365 days later.

One year ago today, I moved to Paris. A year later, my blog draws to its natural conclusion. I'm back in Blighty, on a permanent basis this time, surrounded by my family deep in the deepest depths of exotic Hampshire. This is the 48th post on this blog (I’ve managed to write a lot more than I had expected that I would when I started this blog!). It’s also going to be the last post, for the obvious reason: there’s no more year abroad to blog about! Sad, sad times :( 

To business, then! This post is going to be a bit of a soliloquy, really. It's a post that I've been thinking about and writing, on and off, for quite a few months now, and the more I enjoyed my year abroad, the more I added to it. It’s become a bit of a love letter to the last year, if you like. Call me a sap if you like, I don't care.

302 days after I moved to Paris, 401 days after I started this blog, my life in Paris came to an end on 28th June 2014. And now, with my return from China, it’s official. All told, by the time I arrived back on UK soil on August 6th, I had spent 341 days as an official year abroader. Not quite 365 days, but I think, quite close enough. My (not-quite) year abroad is over.

And after all that, what can I really say? Sojourn to Chengdu aside, which I have already blogged about in six separate posts this month, my year abroad was really all about la cité d’amour that is Paris.

It really is such a beautiful and charming city, with a lot of character, and it’s not difficult to see why it is somewhere that so many people dream of visiting, it really isn't. Building on something I wrote to this effect back in February: I still prefer London as a city and as a place to live. Snap me in half like a stick of rock and London would probably be written there, I just love it so much. It’s also a gorgeous city, home to my favourite place on the planet, and has its own fair share of excellent restaurants, fascinating museums and historic landmarks. It’s the place I gained my independence, the place I have made most of my friends, and the place which has had a large impact on who I am becoming as an adult. It’s exciting, and fast paced, and a perfect balance between old and new.

I was always super excited to go on a year abroad and come to live in Paris – who wouldn’t be? But perhaps because of this love that I have for the British capital, it took me longer than it perhaps should have to really appreciate Paris as it should be appreciated. The turning point was somewhere in the middle of February, but I can now say this with absolute certainty – Paris is always going to be equally as special to me, just for different reasons.

Going clockwise, from top left: the canal at Versailles; the Louvre; the Arc de Triomphe, Notre Dame, Moulin Rouge, and the Sacre-Coeur

Paris was the place where I spoke in French every day; where French was just another language, not a foreign language. It's where nipping into the patisserie for a freshly baked croissant or a beautiful dessert was part of my normal routine. It has a unique charm that I've not seen anywhere else, with beautiful buildings, narrow streets, and a pace of life that is just slow enough so that you can sit back and enjoy life. (Lunch is so much tastier when you sit back and take your own sweet time to eat it, sat outside a café with a glass of wine!)

Paris is the place where it’s perfectly normal for men to hop on and off the metro with their accordions, playing their French melodies as each station whistles by.

True; the administration is slow; the bureaucracy incroyable, and not in a good way. Drinks, with the exception of wine, cost an absolute fortune, and as someone I know posted on their Facebook status quite early into the year;

"…bakeries are run by culinary angels, but beer is drafted by semi-trained monkeys."

Fact of the matter is, I've studied French since I was 4 years old and even with all that under my belt, I was remarkably ignorant, this time last year, about Paris, France, French life. Not so now, and I love all three of those things more than I ever had before or ever imagined I could.

We Brits might make jokes about the French, but Paris – and France in general – is a massive collection of weird and wonderful extremes, of every variety. It’s been an awesome year. One of the best of my life ever (so far, I hope).

I’m so lucky to have had the chance to do my year abroad there. Anyone can admire Paris, anyone can enjoy visiting it, but I don’t think you can ever understand it until you've lived here. And that’s probably true of most cities on this brilliant planet we call home. 

Going clockwise from top left: Champs Elysees, Palais du Luxembourg, the Catacombs and the Opera Garnier

Over the year, I've not just come to love Paris, but plenty of other places too. I've been to the beautiful franco-germanic gem that is Strasbourg. I've been to Dijon, in the Burgundy region. I've been to Berlin, and then there is the month that I have just spent, and posted about, in Chengdu, in the Sichuan province of China.

Fact of the matter is, my year abroad has given me the opportunity to see so many new things and have so many new experiences that so many people my age don’t have, and many people older than us never will. I imagine that living abroad would just get harder as you get older, and add jobs and mortgages and responsibility to your plate.

In Douglas Adam's story Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the supercomputer, Deep Thought, ponders the so-called "Ultimate Question":

"What is the answer to life, the universe and everything?"

...and eventually decided that the answer is 42. 

If you were to ask that question in reality, I say that the answer to the Ultimate Question is a year abroad. Because the year abroad is an education, about life, the universe and everything. That’s why Erasmus as a scheme and other cooperation agreements between universities in varying countries are so important.

Getting serious for a second, I actually did a bit of research on this point, because I wanted to make my point as effectively as I could, and I found a debate on the New York Times website (links at the bottom of this post), where various people submitted their opinions. For instance, Stacie Berdan and Allan Goodman, co-authors of 'A Student Guide to Study Abroad' write that;

"...[studying abroad] teaches students to appreciate difference and diversity firsthand, and enables them to recognize — and then dismiss — stereotypes they may have held about people they had never met..."

Another contributor, Violeta Rosales, pointed out that;

"[We]… should study abroad in order to realize that we are more alike than we are different… Cross-cultural understanding – the exchange of ideas, information and art – is imperative in a world made smaller by globalization and the internet"

But that's all to easy to write when you think about a year abroad in the abstract. I can speak quite passionately myself on this subject, just more in the context of my own experiences.

Clockwise from top left: Wenshu Temple in Chengdu, the Mutianyu stretch of the Great Wall, Pandas at Chengdu's Giant Panda Research Base, People's Park and the Leshan Giant Buddha

Clockwise from top left: Berlin Cathedral, the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, Checkpoint Charlie, and the Brandenburg Gate

I look on Facebook, and Twitter, and Instagram, and I see photos from people doing their year abroad elsewhere – America, Holland, Australia, Spain… All kinds of places. We’ve travelled, explored, and laughed ourselves silly. We've overcome homesickness and language barriers and cultural differences; we've tried new things, and seen new places, and together, we've got enough photos and tickets and souvenirs to fill thousands of scrapbooks. 

The point I'm trying to make here is that we've had a year in which we've really truly lived, away from the constraints of the education system which for many, me included, is the only thing we've ever really known.

And that’s exactly what it’s all about really isn't it? There’re still so many places in this beautiful world that I want to go and see – I’m very well aware that I have barely even scratched the surface, especially after spending time with some much more seasoned travellers than I in China - but I’m still so thankful that I've had to chance to cover even the small - tiny, really - corner of the globe that I have. I dove into the deep end, feet first, and I don’t regret one single second. Not even the things that went completely tits up. 

Turning onto a different tangent completely: when I think about it, my Law degree has taught me a lot of things over the past 3 years, being completely honest, only a tiny portion of it has been about the laws of the land. The university experience is an education in and of itself, and the year abroad in particular is brilliant in terms of personal development. A year ago, right now, I was completely, gut-wrenchingly nervous. In fact, exactly one year ago as this post is published, I was in the air somewhere above the English Channel heading towards Orly Airport and the unknown – a flat I had never seen, a university I didn’t know, a city I had only ever visited for approximately 6-8 hours as a stop off on a school trip to Futuroscope. So yes – I was nervous, maybe more nervous that I have ever been in my life.

Having said that, I am now a firm believer that the unknown is (or at least, can be), a good thing. I said in one of my earliest posts that I was viewing the year as a confidence building exercise. It’s worked. I am a shy person by nature, but I’m now able to push that to one side and plough on through it. I picked myself up, lock, stock and barrel, and landed in the middle of a foreign capital city where the language isn't my own and where I could count the number of people I knew on one hand. Difficult situations have never fazed me, particularly, but they certainly won’t now. 

Going to China – a country where I couldn’t even pretend to speak the language, or read the characters and where I was really going to be on my own, with no one familiar around, was easy in comparison.

Me, being exceptionally fortunate, without exception. 

That said, I am the first to freely admit that this year hasn't been easy - you only have to read back through this blog and you could probably identify when I was feeling low and when I wasn't, and there were plenty of lows. It is tough, it is difficult, and sometimes I wished that I had never bothered to go away in the first place (these were most definitely half-hearted wishes – I wouldn't throw my year abroad away for anything).

One reason that most people go away – it was certainly an important reason for me – is to improve your language skills. The language gap was also the biggest hurdle I had to overcome.

Obviously, my French has improved considerably. I lacked confidence in my own language skills when I first got here – I just read back through my very first post from Paris, on 2nd September last year, and it was full of doubts. That’s definitely not a problem anymore – I know I can handle most of the demands of everyday life. I’m not, however, fluent, which is what I had wanted to be - and if you go on a year abroad expecting that to be the result, I’m here to tell you now that it’s unlikely, albeit a very worthy aim. (This is partly, I will admit, my fault, for hanging out far too much with other English people). I don’t think in French – ‘Franglish’ is a better description. When I first got home, if I were to say, bump into someone in Asda, my first reaction was to apologise in French. In China, my first reaction was actually French more than it was English (probably because a foreign language felt like the right response, even if it was the wrong foreign language). So, there's definitely been a touch of reverse culture shock. Language wise, though, I’d need to go back for a good few months yet before I could realistically achieve fluency.

Who knows? Maybe one day I will. I'd like to think so.

Left: Strasbourg, Right: Dijon

So - in addition to everything that was said in the New York Times, with all of which I am in complete agreement, I would say that the personal growth is a compelling reason all by itself to go on a year abroad.

This has been the fastest year of my life, and it's been a real journey, one which has helped me prove to myself and others what I'm really capable of. Let's face it; I’m a different person than I was a year ago, in [hopefully] all good ways. I've grown up; I'm more independent than ever, and the boundaries of my comfort zone have widened exponentially beyond what they used to be. The year abroad has opened my mind and I am personally of the opinion that it will continue to do so even after my year abroad is long in the past.

And one day in the future, I will tell my kids about this past year, and what I did and saw, and hopefully they’ll be similarly inspired and will go off and get to do something even more wonderful themselves. The cycle will start all over again – as it should. I am firmly of the opinion that you need to see and experience the world to be able to deal with it.

Last but not least, thanks to everyone who's been reading my blog, whether it was just the one post or each and every one. It's been nice to see the page views on my blog stats gradually creep up and know that people have followed my journey. 

That's it! At risk of sounding like a dodgy acceptance speech at the Oscars, I do need to say a massive thankyou my parents, my brother, my flatmate Parisa, and my two absolute best friends, Ashley and Akeelah, for carrying me through the last year. Couldn't have done it without you. Last but not least, thankyou Chengdu, thankyou Erasmus and most of all, thankyou, Paris, for a wonderful year abroad. 

It's been an absolute privilege. 

Signing off : Au revoir à tous.

Vicky xx

Quotes above may be found at: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/10/17/should-more-americans-study-abroad/ (accessed 30/08/14)

Je parti Paris; je vol à Chine.

I've been back home for just over one week now and although I have actually posted twice since then, I've only just realised that I should probably post about my last few days in Paris before coming home!

On the Tuesday of my last week, I had to wait in all day, because I elected to send two suitcases home by way of www.sendmybag.com ... I'd recommend this company, if you're ever in a similar situation. It wasn't expensive, and my bags beat me home, so it was very convenient. Luckily, it was also a boiling hot day, and it wasn't really a hardship to stretch out on the balcony with a cocktail and an ice cream or two. 

I had thought that I would take the few days after that and cram them full of things, but I actually found that I had done 98% of what I wanted to do already, and so I was free to chill a bit, which I needed more than I realised. This year has been exhausting!

I ran some errands - got my confirmation of departure form signed at Assas, closed my bank account and the like - but Wednesday consisted mainly of a long period sat in the sunshine in the Jardin du Luxembourg - again, no great hardship on my part!

Thursday - Parisa and I began cleaning our apartment from top to bottom in preparation from.moving out, and I went to Notre Dame one last time, mainly to light a candle for a recent family loss, but while I was there I finally stumbled across Kilometre Zero, which I had looked for and failed to find on every. single. prior visit, so that was an unexpected bonus.

Oh, and I finally got to see the Eiffel Tower lit up at night - cutting it mighty fine, I grant you, but at least I did it!

Then came Saturday morning. I headed for the airport bright and early, immensely thankful that the French Air Traffic Controllers strike was called off early, and feeling a little bit sorry for myself...

I mean this is ten months of my life we're talking about here! It went so fast, and although it was a real mountain at times, I made it to the top and I loved it. So yes, I was a little bit sorry to be leaving, although it was lovely to be back in Blighty with my family, and just in time for my younger brother's 17th birthday.

That's it! My year in Paris is up - but my year abroad isn't quite over yet! Before I will count myself as officially "ex-erasmus", I'm jetting off to Chengdu, in the Szechuan Province of China to spend a month there, working at a law firm during the week and exploring in my free time!

Now, the furthest east I have ever been before is probably Poland, so this should be a real experience...

I leave tomorrow (ahhhhhh!) so this will be my last post for July, but I'll resume posting in August to finish my year abroad blog off properly.

Vicky xx

Au Revoir et Erasmus: Les faits et la fiction

Okay, so I'm now officially an Erasmus veteran and here to provide you with the lowdown.

These are things I wish I had known, and other tips for surviving your year abroad, mostly based on Paris, seeing as that's where I lived. 

Source: Google Images / commons.wikimedia.org

Some Basic Parisian Truths...

...Monoprix is more expensive than Franprix. If you buy lots of vegetables, find a decent market.

...Pretty much everything closes down on Sundays and Mondays. And the rest of the time, they just open when they feel like it. 

Paris on a Sunday. I know, you wouldn't recognise it would you?
Source: Google Images / bbc.co.uk

...If you're using the metro, particularly, in my experience, if you are going through Châtelet or Place d'Italie, you will wish that you had some hand sanitizer handy.

...If you are approached in the street by a small army of people from Eastern Europe thrusting a petition in your face, don't stop to sign it. Often, it's a scam to make you easier to pickpocket. Ditto, on the steps leading up to Sacré Cœur, with men who try to put thread on you and 'sell' you a 'friendship bracelet'.

...When in restaurants, don't order water off the menu. Ask for a carafe d'eau, and you'll get tap water, which costs 100% less.

...Don't go walking around with your eyes shut. Look up, look down, look all around... (anyone else remember that kid's show, where the woman had a spotty aeroplane and a dog?) Paris is Instagram's darling.

Probably not the best camera for tourism.
Source: Google Images / http://www.antiquecameras.net/

.
...If you're sat on a fold-down seat on the metro, and your carriage fills up: stand, or suffer the eye daggers.

...Once you've had a croissant fresh from the patisserie on a regular basis, Sainsbury's croissants will never taste quite the same again.

...French people appear to love UHT milk. It's everywhere. If you're a good brit, you'd never dream of putting such stuff in your tea, so you'll pay extra for the fresh stuff. 

...A lot of French clubs are what I would describe as 'armpitty' and the guys can get gropey (and not just in clubs. I can count at least two occasions where someone's tried his luck with me, once outside a metro station, and once by Porte Guillaume in Dijon - it's not nice, but you're usually ok if you keep your wits about you).

...Watch where you walk. Parisians are not fond of clearing up after their dogs. 

...Efficiency is not a word in the French language. Bureaucracy is. 

France. Where Red Tape abounds.
Source: Google Images / diginomica.com

And the Practical Stuff: 

Open your bank account as soon as you possibly can. You need a bank account to apply for CAF, to get a Carte Imagine R, to pay your rent etc. I went with Banque Populaire, and they were fine, quite helpful in setting everything up etc. etc. Most people I know went with BNP Paribas, and they sounded okay as well

TIP: It's worth knowing that if you have a UK account with Barclays, it won't cost you to withdraw money from a BNP Paribas atm with that card.

While we're on the subject of money, SAVE UP LOTS OF MONEY IN ADVANCE.  Paris is expensive - more expensive than London. Even with the Student Loan and the Erasmus Grant, the money I saved up just wasn't enough, not even close, and the result was that several times this year I have found myself living on the absolute barest of budgets, which does tend to take the fun out of things a bit, because if there's something no one likes to worry about, it's money.

Source: Google Images / 4vector.com

Carte ImagineR (the student version of a Navigo card). Most people will need one. That's a fact. The students who came to Assas from Oxford were all living at Cité Universitaire, and several of them told me that they would never have got by without it, because they needed to get the metro everywhere. That said, some people can cope by buying thousands of carnets - books of ten tickets. That was what I did, because I lived a lot closer to the centre of Paris, only needed to use the metro once or twice a week and walked everywhere else, which meant that the Navigo would have ended up costing me more. I think that's because you pay a fixed monthly sum - if it was more like the Oyster card, which works on a top-up basis, I probably would have shelled out for one. But each to their own. (http://www.imagine-r.com/)

Mobile phone - it makes so much sense to get one. You could survive on your english phone, but you'll either be tied to the wifi, meaning whatsapp and viber don't actually work for 80% of the time, or you'll end up paying an eye watering phone bill. Also, if your erasmus friends have all got french phones, but you're working on your english phone, you're costing them a fortune too. I took a spare, and it did make life easier. 

As far as network is concerned, I used this company - http://www.lefrenchmobile.com/ - because it's designed for people who are in France relatively short term, and because their PAYG credit doesn't expire, which it does on most other French networks. Also, their customer service is in English, which I know kind of defeats the object, but it does make life easier when you've been in France a matter of hours and you're having technical difficulties (trust me). My friends all did this instead, largely because its cheap - http://mobile.free.fr/

TIP: Learn from my mistake, and make sure your handset is unlocked before you try to put your french sim in it. D'oh!

Source: Goodle Images / simpleicon.com

Language. Do not, under any circumstances, beat yourself up when it's just not coming to you. The first thing I'd say on this topic, is that it varies for everybody, but took me a good three months before I really settled in and the language barrier stopped freaking me out so much. 

The second thing I would say on this is, be realistic. Unless you're super close to that stage already, it's unlikely that you're going to leave your year abroad completely fluent in your chosen language. That would be lovely,and I wish I had left my year abroad able to jabber away in French like a native - but you will inevitably end up speaking English much more than you should. It's an easy trap to fall into - In France, for instance, people often take the opportunity to practice their English with you, when it should be the other way around, and all of my new friends are English. You'd have to be an absolute saint to somehow manage 100% immersion and spend all of your time speaking french with your french friends. I don't mean to rain on your parade - you will improve by leaps and bounds, but it takes work.

Source: Google Images / frencheducation.com

If, like me, you are an iPhone, or other battery-glugging smartphone over, and you are reliant on said smartphone for your camera, and you take millions of photos on said camera, then I highly, highly highly recommend you buy a remote charger thing (if thing is not descriptive enough for you, you can see what I'm talking about here). When I went to Dijon back in May, I was taking the odd snap out of the window from the train, and texting the odd person, and my batter was down to 67% an hour before I even got to Dijon. You don't want to be that person who finishes their year abroad with no photos and no record of it because your phone was always dead, you really don't. 

French attempts at English Tea Bags lead to 'tea' that reminds me vaguely of dirty dish water. It's gross. If you love your tea, stop into Asda, or wherever, and stock up on your Tetley. You won't regret it. Ditto Marmite, and anything you know you'll miss. Sometimes when you get homesick, something British will do wonders. Marks and Spencer's also comes in handy on this front. There are 3 in Paris alone. 

Source: Google Images / theguardian.com

Last, but not least...

• FOLLOW @thirdyearabroad ON TWITTER. And if you haven't already found their website, http://www.thirdyearabroad.com/ bookmark it.... now... right now? Done? If you follow their twitter, at the very least, you'll realise that you're not alone when things are going wrong. You'll get more from it than that though - survival tips, erasmus and language news, travel ideas from people who live in other cities, and so much more. You don't need me to tell you - go check it out!

If you're going on a year abroad, particularly to Paris, I hope you find this helpful, and bon courage!

Vicky xx

Une liste: la partie finale!

Fin. Finished. End. Caput. No more. 

My time in Paris is at an end! Ten months down the line, my year abroad is drawing to a close (but is not ended just yet, for reasons I shall mention at the end of this post...). I packed up my bags and left my lovely apartment for the last time on Saturday just gone, and now I am temporarily (again, see end of this post) back in Blighty and getting all reminiscent. I tried to do a 'Paris in numbers' post, but it would have been boring, because I couldn't put an actual number on most of the things I came up with, and it would have gone something like this: "Many, many crêpes, Many more croissants, Even more carnets for the Metro..."

Which is boring. 

Instead, I've finally been through and updated my 'Paris things to do/bucket list', crossing off everything I managed to get done in my final few weeks in the French capital. 

Voilà.

1. Visit the Versailles Palace

2. Go to Notre Dame Cathedral

3. Visit Les Catacombs

4. Indulge in la cuisine, including croissants, macaroons, snails, frogs legs, seafood, and everything else French and/or Parisian. (On the seafood side of things, La Bar a Huitres is the place that I went for my birthday, and it really was delicious. There's several of them in Paris - I went to the one in Montparnasse. They've got a menu that ranges from massive seafood platters costing a few hundreds of euros, to a nice fixed menu for 44 euros, which was much better for my poor student budget)

5. Go to see the Pantheon

6. Spend time in La Jardin du Luxembourg

The next three I didn't do, and I always knew I wouldn't actually be able to do them this year - the first and second because I'm elsewhere at the time they happen; the third because I spent it at home. But I'm keeping them on my list because they're three things which really ought to be done in Paris, and though I won't be doing them this year, I'll be making sure to do them at some point!

7. View the Bastille Day Parade

8. Finale of the Tour de France

9. Spend NYE in Paris

10. Go to the Louvre and see the Mona Lisa! I have well and truly done the Louvre. I think I went there at least six times, covering pretty much every wing they've got in that place, and it's massive. To people going to the Louvre - see the Mona Lisa if you want, although she's pretty underwhelming, but make sure to do Napoleon's apartments too, in the Richelieu wing.

11. Go to Disneyland Paris. Disclaimer: I've actually been here before, so I count it as done. I wasn't going to include it on my list at all, but my "little" (he's 16) brother insisted that I include it, which was blatantly a not very subtle hint that I should take him.

12. Go to Sacré Coeur.

13. Stroll down the Champs-Élysées, and end up in the Place de la Concord

14. Rue Mouffetard - home of my favourite place to get a crêpe, Au P'tit Grec.

15. Go to the Palais Garnier

16. Visit Monet's garden at Giverny - I tried to do this, but on the metro heading to the train station realised that I would leave myself properly, PROPERLY skint if I went, which didn't seem wise.

17. Go to the top of the Eiffel Tower AND go see the Eiffel Tower at night

18. Visit at least 3 other European Countries. I did manage to visit Berlin in Germany, and I was intending to go to Brussels, but I just couldn't afford it, so sadly, this didn't going to happen.

19. Go to the Christmas Market in Strasbourg

20. Spend the day at Parc Asterix :) - another one for which I ran out of time and money!

21. Go to Bercy Shopping Village - because, really, what's Paris without some retail therapy?

22. Les Invalides

23. Moulin Rouge - It costs a fortune to actually see a show, but I've seen the outside and that will do for now!

24. Spend a few days on the South Coast and maybe in Monaco - this was another one that ended up being unrealistic.

25. La Marais and Place des Vosges

26. La Conciergerie

27. Visit St- Sulpice

28. Go to the roof at Galleries Lafayette - incidentally, I really loved the interior of this store. It's gorgeous!

29. Go the Musée de l'Orangerie

30. Go over to the Arc de Triomphe

31. Visit some other French Towns. I've been to Strasbourg (see no. 19 on the list) and also to Dijon.

32. Go for a walk along the Canal St Martin

33. Bois du Boulogne

34. See some jazz of some kind while I'm here!

35. Visit Le Château de Fontainebleau

36. Go to Musee d'Orsay

37. See an exhibition at the Grand Palais - Parisa and I went to see the Cartier exhibition back in January.

38. Go to Musee Marmottan.

39. Go to the French Open

40. Take a photo of Kilometre Zero, which is right outside Notre Dame (Km Zero is the point to which distances are measured to in Paris)

41. Find the most famous graves at Père Lachaise cemetery. (In case you're wondering, Edith Piaf and Oscar Wilde are just two of several famous names buried there)

42. Parc des Buttes Chaumont

43. Visit La Sainte-Chapelle

44. Browse the shelves at the bookshop, Shakespeare and Co

30 out of 44 things done. Not bad, even if I do say so myself. I'll be adding everything I didn't do to my mainstream bucket list, which I keep in the back of my journal. I'll cross everything off of it at some point, be it next year or in the next ten!

The next part of my year abroad is completely un-Erasmus related and it is all down to a company called Projects Abroad - http://www.projects-abroad.co.uk/ - who offer lots of volunteering projects in countries all over the world. I remembered them all the way back from the Gap Year fair at my Sixth Form College, and now I'm finally off on my Project, having got here rather in a rather convoluted fashion.

I'm going to be working for a month in a law firm in Chengdu, China, which is super exciting, and I'm jetting off again in about a week - so watch this space!

Vicky xx

Un weekend des châteaux: #2 - Fontainebleau

As I mentioned in yesterday's post (two in a row! And there'll likely be more this week), one other thing on my bucket list which I have now managed to cross off is the Palace of Fontainebleau, about 55km outside of Paris.

Anne-Marie and I took the transilien from Gare de Lyon (one of the most confusing metro stations I have ever been to, thankyou very much), which took about forty minutes or thereabouts, and then walked from Fontainebleau-Avon to the Château itself, through quite a lot of lovely parkland.

This area is actually home to the Fôret de Fontainebleau, and people come here on droves at the weekends with their bikes to follow the trails. It's home to several endangered European species and used to be a royal hunting park, which I would assume is why the palace was built where it was, essentially as a rather over the top hunting 'lodge'. Although don't quote me on that. It's a bit of a lame description for a château which, along with its park is actually listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The palace is simpler than Versailles but still very grand. The chapel and the throne room (which used to be the King's bedroom but was converted by Napoleon) are two such examples.

The palace's library is also pretty impressive and held a certain amount of appeal to a bookworm like myself!

Despite it's royal heritage, I actually found myself more interested in the château under Napoleon (Bonaparte). His famous uniform is displayed there (and really, I know it's famous that ol' Boney was very short, but seriously, he was short!) as is the room where he abdicated before he was exiled to Elba in 1814 (from where he later escaped). 

It was an another absolutely boiling day though, and I found myself flagging pretty quickly. The park (and its nice shady trees) ended up being much more appealing to me than the château, interesting though it undoubtedly was. I think I would have appreciated it more if I hadn't been to Versailles just the day before, and I think that at times Anne-Marie and I were thinking more of how much our feet hurt than what was in front of us, but it was a very lovely day!

Vicky xx

Un weekend des châteaux: #1 - Le Palais de Versailles

On Saturday, I finally made it to Versailles, with a week to spare!

Well, it sounds like I was cutting it close, but I've honestly been 'saving up' Versailles if you like, mainly because I thought that it would be better to go and see it in the summer when its beautiful gardens should be at their best, but also because I realised, upon doing some idle googling one day, that the light show happens on Saturdays, starting from yesterday, and yesterday being my very last Saturday in Paris, (I know! *sob*), it was the only day that I could do it.

Me and my friend Anne-Marie headed over to the RER station at Musée d'Orsay earlyish on Saturday morning - but if you're going there, note that you can get there on the same ticket and a lot lot quicker if you get the train from Montparnasse to Versailles-Chantier, which we realised on the way back. The walk from the station to the château is a bit longer but it's worth it.

The Versailles website suggests that on the busiest days you start off on the Gardens and make your way into the Château itself later in the day to avoid the worst of the people traffic, and so that's what we did. 

The gardens themselves are very beautiful, and I think that holding off on a visit until summer paid off very nicely. The flowers were in bloom, the fountains were running, and people were out boating on the Grand Canal, and it gave me a very nice holiday feeling, thankyou very much, as opposed to feeling like I was on 'just' a day trip.

It was also sweltering hot - there was not a cloud in the sky until well after 19:00 and all in all I really think the gardens were at their best. 

A (rather pricey) chocolate ice cream later, and we walked leisurely up the Grand Canal towards the Grand and Petit Trianons, and Marie-Antoinette's hamlet. 

This is where you start to understand why the citizens of France started to get a bit disgruntled with their esteemed Royal Family and start a wee revolt. The Grand Trianon was apparently built so that the King could have a little privacy with which to conduct a love affair. 

An excellent use of the peoples taxes, no?

Anyway, the gardens of the Grand Trianon, again, were what struck me the most, and me and Anne-Marie spent ages taking pictures of them.

Marie-Antoinette's hamlet was something else that made me laugh. Of course the woman who supposedly declared, "let them eat cake!" would play pretend and be 'normal' by ordering an entire mini village to be built in her back garden!

It was very lovely though. I could have spent a couple of hours there alone, meandering around and enjoying the sunshine.

After this, we were getting quite hungry, so we stopped off at a restaurant, whose name currently escapes me, for something to eat. Considering we were sitting in the middle of one of the biggest tourist-traps in the whole of Île de France and beyond, the prices were fairly reasonable - €11 or so for a pizza, €8 for a ham omelette with a salad and bread. The ony thing that was noticeably extortionate was the coke. A medium sized one cost Anne-Marie something on the region of €5.60!

Anyway, hunger satisfied we made our way into the château itself. Truly, you can see why Versailles earned the reputation it did. It is dripping in splendor, nearly everything covered in marble and gold leaf and so on. 

Most famous of all, and for good reason, is the Hall of Mirrors, a long gallery adorned with several mirrors (duh), chandeliers and large windows which make the room bright as anything and very very beautiful. 

If I had one complaint to make about the château, it would be this.

Overcrowding.

The amount of people filtering through the Grands Appartements was, at times, slightly alarming. There were people every which way, the temperature in the room was climbing steadily, there wasn't much in the way of seating for those - I'm thinking here of the elderly and not the lazy - who needed it, and at times it was hard to see any of the room in which we were standing for the throng of bodies. It made it quite hard to appreciate what we were seeing. And this was late in the day when there was supposedly 'less' people traffic.

They need to, in my opinion, introduce a system rather like that which they have running at Buckingham Palace in London, where you pay for a ticket which can only be used within a  certain timeframe, thus staggering out the number of visitors. I understand the need to make money from opening the palace up to the public, I do, but Versailles obviously makes so money in a year that I really wouldn't be all that concerned if I limited the number of people who could go through at once. The gardens are more than big enough and nice enough to keep people entertained in the meantime. 

Anyway, my whinging over and done with, I can carry on to the Royal Serenade, which we also paid to see (largely, I admit, to fill the gap in between the closure of the château and it's gardens and the light show in the evening).

Basically, it consisted of a company of actors in period dress, putting on three mini performances throughout the grand apartments.

First, an opera singer and period instrumentalist - I'm completely ignorant about these things, but if I had to guess, I would say it was a lute or something similar.

Second - and my favourite segment, was a display, set to music, of the rituel d'habillage, or the ritual in which courtiers of the day would dress their King and Queen.

And last, a man playing some kind of instrument that reminded me a lot of bagpipes, but which was actually something else.

Anyway, after this an hour wait in the sunshine saw the gardens being reopened for the evening show. Wandering around the gardens, all of the fountains had been turned on. Some were playing to music, some had strobe lights and dry ice, and some put on seven minute 'displays' which were pretty awesome to watch.

The sunset was spectacular, and right before the sun dipped totally below the horizon, the sky was a bright crimson, which reflected in the Grand Canal made a real sight to behold.

And then, the pinnacle of the night - the fireworks. This was what we'd all been waiting for, really, and it didn't disappoint. I would add pictures, but my phone had died by this point and they're all on my camera (and I currently have no laptop to transfer them to, as I sent it back to the UK with my dad for some much needed repairs).

All told, it was a very nice, if very exhausting day, and I'm glad I managed to cross it off my bucket list. It wasn't the only château I went to this weekend - I visited Fontainebleau on Sunday, but I'll post about that separately. 

Speaking of, today is Monday and I leave this week (!!!!!) so I only have 4 more full days to explore. 

Time flies -

Vicky xx

Les Invalides et le fin des examens

This weekend just gone, mon père was out here in Paris with me, and we had a lovely weekend, catching some live music in a bar on Rue Mouffetard and catching some dinner at La Bar a Huitres, which has become my go to place for seafood (to the delight of my dad, who much to my disgust, is a big fan of oysters).

We also headed over to the Musee de l'Armee at l'Hotel des Invalides. My Dad is ex-navy, and with both of us being history buffs, it was ideal for this weekend.

It's actually really interesting. Unlike the Imperial War Museum in London, it covers more than just the two world wars onwards, but also goes back to the time of the Musketeers and the Napoleonic wars. 

When we went on Saturday, we only had time to cover the 1914-1945 section of the exhibition, and to grab a verrrry quick look at Napoleon's tomb, so at some point before I head back to Blighty I hope to take the opportunity today to go back and look around a bit further. 

Well, that's not ostentatious at all!

In other news, my exams are OVER and I went out to dinner at Entrecôte tonight to celebrate. 

It's so nice not to have any more exams hanging over my head. By Monday this week, all of my stress caught up with me at once and I'm currently coughing and sniffling my way through one of the worst colds I've ever had. To be honest, I've been waiting for my body to say 'no! No more!' for a while. In fact, I'm impressed I made it this long without getting ill - in all my time in education, I have never been through a year as tough and as challenging as this one. 

It's been difficult, exceptionally so, and while I'm glad that I chose to come out here this year, I'm not at all sorry to say goodbye to the university element of it. Not even a little bit. Au Revoir Assas, not gonna miss ya.

On a lighter note, I've 8 (full) days left, including today, to enjoy living in Paris without exams hanging over me, and I hope to make the most of them.

Vicky xx

Plus de tourisme...

Paris is, or rather, was, in the midst of a fair heatwave this weekend just gone, and with four of my five exams done and out of the way, I decided to give myself the weekend off before returning to revision for my fifth and final exam on the 18th of this month.

Saturday I spent sunbathing on our balcony (something which I am so thankful we have!) having found out too late that the Queen was at the Marché aux Fleurs, which was being named after her. 

Sunday, though, I made sure to go out, and Palais Garnier - home of the opera here in Paris, is somewhere I've been meaning to go for quite a while now.

I've never actually seen an opera myself, and I tried to get tickets to see La Boheme or Tristan and Isolde, but they were all either sold out or out of my price range, so I'll have to try again at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden when I head back to London for my final year.

That's not to stop you from going inside though - it's a beautiful building, very decadent, and I can imagine that the atmosphere on the night of a performance must really be something.

After this, I went over to Pére Lachaise cemetery, last resting place of many of the late and the great.

It's an absolute maze, inside. If you ever go, you'll definitely be wanting the help of a map - which can be found on this page - and even then, I ended up getting lost several times and several graves I was searching for eluded me entirely. 

Not all of them though. I found Chopin, Edith Piaf, Moliére and Oscar Wilde, to name but a few (and quite handily, I turned up at this last one at the same time as a British tour group, so I stuck around and got to hear a few interesting facts about the rather interesting sculpture that marks the spot).

Also, a word of advice. Don't do as muggins here did, and forget to take a bottle of water with you. The cemetery is massive, and on a hot day, you'll be wanting a drink! D'oh.

The hot weather was unusually thick, though, and so for the past few days we've been treated to lots and lots of thunder and lightening, which I happen to really like but which probably sucks for all the poor people here in Paris who are scared of thunderstorms. I don't think I've ever known such a protracted period of thundery weather - we're now on day three, although I believe it's supposed to let up tomorrow.

Still, at least the temporary lack of sunshine makes it easier to revise. It's hard to focus when all you want to do is go outside and chill (ignoring, of course, that this blog post is quite obviously an exercise in procrastination...)

Vicky xx