the great European adventure: France 1/13-1/15

Hello!

I've finally uploaded/taken a bunch of pictures of my apartment, so here they are! I absolutely love my apartment. The rooms, ceilings, and windows are gigantic and it's so beautiful. This morning when we woke up, there was a thin layer of snow on the ground, which doesn't happen often in Aix! From anywhere in the apartment you can hear when someone else is talking because the walls echo so much, but it's okay. The other day I was taking a nap in the Penelope Room (the living room) and even though my eyes were closed I could feel that I was in such a big space. Definitely not something I'm used to!

These first pictures are of the kitchen. The kitchen doesn't have the high ceilings of the living room/bedroom/ballroom but its still pretty big! Our french roommate has her room/bathroom above the kitchen which is why the ceilings are shorter. The spiral staircase to get up there is awesome!

wall of the kitchen facing the church

the lit up door in the background leads to the bathroom which leads to our bedroom

the wall facing rue Cardinale. the little thing under the microwave is our oven...

The staircase to Luana (our roommate's) room

The next room is what we like to call the Grand Ballroom. It's a huge room with tall ceilings that has an open space in the middle. The apartment I live in is in the same building as the Vanderbilt-in-France center, so this room is sometimes used for meetings and receptions by Vif. We don't mind though, because we're told we get the leftover food!

part of the Grand Ballroom. the door on the left leads to a lobby with a stairway where you can get to the Vif Center

another view of the ballroom. It's difficult to show in pictures just how large it is

a view from the ballroom to the Penelope room

Our apartment has 1.5 bathrooms, which is really nice. One of the bathrooms is on the left right when you walk into the door. It's not too small, but the sink doesn't work which is too bad. But we have another bathroom so no worries. Also it's really funny because there's a bathroom right next to the toilet, looking onto the church. We're thinking about buying a curtain...

the half bathroom

Our main bathroom connects from the hallway and also to our bedroom, so there's two doors you have to close when you use it. The sink is fine, the toilet's fine, but the shower is very frustrating. It only has the shower nozzle but there's no where to put it up so you have to always hold it. Also there's no shower curtain so it's a big challenge to not get the entire bathroom wet. The bathroom also has a huge shelf which is really convenient because we can put all our bathroom stuff and towels there.

the bathtub's spray just laying there...

our hugeee shelf, clearly being used

The next pictures are of the bedroom. Me and my roommate Emily share it. It's not bad, but the configuration of the room means that the beds have to be pretty close together. But the ceilings are huge and the window is beautiful so there's a trade-off. Our bedroom also has a marble fireplace. It's gorgeous.

the window in the background leads to the garden, the door on the left leads to the Penelope room

my bed and the bathroom in the back

our marble fireplace

our closet (kinda blurry whoops)

Now i just have some random pictures from stuff. Whenever sometimes looks beautiful on the street I take a picture so I have so many pictures on my phone.

le fountain de quatre dolphins. there's 4 "dolphins" around this fountain but they look like weird sea creatures...

a view down rue Cardinale (my street) looking towards the church

A cat named Moustache that i found in Monoprix, which is like Target

the table before one of our soirees. baguette, cheese, nutella, and chocolate. delicious

the first cheese I bought. camembert is good, but I like my cheese more salty

our first homemade dinner. pasta with tomato and another sauce, chicken, and asparagus. also delicious

the church

the view from the penelope room today, yay snow!!

snow!

A few days ago I was with my roommate Emily and another girl from the program, Kayli. We were sitting on a bench as we had just bought a slice of pizza. We were sitting near Roi Rene (the picture below) when we saw a group of 3 teenage guys walk up to the statue with a case of beer. They kneeled in front of Roi Rene and began like worshiping and blessing their beer. It was honestly hilarious. (this was also at like 8pm).

roi rene

Cours Mirabeau in the snow

Today we went on a "Taste of Provence" tour. It was led by a lady named Jennifer who is from San Francisco but she married an Englishman, lived in England for a few years, and then for the past ten she's lived in Aix. She has a very American accent when she speaks French which a girl from our group said made her want to claw her ears. But she was very easy to understand, which is nice!

On the tour, we visited the market, a cheese shop, a chocolate shop, and a cafe. The lady was pretty much showing us her favorite places that have good food. And we also got free samples which were delicious! At the chocolate shop we got macaroons and mine was caramel flavored. It was so so so delicious that i NEED to go back there. After that we went to a coffee shop where we had hot chocolate, which is made from two ingredients milk and chocolate. It was so creamy and delicious; it tasted like you were drinking liquid chocolate. The coffee shop had coffee everywhere, and a section of teas. It smelled so good!