A Solo Tour

If the only contact you have with my life is through this blog, you might be worried that I may have been "taken" during my 11 day solo tour of France. This is not the case. I have just been too lazy to write a new post. At least I'm honest. I could have said I've been too busy, but that would just be lying.

div>So, I toured Paris and Bretagne, completely alone! The alone part was a lot less fun than I expected but the sights were amazing. It's funny how some things I saw seemed even more beautiful after I got home and looked through pictures of them. Sometimes it's hard to take in all the beauty that's around us.

And once again, here's a little photo tour, the last one from this year in France. Enjoy!

The first city I visited (after miraculously dragging my two 50 pound suitcases all the way to Paris and dropping off with my host dad's mom) was Rennes, the capital of Bretagne (Brittany). I loved this city! It's smaller than Marseille and Paris but it's so clean and beautiful. The weather was cooler and I adored the colors and designs of the buildings in the downtown area.

Next was St. Malo. This was one of my favorite days of the trip for two reasons. One: St. Malo is gorgeous! The beach is perfect and the architecture of the city reminds me of what I think Bath in England might look like. The combination of the beach and the buildings is a little strange but also enchanting.

Two: This is the only day I wasn't travelling alone. While I did meet some other people to talk to in the evenings in my hostels, this was the only person who actually went sightseeing with me. We met in the hostel in Rennes and discovered we were both going to St. Malo the next day and just decided to go together. She's a French-Canadian teacher from Quebec and I'm sure I wore her out with all my questions about Canada. She was a good sport though and we spoke a weird mix of accented French and English all day. It was great!

The two pictures above are from Roscoff, a small town where you can catch the ferry to Ile de Batz, my next destination. This little place was so pretty. The first picture was a crazy sight to see in real life. I didn't understand until a few days later but apparently the tide was out and all the boats just sit on land until the tide comes back in to make them float. Kind of eerie.

Ile de Batz was another of my favorite destinations. I spent two nights and a full day on the island just relaxing and being calm. During the day, I rented a bike and pedalled all over the island. I read my French novel beside the duck pond, climbed to the top of the lighthouse, got chased off the road by numerous tractors, and paid a visit to the exotic botanical gardens. It was a day of tranquility.

And I ended my year-long French adventure in Paris. I had a wonderful time visiting museums, eating ice cream and macarons,...

...visiting The Thinker...

...and navigating the metro system. I learned a lot about myself, gained confidence, and tested my French speaking abilities on this little trip and it was a perfect end to this magnificent year in France. I can't believe it's already over but I'm quite sure I'll be back. I love it too much to stay away forever!

Paris

Paris, je t'aime!

I love Paris in the springtime!

Etc, etc...

Ok, so now I'm just quoting movies, but it's true, I do love Paris and Paris in the springtime is fantastic (even if it is overrun with tourists and it rains the whole time).

What made my second trip to Paris even more wonderful was the fact that my family was there waiting for me. They flew all the way over the ocean to visit me, and for two of them, it was even their first time out of the US.

It was so exciting to get out of the taxi and make my way into the hotel and to hear them from the other side of the elevator door, unaware that I was standing right outside. Then the door opened and there they were, all crammed into the French-sized elevator like sardines. And then they were spilling out, with grins and hugs and stories of the long trip they'd already taken.

So there it began, our three weeks of vacation together.

The first day was spent trying to figure out the metro. I have been told that Paris has the best metro system in the Europe. I disagree. It is my opinion that it is one of the most confusing and obnoxious metro systems in the world. Besides seeing Notre Dame, we didn't do a whole lot that first day, considering we got lost trying to find Montmartre, which we never did get to. And it was raining.

The next day it only rained some of the day so we went to Versailles. It was Easter. Bad idea.

The line was so long that if we hadn't taken an 45 minute train ride to get there and hadn't already bought our tickets, we would have headed right back in the other direction. But we didn't and I'm glad.

I wasn't exceptionally impressed with the palace, probably mostly because I was more concentrated on not getting trampled than seeing the artwork, but the gardens were lovely and enormous.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Eiffel Tower where we took a bizillion pictures and mailed a bunch of postcards from the tower's post office. Then my mom and I road a carousel. It was awesome.

Finally Monday, before taking the train back to Marseille, we visited the Louvre. I cannot even begin to guess how many pictures my brother took there. I think he has a picture of every piece of art I saw and then more.

I had my dad and brother helping me on a relentless pursuit of a statue I had found in the guidebook and had an urge to see. We finally found it and Lyne Burke looked at me incredulously. "We were looking for that?! What the heck is it?"

"It is a gnome riding a snail, obviously." Yes, that is what I wanted to see in the Louvre. And see it I did.

There were many other adventures in the course of the three days with themes like, getting lost, having dinner with friends, getting lost, low blood sugar=grouchy Kaity, getting lost, seeing amazing things, and getting lost, but I won't bore you with details. There is plenty more to come in the next few posts. We still have 17 more days worth of adventures to cover!