Paris & Other News!
The past two weeks has been packed with sickness, friends, travel, and lots of things in Dutch. I will start with the more mundane topics before I talk about my trip to Paris. The week before last I was feeling pretty sick, very achey and tired with a small fever. This was not great timing because I had my oral final exam, but luckily that only lasted 10 minutes and was pretty much all I had to do for school that week. The exam went pretty well even though we had a week off from class beforehand making we forget many important details; but none the less I ended up with 90.5/100 in level 1! On Monday I started level 2, it is with the same teacher and most of the same people which makes for a nice atmosphere.
In visa news, Simon and I were finally able to go yesterday to sign the piece of paper from the police saying we are legally living together! It is definitely a step in the right direction, but there still a long wait ahead of us. Tomorrow we have an appointment to start the process of getting a national residency number and card and hopefully get an extension on my tourist visa. Simon's dad is coming with us, so hopefully he can help us ask the right questions and make some things happen.
In other news, Simon bought a car this weekend! He has been looking for a long time now and was having trouble deciding between buying a practical car or his dream car (VW bus!). In the end the practical car won, but I have no doubts that one day he will be a proud owner of a bus. I have no idea what type of car it is, all I know is that it is black, has four doors, and no air conditioning. It is not in Gent yet, but once it is I will be sure to post some pictures. Having a car will definitely make life easier for when we need to go to his parents house, when Simon needs to get to soccer games, buying groceries, and taking more trips! Our bikes will still be our main mode of transportation but now we won't have to rely on the train so much which will be very nice.
And now for Taylor's visit! She landed in Belgium last Saturday, and came for a great week weather wise. It was pretty warm and sunny everywhere we went except for the last day it rained a bit, but we were pretty exhausted at that point so it didn't matter much. The first day she was here we wandered around Gent for most of the day, filling her with as much coffee as possible because she was jet lagged and we had a big concert/festival/party thing to go to that night. Strangely enough Gent is home to the largest techno festival in Europe and taylor happen to come on that day so we just had to go! Simon has gone a few years in a row with his friends, so even though taylor and I knew no one who was playing we figured when in Rome! It turned out to be very fun but very tiring, probably not the smartest thing to do on her first night in Belgium, but too late now. Sunday was filled with lots of sleeping with a small window of eating and walking around Gent some more. Monday morning, Taylor and I hopped on a train to Paris! On the Thalys it only takes two hours to get to Paris from Gent. We were staying in another Airbnb which was only a few stops away from Paris Nord and was very easy to find. I believe we were staying around the theater district, off of subway line 4 at the Strasbourg-Saint-Denis stop if that means anything to those of you who are familiar with Paris. It was a nice location, very easy to take the metro and not a bad walk to many sites!
The nice part about this trip to Paris was that we had both been before, we there was no pressure to rush to see Mona or climbed the Eiffel Tower. We of course still wanted to see many of the sites, but we were also very happy with just strolling around the small streets and discovering places neither of us had seen before. The first place we went to was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery. Taylor is a very big fan of The doors and I am always down with a nice daytime walk through a graveyard. The cemetery itself is beautiful and huge, lucky they had a map of where all the important people were buried. After we snapped a quick pic with Jim we moved over to the Eiffel Tower. We were still feeling pretty tired from our techno experience, so all we really wanted to do was get some cheese, bread, and wine and sit in front of the Eiffel Tower for a few hours. Again we were really lucky with the weather, when I was in Paris this time last year it was definitely not warm enough to be sitting outside for a long period of time.
On Tuesday we made our way up to the Montmarte area. We visited the Sacré-Cœur, which was breath taking. From there we wandered around until we found ourselves in front of the Moulin Rouge. I did not get to go to Montmarte last time I was in Paris, and even though it is a bit touristy I thought it was very charming. From there we took the metro to the Arc de Triomphe. We decided to go to the top since we did not climbed the Eiffel Tower, and man do you get a spectacular view. After that we walked down the Champs Elysees gawking at all the fancy thing we can not afford to buy. That evening, we had gotten some suggestions of a few hip bars to go to from a friend of Taylor's sister...or so we thought. We picked one off her list which was the hotel bar the the Bristol Hotel. Now let me just say, we should have realized what we were getting into by the Chanel and Balenciaga stores that were surrounding the hotel, but we thought this girl is around our age she must know what she is talking about! Wrong we were. We walked into by far the fanciest hotel I have ever been to and found the peacock lounge which looked like somewhere Marie Antoinette would have lounged. We were pretty much the only ones in bar, so feeling very awkward we sat down and decided we would have one drink. Needless to say that drink cost 26 euros each, and mine had popcorn in it! Trying not to embarrass ourselves too much we left as quickly as possible. Not exactly the hip Paris night we had in mind, but at least it makes a good story!
We had most of Wednesday to wander around Paris before our train at 6:30 back to Gent. We walked down past the Pomidou center, which I have always wanted to see in person. It really is a strange building to see in the middle of Paris but for some reason I don't hate it. From there we just walked along the river to the Notre Dame, then to the Louvre and the lock bridge where I found Siena's lock that I had put there last year! I was very surprised I was able to find especially because as I am sure you have heard the bridge itself is collapsing from the weight of all the locks so they have had to remove quite a few. It turned into sort of a long day carrying around our heavy backpacks, so we were happy once we finally arrived back in Gent.
The last two days of Taylor's visit were filled with lots of eating and drinking and walking. It was really nice to have someone to do things with around town or go to a new restaurant or coffee place that I have been wanting to try. But in the end there is still so much that I did not have time to show Taylor so she will just have to come back!
Ok I am sure I am forgetting many important things to tell you all, but my little fingers are getting tired and I am sure your drinks are either cold or gone by now. So I will leave you with the photos I took the past few weeks and a hyperlapse video I took on a boat ride in Amsterdam that I forgot to upload in my last post!
*Just a disclaimer, the drinks that look like shots below are not! They are a Belgian and Dutch drink called Jenever! It is a type of liquor that they distill and then add different flavors to. There are hundreds of different flavors, we tried apple, melon, cranberry, cactus, and chocolate! Also you are supposed to sip them not shoot them!
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