Marseille with Mom

The weeked in Marseille was really fun and full of adventure, surprisingly. Laurent taught his son, Cyprien, how to say "Hello, Grandma". It was super cute! Even though Cyprien is about 2 and grandma sounded more like "growma", it was very endearing and mom was touched.

We went on a little tourist train (not on tracks, but on tires and the road) that goes all over Marseille's harbor and beyond. One of the most famous parts of Marseille is the huge church called "Notre Dame de la Garde" (our lady the guardian). You can see it from almost anywhere near the water in Marseille since it's on a mini-mountain. There's a huge golden statue on top and the church is amazingly large. Our tourist train took us all the way to the church that overlooks all of the city. Here's Mom and Cyprien on the train.
It was really windy and kind of cold on the top overlooking the city but it was magnificent. The next day, we went 'hiking' in the Calanques area. Calanques are like little rocky inlets between huge hills/mountains. I loved this trail and didn't even know it existed. I am defnitely returning when the weather's a little warmer and a 2 year old is not with me. :) You can walk this trail for miles and I can't wait.

Here are Cyprien and I on the top of the trail overlooking some of the inlets.
Yes, that is a crêpe in his hand.

Speaking of crêpes, while eating all the wonderful food at Laurent's, we had a little crêpe party one night. As seen below:
Favorite toppings/fillings included: Nutella, butter & sugar and raspberry jelly. Delicious!

On Monday, mom and I took a 3-hour cruise around the coastline of Marseille. Of course, as soon as we saw that it was a 3-hour tour, we started humming the theme to Gilligan's island. Anyway, obviously we weren't shipwrecked. We did, however, get to go on this cruise on Monday with a whole class of Spanish teenagers. We really lucked out because normally the cruise doesn't run on the weekdays but due to the Spanish kids, they opened up the tour to a few people of the public. Hurray for us! The cruise was great even if it was a bit chilly. We saw the Calanques at a much closer range and the beautiful Mediterranean sea as you can see below:

We had a great time with everyone, as usual and Mom was overjoyed to finally see Laurent and meet not only his wife, but his 2 sons. Next, it's onto the train for 3 hours straight to Paris.

Here is a link to all the pictures if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/MarseilleWithMom#

Montpellier With Mom

After London, we flew back to Montpellier to spend some time in my hometown. We arrived on Monday afternoon and waited for our luggage. Not at all surprisingly, Mom's luggage did not arrive (which would make this lost luggage for the 2nd time). Jokingly, Mom said "what, is it not coming til Thursday?" Unfortunately, she didn't know how true this was. Apparently, the airline that we flew with only had a few flights this week. They flew on Monday afternoon and the next flight wasn't until Thursday afternoon. Because of this little mishap, Mom was stranded in Montpellier for 5 days without a change of pants and only 2 shirts and limited underwear choices. :)

We made the best of it and toured Montpellier for days. We did a LOT of shopping and Mom got a ton of scarves a la French-style. She is VERY cultured now. We went to the Montpellier mall and Mom got to see the madness that is French malls during vacation time. We ate a lot of food (including Mom's first real French croissant, baguette, pain au chocolat and Frontignan muscat [which is a really great sweet dessert wine]) and on Tuesday, we went to the market to get Marseillais soap, some different cheeses for Mom to try and some really awesome candied, dried strawberries. I had a huge lunch and invited Dawn and Cathy over for some tom foolery and yummy food. After shopping some more after lunch, we retired for the evening.

Mom has been teaching me to crochet. I don't think I am quite ready for knitting yet. One hook seems to be all I can handle at the moment.

At one of the department stores, we saw the most hilarious shower curtain ever. Here it is:

Wouldn't that freak you out in the morning? I would love it but it was pretty expensive since we were in the French equivalent of Macy's so I didn't get it. Anyway, we decided on Wednesday, to go bowling. Dawn, Cathy and I took my mom to the big bowling alley in south Montpellier. Here is Mom doing really well in the first game.

Mom also got her hair cut at a French coiffeur. That was really entertaining since she lost about half of her hair. But the haircut looks great! Now her hair is a little bit wavy/curly situation and it's wonderful. Here is Mom at my favorite tea shop enjoying her green/orange tea wearing one of her new scarves.
On our last full day in Montpellier, we took the tourist train, seen below, that went all around Montpellier and gave us some history and sightseeing opportunities in historic downtown. Mom and I loved the train with the really strong accented English commentary. We weren't alone on the train but it was pretty empty anyway. I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that the wind was really bitingly cold.
For our last dinner in Montpellier on Thursday, we had crepes at a Creperie where Mom enjoyed a crepe with crab and white asparagus and I had a crepe with mushrooms, ground beef, garlic and creme fraiche. Dessert crepes included a crepe with Nutella and whipped cream and a crepe with strawberry jam. Mom preferred the strawberry jam crepe but I think she is a bit confused. :) Nutella is always the best choice, in my humble opinion.

Finally, Mom's suitcase arrived in Montpellier on Friday (it actually arrived on Thursday but they couldn't deliver it to us until Friday afternoon). After forcing Mom to walk all over Montpellier, we decided to take it easy on Friday and work on various plans for Marseille, Paris and our return to London. Marseille, to visit Laurent, is from Friday night thru Tuesday morning (Feb. 17). Then we are going to Paris from Tuesday thru Friday. Then Friday morning and all of that day we will be in London but just overnight. Mom is leaving from London on Sat. Feb. 21 and I am flying back to France that same day. Keep your fingers crossed for Mom's luggage to arrive from Paris to London since we are flying. We are taking a train from Marseille to Paris so the luggage should be ok since we will be physically attached to it for most of the 3 hour train ride.

Mom said that she will be burning the clothes she was forced to wear for 5 days in Montpellier. Never again will she wear that red polo shirt or that blue sweatshirt. If you see her wearing these clothes, rip them off and burn them.

Here is a link to all the pictures of us in Montpellier if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/MontpellierWithMom#

My mom is here!

My mom is here! We spent a lovely weekend in London, last weekend, where her bags were lost. The good thing was that we didn't have to transport her luggage to the hotel. The bad thing was that we were there for 3 days and didn't get the bag until the 2nd day. Our first night, Saturday, Feb. 7, my friend Dawn got us AMAZING tickets to see Wicked on the west end. For those of you who don't know, the west end is London's broadway. We were in the 7th row on house left and I loved it. My mom has heard me talking about this show for years and I was SO happy to have her see one of my favorite shows. She really enjoyed it too.

While walking out of our bed and breakfast in London, on the ground on the sidewalk, was a ONE dollar bill. Can you believe that? I have to go all the way to London to get a dollar. :) Our bed and breakfast wasn't so much a breakfast as it was a bed. The breakfast consisted of coffee, orange drink and toast. It was not at all a bed and breakfast, but what can you do?

Before Wicked, we wandered around the Piccadilly Circus area and had dinner at a pretty normal English restaurant called "Garfunkles." Mom had a chicken dinner and I had a beef stew type thing. Wicked was amazing, as afore mentioned.

Here's Mom playing the total tourist in London in the Underground.

The next day, Sunday, Feb. 8th, we took an open top bus tour where we got to get off and on and see all of London. We rode on the top for a long time until we were totally frozen and then went into the heated lower level of the bus. After riding the bus all over the city, we got off and checked out a huge toy store called Hanley's where we saw a ton of toys on 5 levels including this cool Lego Indiana Jones and a Lego clone trooper. Yes, I got an English Monopoly for my collection.



We got an awesome deal on the bus tour where you paid an extra 3 pounds and got a fish and chips lunch from the Sherlock Holmes pub. We also had Sherlock Holmes ale. It was delicious. We enjoyed the mini museum on the 2nd level of the pub as well where they had a bunch of Sherlock Holmes paraphenilia on display, including Mom's favorite, his pipe.

Here I am in the classic English red phone booth:



We rode the Underground EVERYWHERE and I couldn't get over the announcement "Mind the Gap". My favorite announcement was "Fred to platform 2 to clean up a liquid spillage." I repeated that for days!!! I even took a picture of one of the platforms with the classic Underground saying. See below:

Here's a link to all the pictures if you are interested:
http://picasaweb.google.com/jkimpfbeck/LondonWithMom#

Firecrackers, the Opera and Storms

On Saturday, one of the assistants, Dela, had an End of January party that many of us attended. While waiting for the tram to go to her place, we saw a great firecracker/dragon dancing display in front of a Chinese restaurant downtown. It was so great! They set up about 30 firecrackers and 4 people in dragon costumes danced around. 10 minutes of fun for us. Here is a semi-blurry pic.
Below are a couple pictures from the party. After the party, we had to walk halfway home due to tram lines closing before we anticipated. Thankfully it wasn't raining or too cold. It was a great party though with some odd yet quite tasty punch mixture of alcohol, juice and cinnamon sticks.

Here I am with Cathy.

Here I am with Leymi (from Venezuela).

Yesterday, I attended Opera #3: Affaire Etrangère at the Montpellier Opera. It was really funny actually. It was only 1h 26min but it was great. This show was based on a comic book and you could definitely tell. It was sung in French with French supertitles. I really enjoyed the show which was not romantical in anyway. It was just about a stranger who crash lands in his spaceship into a kingdom. The king spends the majority of the show deciding what to do with the stranger who they locked up in prison hospital. He was all bandaged up due to his crash. The stranger even had a head cast on for the entire show which hid his face yet did not restrict his singing. Finally, the king decides to kill him but in the meantime, the stranger trades places with the king by taking his crown and no one seems to notice. The king is emprisoned and all of the kingdom (the 5 other cast members) want to leave with the stranger on his spaceship. The king escapes and ends up leaving the kingdom with the others in the spaceship. The stranger is left in the kingdom alone. Fin. The costumes were cool and very bright and comic book-y. The set was cute and simple with doors that opened and closed by themselves. There was also a track on the stage which allowed beds, tables and various items to move into the scene all by themselves. :)

Today, due to ridiculous storms and a red-weather alert, my school cancelled the afternoon portion of the day and my classes were subsequently cancelled. Unfortunately, I did not learn of this cancellation until I arrived at the school. So basically, I walked in the pouring rain to the train station in Montpellier and got completely drenched and then arrived in Frontignan to be told that the afternoon was cancelled. So then I basically turned right back around and came home. It has been raining for a couple days already and it's predicted to continue raining for the majority of the week. Hurray! This city was certainly not built to handle the rain since I had to, in essence, traverse 2 or 3 raging rapids of water on my way to the train station earlier today.

Your British word lesson of the day: jotter = notebook. In a sentence: Everyone get out your jotters and write this down before I get angry.