toulon

I arrived in Toulon last night by the TGV, my favorite form of transport thus far.  But I wanted to recap a little bit about the rest of my time in Paris so I'm going to back up a bit.

There are a gazillion parks in Paris, so on Monday I made a park tour of all the parks I could in one day.  I walked all day in the 9th, 10th and 11th arrondisements to see the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, Parc de Belleville, Buttes Chaumont and finally the Jardin de Luxembourg.  Pere Lachaise is one of the oldest cemeteries in France, and its absolutely packed in there.  there are graves upon graves, jam packed along little cobble stone paths.  To be honest it was kind of creepy, because it was all cloudy and it had just rained, and the occasional crow cawed at me as I walked alone through this huge city of ancient graves.  I saw Jim Morrison's grave, which is the one everyone asks about when you say "I went to Pere Lachaise," but whatever.  It wasn't large or impressive, in fact it wasn't even in a spot where you could see his name very clearly.  I still don't know why he's there in fact...  Parc de Belleville: not much to look at.  Buttes Chaumont though was pretty cool, it's got this central park feel to it with all the trees and big lake that Napoleon I had constructed around a huge central rock that you can walk up to.  There's a great view of La Defense, the business sector, from up there.  Jardin de Luxembourg was absolutely beautiful.  By that time I was really tired of walking around, but the sun had come out and there were so many beautiful statues of all the queens of France, beginning somewhere around 500 AD.  I sat and watched some old guys play pétanque, a game in which two or four players try to get the closest to a marker ball thrown at the beginning of a round.  I'm sure some of you have played something like it, sometimes its called boule.  But these guys were pros.  They knew it too, because they would make all these sarcastic comments to each other about a certain throw or placement, and I only caught a little bit of their banter.  I think they enjoyed the fact that so many tourists stop by to watch, because one guy was a real clown, and I could tell the other guys were getting annoyed with his antics.  Charles (my cousin) told me afterwards that the Jardin de Luxembourg used to be a place for art exhibits in the past, and they still had a small one there with all these cool Chopin posters from Poland.  There was this really cute girl wandering through the exhibit, and I tried to think of some French to say to her for small talk.  The best I came up with was, "This one is my favorite" when she walked by.  She stopped and smiled at me and said she was from Poland, so she had seen a lot of posters like these ones.  "Oh, really, you're from Poland?  That's cool..."  And then I said goodbye.  Fail.  Apparently I'm not very good at talking to girls in another language yet.

Originally when I was planning out my flight to France I wanted to make sure I was here for their Fourth of July, Bastille Day, which was the 14th of July.  I'm so glad I didn't miss it.  The 13th I went out with Charles and some of his engineering school friends to a bar that was like an American saloon, with Bud Light on tap.  yeehaw.  After that I rushed off to join this new Parisien friend Tibaul (Maxime's cousin) at the Champs de Mars which is right beneath the Eiffel Tower.  There were a bunch of kids around our age sitting around drinking and eating; very cool.  He told me, "Ok, now we're going to use your accent to meet some people," so I asked some girls for a bottle opener for our wine bottle.  They just handed it to us, and asked very dryly where I was from in English, implying that they spoke english very well, thank you, and expressed no interest in talking.  But there were some drunk dudes singing so we stopped and talked with them for a little bit.  Afterwards we went to another party where Tibaul's sister was and I talked with some people about American sports.  Success of a night.

The 14 Juillet is somewhat different than the 4th of July.  There's a big parade with all the different armed forces, all marching very properly, and it's much more focused on the military than your average fourth of july.  It poured down rain during the parade, so I was glad I decided to watch it from Charles' living room.  No barbecues, but that evening we had a picnic with Charles' friends on some grass by the Seine near the Eiffel Tower to watch some really cool fireworks.  We ate all this fantastic french food and drank good beer and wine; I tried pâte for the first time.  Its really salty.  That night was the perfect way to finish my Paris trip.  By the way, the French know how to have a firework show.  Having seen my fair share of fireworks at Angel Stadium and Disneyland, I was still impressed by the display.  I don't think I'll forget this moment, watching the fireworks with my two french cousins on a bridge over the Seine, with all the cars behind us, stopped by people staring up at the sky.

So that brings me to Toulon, where I was greeted by my French family members Sylvain, Alain and of course Melissa.  Alain and Sylvain showed me a quick tour of Toulon at sunset, which is a beautiful mediterranean city situated in a harbor.  No waves, but still absolutely beautiful.  Aunt Melissa has been feeding me since I arrived, and I'm realizing how great it is to have family here.  I couldn't have done this trip without them.  I'm not sure what I'll do for the next few days, but I'm kind of glad to be out of Paris.  The city was a bit overwhelming with all its hustle-and-bustle on the metro and in the streets, I don't know if I could live there for very long.  It's so nice to have some open space finally.  The cigales have been croaking (? I asked sylvain what the word was for the sound they make but he didn't have one, it's like a cicada)  all morning.  Melissa is already calling me to lunch, I guess I'm going to eat a lot here.  I'm fine with that.