Oh Amsterdam..

Originally my plan was to blog about my return flights home simply because it's been a while since I've blogged.

So, yesterday after arriving in Nice at roughly nine AM with no where in particular to go, I decided it would be best just to bum around for like 9 hours till everyone else got back via train. At the time it didn't seem like to much time, but as I discovered, being homeless is trés boring. For those nine hours I slept on the beach, ate baguette, fed the pigeons with my shoe to their faces, and read. NEVER gave I been so scroungy looking. I wish I had a picture of the incident (in honor of Patrick I bought a bottle of wine and a beer and hung out in a park).

Anyway, Alec came up with a plan to get me fed and looking more like an American child than a lonely buzzed French hobo. So he asked his house mother if it was ok if I crashed there for the night and maybe had dinner with them. Her being amazing as she is, agreed and even let me have a shower. Well, my story so far isn't so awesome, so long story short is I ate, I showered, I couldn't spend the night because my plane left too early for me to get there on time, and I said my thank you's and goodbyes.

So I arrive at the Nice airport only to be told I'm not allowed to spend the night..
Carlos "WHAT?!? What do you mean by that?!?!"
Lady "Sir, I'm sorry but you're going to have to go talk to security."
Carlos "I whill. I whill do that!"

A few minutes later...

Security "I think that lady is crazy because as long as you have your boarding pass you can stay here if you want...but all we have are metal benches and tile floors."
Carlos "That's fine I just want to fall asleep warm!"
Security "Ok good luck son."

So....I did what came naturally that day and fell asleep on the floor only to be woken up by the horn of a floor polisher at 2am...who woulda thunk?

Anyway, so that morning I pass through security and board my plane ready to go home and sleep in my own bed and poop on my own toilet (sorry ladies).

A few minutes a pass and I glance at my watch, it's 7:35...weren't we supposed to take off at 6:50?

Captain "Excuse me folks, we are having to reset our navigation system and it was supposed to take five minutes but it seems that blah blah blah.."

Carlos (in my brain) "oh my hell! Ima miss my next plane!" which incase you were wondering I did miss..I had gotten up the security, passed it and passport control, and was walking into the catwalk to my plane when I was stopped...what now? I HAVE to get on this plane! Anyway, they told me I couldn't get on because my bags weren't in it yet, which makes no sense because they could just send them in a later flight..so, they tell me where to go to set up a transfer, and lo-and-behold, it's a 2hour wait time because Delta canceled an entire flight to Detroit..so I get in line and quickly make some friends. A cute American girl and an even cuter German girl (you guys may owe me a bottle of wine after tonight. The Angora Rabbit it going in for the kill). So I find out that they have been there since yesterday and KLM put them up in a hotel with meals provided! They even got t-shirts!

Well, this pretty much brings us to now, the girls are still here and so am I. We had dinner together, and now I'm blogging for you children. I leave tomorrow at 4:30 from the hotel and arrive in SLC at like 2pm. O well.

List of prizes given to me by KLM:

Ten euros
A shirt
Tooth brush
Socks
A hotel room
A 50 euros off my next flight with Delta, KLM, or Airfrance.
And best of all, new friends.


Ps, there is a mini horse ranch right behind my room hahahaha. Oh the entertainment.

Encore de Paris

Marie-Antoinette's hamlet

Looking out of the Rodin Museum into the Gardens

Moss claiming territory in the Père-Lachaise Cemetery

Dropped by the Moulin Rouge

On the Sacré Cœur steps

Lunch in the Square Tertre

Before the dare!

les tombes de napoleon et son fils

les parties de la premiere et deuxieme guerres mondiales

les invalides

when i went there i was wondering what i was going to learn really, but after i got in i found out that there were six museums in les invalides building.

the most exciting parts for me in there were: to meet the knowledge about the world war 1 and world war 2., moitiers sovietique , what kinds of naval mines the germans used to use and also i had the chance to take pictures of napoleon bonaparte's tomb and his son's because some of the ones we haved visited taking photos is forbidden.

over 50 millions dead bodies in the world war 2, more than 30 millions of it were civils in may 1945, the country which had more deaths was URSS 26,600,000 after was CHINA 12,000,000

le chateau de versailles

the statue in front of le chateau de versailles is LOUIS XIV which was one of france's kings

26th I think

So I really dont even know what day it is anymore. Don't even know if Versaille was the 26th or not but we went to it. It was a perfect day to be there. The vast gardens were green and enjoyable especially with the bike ride that some of decided to take. Versaille just might be one of the closest things to heaven on earth. Golden Gates, Luxurious Halls and Castle, and endless gardens. For anyone reading this at home, you really should've come on the trip :)

Séjour à Paris

La tour Eiffel

Le musée Cluny

Le crypte au Panthéon

Près de Notre-Dame de Paris

Le Louvre

Le café Angélina

La place de la Concorde

L'Arc de Triomphe

Epuisés !

Versailles

Versailles

Dans le métro

Sur la Seine

Aux Invalides

I SMELL GOOD!

We all got to go to the Musee Matisse de Nice which has been open since January 5th 1963. Henri Matisse is a famous painter and sculpture. He was the most important painter in the 20th century and is said to rival Picasso in his influence. It was so cool to be able to see the work of an artist that is SO famous, and had as much influence as that man did. Before we entered the museum, our buddy Pat was giving us a little background information on the site. We were all standing close together when a little breeze picked up. I guess the breeze from my direction blew towards Ryan. In the middle of Pat's speech while it was very quiet suddenly I hear, "YOU SMELL GOOD!!!!" right in my ear! I look behind me and Ryan is standing there smiling, and has no clue that he just interrupted a speech... and did so by yelling in my ear. I realized the reason for his interruption was that his IPOD was blasting Paramore and he had no idea what he had just done. It probably one of the funniest moments on the trip so far. The joke for the rest of the day (and actually still) was to randomly come up behind me, sniff, and yell YOU SMELL GOOD! Needless to say I got alot of compliments on my perfume that day-unfortunately it was mostly to make fun of Ryan.
Strange observance- the flowers here must be fed some serious miracle grow! They are so healthy and much more beautiful than the one's in the U.S. Here's a picture of the jardin near the musueum and Matisse's grave. Matisse's grave has a bunch of stones on top of it which are placed there for respect from visitors.

Haha we're in Paris and you're not!

Nous sommes arrivés à le gare de Lyon (à Paris) à 16h35 après un six heure tour de train. En suite, nous sommes allés de trouver notre hôtel quelque part dans Paris....holy crap this city is huge! We took the métro (always exciting and invigorating when you're fighting to get on board before the blasted doors scream shut). Bien sûr, within the first ten minutes, there was a man playing an accordion on one of the métro trains. Gotta love Paris.

We found the hotel and dropped off all of our crap then, without skipping a beat, we were off to go visit le tour Eiffel. After another métro ride and a brief walk, we saw the first glimpses of the tower looming in the distance. For a first-timer, seeing the Eiffel tour was a magnificent sight. I was taken aback by it's immenseness (literally and culturally). We waited in a line to go up the cursed thing and after much standing and stair climbing, we made it to the deuxième étage. Then, after another line, we crowded like cattle into a petite elevator and climbed to the top just in time for the sunset. Whoever said that Paris is the city of love was right. I could feel it in the air as the sun was setting down. It was a shame that ma petite amie was a few thousand miles away...We watched as the sun set and as the lights of Paris slowly flicked on.
After we made it out of the tower, and away from all the blasted vendors, we stepped back for a view of the tower at night (also, truly spectacular) and wandered back to our hotel for some well deserved sleep.

French Faced

The French have forgotten how to smile. In my time here I have seen a rare few smiles, and they usually come from other visitors to this country. As you can see in the picture to the right this genuine frenchman is mean muggin' especially hard. I don't know if he was frowning because of the beautiful day, or because he couldn't get tickets to the cannes film fest. Either way the French do not like to smile, so as you can see in the picture above I tried to blend. Hopefully we will see more smiles the longer we stay because my face hurts from frowning so much.

Beret count: 6

Confiserie Florian

Yesterday after a great day of classes and a visit to the art museum, a group of us went to a candy factory at the port in Nice. It was a pretty cool experience. It was like Willy Wonka's Factory minus geese laying golden eggs. Their whole bit is making flowers and fruit (the whole fruit with the skin) into pieces of candy or other crazy creations. I got to sample Violet, Jasmin and Rose syrup stuff and chocolate with candy rose petals. They were all really good and crazy. After buying my 7 euro white chocolate with rose petal bar, we walked back on the Promenade des Anglais and saw the Monument Aux Morts which is a WWI & WWII memorial for the people of Nice who died in each War. That was a cool sight to see. All in all it was yet another great day here in Nice.

Quelques photos

Carlos: «Hope of Cannes»

Cannes port and film festival in the background

On the Red Carpet

Gelato à la rose

Round-up of a few stars in Cannes

Entrevaux «Between Valleys» in the Alps

 Entering the portico and bridge that access the medieval town below the citadel.

Medieval village immediately behind us and a military citadel at the top of the hill.  Built by Vauban, Louis XIV's military architect.

Sarah bravely checked out the dungeon.

A closer view of the citadel from the switchbacks on the mountainside.

(Photo «piqued» from Jared)