I can't believe it's been almost a month since I posted anything. So much has happened, and I have so much to catch up on!!!

Ok, first of all, let me pick back up in Scotland where we left off.  In my last post, I only made it through part of the first morning that we spent in Edinburgh!  Right after our visit of Holyrood Palace, we went straight for Arthur's Seat.  (You can read more about Arthur's Seat here).  On our climb up to the top, I was continually just in awe of the view.  Here, see for yourself:

It was abnormally hot that day, so we sweated our way all the way up to the tippy tippy top, and then took a deep breath and some "Proof That I Did This" pictures.

After that crazy climb and the following descent, Jenny and I determined that it was, in fact, Tea Time. 

And after Tea TIme, it was then most certainly and definitely Nap Time.  We staggered back to the hostel through a haze of exhaustion and proceeded to sleep for the rest of the afternoon.  After waking up for dinner and a short walk around the city, we went back to the hostel and crashed for the night.  It was a looooooooooooooong and awesome day.

Your French Word of the Week

We interrupt this vacation recap to bring you the following:

I'm a sucker for a freebie, so I signed up for Clarin's newsletter to enter my name in a contest to win some eyeliner...and then I checked out the site a little bit more.  And what do I see?

Bon Mots - French Word of the Week

Plus apparently Clarins is all about French beauty, so.....new favorite cosmetic company?

Check it out, learn some French words....the end. 

Just a wee trip to Scotland, lads and lasses

Here's your travel tip of the day - do not take an overnight bus after the age of 25, unless there are beds to lie down in (think Knight Bus, Harry Potter style).  You will not sleep well on a night bus, and unless you are in that magical time of life when a lack of sleep doesn't slow you down at all, you will feel it.  Boy, will you.  

We happily managed to get on a bus that wasn't making any stops between London and Edinburgh (pronounced Edinborough, or Edinburuh) and so arrived at our destination at like 6:30 am.  We walked up to our hostel, and then I saw this across the street:

They didn't call it Castle Rock Hostel for nothing!  Oh, click here for a picture of the actual hostel we stayed in.  Right?!  Anyway, we did the whole checking in process but couldn't get into our rooms until like 2 pm, so we freshened up, dropped our bags in the storage room, and went out for breakfast.  And I had the full English, which looks a little bit like this:

Eggs, bacon, sausages, blood sausage (gross), a roasted tomato, baked beans (not like our baked beans) and a potato scone.  YUM.  I almost ate the whole gosh darn thing.  After breakfast we went down the Royal Mile to Holyrood Palace, which is where the Queen stays when she's in Scotland and where she has her annual Garden Party.  We got there right before it opened, waited in line and bought tickets, and then went in with our audio guides for a li'l tour.  We weren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, but I did get some awesome shots of the outside and some ruins at the back:

And I'm gonna end that post here, 
a) because I'm sleepy and need to go to bed
b) because I took a LOT of pics in Scotland, so there will be multiple posts

I'll leave you with this thought - my Scottish accent wasn't all that bad.

Lunch in London and a night bus to Scotland

I write this post as a recovering gimp - a friend and I did a mini-trip up to Philly today for the Radio 104.5 Block Party, featuring Walk off the Earth, Alt-J and PANIC! AT THE DISCO.  Can you tell who I was there to see?  Anyway, Walk off the Earth was awesome, but in between their set and Alt-J taking the stage, some drunk, under-age (bleep) decided to cause a chain reaction of people falling over.  In the chaos, I was pushed back into the metal barriers that we were standing in front of, and somehow one of them ended up crushing my left foot.  I had a dickens of a time getting it up high enough so I could scoot my foot out, and then my friend got me over to the first-aid section, to the side of the stage.  All I needed was an ice pack and to sit down for a bit, thankfully, while we watched one of the drunk under-agers get hauled off by security.  My friend was watching the show from where we were standing and ended up befriending one of the crew members for WotE, who got us backstage passes and let us hang out with him and the rest of the crew for a bit.  And then, and THEN....all the members of Panic! at the Disco walked right by me and proceeded to blow my mind. I have loved them since 2005, have all their albums and have never seen them live...until today.  From backstage. Within touching distance when they went on and left the stage. WHAT. THE. WHAT.  In the end, being hurt wasn't such a raw deal after all. 

But I digress.....back in time to London!  When I got back to Jenny's house from the airport on Thursday night, I crashed. Next morning I got up, repacked my overnight bag for Scotland, and went off to meet my friend Jade for lunch.  She and I went to Etown together, and she's been in London for a while doing a Master's degree.  We met outside of Buckingham Palace (classy) and went for lunch in a little pub not too far from there.  

After lunch, we walked back past Buckingham and down to Westminster Abbey, which I finally got to see the inside of.  I felt like such a royal groupie, because I kept trying to figure out which parts I had seen on TV when I watched Will and Kate's wedding a couple years ago. It was stunning inside, but we were't allowed to take pictures.  Here are some shots of Big Ben, Parliament, and the outside of Westminster though:

After Westminster, we got ice cream and strolled over to Trafalgar Square, where we said goodbye and I headed back to Jenny's.  We had dinner and got ready for the trip, then headed for Victoria Coach Station: Scotland or bust!

Last day in France....at last

Oh Em Gee, you guys.  I think I have recovered enough from the drama that was my Return to the States to finally get back to blogging.  Stay tuned to the blog for that story...I'm recovered enough to write, but not about that....not yet, anyway.

Ok so, where were we.....oh yes, the last day I spent in France on this trip.  Another late morning, you may well imagine.  I mean, when the guests don't leave until 2:30 am, you couldn't really be expected to wake up before 10 am the next morning, right?  Once I got up, got ready and repacked my suitcase, I went downstairs to discover more jam being made, and some tarte flambées about to go into the oven.  YUM.  Anyone who knows me probably knows about my obsession with this particular Alsatian delicacy.  The best place to have tarte flambée is probably in a little country inn, miles from the nearest city.  Next best (to me) is happy hour at Les Brasseurs in Strasbourg.  Tarte flambée can definitely taste better when eaten in a place that conjures up happy memories of studying abroad or being a broke teaching assistant.  When neither of those options are possible, you do whatchu gotta do - you go frozen.  They were super yummy, and I ate more than I probably should have.  Glorious.

The tarte flambée was eaten out on the patio, in the garden, in the sunshine, btw.  I also spent the afternoon out in the yard, sitting in the shade and catching up with another one of my colleagues from last year, one of the teachers from the middle school who happens to live in the same town as Isa. Her two daughters came along, both very young and super cute.  One of them was in a FOUL mood, and kept biting/hitting/kicking/hair pulling, and generally being disagreeable.  Isa sent her kids up the road to an elderly neighbor's house to deliver a jar of homemade jam.  The neighbor has gotten the nickname "Madame Chocolat" because she's always giving the kids chocolate.  This time was no different, and they returned with a gift wrapped box of very expensive and yummy chocolates, which we promptly opened and shared.  La vie, franchement, est belle.  

We had a quick raclette dinner, which I requested (again on the patio, in the garden...are you tired of me yet?) before Isa took me back to the airport for my evening flight.  Raclette is a cheese, meat and potatoes meal, pretty heavy and hearty and not at all what you'd expect to have on a hot summer evening.  The thing is that raclette cheese and the raclette melting machine are not widely available in the States.  I was carpe-ing the heck out of that diem and eating some of my fave French foods that I really just can't get here very easily/at all.  Side note - Trader Joe's does a decent frozen tarte flambée, so I will be journeying to Cherry Hill soon to stock up.  

Had another lucky moment at the airport that evening.  I hadn't planned on (or paid for) a checked bag, but Isa had given me tons of jam to take home with me and one of those jars was intended as a gift for my friend Kate.  Definitely wasn't going to make it through security and onto the plane with that stuff, so I went to the check-in desk to see how much it would cost to check my bag.  It is usually really expensive, so I was cringing as I asked....and then the woman at the desk said the word "gratuit".  Did I just hear her say free??  I did!  Since I had volunteered to check my bag, and because there ended up being not enough room on the flight for all of the carry-on luggage, I didn't have to pay!  **happy dance**  Isa could't believe it, and I sort of couldn't either.  I was so bummed to leave France, but I know that I'll be back next summer, so it's not that bad.  I had a pretty uneventful trip back to Jenny's, and there ends my tale.  Stay tuned for tales from my wee trip to Scotland!

And on the third day in France....

....I slept in again!  The mornings I spent in France could definitely have been put to better use, but hey....vacation. On Wednesday we all piled in the car again, this time driving to the Parc de Wesserling.  We drove through a town called Thann to get there, which made me think of my friend Matt.  He and I went to Thann on a grey November day (11.11.11, to be precise) and hiked up to some ruins way up on a hill. Miss you, Matt!

Anyway, the Parc de Wesserling is kind of awesome.  There's a textile museum there, which is located in an old textile factory.  We got to see how a type of fabric called "ïndienne" was made - essentially there was someone who would weave fabric, someone else who would conceive and draw a design, someone who would carve the design into wood blocks, and then someone who would stamp the designs on the fabric, using a different wood block for each color.  It was an insanely long process before it was modernized with machine production, and very cool to see all the steps of the old process.  

The grounds all around the museum form the actual park, where every year they have a new theme for the 5 gardens that make up the park.  This year it was Gulliver's Travels, so there were huge boots and big chairs for giants, and little tiny gardens and things for the Lilliputians.  We did the guided tour with one of the gardeners in order to hear a little bit more about the theme, the decorations, and the different gardens.  One of them was a veggie garden, one a garden in the French style, etc and so on. There was also a "sentier pieds nus", which basically means you take your shoes off and follow a path in your bare feet.  There were all kinds of different things to walk on/in - wood chips, pebbles, a clay pit...there was even a place where you could rinse your feet off.  It was a hot day, but we had a lot of fun just walking around.  Meanwhile, Isa's husband was off running for the 3 hours that we spent in the museum and the gardens.  Scenes from our afternoon:

When we got home from the park, Isa and I went to the grocery store where I stocked up on French candy for myself and others (pics to come when I get home), then we went back to her house for the big BBQ with all of my colleagues from last year.  It was so indescribably wonderful to be able to spend the evening talking with all of them!  There was one colleague missing - she was already on her way to Corsica when we called to see if she was free, so I'll have to get back to Strasbourg sometime to see her. :-)  All in all, it was a wonderful night.  The last partiers stayed until like 2:30 in the morning, and I was just about falling over by the time we finally said goodbye.  Here they are:

Le "Dream Team" du lycée Louis Armand

So, there you have it - only one more day to go before I've written all there is to write about my trip to France this year.  But it'll have to wait until tomorrow, because my feet are frozen so I'm going up to my hostel room to get warm, but the Wifi doesn't reach all the way up there!  See you back here soon!

Ok, back to France - Tuesday

Ok, where were we?  Oh yes, Tuesday.  Let's go back in time.....

On Monday I had hiked up to a chateau and then had a really late (and wonderful) BBQ, if you recall.  So, the directive when we got home was to sleep until I woke up, and not to set an alarm.  For those of you playing along at home, you might remember that my jet lag management had dipped below acceptable standards, and that I was already a bit behind on my sleep.  I did manage to set an alarm for 10:30, but it dragged me up from the depths of a Very Deep Sleep indeed.  

So our plan for that day was as follows:  pack a picnic lunch, pile into the car, drive to Switzerland and go to the Fondation Beyeler, a museum in the city of Basel.  We ate our picnic lunch in the little park next to the museum, went in and saw exhibitions by Max Ernst and Andy Warhol, and a particularly disturbing work of art involving taxidermied, decapitated horses. Ick. On our way back to Altkirch, we stopped off and picked up Isa's daughter, who had been staying at her godfather's house.  We lounged around for about an hour, chatting with them and watching the kids shoot water guns at each other and swing on the swing set.  Oh, and I painted Chloe's nails! When we got back to Isa's house, I'm pretty certain that I took a nap for an hour or so.  Here's a travel tip that I didn't follow: stay hydrated when traveling, it helps you to adjust to changing time zones so you're not a zombie.  

After my nap, we went over to her Mom's house for dinner, and then Isa and I dashed off to the movies for a girls' night, just like we did last year when I'd stay with them on weekends.  This time we saw Pour Une Femme, a non-subtitled French film about love, spies and intrigue following World War II.  We both really liked it, and I hope I'll be able to find it on DVD sometime by the end of the year!

Here are the few pics I took that day, and coming up next is the post about Wednesday!

The Fondation Beyeler, as seen from the park where we ate lunch