Bulgaria: update

So, finally access to a computer. Nor for long though so this is going to be brief, there are people waiting to use the internet as well so I don't want to monopolize the computer.

I have been in Istanbul and Edirne both in Turkey. Turkey was amazing and I have lots of really good stories that I can't really do justice in this short time. Maybe I will have to continue blogging once I return home to finish. Not the least of which included flagging a bus down from the side of the highway. This was not unusual though, apparently this is the way people usually board buses in Turkey outside of main cities... who knew.

I was also in Plovdiv, Bulgaria for two days and I am now in Sofia, the Bulgarian capital. Plovdiv was awesome and Rachael and I recieved and incredibly warm welcom from everyone in Bulgaria. Actually during our whole trip everyone has been incredibly friendly and helpful and more than happy to help us on our way. Even when we don't ask for directions people offer to help us on our way, and we've even had someone walk with us 10 minutes to show us an out of the way address we wanted to find.

Plovdiv was amazing, albeit a little beat up. The sidewalks and roads were incredibly uneven to the point where I tripped multiple times over several minutes. Most of the houses in the downtown area were well maintained though. That being said, there were also lots of soviet/yugolav era buildings that are so ugly and eyesore like they are almost beautiful.

I haven't had the chance to see much of sofia but so far it has impressed me, though it is rather unconvential. The whole town kind of looks like a low income area in north america. Everything is quite beat up and at points decrepit.

Next locations  on the agenda include Skopje (pronounced skopie), the macedonian capital. We are departing at 4pm this afternoon on a bus and will be staying there this evening and tomorrow morning before we head to Lake Orhid. Lake Orhid is meant to be the most beautiful place in Macedonia so we are going to take the opportunity to relax and unwind before we tackle Albania. We also need to do laundry pretty badly... travelling hits clothes pretty hard.

Also, Albania is going to be quite and experience as far as I understand. According to our guide book the government has not seen fit to establish any kind of central bus station anywhere, so buses just drop you off in the city. The location changes depending on what bus company you are with. There are also apparently a lot of rivarly between bus companies so sometimes to have to cede the primo locations to rivals and vice versa. This makes me think that catching buses in Albania will be a very Where's Waldo type of experience but the country sounds amazing and has tonnes of stuff to offer so I'm sure it will be fun.

Hopefully I will have access to a computer in Lake orhid, but if not you will all just have to sit tight until I reconnect with techonology.

Adele

P.S.
I'm not sure that's how you spell orhid, so don't worry if it doesn't appear when you google it...

Novelty

So, Rachael and I have safetly arrived in Istanbul. Amidst torrential downpour yesterday that turned the streets into rivers, we found our hostel. It is in an excellent location, right in the old city between the aya-sophia and the blue mosque. I'm not really sure what either of these things are, but will find out soon as soon we are going to look around and explore.

Arriving at the airport went very smoothly, aside from we had to purchase a rip-off visa... It was 60USD for a sticker in our passport. It was actually a sticker, and they didn't check anything. I'm sure Turkey will be worth it though, it has already impressed me. We made it to our hostel without incident, using the metro system, which was very easy to navigate, setteled in and then ventured out in search of food. We, being both obviously non-Turkish got a fair bit of attention. It seemed to work in our favour this time though. We ended up picking a rather fancy restaurant (not that fancy, but it wasn't street meat) and got quite a few free thing from our server. This included free apple tea and peach liqueur (both very good). If this is what blonde hair gets me, I'm sure I can deal with it. I think it's mainly just the novelty factor, I didn't see a single person yesterday with naturally blonde hair, and got a lot of Germany shouts

We are hoping to head to the largest undercover market in the world today, so I'm sure many more stories will come of that.

ISTANBUL!!

I have done away with all concrete modes of access to the internet. This most likely means that entries will be much shorter but I will try to let you all know in what area of the world I am about twice a week. Since this is the most awful keyboard this will be very short. Hopefully they have nicer keyboards in Turkey...

I have emptied my room in Grenoble and am currently touring Lyon with Rachael (my excellent friend and travel buddy for the next month) and tomorrow we are headed off to Istanbul from the St-Expery airport. We will be there for the next three days and then decide where to go next on the fly. We are planning tour of the balkans. be ready to pull out the atlas, you might not know where these countries are.

Look forward to the next update from Istanbul

-Adele

Fete du travail

This morning everything was looking up, I woke up early, got my butt in gear and set off to campus for a productive day of studying. On they way there I stopped at the bakery and purchased a delicious baked good to sustain me until lunch time. Called the sportif, it is the love child of a whole wheat bun and a scone. Shaped like a ball, it's made with whole wheat flour, and has sultana's and hazelnuts. A meal in it's own right, I imagine it would be perfect for hiking and all other sport-type activities. Now, as I was standing in line for the bakery I noticed a sign advertising that the bakery would be open on May 1st and 8th. I thought to myself, "so what" and continued on my way without giving it a second thought. About halfway to campus I began connecting the dots, there was a disproportionate number of families on the bike path and I had not seen a single tram. I decided it must be some kind of holiday, and I began to question whether or not the library on campus would be open, but decided that because of the proximity to exam period it must be. Arrived on campus, it could have been a ghost town. By this point I had pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the library would not be open, but decided to check anyways. Indeed, it was not, as it turns out neither was anything else.

As yesterday's lunch was rice made with vegetable stock, and dinner was chickpeas with 2 apples and 2 kiwi's, my food situation was in a pretty sorry state. Both of the major grocery stores that are normally open were closed (along with everything else). I had nearly given up when I arrived downtown and found even Monoprix (open on sunday's from 8-12pm!) was closed. Much to my surprise the St-Claire market was open and the Uniprix (corner store) was also open all morning (wow!). A word of advice, if you want to do anything on a national holiday you can pretty much forget it, and if you need food you had better go out before 12pm, otherwise you will hard pressed to find anything other than coffee.

Most shocking of all is that the tram doesn't run at all today. The main mode of transportation downtown just flat out doesn't run today. Too bad if you depend on it to get around... though I guess since nothing is open you theoretically don't need to go anywhere. Anyhow I have since discovered that is the fete du travail today (labour day). After I had hiked up to my room, rather defeated I noticed an unreasonable amount of noise coming up from the city. I was rather upset because I figured I had missed some kind of parade... but it didn't take me long to figure out it was a protest. Seems that it's actually a tradition, on labour day the french protest unemployment, salaries and anything else they feel is unjust that related to work. This year it also seems that things are particularly charged because of the upcoming elections in early may.

So I am currently being treated a concert with lots of screaming fans as the sound from the city rises to my mountain top abode. Oh what a life, should I mention it's no less than 20 degrees today? No wonder I find it hard to study. Because of this, you should scroll down as I have also written a long overdue blog about a portion of my trip to Morocco that I hope you'll enjoy. At least my procrastination is paying off in some way.

Little enterprising...hasslers?

So,memory test for me. What did I do in Morocco nearly 3 weeks ago? I'm going to start from the beginning which will hopefully help me...

Note: $1.17 CAD=10 MAD (Moroccan dirhams), you can also divide the cost in dirhams

 The journey to Marrakesh from Girona passed without event, while I experienced my first Ryan Air flight. It was quite something. We were re-routed multiple times while attempting to check in because we are not EU nationals and needed special stamps etc. The plane had no assigned seating so it was more or less a free for all and the plane was coined 'Fisher-Price' by S. She wasn't very convinced of its ability  to get us to Marrakesh safely. Everything when smoothly, though we missed out on the majority of the flight announcements because we don't understand Arabic and the French was pretty unclear...

Arrived at the airport we passed through customs with nothing more than a cursory glance at our passports and were on our way. Told that we should take a cab from Al-Massira airport to downtown Marrakesh, out we went to the taxi stand. We approached a cab driver and asked how much a ride would be, he replied 200 dirhams, we scoffed. NO WAY . We replied that we had been told it should be 50, maximum 60 dirhams and that was all we were paying. The driver laughed, ok he said, no problem. I guess he assumed we were green tourists. We would have had to ignore the sign with the official rates that were posted (they said between 50-60 MAD) and had no idea about the cost of life to fall for his line. This tactic must work quite often though, one of the girls who was staying in our hostel room paid the 200 dirhams without question.

Thank goodness for our lonely planet morocco guidebook. It helped us so much, and saved us a significant amount of money. Knowing that the daily income of the average Moroccan is $3.25/ day, circa 2005, (keeping in mind that this figure probably applied to the countryside, as people in Marrakesh appeared to be rather rich), really helped us keep tips in perspective. Now, I'm rather used the the whole tipping idea, but I was surprised by how differently it functioned in Morocco. We had porters/bellhops show us our room and not even linger for a tip, gone before we even noticed, however a simple thing like direction will cost you 5-10MAD. Now, our hostel was in the Medina which is basically the old city quarter. The streets there are incredibly similar to a labyrinth with dead ends, weird roads that turn around on themselves and no landmarks to orient yourself. Houses are everywhere so all street are very narrow and it was more common to see a cart pulled by a donkey and motorbikes in most of the streets than cars. Furthermore, the streets often didn't have names and when they did their names were often in Arabic. When we stumbled upon a French street name, it often didn't appear on our map, and vice versa. We couldn't find the main streets indicated on our map to save our lives. I can honestly say that I don't think having a map helped us on a single occasion.

Armed with very detailed directions from our hostel we were certain we would find our hostel without incident... oh the optimism. When we were dropped off by the taxi, carrying our large backpacking bags were were immediately accosted by an older man with a cart who offered to carry our bags to our hostel for 20 dirhams. We declined, and after much insistence on his part we set off alone. It became evident pretty quickly that we were not going to be finding our hostel anytime soon, so when a boy who was about 12 approached us and told us he would take us to our hostel we didn't put up much of a fuss... He walked ahead of us the entire time and met up with his buddies along the way, they all chatted briefly (in Arabic so we had no idea what they were saying) and invariably they would disappear down some side street. In retrospect I'm certain our guide took us in circles for a while, but what do I know. In any case, we were getting pretty skeptical of his ability to find our hostel when he took a sharp turn under and archway which lead into a cave like area off the beaten path. S and I looked at each other "what have we gotten ourselves into" we both thought, we decided that we didn't have much to loose though and followed him. Turns out he did know where he was going as we arrived less than a minute later.

The fun was just about to begin though, because all of his buddies he had been talking to earlier were also waiting at the door for us. Our guide asked us for a tip and because he had indeed brought us to our hostel I had no problem paying. I withdrew a 20 dirham bill and offered it to him (remembering this was how much the old man had told us his services would be), and thus began the drama. He looked at the bill, and said 'what is this, 20 dirhams is nothing to me', his buddies proceeded to chime in that their friend had offered us a good service and was worth far more than 2 euros (this turns out to be a very common thing, comparing dirhams to euros when asking for money). S replied that it was 20 more dirhams than he had at before and he should be happy, the boys got increasingly aggressive demanding at least 50 dirhams, and even went as far as to say that we might as well keep the bill because it is worth nothing to them. They were quite intimidating, but S and I refused to back down, after all they were 12 year old boys. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, the door to the hostel opened (it was a huge wooden door with no windows that could only be opened from the inside when you knocked loud enough) and we literally ran inside, rather shaken by the pre-teen hasslers.

We both felt incredibly guilty, after all giving them an additional 30dirhams would have been no skin off our backs. We then remembered that the average moroccan makes $3.25 per day, and realized we had been (unsuccessfully) scammed. This made us a little wary, but we decided to set off in search of Djemma-el-Fnaa, the main square which was only 5 minutes walking away from our hostel. We soon became hopelessly lost but whenever we pulled out our map we were jumped on by enterprising would be guides. This was rather unpleasant so we just stopped pulling out our map all together and wandered around ssuming that we would find our way back eventually. We were probably wandering for about 2 hours and near the end we were becoming rather worried... we had seen nothing that even resembled a main square. With no idea where we were and with no road signs to orient ourselves we were 100% lost. However, being the resourceful travelers were are, we decided to follow the cars and people as they all seemed to be headed in the same direction and we assumed that eventually we would end up near somewhere major. Impeccable logic if I do say so, about 15minutes we landed right in Djemma-el-fnaa. What a sight.

Djemma el-fnaa (pronounced Gemm eff na) is a huge square, that is surrounded by merchants selling souvenirs and the souks (specialized areas selling specific wares). During the day the center is empty, but every night hundreds of men set up collapsible tents and benches and tables and it become a huge open air  food court. Or rather a glorified bunch of street food vendors. Now, by the time we had located this square it was about 9pm and we were starved so we sat down at the first stall we came across. We might have been worried but there were lots of other white tourists so we decided it  must be safe. Dinner started with the most delicious spiced olives I have ever had, then we had the traditional flat bread (delicious again) and little bowl of crushed tomato and spice to dip it in (resembling salsa but not quite). The main course was tajine (moroccan stew) and vegetable couscous. It was all incredibly delicious and very reasonable. We paid 70 dirhams for both of our 3 course meals, not bad.  We then stumbled upon a street vendor who was selling sweets from a cart. For 30 dirhams you could fill up a little box. They were delectable, made with honey, sesame and coconut.We assumed they would last at least several days... not the case. They very night we set out to buy some more, telling ourselves we wouldn't be returning to morocco for a long time.

Now, well nourished and sleepy all we wanted to do was return to our hostel. A bit of an issue when you don't know how you got to where you currently are. Now, I did have directions that detailed how to get to our hostel from Djemma-el Fnaa but were we unable to find the cafe that was the starting point. We circled the square at least twice, being hassled the whole while looking for cafe Argana. Just as we were about to give up, we happened to look up and notice a huge white canvas, that said cafe Argana was undergoing construction but used to be there. Things were smooth sailing after that and we made it back safe, sound and full to our hostel. We were rather angry about this obvious lack of updating on the hotel's part, that is until we learned that the cafe had been bombed in 2009 and several tourists had been killed. Perspective changes everything doesn't it.

With any luck tomorrow will be the second installment of my Morocco adventures, I figure I had better get writing before I have such a backlog of adventures I am unable to ever catch up.

Motivation required to study > my current motivation.

Perhaps you have all been wondering why my blog has been so inactive given that I am currently not doing anything. You may or may not be aware, but the main purpose of this exchange was not to travel, but to study. Not that this has really been reflected by my blog.

That being said, I do have to write exams for all my classes, for 4 of my content classes (Neuropharmacology, Psychology of Aging, Cognitive Psychology and Perception and Categorization) these exams are worth 100%. So for the past several days I have been doing quite a good job of studying and thus have not been blogging. Today, my motivation has been nearly zero to study and I have probably accomplished about 1 hour of productive studying over the 4ish hours I have been pseudo-studying. I finally just decided to give up the front and accept that today was not a day for studying. You can't win every day, right? It didn't really help that the weather has been beautiful which makes it super tempting to go outside.

I already made it down to the market today, and enjoyed tea at Grenoble's oldest cafe (established in 1739) in the sun. I also went to a bakery that specializes in north-American style cookies and had a delicious dark chocolate and candied ginger cookie. Definitely something worth trying if you want to spice up your normal cookie recipes. So I haven't done nothing, just nothing that will really help me succeed during exams.

P.S. Don't forget to scroll down and check out my entry about Barcelona (also written today)

36 hours in Barcelona

Just the other day I was counting off how many countries I have visited since the beginning of my Exchange. I was including Spain, however although I have been to Spain I can't actually say that I have visited it. Many people have even told me that I wasn't in Spain, I was in Catalonia. As it turns out, in Barcelona people speak Spanish (I'm fairly sure it's the official language) but most people seem to speak Catalan as well. It was very confusing at first, because I originally though I was remembering my grade 9 spanish all wrong. Really, it was just that many of the signs are in Catalan. As far as I am able to tell Catalan is a mix of French and Spanish but with stronger Spanish influences, so at first glance it appears to be spanish. Then you realize you understand nothing (I chose to believe this was because people were speaking Catalan, it could simply be I'm not good at understanding spanish).

I digress, this is meant to be a travel blog so I had better start on what Barcelona was like. We arrived in Barcelona around 7pm and set off immediately for our hostel. It was in a very central location and was different from all other hostels I've been in as it was in an apartment building. We had to buzz up every time and usually we just had to say hello in english and they'd let us through. I once tried to practice my spanish, and replied "hola" in what must have been a good spanish accent because I received a stream of Spanish in return. I panicked and replied in English, and after that just said hello. The hostel itself was not particularly remarkable aside from that,  it was quite small though and so it had a rather homey feeling. There were only 5 rooms and I'd estimate they had about 35beds in the whole hostel. I would have probably liked it better except for while I was making my bed the sheets I recieved felt oily. This sent my thoughts into a downwards spiral and when I was very itchy after my first night's sleep I was convinced that they had bedbugs. This was not the case at all, just me overreacting. Luckily I was so tired that I didn't really care and slept very well despite my imagined night time companions.

Since we had been told that in Spain, people don't eat until 10pm or later we set off sightseeing as soon as we were settled in and planned to get some food later. We were however quite hungry and at some quiche in a quite little cafe beside a huge medeival looking cathedral. The whole eating dinner at 10 wasn't the best idea as it turns out, on Easter Monday things start to close around 10pm. We ended up decided to eat healthy and had dessert for dinner. We selected a nice looking restaurant and mustered the courage to ask for a menu in spanish. This was apparently not necessary as our server replied in English. Once we decided we wanted to eat at this restaurant our server started to lead us to the back of the restaurant. As we wanted to eat outside to people-watch we asked our server if we could have a table outside. He jokingly replied (or so I though) "Of course, but it'll more expensive". We got outside, sat down and opened the menu and to our surprise realized he wasn't joking. The entire menu was actually about 1-2 euros more expensive per item. Our jaws dropped and we considered getting up and leaving, then we decided we would stay and chalk up the experience as a good story for our grandchildren. Though the idea still makes me angry we noticed this was a common theme. In Paris every drink on the menu was about 1euro50 more expensive if you drank it at a table versus at the bar. Which is pretty ridiculous considering it was a cafe and the bar had room for about 4 people.

The next we accomplished a whirlwind tour of Barcelona. Highlights included the Sagrada Familia which is very famous church by Gaudi, the Parc Guell (which showcased many of Gaudi's sculptures), la Ramblas, a huge all you can eat buffet (not particularly spanish but still cool), the port of Barcelona, shopping, delicious spanish tortilla (potatoes and eggs) and the Gothic quarter.

There were also a few notable moments of general tourist confusion. S had heard that the Sagrada Familia is supposed to look like it's melting and has been created by termites, we looked at it and couldn't see this all, which was rather disappointing. Then later in the day we discovered that the Sagrada Familia has two sides and we were looking at the less famous/lesser known side. Luckily we had enough time the next day before our flight to Morocco to go and check it out again. We also thought we were on la Ramblas (a huge street with street entertainers etc. and a green park/strip in the middle instead of road) twice but in reality we were on another large major road. Luckily we found it eventually and it was pretty cool.

Sagrada Familia side 1

Originally created by Gaudi, he did not start building it, nor did he finish. In actuality it is still being built, that's why you see so many cranes in the subsequent pictures

Barcelona as seen from Parc Guell

Barcelona again from Parc Guell, sadly it wasn't clear at all (maybe due to Smog??) but were the city ends its ocean

Cool street lit up in the Gothic quarter

I liked the shadow, there isn't really any deeper meaning to this one

Bridge in the port

Tiled benches in Parc Guell, there are also famous tiled lizard sculptures, however we didn't manage to find any of them

Sagrada Familia, still side #1

 

The termite eaten side

Gates at Parc Guell

The irony

As my dad candidly remarked, I`m travelling faster than I can write. This does indeed seem to be the case. I was planning to finish writing about my easter trip this weekend, but then the opportunity presented itself to go to Turin. So I went to Turin yesterday instead of writing a blog entry and spent today attempting to do school work( I have an exam tomorrow so this was the main motivating factor).

All this to say that I have not forgotten about my blog, but have simply become to busy traveling to write about my travels. The irony, when I travel a lot I have no time, and when I do nothing interesting I can blog frequently.

With any luck I will be caught up by the end of this week. We shall see, but now it is bed time so I can be well rested and fresh for my exam tomorrow. Hang in there, I promise Barcelona and Morocco will be coming soon.

Home Cooking.

So, given that I have been absent for the past two weeks from my blog I have had to come up with a plan to relay my adventures to everyone. I have decided to recount my journey by geographic location, so without further ado, I present the South-East of France. I have also decided for purposes of clarity that it will be easiest if I use names, however to protect the anynomity of all involved I have decided to only use the first letter of everyone's name. Not that I think people will be upset to appear on my blog, however I haven't recieved consent to write about them, so this seems like the best option.

So on Friday morning my friend S and I set off to visit her relatives, P&M. They live in a small town just outside of Perpignan called Thuir and were kind enough to come and meet us at the train station. The train ride was incredibly busy given that massive amounts of people were traveling home to visit their relatives and we ended up sitting in fold out seats across from the toilet. Its the area generally reserved from bikes and ski's, but since there weren't too many this didn't pose much of an issue. Our trip was however made interesting my the 4 men sitting in the same area of the train. France is quite different from Canada in that people are allowed to drink in public areas (trains, streets, buses etc) and pets appear to be allowed everywhere. So these men were rather inebriated and were drinking wine, their dog was also with them. They were quite a sight, but they definitely made that particular section of the train ride far more interesting (we changed trains 3 times).

Train trip aside, once arrive in Perpignan I got to see some really interesting photos taken by P&M of the Sanch procession. Its a tradition carried over from medieval times and happens in southern areas at Easter time every year. I believe that the tradition is that the clergy accompanies the condemned to the gallows. However, because at the time public stoning was common, everyone wore robes and hats to cover their faces a la KKK. This was to prevent the condemned from being killed before arriving at the gallows. The procession also involves what appears to be all of the churches statues and other important artifacts (for lack of a better word) being removed from the church and taken through the city. They are carried by loyal members of the congregation. The photos were remarkable, and I can only imagine what it would have been like in person. If you want to learn more about the Sanch procession this website has quite a good summary.

P&M were incredibly gracious and warm hosts and it was lovely to have all the comforts of a home. S and I each got our own room, both with very comfortable beds. We also ate and drank like kings (or rather queens).  I was able to try boles de picolat (a regional dish), had some paté (not quite for me) as well as delicious bbq`d tuna steak and so much more. We were also lucky enough to have dessert every day and we sampled some delicious cakes purchased from a local bakery, had delicious baked apples with honey, almonds and cinnamon, chocolate lava cake as well a delicious panna cotta (with coconut and honey). Furthermore we were lucky enough to same regional wines and champagnes that we also often paired with local cheeses. I also finally sampled the local specialty alcohol which is called pastis. In the southern area of France it is the aperitif par excellence. For those who aren`t aware, and aperitif is almost exactly like and appetizer but consists of alcohol instead food. Anyhow, pastis is an anise based, very strong alcohol that tastes exactly like incredibly strong black licorice. Luckily for me I really like black licorice, otherwise this experience would have been very unpleasant. Anyhow, it is always served over  ice and diluted with water. Definitely not for the weak of heart, or those who don`t appreciate the taste of anise.

From the above description it might appear that all we did was eat. This was however not the case at all, P&M were excellent guides and showed S and I many of the sights in the region. We visited the Market in Ceret as well as the modern art museum and enjoyed a lovely lunch in a picturesque outdoor square. The modern art museum was a little lost on me, but there were quite a few very famous painting by artists such as Chagall, Picasso, Miro and Matisse. It appears that Ceret inspired many of these artists and many of the painting were actually of Ceret itself. Quite cool. On the way back from Ceret we drove through the Pyrenees which were beautiful. Sadly I didn`t think to take any pictures from the car window.

We also went to P & M`s seaside apartment in Port Vendres another afternoon and were able to appreciate the lovely view`s. On our way back we passed through the very touristy, but equally lovely town of Collioure.

On our last day with P&M they were kind enough to take us to the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres (in Spain). For those who have never heard of Dali before, he was a very prominent  Spanish surrealist painter. Though I am no expert, surrealism was explained to me as incorporating elements of reality in unusual ways, you`ll get a better idea when you look at the photos later on.

Port Vendres

The fishing industry in Port Verdres was once very good, but because of overfishing, there are many abandonned nets

Collioure

A cat napping in an excavator, it was pretty funny.

Ceiling painting in the Dali Museum

One of Dali`s most famous paintings

Top of the world.

So here we have some long overdue photos of my last ski trip. As I had previously mentioned the weather was amazing and I managed to get some excellent photos (keeping in mind that these were taken with my iPod). You even have a few shots of me! Not that you can really tell with all of the ski gear, however those of you who know me will be able to recognize my bright yellow rain coat which doubles very nicely as a distinctive outer ski jacket.

Grand southern adventure.

It seems that I am doing too many things to be able to update you about all of them. I haven't had the time to post updates about lyon and I am already off somewhere else for easter break.

After promising my parents that I would provide them with a rough idea of where in the world I will be for the next 10 days, you will all be treated to a rough itinerary of what I plan to do.

April 6th-9th.

I will be enjoying myself in the south of France. I am traveling with a friend and she has relatives who live near Perpignan who have invited us for Easter week-end. I am really looking forward to this part of the trip and I am told we have lots of stuff planned for us. I understand we will have a chance to visit the coast and that a bbq will be involved. We will also be going to the Salvador Dali Museum which is in Figueres, it is supposed to be very cool, and since my friend knows a lot about art I imagine that she will be able to tell me details about Dali that will make the museum that much more interesting.

As you can see, it's about 400km's from Grenoble to Perpignan, however the train is quite quick and it is only going to take us about 5 hours (including the 2 transfers we have to make). Girona, the city I have underlined in blue is where we are catching our flight from to head to Morocco.

April 9th to 11th

Barcelona! I will get to experience my first taste of Spain and I am quite excited about this. I was just reading over the guide that I have on Barcelona and its sounds like there are a ton of things to do. Our hostel also seems to be in quite a central location so we won't waste too much time coming back and forth. I have no idea what exactly we will do but it will undoubtedly be interesting. With a population of just over 1.6 million in the city center, and night life that doesn't begin until I am asleep (12am) I imagine there will be no shortage of things to do.

April 11th to April 15th

Its time for Morocco. This is possibly the portion of the trip I am most excited for, probably because it seems the most exotic and interesting. We are flying into Marrakesh and leave from Agadir. Though we have no definite idea of how we will be getting from point A to B (I mean by which route, not the actual mode of transportation) we have two travel guides that will help guide us in this process. I imagine the 5 hour train ride will be a good time to work on this.

I was initially a little worried about communication, as I speak no Arabic but since Morocco was once colonized by the French it appears that many people speak French. As far as people who are worried about my safetly you shouldn't. The guide books all seem to repeat the same things which I think, if respected, will make for an enjoyable trip. Key points include learning at least a few Arabic greeting, and brushing up on French. Since I have point number two, I just have to learn a few greetings, helpfully located in the front of the guide book. The guide (by lonely planet) also says to not wear shorts or tee-shirts, at all. Morocco seems to be very centered around respect, and wearing shorts and tee-shirts is disrespectful and only done by ignorant tourists (the words of the guidebook). This applies to men as well as women. Though this will probably result in me cooking alive, I'm glad that I know this before I leave so I can properly plan my wardrobe.

This is photo that I found of Marrakesh, I am really excited to have my own version soon!

I will not be bringing my laptop with me, so will be at the mercy of my iPod keyboard and internet cafes if I happen to find any. As you can all imagine, this does not mean good things for my blog. I am however thinking of keeping a journal. If that goes well I am hoping I will simply be able to transcribe my adventures, which will hopefully expedite the process of me updating you all upon my return.

April Fool's

For all of you who don't have Facebook and missed out on my April fools joke I posted a photo of some Brown hair dye and lead people to believe that I was going to dye my hair. I think quite a few people fell for it judging from the reactions I received. So if you hear any rumors circulating that I am now a brunette you can disregard them. It was a poisson d'avril (april fish) as they say here in France.

A hodge-podge of info tidbits.

I have recently been asking myself where all my time goes. I don`t have a lot of commitments but I never seem to have time to write blogs. At least not this past week. This is also going to be a shorter post. On Friday it was one of my friends birthday`s today and we held a party for him in my residence. So I had about 50 balloons in my room at one point. Because I don`t have near the lung capacity to blow up 50 balloons I enlisted the help of my friends who distracting me from the blog post I meant to write..

On Friday I was also looking around Grenoble for streamers (called serpentins ie small snakes) I could not find any anywhere. I went to the 2 euro store, a grocery store and even checked out a specialty party store. They just don`t seem to have them. At least not in the 3 stores I went into, which granted is quite a small sample to generalize to an entire country. My guardian angel must have been watching over me though, because this afternoon while picking a parcel from the post office I forgot my wallet and helmet in the library. They are next door to one another so it wasn`t a huge distance to backtrack. However, the fact remains that I left my wallet unattended for about 10minutes. I returned and it was in exactly the same place, relief. I think it helped that it was inside my helmet and not immediately visible. People in France don`t seem to value helmets all that much. I would say less than 15% of people wear helmets. Of that 15% most of the people are older than 40. Apparently it takes a while for people to realize the value of helmets, it's a pretty frequent sight to see entire families with young children not wearing helmets. Quite shocking frankly.

Yesterday I went to Lyon for the day (100km's away) with the international student association. It was fun but not what I had expected. It was interesting and I saw lots of nice things but it somehow didn't live up to my expectation. I think it was the size of the city and all the people. Depending on who you ask, Lyon is the 2nd largest city in France and there were lots of people everywhere. It kind of detracted from some of the attractions if you ask me. It could have also been that I only had time for a surface visit. Since I was only there for the day I didn't have the chance to visit any of the museums which are apparently very nice. Lyon's claim to fame is apparently the textile industry. In the city there are a ton of passageways the run within the buildings so that the merchants could carry their cloth without getting it muddy (when streets were just dirt) and protect it from the rain. The textile museum also sounded amazing, they had a permanent display of cloths throughout history, even including samples of Egyptian dresses. I doubt that I will be returning though, there wasn't enough stuff to make me want to return when I still want to visit Geneva and Turin which are about the same price and distance away.

This morning I rode around Grenoble on my bike with a friend. We went to the market under the train tracks and generally explored Grenoble's streets. It was really calm on the streets (usually you have to weave between many slow moving pedestrian) and very enjoyable. Grenoble also has tonnes of flowering trees which are just starting to come out, so some of the once brown streets are starting to look like areas of oak bay (huge flowering trees that border the street for those of you not from Victoria).

That is however all the time I have for today. I am trying to get work done in anticipation of my 10 day easter trip. I  will try to get in a couple of updates in, and hopefully even some photos in before Friday but that might be a little too optimistic.

Its quite a tradeoff, the more awesome things I do, the less time I have to tell you all about them.

Boarder-cross

In chronological order here is what I have been up to since my last post.

I have decided that I will not be pursuing my potential modelling career. No matter how much research I would do, it still seems like I wouldn't have enough information. Also, I don't really want to go and get photographed for who knows how many hours, I would rather use my time for more useful things.

Skiing at 2 alps yesterday was fantastic. It was probably the best day I have skiing in my short skiing career. The weather was perfect, it was a little chilly in the chair lift but the perfect temperature while skiing down hill. The snow was excellent in most places and I even got to ski in powder. It was awesome. Furthermore, I am now confident enough on my skis to gain (some) speed while going downhill, so I was feeling pro. That is until someone who was actually good went zooming by me. I was also encouraged by my more fearless friend to try the boarder-cross initiation run, so I was also able to check that off my list. I didn't really like it because there were a lots of bumps so you could do jumps. I am still terrified of become airborne because I know I would not be able to land a jump, so I kept having to break which made it less fun. I found a video on youtube of the boarder-cross route at 2 alps, so if you are interested in see what boarder-cross is click here. Even if you're not interested in boarder-cross, it's pretty cool because you get to see the same scenery that I do for a few minutes. Here is another video of the same run, but I would advise against watching this one if you get motion sickness, the boarders are going alot faster. Just to clarify, this is not the run that I went on, I went on a less steep version but it runs parallel to the run shown in the above videos.

Look forward to photos of 2 alps and info about the st laurent archeological museum and grenoble fab lab because this is all the time I have today.

Up and up?

So, staying true to form I went skiing again this Thursday (yesterday), though it was the first time in two week. I am also going again tomorrow for a full but I think that my skiing season will soon be coming to an end as hiking seems very appealing at the moment. The snow was also disappearing quite rapidly from the lower altitudes at 7 Laux (its base is at 1350m, summit 2400m). The snow that I was skiing on was reminiscent of a slushee. That being said, there was an avalanche yesterday while I was skiing. It must have been pretty big as there were lots of helicopter flying back and forth. I heard that it even took out the skiiers who were on the route underneath. No need to worry about me though, I'm still not good enough to be on those types of routes. I think it was a black diamond route... but I could be wrong about that. Tomorrow I will be at 2 alps, it is a lot higher in elevation (base at 1650m, summit at 3200m) so I think that it will be much more enjoyable.

I also rented myself a bike today. I'm pretty excited about it. Its nothing special, just a standard city bike with 3 gears. This is not much of an issue because the entire city of Grenoble is flat, aside from the hill to my residence. I think what I will end up doing is locking my bike at the bottom of the hill and walking up. I don't think there is any way I would make it up the hill, the lowest gear is just not low enough. 6 switchbacks are just too many for me. Not to mention that my legs and heart are not strong enough.

My bike rental also includes 3 locks and I am supposed to leave on my bike at all times. Bike theft is quite an issue in Grenoble and I have seen many bikes with parts missing. Bike thieves even go as far as to steal your seat if you don't lock it to your bike frame. So I have that lock, a "U" lock to lock the bike frame to something sturdy and a lock that immobilizes the rear wheel. If that doesn't discourage thieves I don't know what will.

That however was not the most interesting portion of my day. As I was locking my bike up at the bottom of the stairs I was approached by a photographer. He told me that he was looking for a model for one of his clients, which is a jean company. He then went on to mention I have the profile (as in side of face) that this company is looking for. I was original quite skeptical because these types of things don't just happen in everyday life. However, he was not pushy at all and gave me his business card so I could check it out for myself. So upon returning to my room I looked him up, and everything seems to check out. What do you guys think? His website address is "levetchristope.fr" if you want to look at it for yourselves. The jean company is called April 77. In any case, it was quite flattering to be approached by someone and being told that they would be interested in having you model for them. It was even more flattering because I had some excellent helmet hair and a rather red face as I had just biked back from University in 20 degree weather.

Vizille

So, after a brief letting off of steam I return to the purpose of this blog. Keeping you all informed about what I am doing. After I let you all hanging about Vizille I am back to resume the tale.

First things first, I went for brunch at a restaurant called Pain et Cie. I am not usually someone who describes food and I am definitely not someone who is inclined to photography their food but I was sorely tempted. If only to document the sheer volume of food that was presented. As you are all aware, brunch is usually a mix of breakfast and lunch foods. The brunch here followed the same principle with one important deviation. Whereas at home, bunch is the size of regular meal, at this particular restaurant I felt like I was eating a full breakfast, and a full lunch in one sitting. The waitress brought everything out in stages, first was a bread basket with 4 different kinds of spread (one of which being white chocolate macadaemia, mmm) and a croissant each. The bread (and croissant) had been freshly made on location and they were delicious. This on its own would have sufficed for breakfast, but there was more to come. Next came yogurt and granola and a soft boiled egg with bread strips. I should also mention that during this phase of the meal there was also tea (or espresso, or coffee, or hot chocolate), freshly squeezed orange juice and water. I would easily have been full after all of this but just as I was finishing the waitress brought out the salad. Since there was no more room on our table, the waitress had to place the salad on the adjoining table, luckily it wasn't too busy.

Now, this was not just any salad, there were indeed lettuce and greens involved but there was also an incredible amount of meat and cheese. I had four different kinds of cheese on my plate, there was brie, fresh mozzarella and two others I don't know the names of. I should also mention that the amount of cheese per kind was greater than the sum of cheese you would expect to find in any salad at home. There were also deli meats (as if I wasn't already overwhelmed enough), proscuitto, salami and smoked ham for those wondering. Overall it was a delicious experience, though in the future I may try to order just breakfast or lunch so I can move after.

Now, getting on back on track to the original purpose of this entry after brunch we waddled to the tram stop so we could go to train station. We didn't actually catch the train but took a coach bus that operated in much the same way as a city bus, except the distance between the stops was much greater. It ended up costing 8€20 for the round trip which seemed a little expensive but it was about 20km's each way so I suppose it was fairly reasonable.

Here you have a pictorial representation (I have been told they are useful so I keep including them). I took us about 1hr to get there but mainly because the bus went in circles in Grenoble picking up people, and as we had jumped on at the first stop there were quite a few of them. Once we arrive in Vizille we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the entire park and museum were free. I was also some what mistaken as the castle in Vizille actually has two functions. It is as castle, but it houses the museum of the French revolution, so its kind of a two in one visit.

We went into the museum/castle first. Now, I am not really one for museums with audio guides but this one was very good and I thoroughly enjoyed it. The museum consisted mainly of paintings done during/of the French Revolution displayed in various rooms of the castle. Some of the were massive with a person in the painting being the size of real life person.

A tapestry with "Freedom or death" written. I was originally annoyed with my reflection but I think it looks kind of cool

That piano is a grand piano, so you can imagine how huge the painting is.

Again, this people are only slightly smaller than real people. There was a ton of symbolism in this picture but I can't remember any specific example at the moment

This is one of the picture that the audio guide really brought alive. All of these people are rebels waiting for their names to be called by the executioner, in the background you can see a woman struggling who's name has just been called. The man in the center was an important figure, sadly I can't remember his name

The woman in white is Marie Antoinette, wife of Louis XIV on the way to here execution. The audio guide commented on how here torso was elongated to make her seem more heavenly, which was common in many English paintings of the era (this was painted by and english painter)

the stone walls you could see at certain points inside the museum

the declaration of man's and the citizen's rights

Perhaps one of the best known painting of the revolution. This event actually took place in the castle in Vizille (July 21st 1788), but the room in the picture has since been destroyed. This is only a small portion of the photo as I couldn't get far enough away to get the whole thing in.

Me and the castle grounds, I figuered you all might like to see I actually go to these places and don't just steal the photos from Google.

The castle seen from the park which was 100 hectares if I'm not mistaken.

The castle in all it's glory. Not the best of shots but it's the best one I got.

Dear Canada Post

Dear Canada Post,

No one can deny that you have been instrumental in the foundation of our nation, for this I thank you. During a time when the only way to communicate was with letters, people depended on you to convey vital information. A job I am certain you performed admirably. While I concede that we have now moved into an era where we rely on the internet and the telephone for communication, this does not mean that Canadians no longer depend on your services. I have on many a occasion, depended on you. I will even go as far as to speak for my compatriots and say that we, as a nation, still depend on you.

On your website it is clearly stated that local lettermail can be expected to arrive within 2 business days, within a province 3 days and if you send mail nationally it will take 4 business days. I find these numbers completely reasonable, my problem is your flagrant disregard for these guidelines (created by you I might add). Since early February I have been expecting a letter, it is now nearly one and half months later and the letter is nowhere in sight. I understand that you deal with a large volume of mail on a daily basis. If you aren't able to stick to your posted guidelines I understand. Canada covers a huge area and 4 days is not very much time to get a letter across the country into the right person's mail box. That being said, at no time should the discrepancy between your guidelines and the actual mail delivery time put your competence into doubt. Sadly, you have done just that.

I believe that everyone (even crown corporations) deserve a second chance. Mistakes are human, and to expect perfection would be unreasonable. What I find regrettable that you have already exhausted all of your second chances from me. Do you remember last October when I was waiting for my drivers license to arrive from Victoria to my Ottawa apartment? It took 4 weeks, I repeat 4 weeks to arrive. Unacceptable. While I was in first year you did not deliver any of my three Easter gifts, zero out of three. When you eventually returned these items to their original senders, it was months later. Returning a parcel 5 months later to it's sender, after failing to deliver it to the intended recipient is unprofessional. Where was that parcel during those 5 months? Canada is big, but it is not that big.

All of these instances are reasons I have slowly but surely lost faith in your ability to effectively deliver mail. Actually, forget effectively deliver mail, I have lost faith in your ability to reliably deliver mail. I am no longer certain that when I send something it will arrive to the person to whom I sent it, and vice versa.

I would be tempted to write off your entire company, and lobby for the privatization of Canada Post just so that your monopoly on mail delivery would end, if not for one baffling exception: your surprising prowess in the international mail delivery category. As I am currently in France, I have sent multiple postcards to friends and family at home. Likewise, I have received letters from people at home. I have never had anything take longer than 2 weeks. I mean that literally, 2 weeks. Not 14 business days, two weeks pure and simple. I would say this is what infuriates me the most. How is it that you are able to get your act together and send a letter around the world in a timely fashion, yet remain unable to consistently deliver mail within Canadian borders?

I realize that every day you successfully deliver mail to millions of Canadians on time. This critique of your doings might seem a little too strongly worded to other people, after all you do successfully complete your duties the majority of the time. However, unless my name is on some type of blacklist (in which case I implore you, please remove my name) I am certain that I am not the only one that this has happened to. I can only imagine how frustrated people must get who live in rural areas. If I, who has only ever lived in major cities can't get my mail on time, how do you treat people living in Northern and remote communities?

I don't expect you to change overnight, I don't even expect you to change that much. I would just like to see a system implemented where you are able to track important mail without having to pay the extra $8 for a registered letter. If that is to much to ask, would you at least be able to deliver people their mail? Pretty please.

I would like to clarify that is is not an attack against Canada Post employees, who I believe do an excellent job. It is not even intended as an attack again Canada Post itself. It is simply a letter containing my frustrations as a customer. I would have sent it to you in the mail, but we all know how that would have turned out.

Sincerely,

A disgruntled customer.

I`m going to Morocco!

As one of my friends put it eloquently, yesterday I had a girly day. I looked at shoes, went to a material store and made myself a curtain. Though I already have a curtain in room its quite ugly and completly blocks the light. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but yesterday when I had my window open I felt like my arm was being burnt so I needed some kind of thin layer to protect myself from the sun. I still wanted to enjoy the sun and thus was born my conundrum. I also now have a kind of privacy screen from the people who are going up the bastille in the eggs. I know for a fact that they can see into my room, though I imagine that most of the time they are admiring the view and not the rooms in Rabot. I still feel a little uneasy changing though.

In terms of my trip over Easter break I now have a way to get back! Hourrah. I was a little worried before that we might end up paying huge sums of money to leave Morocco because all of the flight would be booked up. Luckily this was not the case and for the entire Morocco excursion flights have worked out to $250 CAD. The leg from Barcelona to Marrakech is about 2 hours and from Agadir to Lyon the flight is about 4 hours.If you follow the route illustrated by Google maps (which we won`t be) its 2,666 km.

Anyways, that's all for now. I am meeting a friend from brunch shortly and then we are going to visit Vizille, which is 17km's south of Grenoble. It has a castle which is the main reason we`re going. I`ll have more details later, probably even some photos!