France, take note:

A little gem we found in Baux de Provence. Maybe France should actually take it to heart...? 

Provence!

Well, you know the year is really coming to a close when Dickinson takes its end of the year trip! We went to the legendary Provence region! We stayed in Arles for 3 nights, and took day trips around the area. When we got there on Thursday, we walked around Arles a little, and then ate dinner as a group ate at the Café de la Nuit, which was immortalized in this Van Gogh painting. Thus, the food is overpriced and not that good. But the atmosphere was nice! Van Gogh stayed in Arles from 1888-1889, and at the hospital there is where he cut off his ear (photo above). Sweet. But he also did something not psycho, which was paint over 250 canvases while in Arles, which is a huge amount.

Friday, we went on a magnificent hike in the Apilles Mountains! The Apilles are like the smallest mountain range ever, but the scenery is absolutely breathtaking, and we were lucky enough to have a gorgeous day! I understand why Provence inspired so many artists to paint, because it really is amazingly beautiful. Our guide during the hike was the cutest ever, and he told us it was his dream to do a “guide exchange” with a hiking guide in the states, because he really wants to visit the US. I was in love. Another cool thing during our hike was that we saw lots of wild thyme, rosemary, and lavender. I sat in some thyme during our picnic. Then after our hike, we visited the Cathedral d’Images, which is an old quarry where they now do expositions of photography and art. We saw a Cezanne exposition, and how they do it is really cool: it’s pitch black inside, and then they project the images in JUMBO size on the walls on the mine, and they are constantly changing. And there is classical music playing, which really helps to create a really cool atmosphere inside. Definitely the coolest museum I’ve ever been to! Then we visited the Baux de Provence, which is a cute little town, but I wasn’t too impressed because there were approximately 8000 other people who were visiting at the same time as us. Too crowded. That night, we were all pretty pooped, so we went out to dinner and then crashed. But I did eat some pistou soup, which is a provincial specialty with veggies and beans and basil and garlic, and I was in love.

Saturday was super fun market day! We had so much fun wandering around in all the stalls and tasting delicious delicacies and buying souvenirs! We bought picnic stuff, and had a delicious lunch of fresh bread, cheese, pesto, tapinade, and strawberries! Then while we were eating in
this park, I got pooped on twice by pigeons while sitting under the same tree. It was gross. Surprisingly, it did not put me off the picnic, and I still enjoyed myself. Then in the afternoon we went to Salon de Provence, which was promised to be some sort of crazy soap capital of the world, and as Michael put it, he thought “they would just be throwing soap at us, because there would be that much.” Unfortunately, we were a little disappointed by a somewhat modern town (earthquake in 1909 destroyed the old part of town), and not a soap shop to be found. No soap shops make Dickinson kids a grumpy bunch. However, we did see pretty houses where former soap makers used to live…if that interests anyone. Saturday night led us to a delicious dinner at Le Criquet, the cutest restaurant maybe ever in the world. And then we went to a sketchy bar that had a bunch of overly excited teens/early 20s in it that jumped around a lot and played with our hair…? It was odd. But entertaining nonetheless.

(fountain in Salon de Provence that was all grown over with moss, but water still comes out of it like it's raining from underneath the little tree part!)

Sunday we took a tour of Arles, which has a lot of roman history, including an arena where they have bull fights! Then we hung around in the intense heat while we waited for the train. Seriously, Provence was HOT. It’s not even summer yet, and we were probably pushing 90 all weekend. And then we got to the train, expecting relief from the heat, but then it turned out to be the hottest train ever known to man. It was an incredibly unbearable 3 hour return to Toulouse. It was gross.

So besides incredible heat (which was not actually a bad thing!) the end of the year trip to Provence was a great success, and a great way to spend some of my last days in France! But if one more bird poops on me…game over France.

The year is almost over...?

Last party of the year chez Kat! Oh, we had some great times over there. And Shana come through Toulouse on her way home from Cameroon to celebrate with us, yay! Here's her and Dan enjoying the guacamole and looking adorable. ;)

In other news, it's becoming frighteningly real that the year is quickly coming to a close. I'll be closing my bank account next Wednesday, then the end of the year trip to Provence, and then my oral defense for my internship on June 1st! Then just 5 little days until home sweet home. :) 

Morocco!

Wheeeee, Annie, Christine, and I went to Agadir, Morocco for spring break! We wanted to go somewhere to enjoy some nice hot beach weather, work on our tans (yeah right), and just relax! We got this really great deal through a student travel agency, sooo we packed up our bags and flew to Morocco (how cool is it that we can travel so easily to a different continent? Especially a crazy continent like Africa!)

We stayed for one week in Agadir. In 1960, Agadir was completely destroyed by an earthquake that killed 18,000 people. So, needless to say, the city itself is rather modern looking, and there isn’t really any nice architecture to look at. And it’s a very popular French tourist destination, so the city is very “tourist friendly”. The first day, Saturday, we enjoyed some great beach weather. To avoid a lot of harassing on the public beach, we opted to rent these comfy beach chairs and umbrellas on a private beach. It was awesome! For 20 dirham (about $2) we could sit in peace and be super comfortable while enjoying the beach! Then Sunday, the weather was kind of bad (go figure, like the only rain all year comes when we are there!) so we went horseback riding! We went through some brushy, deserty areas and some woods, and then we got out to the beach and ran along the beach! It was just like a movie. Especially when it started pouring rain (and hailing!) and it turned into a wet t-shirt contest on horseback. Neat. But still an awesome time!

Monday, it was rainy again, so we went to the Medina d’Agadir. A medina is traditionally the old part of an Arab city, but since Agadir was destroyed in 1960, this is a replica of what a traditional medina would be like. It was still pretty cool, despite the fakeness of it all, because they did a really good job with making it seem real! And you could watch artisans work at making sandals, tunics, jewelry, etc.

Monday evening we went to a “soirée berber”, which was organized through our tour company. We drove about an hour to this old Kasbah, where we would have a delicious traditional Berber (tribe in Morocco) dinner and enjoy some entertainment! The dinner was great; we ate everything with our hands and used this homemade flat bread as silver wear/plates/napkins! The French people were not into that, and looked at us three Americans like we were crazy as we dug in! Then after our first course and second courses (flat bread dipped in butter and honey followed by a tagine with fish in a delicious sauce!) we were called out to “watch” the entertainment, which actually mean participating, which we didn’t realize. So we get grabbed into this dancing circle, and at first we were all kind of like “umm…we look stupid! Bah!” but then we were like “oh, who cares!” and really got into it! And since most of the other people there were families or couples, we three young American girls got a lot of attention! We kept getting pulled into the circle to dance with the men, even when no one else was! Needless to say, it was a hilarious and fun experience. And the food was DELICIOUS! After the first round of dancing, we went back in to enjoy our third course (another tagine, of chicken this time) before we were called out to dance again! Crazy Berbers. And we met this one “native” guy who had worked at Colonial Williamsburg for a long time. (Funny story, we saw him the next day when we were driving around in a cab in Agadir!) Then we had dessert of couscous with cinnamon and sugar, and oranges.

Tuesday was finally another good beach day! We went to the public beach in the morning, and it wasn’t that bad! We had people coming up asking us to buy crap, but we weren’t bothered that much, which made us happy. Then in the afternoon, we headed to the souk! The souk of Agadir has 2500 sellers and is like a little city! Some sections were really cool, which lots of handmade leather good, spices, clothing, etc, but then other sections looked like rip-off land in China or something, with lots of fakes and stuff. So I ended up buying these handmade leather sandals and a white embroidered tunic! The prices were crazy good too. I like Morocco.



Wednesday, we did beach again. Yay! Then in the afternoon, we were going to try to go to a hammam, which is a Moroccan bath/sauna type thing, and we had read about a “good” one in Lonely Planet, but apparently LP hadn’t been there recently, because the place looked like sketch land. So we went back to our hotel and made appointments for massages and sauna-ing at our tourist-friendly hotel hammam! What an experience! So turns out that a hammam is actually a very wet version of a sauna. So we’re sitting in there just getting hot, trying to avoid getting our underwear wet (it was rather puddle-y in there) and wondering if anything else would happen when this large Moroccan woman comes in and proceeds to throw buckets of water on us! So much for trying to keep dry! And then we got all this mud/clay/apparently good for your skin stuff all over us, and then we got massages, manicures, and henna!

We did discover that pretty much every man in Morocco was interested in either: a) selling us something, b) killing us (for not buying their stuff and/or not stopping to talk to them…?), or c) giving us 5 million camels. We definitely got some interesting offers (and yes, the 5 million camel offer was really said), and everyone called us “les gazelles”, which at first we thought was a kind of cat-call thing, which it definitely was in some cases, but nice guys who worked at our hotel called us it too! So I guess it’s just a Moroccan guy thing.

So yay for spring break in Morocco!