Now Back to Our Regularly Scheduled Program

     Bonjour tout le monde! Sorry for the brief hiatus, I was so busy for a while that I completely forgot t o update my blog. Well now I am. I’m expirimenting with the Windows Live Writer so enjoy the pictures and hopefully this can continue.

So, highlights:

• Trip to a garden in the middle of nowhere
• A Hockey game
• Going to Angers to see the musical Cleopatre
• Going to Paris to see, well, Paris and the musical Mozart

So this garden, it was in the middle of nowhere and took a while to get to but it was really pretty and a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon. Part of it was designed to look like a desert. We walked around and had a picnic. Okay, not very exciting compared to Angers and Paris.

The hockey game on the other hand was completely amazing. It was the Nantes Corsaires (the D2 professional team in the area) versus Toulouse.  There were more people there than I expected, everyone was enthusiastic and cheering (unfortunately they only know one chant, I will have to impart some of my Miami hockey fandom before I leave). There were a surprising number of penalties (at least two in the box at all times and often 3-4), three were ten minutes and one guy got thrown out. Surprisingly I didn’t see anything I’d categorize as a fight to qualify these penalties. Nantes didn’t win but it was great nonetheless.

Two weeks ago I visited Angers with Molly. The main attraction of Angers is its chateau. It is an absolutely gigantic chateau with a lovely garden-type area in the center, a church and an exhibit containing the Apocalypse Tapestry.  Unfortunately the church was closed due to a fire in January, but it was pretty from the outside. The Apocalypse Tapestry was awesome because it is a huge huge work (together it takes up an entire room built to house it) that depicts the entire book of Revelations (not the most uplifting tapestry, hence the name “Apocalypse”). And luckily for me there was a special exhibit in the room of books that the King Rene (who use to live in the chateau) collected. Needless to say, I bought lots of postcards since I couldn’t take pictures.

After the chateau we got lunch, checked out the church and headed north to the Parc des Expositions where Cleopatre was playing for the weekend (the goal of the trip).  It was soooooooooo awesome! It is pretty much a combination of the plays Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra plus hip-hop dancing, elaborate sets and lots and lots of rhinestones.

Last weekend I went to Paris with Meyanna, we spent some time with her friend, who lives in Paris, and her family. We saw a lot of stuff:

• Day 1: Notre Dame de Paris, St. Germain des Pres, Musee D’Orsay, the Champs-Elysee and Mozart L’Opera Rock
• Day 2: Versailles, Montmartre and the Bibliotheque National de France
• Day 3: Louvre, Musee Cluny (medieval museum)
• Day 4: Chantilly, Eiffel Tower

Notre Dame was great, but not as impressive as I expected, the Musee D’Orsay was awesome, I got to see all the Degas works that I love! The Champs Elysee was very happening and I fulfilled one of my life goals, which was to sing the Champs-Elysee song on the Champs-Elysee.

The Mozart musical was AWESOME! The costumes and music were just out of this world. And although I’d probably say I liked Cleopatre better, Mozart was really impressive. It was the very romanticized story of Mozart and how horrible his life was. The storyline itself seemed a little simple but the music made up for that big time.

Versailles was a little overwhelming, I’m not a fan of the marble and gold paint era but it was pretty cool. Montmartre was pretty and had a great view. The Bibliotheque National was having an awesome exhibit on the legend of King Arthur that included a ton of manuscripts and a little niche playing Monty Python. I love France.

The Louvre was incredible and I took at least 500 pictures there (I took more than 2000 pictures in four days and had to delete many in order to continue taking them all weekend). I didn’t see the Mona Lisa, but it was that or the entire wing of medieval art. I think I made the right choice. Meyanna and I parted ways before the Musee Cluny because she wanted to see the Centre Pompidou, which has modern art. Cluny was great, of course, since it has medieval artifacts, including lots of tapestries. I bought a bunch of postcards and a magazine on the works of Christine de Pizan in French. Then I enjoyed a quiet dinner at a creperie and headed home to watch the third Harry Potter movie in French

In the morning we left our luggage in a locker and intended to go to Chantilly, which is about 40 mins north of Paris by train, but we missed the train and the next one didn’t come for an hour. Instead of a morning we ended up spending the whole day there but it was most definitely worth it. The weather was mostly great and the chateau was gorgeous. There was a museum that contained some paintings we had studied in art history class, which made us extremely happy, and there was a library containing rare books. Unfortunately most of the rare books were newer than I had hoped and were being displayed for their covers or the decorative inside of the cover, and not for their actual contents. The Tres Riches Heures of Jean Duc de Berry live in Chantilly, but to my disappointment a sign in the library stated the book was too fragile to display so they had a facsimile out instead. Of course more postcards were purchased. I think I left Paris with nearly 40 postcards, 24 of which were actually of sights in Paris, the rest were manuscript images. 🙂

So now I’m back in Nantes until Saturday and homework is hitting full force. I got several exams back today and didn’t do too bad on them and I took an exam today, we’ll see how that goes. Starting in two weeks I have four successive papers due through the beginning of December…I need to get started on those.

And with that, au revoir until Monday when hopefully I can tell you all about my weekend in the Loire Valley!