Emily in Barcelona.. and Paris!

Wednesday was the main day of the La Mercé (I can easily type accent marks on the computers at school, so for once I'll use them...). Although I had been up late the night before, I made sure to drag myself out of bed to go to see the uniquely Catalán ¨castells¨ - essentially, human towers. About 20 or so people, using a variety of specific climbing techniques, endurance, strength and pure craziness, climb up one another to form a typically 5-8 level-high pyramid. The lowest levels are comprised of older men, the uppermost, of young children, with teenagers and such in between. It took place in one of Barcelona's many main squares, Jaume I, between the two most important buildings of Catalán government, El Palau e la Generalitat and la Casa de la Ciutat.

The Catalonian president and his family were actually on the balcony of the Casa de la Ciutat watching the event - the plaza itself was packed with people. There were all different teams of castellers from various regions of Catalonia - while the crowd held its breath (and their pocketbooks - being in such a large crowd made me a little nervous) each team would build their tower, one at a time, until the littlest casteller (who is usually about 5 years old), would climb to the top, blow a kiss, and then all would commence to come back down... which was about as scary as when they are going up.

That was probably the most exciting part of the day. My friend and I also happened to wander back to the square later that day when it was less sardine-can-like, and saw that one of the two government buildings, El Palau e la Generalitat, had free public entrance for the day. It was quite pretty. We went to a parade later that was a little on the ridiculous side - mostly just creepy figures dancing around awkwardly. The fireworks that night were spectacular, set to music at the plaza de España.

Inside the Palau:

The next morning it was off to France with my friends Anjali, Max, and Marcelo. It was a a bit of a project getting to Paris, I must say. We took a bus from Barcelona to Girona (Spain), a plane from Girona to Beavauis (France) and a bus from Beauvais to Paris. Ah, the joys of being too poor to afford direct flights...

Anyway, overall, Paris was more wonderful than I could have expected. I suppose I knew I would like it; being a romantic and all - but at the same time, I was a little weary of the French themselves, and how they would treat us in light of our limited language skills (¨bonjour, ¨parlez-vous l'anglais¨, and ¨baguette¨just about summarize the extent of my vocabulary). I was pleasantly surprised by how much I truly did love it, and how nice most people were. Of course we did spend most of our time in touristy areas, with Parisians that are likely used to people like us.

We didn´t do much on Thursday night, being tired from travelling and wanting to be able to wake up early Friday for a full day of exploring - so we walked around a bit and had dinner at a local restaurant (nothing too extravagant - we decided to eat cheaply for most of the trip and then have a nice sit-down meal on Saturday). We then went to the oldest bar in Paris, which was rather disappointing, honestly. It was more Irish pub than antiquated French tavern. Far more exciting was the scrum-diddly-umptious crepé we had on the side of the road, made with nutella (a type of chocolate/hazelnut spread) and banana. Mmm.

The next day was quite productive: our first stop was Notre Dame, which was completely gorgeous. (Mildly funny story: we only knew which metro stop to get off of to go to Notre Dame, but lacked specific directions - we assumed to first church we saw was it - commence excitement, picture-taking, etc... got in line to go in - and promptly realized it was a completely different cathedral). Here are some pictures, not that they do it justice (by the way, this trip has really made me wish I had a better camera... if anyone´s feeling generous???):

I was just amazed at how beautifu the whole city was. We picked a perfect time to go, too - the weather was like a perfect fall day, every day - the leaves were just starting to change, and it was cold at night and in the evenings - but warm and sunny throughout the afternoon. After Notre Dame we went to meet at Luxembourg Garden with my friend Peter, a fellow English major from Northeastern, who is studying abroad in Paris (and luckily for us, happens to speak French very well). Chessie, this one´s for you!:


The park was one of the loveliest I have ever seen. There were so many people out, chatting, reading, sunbathing. The gelato we had afterwards was coincidentally some of the best I've ever tasted.. I love parks and ice cream in general, but combined = magical. Haha.



After the park we wandered through the city towards the Louvre, which is free (hurray!) for people under 26 after 6 pm. The building was magnificent - and enormous (it holds over 35,000 pieces of art).

The Louvre closes at 9 - three hours is hardly enough time to see everything (try three days) - but we picked out a few highlights and set off running to get to them - the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Code of Hammurabi, Liberty Leading the People, to name a few. It was so exhausting that we ended up not even being able to stay for the full three hours... Here I am with Liberty Leading the People:

The following day we went to see the Arc de Triomphe, which was pretty impressive. From there we walked down the Champs d´Elysee, a famous street that runs from the Arc to the Louvre. We stopped along the way to eat our aforementioned ¨nice¨meal, which included escargot, paté, french onion soup, etc. It was quite delicious.

The latter half of the Champs d´Elysee was completely gorgeous, again, running through a beautiful little park which we took our time exploring...

After that Anjali and I went to take a little boat cruise along the Seine - it was a pleasant change to be able to sit and have the scenes and sites of Paris pass by us instead of vice versa. Our final stop of the day (and of the trip) was to the one and only Eiffel Tower. We had hoped to be able to get up to the top in time for sunset, but of course, everyone and their mother had the same idea, apparently - the lines were huge (and it was a Saturday, after all). It was about an hour and a half before we were able to get into the lift. Either way, it was pretty spectacular to be able to see the ¨City of Lights¨ at night from the top of the Eiffel Tower.

After the Eiffel tower, we wandered around and ate more crepés and delicious baguettes, and met up with Peter to do as the French youth apparently do - drink in front of national monuments. Our national monument of choice was the Pantheon. It was interesting, to say the least.

The following morning we had to be up at 5:30 AM to catch our 9 AM flight - we anticipated that being a disaster, and were right... to make a long story short there was mass confusion at the bus terminal to Beauvais, and Anjali actually ended up missing her flight :( thankfully, the three of us made it, though it was a pretty close call.

A few more pictures (PS - you can click on the pictures to make them larger):



We started our ¨real¨classes here on Monday - apparently the reason I´m here is to learn or something....? (Ha) I will try to write about those and some other various topics in the next couple days - I´ve been slacking and end up having to write novels when I do get around to posting in order to cover all that´s happened, and even then, I´m leaving out a lot.

Until then! Abrazos y besos (hugs and kisses)!