Francophile in the West

It's been another great week in Nantes! One of my assistant friends is having a birthday this week, so we decided to go out and celebrate! On Thursday, we went to "Les Moules du Bouffay", a restaurant in town that specializes in my favorite- mussels and limitless fries! Sooooo delicious. Last night, six of us gals had dinner together at one assistant's apartment, and then we walked over to the Lieu Unique bar . You might recognize the name. If you've ever eaten a Petit Ecolier cookie, then you know LU! The company is from right here in Nantes, and years ago they turned their old factory into a bar/restaurant/club, museum, etc. It's a really fun place to go out for drinks on the weekend; lots of interesting people watching. When we arrived at the bar, we saw on a big screen that it was 'biker night'. Needless to say, there were lots of people with awesome beards, tattoos, and biker club jackets! We even spotted the French chapter of the Hells ...

Being in France is absolutely wonderful, and most days, I wish I could stay here forever. However, it still comes with its small inconveniences. For example, all of the paperwork that one must fill out for everything (detailed in my previous post), the fact that Europe is so expensive, and also the fact that I don’t have internet in my apartment and probably won’t until sometime in November. At first, this was due to the fact that I had just created a bank account and was waiting to receive my bank card in the mail (French internet companies can’t accept cash or American cards to pay for their services). Now, the issue is that I have a bank card, but there is no money in the account because the bank will not accept deposits of cash. So, now I have to pay to transfer money internationally from my bank in the USA to my bank in France.   Only after that transfer goes through will I be able to set up an account with an internet provider, and then after that, it will take 8-20 days fo...

Okay, so, I’m in France, and I’ve found an apartment. What else did I do here in my first two weeks?? Let’s see… Made friends, worked, ate and drank delicious French food and wine, and did some exploring! The Chateau des Ducs de Bretagne, downtown Nantes. I arrived in Nantes on a Sunday (9/23), and generally, on Sundays in France, there is not much open and not much to do.   One thing that is open all week, however, is the movie theater! My first night in town, I took myself to see “The Bourne Legacy”. I’m a sucker for the “Bourne” movies and had to check out the fourth installment. Luckily, they had a showing of the film in the evening in English with French subtitles. It was a good action flick! On the social side of things, I was fortunate to meet several other assistants pretty early on in the week after I arrived in Nantes, thanks to Facebook. We ladies were glad to find each other and get along really well, so we were wandering around and grabbing ...

And now, we arrive in France! I flew into Paris in the morning on Saturday, September 22 nd , and made my way to the same hostel I had stayed in before I flew back to the States when I was here in 2009- the Aloha Hostel. It’s well located, almost right between the Gare Montparnasse and la Tour Eiffel, and it’s a good spot for transit through Paris. As soon as I got checked in and dropped off all of my stuff, I headed out into the city! I wandered around town, eventually making my way to la Tour Eiffel, and enjoyed my first genuine French crepe in quite some time along the way (ham, mushrooms, egg, and emmenthal cheese).   It was exactly what I had been craving. Once at la Tour Eiffel, I took some photos, sat on a bench in the sun for a while, people watched, and enjoyed the general splendor of being back in the City of Light after what felt like so long. I then made my way over to a classic Parisian coffee shop, “La Terrace”, and read a book while savoring my first...

After a wonderful three and a half day adventure in the Cinque Terre, Kris and I took off for ROMA! I had heard that Rome was amazing, but Kris and I were worried about all the tourists and didn’t know what to expect. Let me tell you, Rome is fan-freaking-tastic, even with all the tourists!  We arrived late on Wednesday night and were pretty darn hungry by the time we arrived at the place we were staying. We ventured out into the immediate neighborhood and wound up finding a place to eat, but the food was rather strange. Kris ordered “Rome-style Chicken”, which was basically the back or ribcage of a chicken in some sauce; it hardly had any meat on it at all! I ordered Risotto Scampi, which was just risotto in a tomato sauce with a HUGE crustacean plopped on top. Alas, not exactly an ideal meal, but we wound up laughing pretty hard about the whole thing. Thursday was an absolutely beautiful, sunny day. We had previously made reservations ...