Day 5: "I don't know how the French kings managed to find their mistresses without a GPS."
My response to that would have been pithy, vulgar and contain such theories as, 'they followed their crotch'. Needless to say, I bit my tongue.
2nd January
Today I rolled out of bed at 7:30am per the instructions of our zealous host, only to trudge into the living room and find him still asleep. I stared at my feet for a bit and mumbled, "but. But, sleep. I want it. Now." I left sleep in Melbourne, I think. Also I was kept awake for a bit by my mother's snoring, but I talked in my sleep, so fair is fair. Apparently I said, "okay, okay," showing me that I listen to people in my dreams as much as I listen to people in real life.
It snowed in Paris. When our host was awake and boiling coffee, I went to lock my mother on the balcony for her morning meditations and discovered a fine icing-sugar coating across the railing and tiles and the roofs of the houses below us. My reaction was a monotone, "It's snowing," followed by an attempt to close the door on my mother. Mother was a bit more enthusiastic, by which I mean she coaxed me to come outside and watch the snow falling with her.
The mission of today involved driving to two of the most famous castles in France, neither of which I have heard of, which made me feel like an uneducated prole: Chambord and Chenonceau. Distance from Paris: far, which led to the title quote.
Chambord is apparently a large part of the French national identity. It's a brand of everything from yoghurt to boots, and it appears on postcards all the time. That is pretty understandable. It's huge and impressive-looking and very, very pretty. The French kings would live there 3 weeks out of the year; when they moved, so did their furniture, making for a very bare castle. But the place was dotted with fireplaces, most of which were lit. It was amusing to see the tourists clustered around the fireplaces while trying to take pictures at the same time.
I took so many pictures that my camera died mid-tour. My mother asked why exactly I was taking so many photographs, and I answered with a wide beaming smile that must have covered half my face and an excited, "RESEARCH."
Sadly, half of Chambord was closed due to renovations and bad weather. What we did see was not particularly interesting: one floor was dedicated completely to hunting, hunting trophies, pictures of hunting, the importance of hunting to the monarchy, hunting implements and stuffed spoils of the hunt. I have a photograph of what I have poetically christened the Hall of Horns, also known as 'the lords of Chambord single-handedly cause the extinction of the French deer' or 'massive overcompensation across the ages'. My mother dryly observed that the French love killing anything or anyone that isn't French, and even some things that are.
Next we went to Chenonceau, where every French king worth their salt has ensconced a mistress at some point or another. It's built such that the Loire river flows around and beneath it, effectively making one of the coolest moats ever, and it has gardens to either side filled with fountains and shrubs in absolute geometric patterns and clipped lawns and large trees and excitement. Tragically, due to dead camera (and RESEARCH) I was unable to take pictures of such delights as the ceiling of the Room of Five Queens, which is decorated with said queens' coats-of-arms, or a marble medallion depicting the Emperor Nero, or the guards' room, or the chapel. Sad face.
Alright, I lied. There is one obligatory food description. The mustard. The French mustard. It melts my sinuses and leaves me feeling like someone has shoved a burning splint into the inside of my head; each time I scrape some onto my plate, my cracked lips scream at me to stop it or they will weep blood and I will have to acquire prosthetic lips because they will never function for me again. But I can't stop. It tastes so good. With everything. Damn you, Asian heritage. (My stomach, on the other hand, has never been happier. It is rewarding me by not giving my painful stomachaches at 10am, or painful stomachaches at any time at all.)
I am sleeping 8 hours a night and eating 3 meals a day. Is- is this healthiness? WHAT IS THIS HEALTH, PRECIOUS? WE HATES IT.
3rd January
11:00am -
The French attitude to driving also seems to apply to the way they push shopping carts.
8:00pm -
Today we went to Versailles, where King Louis XIV had his most famous castle. Needless to say, it was packed with tourists. There was a nice audio-guide explaining court life, seasoned with pleasant details such as 'where courtiers can sit depends upon how much the King likes them' and 'in order to determine that the heirs were legitimate the queen had to give birth in public'. Research~. However, the tour was kinda ruined by the presence of a hideous modern-art exhibition by some allegedly famous bigwig taking place within the Versailles palace itself. It is an agonizing thing to look up, see Ares trampling down some enemies of the state, then look straight across and be greeted with some ugly plastic lobster dangling from the ceiling like the carcass of good taste.
I am not alone. That is my consolation. The French people share my lack of regard, especially the staff at Versailles, who were apparently told to stop criticizing the so-called art or lose their jobs. I love the French.
We were ushered out fairly soon because the palace was closing and we arrived quite late. So we went around the gardens (even better than the ones at Chenonceau) and I tried out the night-scenery option on my resurrected camera. It does not work when your hands are shaking so much from the cold that any picture you take looks like a bad acid trip in central Tokyo.
On a slightly more panicked note, I can't access my school email, which is bad in the extreme because my results are being emailed to me. Otherwise I have to wait until the 7th and that is just not cool because I will be in Amsterdam! MERDE. MERDE. MERDE. (have I got the url right? webmail.mlc.vic.edu.au? If I cannot get it, can one of you guys please check it for me and post the results here in a comment ASAP?)
2nd January
Today I rolled out of bed at 7:30am per the instructions of our zealous host, only to trudge into the living room and find him still asleep. I stared at my feet for a bit and mumbled, "but. But, sleep. I want it. Now." I left sleep in Melbourne, I think. Also I was kept awake for a bit by my mother's snoring, but I talked in my sleep, so fair is fair. Apparently I said, "okay, okay," showing me that I listen to people in my dreams as much as I listen to people in real life.
It snowed in Paris. When our host was awake and boiling coffee, I went to lock my mother on the balcony for her morning meditations and discovered a fine icing-sugar coating across the railing and tiles and the roofs of the houses below us. My reaction was a monotone, "It's snowing," followed by an attempt to close the door on my mother. Mother was a bit more enthusiastic, by which I mean she coaxed me to come outside and watch the snow falling with her.
The mission of today involved driving to two of the most famous castles in France, neither of which I have heard of, which made me feel like an uneducated prole: Chambord and Chenonceau. Distance from Paris: far, which led to the title quote.
Chambord is apparently a large part of the French national identity. It's a brand of everything from yoghurt to boots, and it appears on postcards all the time. That is pretty understandable. It's huge and impressive-looking and very, very pretty. The French kings would live there 3 weeks out of the year; when they moved, so did their furniture, making for a very bare castle. But the place was dotted with fireplaces, most of which were lit. It was amusing to see the tourists clustered around the fireplaces while trying to take pictures at the same time.
I took so many pictures that my camera died mid-tour. My mother asked why exactly I was taking so many photographs, and I answered with a wide beaming smile that must have covered half my face and an excited, "RESEARCH."
Sadly, half of Chambord was closed due to renovations and bad weather. What we did see was not particularly interesting: one floor was dedicated completely to hunting, hunting trophies, pictures of hunting, the importance of hunting to the monarchy, hunting implements and stuffed spoils of the hunt. I have a photograph of what I have poetically christened the Hall of Horns, also known as 'the lords of Chambord single-handedly cause the extinction of the French deer' or 'massive overcompensation across the ages'. My mother dryly observed that the French love killing anything or anyone that isn't French, and even some things that are.
Next we went to Chenonceau, where every French king worth their salt has ensconced a mistress at some point or another. It's built such that the Loire river flows around and beneath it, effectively making one of the coolest moats ever, and it has gardens to either side filled with fountains and shrubs in absolute geometric patterns and clipped lawns and large trees and excitement. Tragically, due to dead camera (and RESEARCH) I was unable to take pictures of such delights as the ceiling of the Room of Five Queens, which is decorated with said queens' coats-of-arms, or a marble medallion depicting the Emperor Nero, or the guards' room, or the chapel. Sad face.
Alright, I lied. There is one obligatory food description. The mustard. The French mustard. It melts my sinuses and leaves me feeling like someone has shoved a burning splint into the inside of my head; each time I scrape some onto my plate, my cracked lips scream at me to stop it or they will weep blood and I will have to acquire prosthetic lips because they will never function for me again. But I can't stop. It tastes so good. With everything. Damn you, Asian heritage. (My stomach, on the other hand, has never been happier. It is rewarding me by not giving my painful stomachaches at 10am, or painful stomachaches at any time at all.)
I am sleeping 8 hours a night and eating 3 meals a day. Is- is this healthiness? WHAT IS THIS HEALTH, PRECIOUS? WE HATES IT.
3rd January
11:00am -
The French attitude to driving also seems to apply to the way they push shopping carts.
8:00pm -
Today we went to Versailles, where King Louis XIV had his most famous castle. Needless to say, it was packed with tourists. There was a nice audio-guide explaining court life, seasoned with pleasant details such as 'where courtiers can sit depends upon how much the King likes them' and 'in order to determine that the heirs were legitimate the queen had to give birth in public'. Research~. However, the tour was kinda ruined by the presence of a hideous modern-art exhibition by some allegedly famous bigwig taking place within the Versailles palace itself. It is an agonizing thing to look up, see Ares trampling down some enemies of the state, then look straight across and be greeted with some ugly plastic lobster dangling from the ceiling like the carcass of good taste.
I am not alone. That is my consolation. The French people share my lack of regard, especially the staff at Versailles, who were apparently told to stop criticizing the so-called art or lose their jobs. I love the French.
We were ushered out fairly soon because the palace was closing and we arrived quite late. So we went around the gardens (even better than the ones at Chenonceau) and I tried out the night-scenery option on my resurrected camera. It does not work when your hands are shaking so much from the cold that any picture you take looks like a bad acid trip in central Tokyo.
On a slightly more panicked note, I can't access my school email, which is bad in the extreme because my results are being emailed to me. Otherwise I have to wait until the 7th and that is just not cool because I will be in Amsterdam! MERDE. MERDE. MERDE. (have I got the url right? webmail.mlc.vic.edu.au? If I cannot get it, can one of you guys please check it for me and post the results here in a comment ASAP?)