Catchup time!

I've finally ended my month of crazy travelling, time to get back to normal Paris life...at least for a few weeks :-P

Since my last update I've been to Budapest and Lyon and had visits from Charlie and my dad-- all wonderful! I'll try to summarize them all but this could get a little lengthy...

Charlie got to Paris the last weekend in February to visit for 9 days, which was really good. For the first part we stayed in Paris and tried to find cool stuff to do outside of all the normal touristy stuff. Some highlights were Versailles, the top of Notre Dame, and the really interesting (yet very creepy) Catacombs. If you've never heard of these, they are a few miles of underground tunnels where the put all the bones from the Paris cemeteries after they became overcrowded a few hundred years ago. It's pretty creepy, you walk inside this tunnel surrounded by bones stacked about 5 ft high and around 7 feet deep, oftentimes the bones have been made into ornate patterns by the workers. I didn't have my camera but Charlie did so I'll see if I can get some pictures up here soon. The top of Notre Dame was also really cool, giving you beautiful views such as this:

After a few days of exploring Paris we headed to where it was cheapest to fly to on easyjet (love how we make our travel decisions): Budapest! I never really had any intention to visit Hungary this year but it was definitely interesting to see! The city, which used to be the center of one of the largest empires in Europe, was torn apart twice in the past 70 years-- first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets (really the same people, just changed armbands). It still has a lot of scars from the 20th century, with many buildings that are still in ruins, and a population that is just trying to re-emerge into the global society, as is the case with a lot of eastern European countries. This was my first eastern European visit, and you can definitely feel the difference from western Europe. The culture, however, is still one of the purest old Europe culture's I've encountered, with many people we met still very traditional compared to western Europe, especially France. We did a lot of cool stuff on our short visit, but my favorite was definitely the Hungarian Bath we went to! Budapest (which, by the way, is actually two cities: Buda and Pest, connected by a bridge over the Danube) has several bath houses where you can go and "bathe" in several natural hot spring pools. Everyone goes, the old, the young, couples, children, and you all sit in medecinal or just hot water and relax. The one we went to, Szechenyi, was absolutely gorgeous and had indoor pools as well as outdoor pools (the cold air and the hot water is really nice--as long as you can make it to the water before freezing in your bathingsuit!). Here's a small picture of the outside part taken off their website:

All my Budapest pictures can be see on Picasa! Click below

Budapest

A few days after Charlie left, my dad came for his first visit this year! It was great to see him, and we had an amazing time exploring Paris and Lyon. He arrived on a Thursday, and we had Thursday afternoon and Friday morning to kill before our train to Lyon, so he got to check out the Musee d'Orsay and the Pere Lachaise cemetary, both two of my favorite Paris gems. We then went down to Lyon for the weekend, which was amazing! Its much farther south than Paris, so the weather was warm and sunny-- I even got a sunburn on Saturday! It's a beautiful city divided into three parts by the two rivers the Rhone and the Saone which run through it. We spent a good deal of time in Vieux Lyon (Old Lyon), which is a bunch of really tiny cobblestone streets with tons of "bouchons". Bouchons are classic lyonnaise restaurants that serve delicious, but simple food. Most of it used to be considered peasants food, and although there's a bunch of *different* ingredients (I might have eaten horse, and pigs feet, ears, and cow stomach were frequently offerred), the food is delicious, giving Lyon the title of Cuisine Capital of France. Our first night we ate at one of these Bouchons that was recommended by a friend I met in Ireland, and it was amazing (despite possibly eating horse). The second night was even better though. We decided to try  our first Michelin starred restaurant, and luckily we were able to get a reservation at Les Trois Domes. This amazing restaurant is at the top of a hotel, with semi-panoramic views of all of Lyon, which was gorgeous at night. The food we had was extraordinarily exquisite, and second only to the meal that we once had in Italy (another story). We ate quail egg with tapenade and fresh battered shrimp as our "patiences" (apparently they give you free little tasters before your appetizers...surprised me!), saumon mi-fume (half-smoked salmon-- very tasty!), lobster, duck, chocolate...mmm! Definitely a meal to remember.

In order to work off all the delicious food we were eating, we walked all over Lyon the whole weekend, seeing the oldest Roman amphitheater in France (15 bc), the cathedral on the hill, the traboules (passegeways under buildings where they used to transport silk between factories when Lyon was the silk capital of Europe), markets by the river, and more! Definitely a beautiful city, with a much more laid back atmosphere than Paris, even for the second biggest city in France! When we got back from Lyon, my dad had one more day here so he explored the Invalides while I was in class, then we got brave and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Paris by bicycle! The city of Paris has this great system of bike rental racks set up all over the city, and you rent for 1eur/day then 1eur/half hour after the first one. We did about two hours and were able to see most of the city! Although the crazy parisian drivers are scary at first, you get used to it. I'm already planning on renting them again this weekend with my friend!

There's a *brief* summary of my past few weeks-- hectic but worth it! Now I have a few weeks to focus on school (two exposes and a paper due..) before my next big adventure, a cruise to Greece and Croatia!