After settling in, we headed out with intentions of going to the beach and then out to dinner. Unfortunately, we missed the last bus to the beach, so we just went straight to dinner (still in our swimsuits). We went to this little Italian cafe with outside seating called La Piazza Papa, and I ordered a pizza au fromage. It turned out to be a wood-fired cheese pizza with black olives and olive oil. It was DELICIOUS. I woofed it down, as I was starving. We drank white wine with our meal and shared desserts when we were finished with our entrees. After dinner, we strolled around the downtown area, exploring and searching for something to do. We stumbled across an empty retro/mod nightclub called Le Huit, or The Eight in English.
We were the only people in there for the first half-hour, but then we were joined by two women in their mid-twenties working on their PhD's. I sat up at the bar with them and talked to them. We asked them questions like what kind of music we should listen to and things we should do in Grenoble. I also ordered a drink called "Blonde Ass" whose ingredients were listed like so: zubrowka (???), liquer de vanille, puree pomme verte, jus de mangue, et citron sucre. We were intrigued by the name. Most of us ordered it, and the bartender laughed each time we said the words "Blonde Ass" in our American accents. We also tried some French beer and a Belgian beer called 1664 as the night went on. We were actually introduced to 1664 by a French boy named Paul. He stood next to me at the bar, and when he got his drink, I asked him what he ordered (I discovered this was a great way to make friends, as this was how we started conversation with two women in their mid-twenties). He told us and then invited us to come and sit with him and his friends (William and Bertrand). They were all cute but very young (just finished high school) and they had two adorable girl friends, Leopoldine (and I forgot the other girl's name). We all got along great and we left the club with them and went to this huge public garden and sat around and talked while they passed around an enormous bottle of wine. At this point, most of us were not interested in having more to drink. The best part of the night was being in the company of actual French people who didn't speak English and wanted to be our friends. We got back to the hotel around 1:30-2 a.m. and went to bed.
The next morning we woke up at 10 a.m. and headed downtown to pick up brunch from a grocery store. Afterward, we hopped on a bus headed for the beach (!!!) and laid out/dipped in the Mediterranean all day long. We bought a couple bags of interestingly flavored chips and a six-pack of Krotenbourg beer and shared it (which was perfect, since there were six of us). When we decided we had gotten enough color (around 6:30 p.m.) we returned to the hotel and got dressed for dinner and everything after. I wore a grey American Apparel tank top tucked into a pair of high waisted dark jeans from Urban Outfitters. I wore my bangs down too, along with a vintage red leather bag with a chain strap a la Mommy, so I felt super French and stylin'.
For dinner, we went to a little outdoor cafe called Brasserie Chez Regis which apparently specialized in seafood. To start, we all had some white wine called vin de pays de l'heruait. Alyssa and I ordered two plates to share, tagliatelles de fruits de mer (seafood pasta with a cream sauce), and moules au pistou (mussels in a basil-garlic cream sauce). Neither of us had ever tried mussels and we were really excited to but kind of scared as well! Luckily, they turned out to be AMAZING. We polished them off in record time!
Afterward we headed to the garden to meet up with Paul, William, and one of their friends that we hadn't met the previous night. They led us to a bar whose name I forgot to record. The bar was really chic with huge mod black leather couches and really cool lighting. Very sophisticated. I ordered a gin and tonic and messed up the translation and was given a drink with MINT in it. We all know how I feel about that! I immediately grabbed a lemon and sucked on it really hard in order to get rid of the taste. We sat at the bar and talked about how to say bad words in French and English and American movies that the boys had seen dubbed over in French. We learned that basically very American Blockbuster hit is released in France in this manner. We asked them if they had seen Mes Amis Mes Amours, the movie we saw last Wednesday, and they said that they hadn't and that no one likes French films. =(
After the bar, we headed back to the garden to meet our friend Michelle who took the same train as we did (she's in our program) but wanted to meet up with some French friends who did an exchange program in Madison for the weekend. The boys bought beer on the way to the garden and they taught us this French drinking game called "Caps." Basically, everyone puts the bottle caps on top of their full bottles of beer and uses another cap to try to knock other peoples caps off by throwing it. If you knock off someone's cap, they have to drink a quarter of their bottle. After this, we went home and went straight to bed. By the time we were all tucked in it was 3:45 a.m.!!!!!!! We set an alarm for 10 a.m. and slept straight up until it went off.
We were supposed to meet the boys at a lake somewhere but were running too late and we decided to cancel. Instead we went to a little cafe and got lunch and iced coffees and then went shopping at this store called Kookai. It turned out to be a major hit with us, and we all walked away with a few items (sorry, parents! but don't worry, it was my first successful shopping trip in France). I snagged 3 cute tops and an amazing brown taffeta NICE dress all for a very modest price. J'aime les soldes! I also found a really gorgeous yellow patent leather clutch with a pouch for coins (coins are used way more frequently in Europe, so this will come in handy from now on) at this store called Minelli, which is known for its shoes, or maybe just its leather in general.
Copy and paste (ATTENTION MOM! THIS IS EASIER THAN TYPING THE LINK LETTER-BY-LETTER) this address into your browser to view pictures of our trip: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2003585&I=909&id=1263930046
Some things I noticed about France in general while in Montpellier:
-Loose dresses/tunics made of light material, worn with leggings, and belted liberally around the hip are very "in"
-Bathrooms are unisex. I found this out the hard way when Paul followed me into the bathroom at the bar and I freaked out, thinking I was about to be abducted.
-There are lots of Arab people in France! I met an Algerian girl and her boyfriend while swimming in the sea, and two guys (one Egyptian, one Moroccan) were harassing us while we sunned ourselves. They even tried to find out what we were doing after dinner!
-French men are surprisingly more chauvinistic than we previously thought. We were asked many times on our vacation for directions to the kitchen.
I arrived back at chez Cottave-Fabert around 7:20 p.m. this evening, just in time for a quick shower before dinner. Apparently, there are two new people who have moved into the house in the place of Pierre-Eric who left early last week. They are two Polish people, a kid and his mother, and they speak really good French. I wonder where Mme. finds these people... does she put ads in the paper?
P.S. I sent you all postcards and you should all be receiving them within the next week or so! My parents have already gotten theirs!
1 comment:
this was ridiculously long. but i want credit and brownie points for reading all of it.
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