23 April 2013 · Comment
France stuff!
Hey, I’m in Italy now! In the Cinque Terre. Which means I am now like three countries behind with pictures if you count France part 2 of 4 as a separate country from France part 1 of 4! Ahhh even when I have nothing but free time I still manage to not have my life together. But I’m starting to get it together here, with pictures from France part 1 of 4! Baby steps, ok.
A gradienty brick wall! Haha, what is there to say about a nonsense picture like this. Aaaaand now it’s 1 in the morning and I’ve been traveling all day so I’m gonna go to bed and finish this up later. I don’t think… I’m ever going to be a professional blogger with this kind of work ethic/lack of substantive content. Wutever, later!
Hay! I’m back! A mere… three days later But to be fair, they were probably the most amazing three days of the trip and I wore m’self out every day and went to bed exhausted every night! And that’s good, right? I was out like, seizing the day and living every day like it was my last or whatever!
So while we’re on the subject living life to the fullest and junk, if I may digress for a moment (har har, as if this whole blog isn’t one giant nested digression BUT I DIGRESS), I’ve been thinking a lot on this trip about how a person should be. Like, I’ve been trying to be kind to everyone I meet, but sometimes it’s difficult to tell what’s kind. Like HYPOTHETICALLY, if you get to your assigned seat on a train and the guy in the next seat is using it to store his newspaper and stretch out his legs, is it unkind to tell him that it’s your seat and you’d like to sit down and then keep sitting there while he huffs dramatically and keeps his legs all up in your leg space? It’s like, I realize that my presence here is causing you distress and I wish that weren’t the case, but I don’t really know what you expect me to do about it.
Or like, what’s the kind response to getting touched inappropriately on a train platform with lots of other people around and in broad daylight so you’re safe, but it’s just like, where does a person get the idea that that is ever acceptable on any planet? I would guess that the kind response is not punching the offending scumbag while screaming things at him that are not appropriate to repeat on a family-friendly blog, but what’s the right answer there? I mean, speaking hypothetically, of course. Maybe the answer is just that you should be kind and expect that everyone you meet will be good, but if they’re going to act inappropriately then maybe a little unkindness is in order. I DON’T KNOW. Different cultures, man. I tell you what.
But at any rate, this is an adorable French building. And here is a church with a perfectly gradienty sky that looks like it was photoshopped:
Ok so another thing is that I read “The Namesake” a few weeks ago, in which the main character visit Paris with his wife and she tells him not to ask for cream in his coffee after breakfast because French people don’t do that. And she’s a terrible person and a fictional character anyway so who even cares what she has to say, but I have noticed that I get condescending looks for asking for cream in my coffee after breakfast here. And like, I’m self-conscious about a great many things, one of which is reinforcing the boorish American tourist stereotype when I’m in different countries, so I try to respect other cultures and fit in and stuff, but seriously who is it hurting if I want to drink my coffee with milk? Is asking for it the wrong thing to do and just another example of me trying to impose my uncultured American ways on those around me? I don’t think so, but drinking bitter coffee also makes me grumpy so maybe I’m just justifying.
Whatever, here’s a pigeon party:
Equal parts pretty and disgusting!
More adorable Parisian architecture. It reminds me of the enormous house that crazy couple is building in Florida from the documentary “The Queen of Versailles.” I just really like how they wanted it to resemble Parisian architecture, so they modeled it off of the Paris casino in Las Vegas. As if that were the world’s foremost example of Parisian design. But sigh, I really gotta stop judging people. It’s just so fun!
Hotel Regina! I don’t know why I took all these nonsense pictures, I was super jetlagged for the few days I was in Paris and I’m coming back in May before I fly home, so I mostly just wandered around and ate a bunch, which doesn’t make for the most interesting pictures. Maybe next time I won’t be such a crouton, but probably not!
Some crazily-lit buildings near the Louvre. I just really like it when there are super dark rain clouds in the background and everything in the foreground is in sunlight OKAY.
And finally, a gigantic golden pegasus! Neat! And that’s it for Paris part 1!
Now we’re in Quimper, the home of the most spectacular crepes there ever were! This is the inside of the cathedral, which is allegedly bent like this to mimic Jesus’s head while it was bent on the cross. For something so morbid, it certainly does look pretty!
Also, as I was wandering around outside the cathedral, an older gentleman asked me something in French and I was like, “dude, jun comprun paw ler fransay,” which is the one French sentence I’ve gotten decent at saying and means I don’t understand French, in case my sassy phonetics were too obscure. But he was like “Cafe… avec… moi?” And I was like, I don’t really see how this is going to work but okaaaay. So we had an awkward coffee and then he invited me to his drumming performance and I was like, sure that sounds neat. But THEN we walked for a while to the performance and it turned he just wanted to play his drum in his apartment for me, so I was like:
That is not… going… to happen. So I tried to tell him in my super duper limited French that I promised my parents that I wouldn’t go into any strange men’s homes and he was like noooooo it’s just for DRUMMING. But just, no. Okay, my computer battery is about to die again so I’ll finish these up someday before I die maybe.
More churchularity!
Ahhhh, the market in Quimper!! So wonderful. Oh man I can’t wait to get to Berkeley and buy fresh vegetables all the time and farm fresh eggs and maybe I can find an illegal supplier of unpasteurized milk because it’s supposedly infinity times tastier.
Pooooonies! Just hangin out hitched to a hitching post, looking like they’re straight out of Hobbiton.
The castle at Pontivy! Pontivy is the cute little town a few hours away from Quimper where I stayed since I couldn’t get a hostel room in Quimper so it was kind of an accident that I went there at all, but it turned out to be great! The night I got in, there was a huge fireworks show like, a few feet outside my window and the guy running the hostel gave me a map for a really nice walking tour, which is where all of these pictures are from.
An olde timey sign.
Some wooden heads poking out of a building.
A mossy roof.
Ummm, a door. I don’t know.
Musculation! I am never calling working out anything else again. “Where are you headed?” “Oh you know, just gonna go MUSCULATE.” Haha just kidding, I don’t work out. How am I ever going to stay on the fast track to diabetes if I do things like work out? That’s silly you are silly.
A nice view of Pontivy.
The exact same thing but at butt early the next morning!
Arrrrgh crooked pictures! It’s ummm, downtown Quimper.
Beautiful Quimper market strawberries!
Muscat grapes! They tasted just like delicious girly wine.
Crazy French radishes!
And the last photo of Quimper! This picture really highlights how I kept getting rain all over my camera lens and breaking it little by little. This is why we can’t have nice things!
Ok that’s the end of the France part 1 pictures! Now I am in Annecy taking a French class and I am really going to try and catch up on posting pictures this week! Yeah!
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