Back in Exeter

Friday the 19th - This was one of our first days of crazy sunshine - I had horrible tan lines by the end of the day not realizing. I was out all day in the grass hanging out with Kjirsten and Daniel, sharing April adventure stories. At night a whole gaggle of people went out to Firehouse for pizza, which I have actually yet to experience. That place literally has four tables I am pretty certain. We were not discouraged though, and went down to the quay to have a different delicious pizza at The Waterfront. We popped into a bar called The Revelry which is also in the quay. We split some wine, listened to the weird DJ, admired the Waterfront's workers have a little dance after work, and watched Natalie attempt a pick up line (she was successful in getting a number but not in saying "Can I haaaaave your number?").
Saturday - I was generally unproductive during the day, but travelling is surprisingly exhausting. At night, we went to the Cavern. It was weird because without students, there's not many people left in Exeter! So we stayed in the bar part for most of the night (except for a few songs where I sprinted on to the dance floor because I had to sing and dance), and met a weird shitty brother-band-duo who doesn't bother practicing? and some Marines who were out past curfew.
Sunday - Without our boys in the flat, we decided on some chick flicks for the night - Bring it On and Mean Girls :) Nothing much beats them, let's be real.
Monday - More sunshine! Amazing. We actually managed to do a tiny bit of homework in the sun, but mostly relaxing. At night we did insanity as a group of five, which was special. It's kind of amazing how gross you get in forty minutes and also amazing that no one comes and yells at us from the kitchen below.

France (Paris, Toulouse, Perpignan, [Barcelona,] Collioure, Latour de Carol): March 30 - April 11

  So for some magical reason, Brits get a month off of school in April. I'm not complaining.

  Jessica, Natalie, Elena, Lesly, Ben, Brandon, and myself had started our break by stuffing ourselves full of brunch food for Easter. It was sort of to get rid of the food that would have gone bad while we were gone, but also we just love food. A lot. You will learn that more and more as you read this entry specifically.

      Then we stayed up until 2:30am to catch a 15 HOUR BUS JOURNEY to Paris. Yay. The first part to London was the worst part, being tired and cold and on a bus for something like 5 hours. London was also subzero when we got there for some reason. But that's okay! Because we soon hopped on another bus that drove us on to a ferry to get us to France. We were pretty excited because the ferry was very nice (bars, casinos, gift shops) and had people in costumes everywhere (some party/festival thing). We got to spend an hour on there. We finally got to Paris around dinner time and met up with Ben's childhood friend, Perle. She is an extremly impressive and fantastic human being who gave us a bit more of a resident's look of Paris. We went to a crazy good resturant that lets their friends stay and drink after they close. Then we went to a bar that had a huge cover... unless you know someone. Played a lot of jazzy indie things upstairs, and club stuff downstairs it what felt like a small concert (and also they played Rage Against the Machine? Love it).
    MARCH 31: Rolled out of bed. Of course we had to first stuff our faces at a breakfast buffet, I probably had nine croissants. They we did a bit of touristy things - Sacre Coeur, walking around Montmatre and doing some shopping (always), and seeing Moulin Rouge. All very cool and beautiful, as always. That night we went to Perle's to eat Raclette (a baked potato with cheese and cold cuts...yum), sing, and dance.

    APRIL 1: Lots of touristy stuff today. Walked down Champ de Elysses, saw the Arc de Triomphe, power walked through La Louvre for an hour (saw the Mona Lisa and some other lovely things). We saw the Eiffel Tower during the day and at night - it's pretty amazing no matter the light or angle. That night we almost slept through our taxi to the airport, so that was fun (we tried to stay up and all four of us assumed someone else set an alarm). Then Natalie and Lesly both had to rip things out of their carryons because they had to put their purses inside (Ryanair and Easyjet are a load of fun sometimes). Despite it all, we made it to Toulouse!

    APRIL 2: Pretty sure we spent most of this day sleeping. At night we went to watch a football game in a bar with every dude in Toulouse (we were 5 of probably 8 women at the bar). It was also about ten thousand degrees - at one point Elena and I fought through the throngs of men to get outside for some fresh air and then got creeped on by said men sooo we ran back in. After the game we stayed and drank because Ben was reuniting with his buddies. They danced a beautiful dance to Grease Lightning and we all danced around a bit as well. There was some random dudes across from us who would just yell a line from an American song to try and get attention, but they didn't know the words to anything. Good try? Anyway we left there to go to the sketchiest bar of all time, an "Aussie" bar, but not. Full of gothy angry looking people and a couple crazy girls: a blonde girl (who was for sure on drugs) came up and screamed in Jessica's face (twice) and then threw Jessica's drink on her friend... and the friend decided that it was Jessica's fault and wanted to fight her ...thought we were going to have a rumble! When we finally dragged Ben home, he told us to "Just shine bright, I'll see you tomorrow." (it doesn't make any more sense in context).
    APRIL 3: As we do in every beautiful location we find ourselves in, we shopped. Toulouse is really nice because it isn't a super touristy location, but it's beautiful, relaxed, and real. We also got delicious ice cream at Amorino. At night we went to a BBQ at some of Ben and Charlotte's friends and then went out to a little bar. We met some characters and saw some scary drunk cougars, so that was a good time. Then we went to a club where we were the only ones there and danced for a while. Quite lovely :)

     APRIL 4: A mostly relaxing day, walked around Toulouse soaking it all in, yaa knooow. At night we had dinner with Guilliame and Charlotte (Ben's siblings). Charlotte made fun of us because we ate basically an entire meal directly before the tapas she made (but has no problem eating dinner round 2).
    APRIL 5: It was Jessica's birthday, so she decided to make us breakfast? Not quite the usual birthday girl choice but it was delicious of course, a lovely start to the day :) The girls went shopping and made jewellery while the boys stayed behind to make a cake. When we came back we sang, ate cake, and gave Jess her birthday present. At night we went to a bar for tapas and sangria - it got messy. A fun time with pictures that I don't quite remember all of.

     APRIL 6: Charlotte and Ben drove us to Perpignan to stay with his parents for a few days. Ben's family could not be more amazing - they were so accommodating and friendly and loving and awesome. Gil and Pascale made us amazing food constantly, spoiled us with champagne and wine, and tried to work through a pretty decent language barrier. It was really comforting and relaxing all around. :)
    APRIL 7: We drove up to Collioure to see Ben's grandmother and bask in the perfection that is Collioure.  The whole town is bright and beautiful, as well as having a beautiful beach area. Ben said it is really touristy in the summer but we got to enjoy it more like we were locals thanks to Ben and Charlotte. We sat and ate pizza on the beach, threw a rugby around, and collected rocks. Somehow, we get the sun everywhere we go, so it was extra amazing.

    APRIL 8: Day trip to Barcelona! We went into one of the many cathedrals of our trip, which was beautiful of course. I wasn't expecting the strange arcitecture of Gaudi in the rest of the town, but it was cool and something different. We went to Gaudi's unfinished church and a park that featured his arcitecture. Neato. :)

     APRIL 9: We said a sad goodbye to our new parents to take a [n incredibly beautiful, scary, unique] one euro bus ride to more of Ben's family that I want to adopt - his grandparents Jean and Colette. Their house was enormous (liiiike 7 rooms and 3 floors for 2 people?) and incredibly beautiful and old and I loved it. Ah. We took a walk in the countryside and I just can't even believe the amount of beauty everywhere. The mountains looked amazing and the nature made me feel right at home. Jean and Colette kept our vacation tradition alive and stuffed us full of delicious food and wine as many times as possible (considering we were there for a short amount of time).

     APRIL 10: Clad in snowsuits from the 80s, we went sledding on a ski hill that was closed for the season. Felt like maybe I worked off one of the ten thousand baguettes I consumed on this trip thus far. We used one sled and one plastic bag to sled and layed out in the sun. On a mountain. In France. What a life!

    APRIL 11: Back to London. After getting slightly lost and having two different people offer us directions (people here are crazy nice, always) we found our hostel and were pleasantly surprised. I feel like I am always ready for the worst, but we have just been super lucky. The hostel was clean, had a solid breakfast, and the staff was suuuper friendly. We also had boys from Denmark in our room who were hungover and sleeping the entire trip and a girl from the US who was taking a gap year farming in France. Pretty cool. That day we went to Abbey Road & studio, which was pretty cool. The street wasn't too similar to the album cover but we signed the wall and took pictures. Then Elena took us to Harrod's, which was not even real life? It is an entire city block (if not more?) and probably seven stories of designer out-of-our-league bullshit, it was terrifying! But very cool and posh. Mhmm.

   APRIL 12: Started our day with a walking tour of "Royal London", featuring four castles and some cool stories. It was raining the whole time, but we have come to accept that from England despite our usually good fortune. At some point afterwards we went our separate ways and Natalie and I went to explore some sights.We went to London and Tower bridges, which was a bit confusing because we don't know enough British history, but tower bridge was really beautiful and lovely. We looked at the tower of London but didn't go in and then went to St Paul's Cathedral. Out of the many (many.) cathedrals we visited on our adventures, I think this one was my favourite. It was really incredible. At night we did a pub crawl in the Camden area (hipster heaven y'alllll), which was super fun. Natalie and I made a point of taking really horribly dumb pictures whenever the photographer came around. We had our free sambuca shots and bonded while we waited for Elena and Lesly to caatch up, and then we danced at one place with a bunch of 90s rap and another that was an old opera house with a horrible male to female ratio. We were getting hounded basically the whole time, but mostly it was amusing until desperation set in at the end.

   APRIL 13: A day in Oxford :) We did a hop-on, hop-off bus tour because it was cold and rainy. It's an easy way to see the city and figure out what you want to see. Oxford is all extremly beautiful in general, but we popped in the Alice store (where the Alice who inspired Alice in Wonderland used to buy her candies and such) and did the library tour. Oxford receives a copy of every book printed in the UK as well as having extremely old folios. Really cool (for me). :)

    APRIL 14: Back in London, we watched the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. It was  hard to see the actual thing, but we saw them parade in and out of the gates. We had also seen a mini version down the road on our walking tour previously, so I get the idea. Neato. Then we went to Portobello Market, because shopping. It was great though because it wasn't the same H&M, Primark, blah blah blah. It is a ton of vintage stores and original stores. It was really cool to look around and see what you could find :) That night, Elena and Natalie headed back to Exeter while Lesly and I travelling first class (somehow) to Liverpool! Our hostel was more like a house, offering few fruit and laundry all day. We were incredibly excited because on top of this we also got a six bedroom dorm to ourselves and our own bathroom and shower. There were also cool Beatles murals in the staircase (Liverpool LOVES their Beatles).

   APRIL 15: Another hop-on, hop-off bus tour, which was actually super helpful because Liverpool had a decent amount of things to do. We started on Albert Dock, getting through the Maritime Museum (focussing on the Titanic, Empress, and Britannica) and the International Slavery Museum. Very interesting and depressing stuff. After that we did "The Beatles Story", which was really really awesome. I'm sure it's stuff my dad could have told me (because he knows a ton of random Beatles facts), but it was cool to see the progression of their careers... I actually didn't know that all their music was made in such a short amount of time. We did pop into the Cavern Club, which is not the original but a replica in the same place.

    APRIL 16: Liverpool has two Cathedrals - one Anglican and one Catholic. The Anglican church was very beautiful with incredibly high ceilings. We went up to the observation deck and almost got blown away (literally), but it was fun. The Catholica church is extremely modern - it doesn't really look like a church and it features a lot more stained glass in weird places for light, not to tell a slice of the bible. Both were beautiful and interesting in their own ways. We also went to a WW2 museum that was actually a headquarters during the war. It was cold and creepy (underground) but amazing to see how people lived trying to intercept submarine messages and win the war.

   APRIL 17: In Manchester, we didn't have a ton to do really. We went to John Rylands Library, which has a lot of old books and a focus on William Blake, an English Poet (among many other things). It was very beautiful, as always. I don't think I retained much of the information because I was in the middle of my sickness, but it was cool anyway. The Art museum was probably my favourite part because of a really interesting exhibit by Raqib Shaw (googling his art will not do it justice). He uses acryllic paint and rhinestones (at first because he couldn't afford canvas paint). After that we went to the football museum (weeeeee.) - I had a tough time with this one. I tried to pretend to care, but there was very little that made sense or resonated with me in that museum. But, I was in Manchester, and I can say I did it. Good enough.
    APRIL 18: Off to Leeds for an undeserved day trip. There is nothing in Leeds. We went to their tiny Cathedral, natural history museum, and leeds culture/history museum. Then we wandered around Trinity Leeds for too many hours (it's their new shopping centre and they seem to be very proud of it). It is lovely, but it's all the shops we've been to many times this past exchange and I need to stop spending money (I haven't figured out how to get everything home yet). Either way, we wasted enough time just walking around, enjoying sunshine (as always, somehow!) before we got on a train home.

It is good to be back in Exeter.