Chateaus and Churros and Cheese. Oh my!

This is the entrance to the Château de Vincennes, where I went with my art history class last Friday.Yes, this class is legit. The castle was constructed in the 14^th century by Charles the V, and currently houses art exhibitions and tours, as well as part of the French Department of Defense. Yes, their Department of Defense is literally in a castle. That has a moat. And a drawbridge. I think that’s how you’re supposed to do it, Pentagon

A view of the backside of the entrance, while standing in the inner courtyard of the castle. Unfortunately, this isn't original to the castle, as a lot was demolished throughout the years, especially under Louis XIV, who wanted to renovate the site in his own style. 

A view of the exterior wall surrounding the castle site. There used to be a manor here constructed by Philippe-Auguste to watch over the forest help and help with the hunt, but it has since been destroyed. Apparently the castle used to be very popular with the women of the court, and as a family vacation destination for the nobility.

A view of the castle chapel from the inner courtyard. More on that later. 

The tower on the right is the original keep, dating back to the 14th century. On the left, you can see the buildings erected under Louis XIV.

While we were there someone was filming a movie. Apparently it was set in the 1940s, which makes sense because during World War II the castle was used by the Nazis for "administrative purposes". 

Another view of the keep. Weapons and stores of food were kept here in case of an attack, as well as the stores of gold, to which only the king had a key.

The moats (now dry, as you can see) surrounding the keep. They're a lot deeper than they look in the picture, and apparently they worked, as the tower is still standing. 

A view of the inner courtyard from the roof of the keep.

The chapel to the left, and the part to the right that is separated is the work of Louis XIV.

Another view of Louis XIV's section. The Arc du Triomphe-looking structure in the middle of the exterior wall used to be one of the original towers, but he cut it down to fit the style of his time period.

Part of the exterior wall. The covered part is called a "chemin de ronde" use to survey, and for the king's daily walks. 

More of the keep. There's also a bedroom for the king there, in case he should have to take refuge there, though that was only as a last resort. He had to be careful, though, because the doorways were really low, and apparently one king died by hitting his head too hard on the door jam. Ouch.

Drawings made by former prisoners of the castle. They're all over the walls in there. They could have been done by the Marquis de Sade or Diderot, two famous prisoners of the castle. 

Inside the chapel on the castle site.

Gorgeous stained glass windows, actually completed during the Renaissance, not the Middle Ages, so they are a lot different from the ones in the Sainte Chapelle. 

The rosette in the chapel. Apparently it is supposed to look like flames. 

More chapel.

Now, here we are at the Fête des Vendanges which was last weekend, an annual festival at the feet of Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, where they harvest the grapes from the local vineyard, and vendors from all over France (and Belgium) come to sell their cheese, chocolate, sausages, and wine. There's music, free samples, art exhibits, and people in really excellent traditional regional dress.  

Some of the vendors with their wares on display.

Some huge loaves of bread in front and sausages in the background. It was so hard to choose what to get!

This gives you some idea of how many people were out and about that night. 

A stuffed boar's head presiding over the meats and cheeses. 

Some old apparatus used to ferment the grapes, I think. This is near the stand where I bought some hot chocolate "made in the ancient style". I'm pretty sure it was just a chunk of dark chocolate in a cup with hot water poured over it. But I'm good with that.

A kind of blurry view of what I think were professional wine judges, though I'm not sure. Either that or they are professors at Hogwarts. But apparently professional wine judges do exist, and they carry around their own wine tasting cup on a string around their neck. 

A view of some artisan nougat on display. Didn't get to try it, but the variety was amazing.

This gives you an idea of the atmosphere of the festival, and of the regional clothing. You can also see in this photo the professional wine tasting cups around their necks. 

This was my dinner. It's called tartiflette, and comes from the eastern part of France (near Talloires and Annecy), by the border with Switzerland. It is chopped boiled potatoes, a lot of Reblochon cheese, and little bits of bacon. Highly recommended.

Me keeping warm with a bunch of piping hot churros. Not sure why they were served here, but hey, I'll take churros anywhere I can get 'em. 

We also stayed for the fireworks that night. They were set to classical music, which was very neat, and though this picture doesn't do it justice, seeing them in front of Sacre Coeur was absolutely beautiful. And while waiting, I met a French woman who was an au pair in Minnetonka, Minnesota when she was young! Go figure. 

Well, hope you enjoyed these little snippets. I'll write more next week, after I get back from my visit to Normandy/Bretagne this weekend!

Nothing Works in Europe. But Actually.

So I don't want you to think by the title of this post that I'm terribly frustrated with Paris or anything or dislike it, but a love story with Paris is extremely complicated, and I think that now I've passed the "honeymoon stage", as they say, all the little quirks (and glaring faults) I had overlooked in the excitement of discovery are now becoming very apparent. For instance, how nothing in the university system is online. Literally. Professors/departments almost never email students, and it's very difficult to track down useful information like what room your class is in, if not impossible. Basically, the French universities still rely on the poster system. Need to know where your class is? You have to show up an hour early the day of and pace up and down the halls trying to find the poster that tells you the room number. That is if they've put it up yet. And none of the rooms are equipped for projection to do PowerPoints or anything "fancy" like that. Maybe this is a way of "living simply" or something, but to me it just seems like a way to waste more time. I have been told, however, that fads/technology/fashion trends that come out in the U.S. tend to take about 10-15 years to make it over to France. So since "we" invented the internet, maybe that's why. And also why they don't have Hulu or Netflix or Pandora. The poor souls. And then there's the restaurants. On a Friday night, you'd think cafes would stay open just a bit later, right? Not always the case. It seems like everyone wants to go out, even the storekeepers, so they just close up shop. But then I don't understand where they go. It's sort of like wondering where chefs go out to eat when their shift is over. And then there's the notebooks. I can't seem to find normal looseleaf paper here. It's impossible. The French kind has about a bazillion tiny blue and green lines zig-zagging all over it, which makes it really hard to read. But then when another Tufts student finally did find some "normal" paper, we realized it was too big for our folders. Because French paper is just a tiny bit smaller. All I have to say is: Why?. But then what really killed me was when I went to a Mexican restaurant and tried to order a brownie. On the menu it was spelled the same way, so I asked my question in French my pronounced "brownie" with my American accent, assuming the word had transferred. The waitress asked me to repeat myself. I said it louder. She gave me a blank stare for about 5 seconds, stared at the menu, and then said "Oooh, a 'broooneee'." Now, I understand that this is a foreign word, and the sounds may be difficult to pronounce, I don't feel that I should be made to feel foolish when it's an American word! We invented it, for goodness sake!  But I'll stop complaining now. I don't want to sound too harsh, I find most of these events comically frustrating as opposed to actually upsetting. Just needed to rant a bit. I'll tell in pictures now about what I've been doing lately.

This was last weekend, during the end of fashion week. My friends and I got lunch at these food stands at the Place de la Concorde and then went to the Tuileries Gardens to watch the designers/models/bloggers/important fashion-y people walk back from whatever show they were at. It was crazy. There were street style photographers and paparazzi all over the place. 

A giant pot of cheese. Typical France.

My lunch. A chocolate covered waffle and Nutella and banana crepe. I love my life.

This was at the Paris vu par Hollywood (Paris viewed by Hollywood) exhibit at Hotel de Ville. These are some of the clothes worn by Audrey Hepburn in one of the movies she is in that is set in Paris. Sorry I can't be more specific. 

This is one of the storyboards used for the movie "Midnight in Paris"

This is me, chillin' in a lounge chair by the Seine. 

This is the Centre Pompidou, a library and cultural center near the Marais. I studied for a bit there on Sunday, but it's always super crowded and awkward because there are not really individual cubicles, just long tables with chairs, so you have to sit really close to strangers, which I'm not a fan of. Plus I think the guy next to me had pneumonia or something. Anyway, afterwards I got some really good shwarma and sat out here and watched the performance artists and painters do their thing.

On Tuesday afternoon (my birthday) I went with another Tufts students to a really great chocolate shop near Montparnasse. It was amazing there. For the hunting season they make huge chocolate covered pheasants and dogs, and then just normally they have all sorts of other crazy-intricate sculptures and such. I just got this little thing, which is a dense, nutty chocolate cream covered in dark chocolate with some crunchy bits thrown in. It's called a rocher. I think that's what Ferrero Rocher chocolates in the states are supposed to be like.

This was the plate of seafood my host family made me for my birthday. There are oysters, sea snails, big shrimp and little shrimp. It was all delicious.

This was my birthday cake. They even put a candle in it for me, which was really sweet, but then it fell over.

This the Sainte Chapelle, where we had our art history class on Friday. It's a church from the middle ages with stunning stained glass windows, with hundreds of panels that tell the entire story of the Bible entirely in pictures, as at the time almost everyone was illiterate. The fancy shrine thing you see in the picture was built by a king to house what they believed to be the crown of thorns of Jesus, brought back from the Crusades.

This huge circular window is the one depicting the Apocalypse.

This is at the Palais de Justice, and is the room in which Marie Antoinette was kept after she was pronounced guilty by the revolutionary tribunal and before she was beheaded. Her husband Louis XVI was not kept at this location, and was beheaded several months before she was. 

This is a recreation of her prison cell (the woman sitting in the chair is not real), as her original room is now a small chapel. Apparently she was under constant watch by guards, and was extremely sick and miserable towards the end, as one might imagine. I have to say, though, I will forever imagine her as looking like Kirsten Dunst in Sofia Coppola movie "Marie Antoinette."

Some macarons at another chocolate shop in Paris, in the Latin Quarter. They are not like American macaroons, but rather a really sweet, melt in your mouth cream filled cookie that comes in every flavor under the sun, from chocolate to pistachio to lavender. You can even get them at McDonald's here. It's on the Dollar Menu.

An example of some hunting themed chocolate confections. 

This is the Great Mosque of Paris, built in the 1920s. We visited on a Friday, which is a prayer day so we couldn't actually go inside, but the outside is amazing, and the place is huge. There's several markets, cafes, cultural centers and classrooms in one entire compound. It's like its own little village.

This is me at one of the cafes in the mosque compound, drinking delicious mint tea You can also smoke hookah there. It really feels like you are in Tunisia or Morocco or something when you are there. The French have a word for that, called dépaysement, which has no English translation but means the disorienting feeling of being in a place other than the one you are in. Pretty cool.

This is a photo of Le Lapin Agile, a neat little cabaret bar tucked into the side of a hill in Montmartre, near Sacre Coeur. I went here on Friday night, and I highly recommend it. The owners are amazingly friendly, and the atmosphere is very cozy and really French. Apparently this is one of the last vestiges of the traditional French cabaret, (think Edith Piaf). They sing only traditional French "chansons" and original compositions of that style, and there is lots of accordion playing. 

These are French profiteroles, a sort of gigantic cream puff filled with vanilla ice cream, then drowned in warm chocolate sauce and sprinkled with slivered almonds. These are also what they make traditional French wedding cakes out of. The just stack them up into a sort of conical pyramid, drizzle them with chocolate and caramel so it sticks together, and call it a day. Brilliant.