Paris Quirks

Found this in my drafts as well. Might as well post it!

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I have decided to compile a list of things about Paris that people who have not been to/lived in Paris probably wouldn't know about it. I'm going to try my best, since some of these things have actually become normal for me now.

• They have pink toilet paper! As well as blue and orange, and ones printed with math equations and stamped with women in ballgowns. No joke. My washroom is always stocked with the pink though.
• Jay walking is second nature to people. Pedestrians rarely pay attention to the crossing signs; as long as there are no oncoming cars, people will cross the street.
• Drivers are crazy. The way Parisians drive is ridiculous. Some cars run red lights, some are just in the middle of the road when it is the opposite side of traffic's turn to drive, and people are able to manoeuvre through small narrow roads... All I know is that I would never be able to drive in Paris (especially since I don't know how to drive manual cars).
• Some toilets do not have seats. I guess these are what people call squat toilets? They are by no means a hole in the ground, but they are just uncomfortable as you can't sit down properly or else you'll fall into the toilet.
• Many people beg on the train/metro. People get on the train, asking for money or restaurant tickets, usually by placing a piece of printed paper with a small explanation of why they need money. I always feel bad when I see people begging, but sometimes I wonder how they managed to find a printer and type up and print what they wanted to say. There are also people who hop on the metro or train and start playing their accordion, in hopes that you will enjoy their music and give them money afterwards.
• Admission to museums and some tourist attractions are free on the first Sunday of every month. For example, the Louvre, Musée D'Orsay, the towers of Notre Dame, and admission to the top of the Arc de Triomphe.
• You do not need to tip. Tip and tax are included in the price of the meal, so you do not have to pay any extra to what the price listed on the menu is.
• There are washrooms where you must pay to use them. This includes the "luxury washrooms" in Printemps and Galeries Lafeyette (where you can choose your own toilet paper), and the outdoor washroom stations scattered throughout the city.
• They do not have proper milk. All the milk I have tried have either been half-creme, or just taste plain disgusting, even though they are supposed to be skim milk. They also have milk that just sits on the shelf, unrefrigerated.
• Eggs are not refrigerated in the grocery store. I guess this goes hand in hand with the milk? Not sure why they do this.
• Bread is never served with butter. Never have I ever had butter with my bread at any restaurant in Paris. If you ask for it, they'll just laugh at you or just tell you no.
• People walk around carrying baguettes. This is one stereotype that is actually true. People pick up baguettes from the boulangerie and just carry them around with the top part of it exposed to the world. Sometimes you'll see people carrying two or more.

Those are all I can think of for now, I'll keep adding as I think of more!

Everyday life

It is currently February 2, 2014 as I am writing this, but I was fixing up this travel blog because the formatting had gotten all messed up when I discovered this post in my drafts. I can't believe I never published this, so here I am, a full year after my exchange has ended, pressing 'publish'. I've decided that I should complete the rest of the blog posts I had originally planned to write as well. It's definitely something I'll appreciate 10 years down the road when I want to look back and reminisce on my exchange days. Plus, it'll be a fun way to relive my travels and see what I remember, a year later.

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I've noticed that all my posts have been about places I have travelled, and I haven't really posted about my daily life in Paris! It's just that most of the time when I am in Paris and not travelling, I am at school. School takes up so many hours of the day, I am usually exhausted by the time I get home. So I guess this post will be dedicated to touching on a few things that have happened in the past 1.5 months that I've been here.

First of all, I've had the opportunity to meet so many different people from all over the world. To name a few, I have met people from the Netherlands, Brazil, Indonesia, Ireland, Mexico, Belgium, Hungary, and of course people from France. It's really cool to hear about their countries (in their accents) and what is different over there, compared to Canada and France.

A while back, we also spent some time with all the international students on a boat cruise on the Seine River. After, we chilled at the Eiffel Tower while drinking wine. We also saw a couple taking photos in wedding attire, and we even got a photo with them! That is not something you get to do everyday.

We also had a shopping weekend where we went to La Vallee Village, BHV (a department store), and Rue de Rivoli. We didn't end up finding anythinggg at La Vallee Village, but since it was close to Disneyland Paris, we got a quick glimpse of what we were going to experience when we go on Christmas Day (SO EXCITED, PS). On Rue de Rivoli, we found a shoe store named Viviane which had cute shoes for really cheap! I bought a pair of flats for only 15 euro. Also did I mention the store's name was VIVIANE? French Vivian strikes again!

Once a week, we have Team Canada family dinners. (Cute, right?) Each person is responsible for bringing an item so that we have an appetizer, main course, dessert, and wine. Our most recent one was for Thanksgiving, since we obviously had to celebrate it although we weren't with our friends/family back home. We couldn't get turkeys so we had to make do with chickens. There was salad, sweet mashed potatoes, stuffing, zucchini, apple pie, and wine... All the makings of a great Thanksgiving dinner!

The other day, I was fortunate enough to meet up with an old friend from high school, who is currently on a semester abroad in Germany. He came to visit Paris with a few of his friends, and we had dinner at the Latin Quarter. It was so good to see a familiar face from back home, and catch up since we had not seen each other for 3 years!

I can't believe that I've been in Paris for so long already! Only 2.5 more months left, eep!

Reality

I realized I did not finish blogging about the rest of my trip (Italy, Amsterdam, London, Morocco, Switzerland), I am the worst. I may or may not get to it eventually... one day (I still have my blog notes!).

If you'd like to read about my life now back in Canada, feel free to visit

vi-vie-an.blogspot.com

It's a lifestyle blog where I talk about my foodie adventures in Toronto, exciting places I go to, and my life adventures in general! :)

The Amazing Race: Greece - Part 2 (Athens)

Our flight to Athens from Santorini was definitely the shortest flight I've ever been on... 25 minutes! We landed pretty late, at 9:00pm (or 21:00 as it is called over here), so we found our way to our hotel, and grabbed gyros for dinner.

We only had a short time in Athens, so this is really where our Amazing Race began. Karen originally had this idea to climb Philopappou Hill in the morning to watch the sunrise, but when we woke up, it was really dark out and we were too scared to walk by ourselves. Our hotel concierge had told us that although the Hill was a great attraction during the day, it was filled with thieves and overall bad people at night.

We decided to skip that, and head to the 2004 Athens Olympic stadium instead. Of course we couldn't end up finding it, and since we were short on time, we decided to scrap that idea as well, and just make our way over to Acropolis. On our way there, we stumbled across Hadrian's Arch, and the Temple of Zeus.

Hadrian's Arch

Temple of Zeus

We got into the Parthenon for free since we had our EU student cards, and made our way up the steps to the top. There were a ridiculous amount of stray dogs there! They were like the equivalent of squirrels in Ontario. I didn't mind it too much since I love dogs, but Karen was just not having it (she hates them). We saw a photographer taking epic shots of a group of guys. We pretended that they were a famous boyband. (They probably aren't.)

A dog just chillin in the middle of the road

At this point, we had not really started exploring the Acropolis yet, yet we were already an hour behind schedule, and were supposed to be at the airport in 35 minutes. Needless to say, we rushed through everything. It was literally "Oh wow that's soo pretty!" *take photo* *run to next monument*

Odeon of Herodes Atticus

The Parthenon

By the time we finished, the Acropolis had filled up with crowds of people. We were so lucky there weren't as many people around when we were running about, otherwise things would've been even harder. We found ourselves the nearest metro station, and waited for the next metro. In the 3 minutes we sat there, we contemplated whether taking the metro would be faster (approx 45 mins), or whether we should just find a cab. At this point, it was already 20 minutes until gate closing, yet we were still nowhere near the airport. We opted for the latter, and ran out to hail a cab. We ended up finding a taxi driver who was seriously a lifesaver. Although it was rush hour, he managed to get us onto the highway, and then started driving 150 on a 70 road. His driving was so crazy, weaving in and out of lanes but I was grateful that he understood our need for speed. However, by this time I had already given up and accepted the fact that we were not going to get onto that plane. There was no way. He managed to get us to the airport 15 minutes before the flight was schedule to depart, so we gave him a huge tip, hopped out of the car, and literally began running through the airport to get to security/our gate. I'm pretty sure I almost knocked down a woman but I only had time to shout "Sorry!" and continued sprinting through the airport. When we got to security, the lines weren't too long, but of course with my bad luck, I got both my body and bag searched. Just typical, right? We then ran to our gate, which of course was at the opposite end of the building. 

Somehow, by some miracle, we actually made our plane. There was a woman at the gate before us, trying to board. Thank goodness for this woman! Had she not been there, our flight could very well have just left. We were sweating buckets and out of breath, but we got onto the plane and found ourselves seats as we tried to regain our composure.

Overall, I'm going to say Athens didn't really live up to my expectations. Maybe I'm just ignorant, but I had not expected it to be so... urbanized. I was expecting more Greek columns and old buildings, but aside from the Acropolis, there wasn't much of that. We also didn't get to explore the Plaka markets which was something I was looking forward to. Maybe this just calls for another trip to Athens, one where I have more time, so that I can better explore the city and give it another chance.

When we got back to Paris, since we had flown into Orly airport, we decided to stop by Ladurée and have tea.

The Amazing Race: Greece - Part 1 (Santorini)

Let me first say this post is LONG overdue. It has been a month and a half since I went to Greece (Oct 20-22), yet I'm only finally putting up a blog post now. I have been doing so much travelling that I haven't had time to catch up on all this. I was even behind on putting up albums on Facebook, and usually I am on my A-game when it comes to that! However, I figured I better catch up on all my posts before I fly back to Canada, so without further ado...

Greece was easily one of my most anticipated trips-- Santorini, to be specific... and it did not disappoint. Let me just say though, this whole trip was also one that involved a lot of running, especially through airports. Getting to the airport from our apartment was a hassle in itself. When we got into the taxi, the meter was already at 20 euros (Note: this is common in France, they tend to include the cost of the meter when the taxi leaves the stand until it gets to your location). This did not sit well with us. We tried arguing with the taxi driver, in french no less, since we did not want to pay the extra 20€ we had never incurred before. Long story short, after a series of unfortunate events, we did end up paying him the 60 something euros, and had to run through the airport to catch our flight. 

Our first stop was Santorini, which is absolutely breathtaking. It is definitely one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to. When we first got there, our hotel was closed for a 3 hour break, so we just went off on our own to explore Firostefani, which was where we were staying. The place was pretty deserted with many of the little shops closed, which we later found out was because tourist season had ended the weekend before. Part of me liked the fact that we were one of the few handfuls of people on the island... It just made it that much more peaceful and "our own". We then decided to grab lunch at the only restaurant that was really open.

Santorini Salad

Greek salad

Honey covered jelly dessert

After lunch, we went to explore some more and snap some photos. We ended up meeting this little Japanese woman who asked us to help her take a photo, and who we literally saw everywhere after that. She couldn't really speak English so the whole time she was just speaking Japanese to us as if we understood the language, with the exception of the occasional "shutter, shutter" to tell us to take a picture.

Our new Japanese friend! (She did the peace sign in every photo)

We then began our cliffside walk to Oia to watch the sunset. On the way there, an old man and his dog approached me and began to mutter a few Greek words at me. I politely told him I didn't speak Greek, and that was when I realized that both his dog and he had blue paint all over themselves. The man began to touch my face and say something else I couldn't comprehend. I backed away from him, towards the wall, when suddenly I saw him lift his cane and before I knew what was happening, he was hitting me on the head with it. I was completely in shock, and could not believe what had just happened. Karen was next to me, just as in shock. Luckily, a group of French travellers came up around the bend and had saw what happened, and proceeded to shout at the man to stop, and told us to "Allez-y" (to run away). Karen and I just ran for it, and the man's dog began to follow us. We were so scared the dog would attack us, but the next time we turned around, it was gone. "What the hell was that. Did that really just happen?" was all I could say, over and over. Even now, I still can't believe I got hit on the head with a cane by a crazed man in Greece. Who does that?! 

After that terrible incident, we continued with our journey to Oia. We hopped onto the bus that would take us there, but the sun had already begun setting. The bus had to stop occasionally to let cars coming from the other side pass, as the roads in Santorini were so small and narrow that two cars couldn't pass at the same time. Eventually we made it to Oia, where we ran to find the best spot to catch the rest of the sunset. It was a race against the sun! (Haha, lame I know) We managed to get there in time, as the sun cast a pinkish orange glow onto the section of buildings we were standing on. A sunset in Oia is definitely a must do; it's one of the most beautiful sunsets you will ever see. 

Running down any path that would take us to the sea

Two stray dogs bullying a cat who decided to hide behind the segways

After the sun set, it was completely dark. There are few lights in Santorini, so we found a restaurant where we grabbed a gyro plate and wine to go, and hopped onto our bus back to Firostefani. We made our way through the dark roads until we got back to our hotel, where we checked in, and proceeded to have dinner and watch the Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (it was only fitting!) on our terrace which overlooked the sea. The view from the terrace was unbelievable, you could see the illuminated houses and buildings on the coast of Fira, and thousands of stars if you looked up into the sky. 

The next day, we woke up nice and early to watch the sunrise. It was completely freezing out, but we stood outside for a good 40 minutes waiting for/watching the sun rise. It was so pretty! 

We then headed back to our hotel to have breakfast on our terrace, where the view was, again, amazing. After breakfast, we walked to Fira and took the cable car down to the port, where we boarded the boat cruise we had bought tickets for the previous day. 

Our pirate ship

Our first stop was Nea Kameni, a volcanic island which was mainly dormant with the exception of one volcano. We had not expected the hike to be so rocky and steep, so we were really struggling with walking with our sandals, and backpacks on our back. To be honest, the whole volcano just reminded me of a landfill. We did make it to the top though, because we are troopers like that. 

Casual hairflip on a volcano..

Our next stop was a hot spring, where the water in that particular spot was approximately 23°C. We had not brought our bathing suits so we stayed onboard the ship and lounged around. 

You can call me.. El capitan

When we got back to the port, it began to rain. It seems like rain just follows us wherever we go... Typical. To get back up to Fira, we did one of our most anticipated things for this trip.... We rode a donkey. The donkeys had to climb up 594 steps, and at a few points during the journey I really thought I was going to fall off mine. My donkey kept slipping on the steps since they were still a little wet from the rain. Donkey themselves are pretty dirty creatures. There were flies and poop everywhere, the donkey in front of me kept passing gas, and my donkey even stopped on the steps to poop at one point. However all of these things did not stop my donkey ride from being one of the best parts of my trip. Even though it was just 15-20 minutes, it was super fun and now I cannottt wait for the camel trek I will be going on during my trip to Morocco (2 hours on a camel? Hellsyes!)

Once we got back into Fira, we perused through some souvenir shops and bought each other Evil Eye bracelets as a souvenir (Note: You are not supposed to buy these bracelets for yourself as that is bad luck. Always buy them for someone else, or if you really want one, get a friend to buy it for you). The woman who worked as the cashier was eating something that looked really delicious so we asked her what is was. She told us it was from her sister's restaurant just down the street, and told us that if we were to eat there, to find her sister and tell her that she had sent us there. We ended up going to this restaurant, which was called "The Greeks", and we got a 10% discount for being "friends" of her sister. 

The dish we ordered that wasn't on the menu

Greek froyo!

After lunch, we headed to Santos Winery where we did a wine tasting. We each had 6 wines which were all delicious (with the exception of one of the reds... I still have not grown to like red yet!).

We started with 2 whites, 1 rosé, 1 red, another white, & ended with a Vinsanto dessert wine

We then headed to the airport for our next flight to our next stop, Athens! Santorini is definitely one of my favourite places; I will definitely be back!