My Life Before Paris...

Sunrise: 7:44! (We rolled the clocks back this weekend)
Vocab: tuer les cochons - to kill the pigs

...is coming to a close. Tomorrow evening I head off for a long weekend in Paris with a few friends and as my second full month in Nantes comes to a close, it's about time for another retrospective. I've devoted a lot of this blog to reflections on the cultural differences I've found in France (and also on all the beautiful places I've seen, bien sûr), but I think all along I've failed to mention my various sources of comfort -- and there are plenty of those.

I've been keeping a little notebook on my person pretty much at all times just in case I need to jot down something I've noticed or add (ajouter) a word to my ever-growing vocabulary list. The other day, I was flipping through it and I found this little paragraph from early on (September 19): "Officially three months left until the end of the program. Sometimes, it seems culture shock has nothing to do with the differences and everything to do with the jarring similarities. When a little French baby touches my shoe, everything seems a bit brighter. There's something magic in French children." And I still mean it. It's almost impossible to explain this to French people because it relates so closely to my position as an outsider, but I cannot get enough of French children. Their high pitched lisping French never ceases to mesmerize and astound me. Yes, I know it's their native language, but I always find it astonishing when a little blond girl who hasn't even broken a meter in height opens her mouth to jabber away, while I still blunder my way through simple declarative sentences. It's comforting though; if they can do it, I can do it, right? And anyway, I've managed to read all of Diderot's Contes, what five-year-old can say that?!

And, hey, being an American in Nantes can sometimes have its perks. I will always resent cashiers who address me in English even when it's clear that I know how to speak French, but when the kebab guy gives me attitude, all I have to do is look across the street. What do I see? McDo. The Golden Arches are a beacon of light, the apex of the American conquest of Gallic lands. Hyperbole aside, there's nothing like a good hamburger (or as we say, 'amburger) every now and again to lift the spirits of a weary soul, and there's one place I can always go where I won't mind being addressed in English. No, it's not McDo. It's Burger House, this tiny burger joint on one of the side streets behind the big cathedral here.

I feel perfectly comfortable calling it a "burger joint" because the owner is an American expatriate who doesn't speak a lick of French. He fell in love with this Frenchwoman and I guess the rest is history. She works the counter to take care of all of his French guests while he mans the grill. The friendly yellow walls sport framed photos of beaches and American cars. The music is a constant stream of classic rock and the menu defiantly proclaims dishes like "Le VRAI Cheeseburger" (the REAL cheeseburger). Picking up on our accents right away, the owner addressed my friends and me while flipping burgers, "Where are you all from?" "All over!" we replied. New York, Ohio, Colorado, Kentucky, Maine. He was impressed and we all felt at home.

Angèle had come with us and I think she was the only one who felt a little out of her element. She doesn't eat burgers that often, and I'm not sure she'd ever had an honest to goodness American burger like the ones at Burger House, and it was funny to see her approach it with curiosity while we dug in with zest. I'm glad I've had her at my side through all this. I was thrilled to bring her to Burger House because, in some ways, I felt like I was bringing her home, like I could welcome her the way she had welcomed me.

She's a peculiar girl, Angèle, and I mean that in every sense. Granted, I'm by no means equipped to generalize about French girls, but it seems to me that Angèle is kind of a special case. First of all, she's a ham. Nothing seems to embarrass her and she will go out of her way to make her friends laugh. She likes to read trippy American poetry from the 1970s by authors that I've never heard of. She seeks out (and has a penchant for finding) the quirkiest corners of Nantes: Trentemoult, "La Maison" (a bar set up like an art deco house), Moustache Poétique (a comedic slam poetry show performed by a trio of mustachioed Parisians).

In fact, Moustache Poétique deserves its own paragraph. Apparently the theatre, TNT, hosts this group annually and they always offer a reduced admission fee to girls who are brave enough to draw on mustaches. Naturally, Angèle was prepared with stage makeup. She met me at the tram and brought me back to her little apartment (where she lives with her brother). After giving me the grand tour and mixing me a drink of diluted mint syrup, she sat me down, whipped out her brushes and said, "Ne souris pas" (don't smile). Of course I cracked up, but after a few minutes, she had managed to paint on the perfect mustache. Then we traded places and I looked her in the eye and intoned, "Ne souris pas." She cracked up, but quickly composed herself, as time was of the essence. As it turned out, we were the only girls who had been brave enough to paint on mustaches. We sat dead center, so when the group came out they saw us and cracked up, too.

After the show, we thanked the group, bought buttons from them, and convinced them to take a photo with us. When we left, instead of rushing home to "shave" (raser) we headed over to Bouffay to meet some of my friends at a bar. We got plenty of stares, but also plenty of compliments -- "Elle va bien, ta moustache!" Prancing down the street, a pair of mustachioed girls, Angèle and I took Friday-night Nantes by storm; I sensed a change in my relationship with the city. "I own this town," I thought.

Soon, Angèle and I will take Normandy by storm. She's invited me out to her family home to tuer les cochons (see above) later in November. It's exactly what it sounds like. We're going to make blood sausage. I'm worried I might be traumatized, but I also know that I've been invited out to "la vraie campagne" (the real countryside), as Angèle says. She will show me yet another piece of French life I never would have found on my own...and that most American tourists probably never get to see! I can assure you an essay of the greatest magnitude will probably develop from this experience.

Following Angèle's example, I've started to discover some of Nantes' quirks on my own. It's a small world in this city and coincidences abound. The night after Moustache Poétique, I started the day by going to an film exhibition called "Popism" at Lieu Unique (the converted LU cookie factory) and rounded out my night at the same place, meeting Angèle at the bar after a concert. While goofing off and generally embarrassing ourselves on the dance floor, we ran into two of the three mustachioed poets and spent a few minutes trying out some outrageous dance moves with them.

And that's just one example. Day to day, I see a lot of the same people. I like that. I'm beginning to understand the rhythm of this town and to march in time. There's this boy who always rides my bus. He can't be more than 16, but he is the absolute portrait of French teen angst. Long black hair, long black coat, horizontal striped shirts. I just want to buy him a big wheel of cheese and a pack of Gauloises to see if maybe he'll smile. I realize the preceding sentence maybe sounds a little creepy, but I promise it isn't. His extreme Frenchness intrigues me; that is all.

Yesterday, my university classes were canceled, so had a slow morning and then took myself out to the Musée Dobrée, which resides in a converted (small) palace. Afterward, I spent some time reading Madame Bovary in the park adjoined to the museum. This is my city now, I think, and I guess it's about time I saw another.

To conclude, two photos from our night with the Grandiloquent Moustache Poésie Club:



Angèle's friend Romain, Angèle, and me with said grandiloquent club.



Me and Angèle, the mustachioed filles

Ticket Stubs

Sunrise: 8:36am
Vocab: la foule - the crowd

This entry, which has a lot to do with art and music, comes in movements.

Stub 1: Opera Graslin

To begin at the beginning, I went to the opera on the sixth of October -- long, long ago. Another introductory remark: I am very grateful to IES for buying tickets and organizing outings to the opera. That being said, the tickets they reserved toyed with my heart in the worst way. I had signed up with a group of friends, but since I kept forgetting to add my name to the list, I ended up getting the last available ticket. I therefore knew we would not be sitting together, but upon arrival, we discovered that we were in completely separate boxes. Now, the idea of a box at the opera was a total thrill to me, so one can only imagine my chagrin when I entered my orchestra level box (!) only to discover half of the stage obscured by the balcony overhang. As it turned out, though, I was among the lucky few who could actually see all the action on stage. I missed a certain amount of the scenery, but I had a clear view of the bottom half of the stage, which was quite enough to see all of the (incredible) period costumes.

While some of my more cultivated friends left the opera house thoroughly nonplussed, I ended the night sleepy but entirely enraptured. We had gone to see Massenet's Manon based on Abbé Prévost's novel Manon Lescaut, which I actually read for a class last semester. And I thought taking a class on 17th and 18th century French would have no external validity! The opera had collapsed the complex plot into a relatively banal story of love lost and regained and ultimately lost again in the throes of consumptive death (do all operas end that way?!), but I got over that the moment the principal soprano opened her mouth. In spite of my poor view, I was totally taken in... and I snuck into the main orchestra seating area to get a better sense of the space, which was everything I had hope to find in our small opera house. While blue is, apparently, not the traditional opera house color and while the painting on the ceiling may not have been as impressive up close, the view from where I was standing transported me.

Feeling classier than ever, I reseated myself for the second act, whose penultimate mise en scene was terrifying and spectacular: a large tarnished mirror stood as the backdrop to a decadent scene of gambling and debauchery in which everyone dressed different shades of red, except for Manon and des Grieux (her lover), who wore black. It felt like hell, but in the best way. To commemorate the auspicious occasion, my friends and I all dressed as secretaries (accidentally) and took a photo on the steps at the end of the night.

Stub 2: Ryanair to Dublin (and AirCoach, too!)

As per the requests of my loving fans, I took a lot of pictures of myself in Dublin, so I'll preface this stub by saying: there are a lot of pictures, so I have made them small for spatial purposes (this is a long entry). Click to enlarge.

My Irish experience started before flight FR1987 even touched down in Dublin. Ryanair, the sketchiest airline in all of Europe, does not assign seats -- which was actually a good thing for me and my traveling companion Angela. Upon boarding the plane, we commenced our search for a pair of seats, and after a few refusals ("My husband is sitting there!") we finally espied pair of seats next to a small man most likely in his early to mid 40s.

"Personne n'est là?" I asked, addressing him in French. He shook his head no and we seated ourselves (nous nous sommes installées), only to discover shortly thereafter that our new companion was Irish, not French as we had originally suspected. After hearing us speak English, his initial attempt at contact constituted a mumbled joke about smoking on the plane. Coincidentally, just moments after his weak attempt at humor, an announcement came over the PA that the crew would be selling cigarettes that passengers could smoke on the plane and, indeed, to our astonishment, the flight attendants began walking up and down the aisles offering us "Smokeless Cigarettes." Our Irish companion was infinitely intrigued, and fueled by the ironic commentary taking place between me and Angela, he exclaimed, "A cigarette without smoke? Why, that's like a beer without alcohol, like a sandwich without..." and he couldn't finish his thought.

Moments later he ordered a beer. While waiting for his drink, our new friend started asking us more questions that we couldn't answer about the Smokeless Cigarettes, and finally stopped another flight attendant: "How do they work?" he asked. "They're just a burst of nicotine for nervous travelers," she replied. "But can you light them?" "I think so, I'm not sure." "How much are they?" "Would you like to buy a pack?" "No, no, I'm just curious." "They're 6 euro." "And how many to a pack?" "Ten, I think. Would you like to buy a pack." "No, no. This is just research. How much are they again?"

A few minutes later, the beer arrived. When given a choice between the two types available on the plane, our companion entered a state of absolute panic for about thirty seconds before saying, "Both! Both! I'll take them both." Our (apparently) tipsy friend finished both beers in the remaining hour of the flight. Toward the end, he invited us to see his band play on Monday, and we regretfully told him that we would be back in Nantes by then. He sighed, "I live in Nantes and I'm from Belfast. I don't know anyone in Dublin. I wish I had someone to invite." The last fifteen minutes of the flight passed in utter silence. After touching down, Angela and I got through immigration without a hitch and parted ways at the buses as she boarded her bus for Belfast and I mine to the heart of Dublin. I found I had to fight the urge to address people in French, which we later determined to be just a sign of my ascent to fluency -- I hope!

Dublin, it seems, is a city of nostalgia. Lynn (my oldest friend in the world) met me at the bus, and we passed the first night (Friday) catching up, and finding my other friends studying in Dublin: Erin (my first roommate at camp), Janna (one of my freshman year suitemates), and Thomas (an old friend from elementary school who moved to Dublin and is now a permanent student at Trinity). An ever growing and shrinking patchwork group, we formed quite the motley crew and tromped all over the entire city. Here is some of what they showed me:

Some very weird layout spacing is about to occur here. But, here are the first two stops from my whirlwind tour of Dublin on Saturday. To the left is the only picture I was allowed to take of the National Museum and to the right is Grafton Street, great for people watching, shopping, and generally pretending to be Irish. NB: The National Museum is chock full o' Irish art and history, including several petrified corpses or "Bog Men" -- relics of an ancient clan recently discovered in (surprise!) an Irish bog.

Above, please find evidence of the various theatrics that take place in Dublin. Also, Leprechauns exist!
















Dublin is the perfect place to be a literature nerd. To the left, I've taken a moment out of my day to read a little Proust at the James Joyce center and to the right I've cracked open my copy of Joyce's Dubliners (which I bought at a fantastic used book store) in front of the James Joyce statue.


























And what would a trip to Dublin be with out some culinary exploration? No? You're not with me on this one? Well, at any rate, to the left you will notice my extreme trepidation before diving into a plate of bangers and mash, but perhaps I'm just overwhelmed by the excitement in the pub mere hours before the start of the Ireland vs. Italy football match. To the right, note my pride after sampling my first "sip" of Guinness.
















Sunday morning, we took yet another turn around the city before my departure, stopping first at Dublin Castle (to the left) and then taking a load off at St. Stephen's Green, which wasn't far from the AirCoach stop. Throughout the weekend, I felt like I was walking on air, not cobblestones and pavement. I was relieved. In Dublin, everyone understood me: the language barrier was basically non-existent, and I passed my time with friends who know me so well that I never have to explain myself to them. It was hard to leave, but there were, nevertheless, things to look forward to in Nantes.

Stub 3: Phoenix à La Carrière

And now we're about back up to date. Phew! Last night, my friend Christiana and I went to see the band Phoenix perform at La Carrière this huge venue out in the suburbs (les banlieues). At this point, Phoenix is pretty well-known in the states, and even though they sing in English, they are, first and foremost, a French indie group. They were on their home turf last night and it was astonishing.

I'd already been to a few smaller concerts around Nantes, and I'd fallen victim to the growing fear that French people never dance at concerts. It was all the more terrifying when, at La Carrière the entire enormous crowd stood stock still throughout the entire opening set. It was Chairlift. While French indie has reached the states, some American indie still clearly has yet to capture French audiences. After Chairlift's lukewarm reception, imagine my surprise at the crowd's roar when Phoenix finally came on -- punctually, might I add. France has no time for rock star theatrics: Chairlift started 10 minutes early and Phoenix came on promptly at 9:30. Swept up in the tidal wave of people, I hardly had to do anything to feel like I was dancing. The tightly packed crowd nudged me into unison with its swaying and jumping.

I'd never had more people ask me if I was British.

Stub 4: Tickets de Repas

Two days a week, I eat lunch at the University Restaurant (Restau-U or RU, pronounced: roo). I've written a fair amount about my frustrations with the atmosphere: the crush of students all trying to squeeze in a meal during the 1 1/2 hours the place is open and the general distaste French students seem to have for anyone they don't know. Well, all that changed last week when I discovered one vital piece of information: not all of the students eating at the RU are French.

On Thursday, I started chatting with two girls in my history class, ERASMUS students from Hungary and Italy. Outgoing and friendly, Lilla and Georgia seemed thrilled to meet other international students, and speaking French with them came easy. It was also more necessary with them than with anyone else since French was our only common language. We walked out to the RU together and while we got separated in the lunch line, we implicitly promised to try to eat lunch together on Thursdays from now on.

On Friday, a group of us inadvertently surrounded a Chinese exchange student. He handled it well though, and seemed relieved to be among chatty Americans.

In closing, I don't disparage the French students: this is their home turf. They have nothing to seek out. Most French students at the University of Nantes came with with other friends of theirs from high school. It's different from the States, where people tend to go their separate ways for college. That said, it's a relief to find a welcoming international community, finally...and to discover that I am a part of it!


TICKET SOON TO BECOME A STUB: TGV to Paris for Toussaint!

Short and Unfulfilling

I have my Art History midterm on Wednesday. Therefore, I have been a delinquent blogger. Coming soon: Dublin, Opera, and International Encounters! Now: why it is okay that the sun rises so late in Nantes (as seen from the kitchen terrace). Pink sky in the morning? Tant pis.

The Month in Review: A Dinner Party

Sunrise: 8:15am
Vocabulary:
canapé - sofa
la classe - classy

It's Monday night and I'm sitting at my computer, when Marie tells me that we've been invited to dinner and that we're going to Ikea. Puzzled as I was, I tossed on my scarf and coat and followed her out. In the lobby, we met her niece and nephew, who had arrived by bike, and headed down to the garage to pile into the car. As we drove to Ikea, two significant and practically simultaneous revelations struck: (1) we would not be eating at Ikea and (2) I needed neither my coat nor my scarf.

It has been just over a month since my arrival in Nantes and the greatly diminished language barrier remains a barrier nevertheless -- although I might attribute the above more to syntax than to my limited knowledge of French. As I tell everyone, it seems, I have my "good French days" and my "bad French days." I've sensed a gradual increase in the number of good days, but sometimes the right words just don't come out. While I've been struggling against my meager vocabulary, though, I've found that I can fake it pretty well -- all it takes is a room full of French people. The more saturated I am in French French, the easier it is for me to speak with an authentic-sounding accent, and I've just about perfected the three words I use most often: "merci," "pardon," and "bonjour." But, I exaggerate (or underexaggerate), I've received a fair number of compliments on my accent from many of the French students I've recently encountered -- although according to Marie and her nephew Arnault, the best compliment of all would be, "You have no accent!" I'm trying.

While the language has, of course, been my main focus and obstacle over the past month, there are other, smaller things, that I'm also still trying to get a handle on. The weather, for example. I wish I could say, definitively, whether or not it is autumn here. Each day commences with decidedly autumnal temperatures, which linger well into the late morning and early afternoon, but ultimately climb to 70 or 75 (in Fahrenheit, of course). Thus, a coat is a highly practical article of clothing when I leave for class, but has become outmoded by the time I'm done with lunch. (I guess that's French fashion for you!) It's humid here, too. The air right now is a sponge and I am not looking forward to the day it gets wrung out. Every time we have a gray or rainy day, Marie jovially remarks that "c'est un vrai temps nantais!" While my body and psyche are both still adjusting to Nantes' peculiar meteorology, I must admit that a crisp, cloudy day in Nantes makes me about as happy as a brisk, sunny day in the states (that is, very happy). Perhaps there's hope for me after all.

We arrived at Ikea around 8:30pm. Everything here closes early. Most buses quit running at around 8:00pm (even on weekends). But Ikea, Ikea stays open until 9pm. We had arrived on a mission: to pick up a sofa for Marie's niece, Alice. While she went off in quest of the desired piece of furniture, Marie, Arnault, and I took a more leisurely turn around the store, pausing to pick up some lightbulbs. On the way out, Marie stopped by the small food section of the store to pick up several boxes of the cookies to which we had lately become addicted. She came back with six boxes of cookies (two of each kind) and a chocolate bar for each of the kids. If I were to come up with a term for this phenomenon it would be "little treats," and it remains unclear whether "little treats" are customary, or just a peculiarity of this French family. In any case, my life seems to be just full of little treats, just little moments of indulgence. While Americans seem to have this decadent, luxurious image of French life, I've found that the secret to the lifestyle here lies in finding the right moment for a little treat.

After a brief drive back into the city, I helped Alice carry her new sofa up three flights of stairs -- or, I should say, a box of pieces that would soon become a sofa. She's a student at the local architecture school and, as is customary here, she lives on her own in a small apartment because there is no such thing as "on-campus housing." On the way out, I helped her carry a gargantuan pile of trash and cardboard boxes out to the dumpsters. The next stop on our driving tour was Marie's house, again, to pick up the bikes and head over to Arnault's house for dinner. We brought some bread and a small dish of eggplant and ham to contribute to the rest of the meal: couscous and steamed vegetables. I was surprised Marie didn't make her usual joke about "eating like they do in Spain," since we started our meal well after 8:00pm.

After the main meal, we moved on to cheese and wine. Alice rinsed out my glass for me, without a second thought, and brought in a hunk of Camembert, which we ate directly out of the wrapper. While it is most elegant to eat cheese plain, with fork and knife, we ate our Camembert on small pieces of bread while sipping a red wine from Bordeaux. Arnault keeps a wine map on a wall by the dinner table (which is in a room that triples as dining room, living room, and bedroom) and showed me the exact region of our wine. He pointed out that if I took a bite of cheese and then sipped the wine, the taste would change completely. And it did! Before my enological revelations, though, they asked me to smell the cheese. "Most French people enjoy the scent of this cheese," said Alice as she held it up to my nose, "except for me." They all seemed floored when I told them I liked the smell, and then cut off a sizable piece for my bread. "But she likes Roquefort," Marie said almost proudly. "She's not like most Americans."

I find it both comforting and off-putting (if that's possible) that the French treat family members' homes practically as their own, both in the liberties they take and the responsibilities they assume. Whenever Marie has relatives over for dinner, she makes sure I get the best place at the table, she offers me every course first, and only asks her family members for help in the kitchen. I think I'm something of a novelty, though, more than just a guest. People constantly ask me if we "have" certain things in the states. The first time we ate eggplant, Marie hadn't expected me to know what it was. Whenever I mention how much I love the bread here, people ask, "But don't you have bread in America?" People also ask me questions about the economy, politics, education, the environment. Even if I'm not an expert, a simple yes or no can often elicit at least one ooh or semi-interested ah.

We closed the evening with tiny cups of decaf coffee and spéculoos cookies (which also come in spreadable form!). After two cookies (which taste like Teddy Grahams, but look much classier), I drank the rest of my coffee black -- again, to oohs and ahs. I had never drunk black coffee before, but I think it may become a habit. As much as I continue to find myself lost in the cultural differences here, I already feel myself changing, adopting new ways of going about my life -- adapting maybe, but also changing for good.

Last Saturday, my friend Emily and I met up with my maraine Angèle and her friend Anaïs for a voyage to Trentemoult, a small island just a ten minute ferry ride from Nantes (and pulled straight from my imagination). I invite you to spend the day in our shoes this way. (For reasons that remain unclear, this album is password protected. Get in by typing: iheartchucks.)

NB: After rereading this, I have surmised that as my French improves, my grasp of English becomes increasingly tenuous. There are just so many misplaced modifiers. Please forgive me.

Full to Bursting

Sunrise: 8:07am
Vocab: je m'en fiche - I don't care

So much has happened to me in the past week that I may have trouble cramming all of it in here. In true lit major fashion, though, I believe I can narrate this quite well in a stream of consciousness where time has collapsed entirely. I'm pleased to announce the return of photos!

Marie actually took this first photo; it's of me and Jules Verne, if you can't tell. As per usual, we spent this past Sunday seeing the sights around Nantes. This time we took advantage of the Balade des Ateliers. Atelier is the French word for "studio" and a balade is a little walk. So, to put that together, the Balade des Ateliers is kind of like a local artist scavenger hunt. (Okay, maybe it's not quite as rip-roarin' exciting as a scavenger hunt, but for some reason, a lot of what I do in France seems kind of like a scavenger hunt...but that's not a motif I plan to develop at this moment.) There's kind of a course of different sites around the city where local (and less local) artists have set up shop to display (and hopefully sell) some of their most recent work. We didn't have time for all of it, but we got through a couple stations, and at the last one we went to, I saw some of the best watercolors I think I have ever seen. I was actually considering buying one, in spite of the >300 Euro price tag, but in the end, it didn't seem prudent. I've also chosen to highlight this photo because it depicts a friendly interaction between me and a Nantais kid. No, really, it's not a stretch (tiré par les cheveux).

Last night, there was a party à la fac, a kind of mixer for international students and local students. Pretty much everyone there had also registered for a filleul(e)/marraine ou parrain. Here's the basic idea: the international students wore yellow wristbands and the local students wore blue, and once tagged, we were all supposed to mingle and ultimately link up in a blue-yellow pair. Whoever you ended up paring up with is your buddy for your stay in Nantes. My marraine (I'm the filleule) is named Angèle: she bought me a beer with strawberry syrup in it (kind of weird, I'd consider drinking it again, though) and introduced me to some of her friends. CONTACT! AT LAST! I don't know too much about her yet, but she's studying English (and she plays the ukulele!), so we really are a perfect match, I think. She also seems to genuinely want to pursue a friendship and we're going out for drinks tomorrow night.

Since I started this entry in medias res and have now fully exhausted the most recent events in my life, I will backtrack a bit in time to last weekend. On Thursday, a group from IES played some billiards and went to a crêperie for dinner. In the spirit of "full to bursting," I should mention that between all the gallettes and sweet crêpes I've been eating, I'm definitely getting a little squishy around the edges. I'm hoping salsa class starts to get aerobic, and today I actually considered doing some clandestine pilates in my room from time to time. Meanwhile, so many French ladies are just as skinny as can be. I. do. not. understand. In any case, when this waiter asked me what I wanted for dessert, how could I say, "nothing?" (As you can see, he's a very insistent-looking man.) Oh, and did I mention how good I am at pool?


















As you can see, I'm toying with the photo layout a bit, also, I wanted to save space for the photos that are really worth keeping big. In other words, the photos from Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. The French Romantic author Chateaubriand, incidentally, is from the walled city/town of Saint Malo. (Yesterday, I read René for my Literary History class. I will be reading approximately 500 novels for that class.) I won't say too much because I think these photos pretty much speak for themselves. Briefly: Mont Saint Michel is an isthmus (a word I just recently learned) off the coast of the border between Brittany and Normandy. Surrounded by clay and perilous quicksand (!?) at low tide, Mont Saint Michel is, at first, a series of narrow, sloping cobble-stone streets full of these seemingly ubiquitous touristy storefronts stuck inside ancient hovels. Eventually, the path gives way to the abbey. I present these photos in chronological order so you can get a sense of the ethos of the place, so you can come along on my journey, and so I won't have to work too hard to describe everything I saw and felt.


It was love at first sight(ing).


Mortal peril!




A view on the way up. (So many views!)


Entry! At last!


A view from the top that actually made me want to take photos in sepia.

And now, we enter the abbey...













I feel bad for Saint Malo, since the Mont is a pretty tough act to follow. Here are two Saint Malo photos anyway:


Walkin' the ramparts.





And by two, I clearly meant three.