16: Queima das Fitas

I'm finally back with a much more upbeat blog post (because God knows we all need to be more positive nowadays).


Queima das Fitas, or "The Burning of the Ribbons," is the biggest student celebration in Europe... and it happens right in my little city of Coimbra, Portugal.  As I'm sure I've mentioned before, Coimbra is Portugal's first and oldest university and it has quite a few very old traditions.  Queima isn't a tradition that stretches back to the university's founding in the 13th century but it is at least one hundred years old and celebrates the senior's (or finalistas) graduation and the burning of their school ribbons as a symbol of such commencement.  The 8-day celebration (a day for each department at the University) starts on the Friday of May with a midnight Serenata in the wee small hours of the morning.  From then on it is complete madness in the city: mayhem, drunkenness, debauchery, and all that follows.  I sincerely doubt several of my friends here would remember the week if they didn't have incriminating photos to help them piece together the events of each day. :)

Tacos for Cinco de Mayo!

 The Thursday before Queima was actually Cinco de Mayo, so with the Midnight Serenata that night it felt as though the two party traditions of my heritages were coming together for a truly epic night.  After a "Mexican dinner" (thanks to an overpriced El Paso taco kit), Tatiana, Amy and I joined forces with Barbara and Ashleigh, split a bottle of wine, and headed to the Midnight Serenata.

Fadistas singing on the steps of Sé Velha

The square was packed at 11 PM, though we weren't surprised in the slightest.  Students in full Coimbra uniform had been waiting since the afternoon on the steps of Sé Velha, and Amy had seen them receive a pizza from a delivery boy sometime around 3 PM.  We stopped and bought individual half-bottles of Barbara and Ashleigh's favorite Portuguese wine, Mateus.  I've decided that I have family connections to this winery.

Mateus wine for everyone!

After dodging far too many drunk Coimbra students (the guys were very excited to see us and the girls glared as if their looks could kill), we found a pocket were a few recognizable Erasmus faces were stationed and enjoyed the concert when it began at, you guessed it, midnight.  We weren't sure exactly how long the concert was going to be, but with the help of Mateus we ended up enjoying the somber fado celebration quite a lot.  After stopping back at our apartment, Tatiana and I headed back out at 2 AM for the first real Queima das Fitas festivities: a party underneath the Quimica (Chemistry) and Física (Physics) departments.  The rest of the night got a little crazy... all I will tell you is that I met Tatiana back at the apartment at 6:30 AM and enjoyed delicious grilled cheeses before falling asleep and definitely missing my 9 AM class the next morning.

The Gates of Heaven.

The Stage

Ashleigh and THE CANDY

Friday night marked the first night of the "Noites do Parque," which took place across the river in a huge area.  Each night there was a giant concert, where the opening act usually began around midnight and the headliner graced the stage around 1 or 2 AM.  The first night featured The Editors as the headliner, and while they were great we didn't stay at the concert the entire time.   The facility was huge: near the stage was a giant complex for food, souvenirs, and beer.  Behind the food were three enormous tents, each with its own DJ blasting dance music.  And of course, port-a-potties and public urinals tucked out of sight.  That night Amy, myself, Barbara, and Ashleigh got giant bags of candy.  There were people all over the place handing out random things for free, and we ended up with pink balloons and condoms whose wrappers called attention to human trafficking.  We also bought delicious sangria from a booth sponsored by Bigorna, a favorite bar close to our apartment.

A shining beacon in the night.

The next day I went to visit my family with Amy, but I'll talk about my adventures with my family both that Saturday and this past weekend in my next blog.  When we returned, Tatiana and I headed out to the Noites do Parque again, where we watched Brazilian musicans Marcelinho da Lua and Marcelo D2, who were both fantastic and high-energy.

Concert-goers.

The next day was what most would call the highlight of Queima das Fitas: o Cortejo.  O Cortejo is a huge parade where students from all of the different departments create giant floats that traditionally feature some sort of political, social, or cultural satire about contemporary Portugal.  From these floats, each the color representing the department (yellow for Medicine, dark blue for Humanities, red for Law, etc), students already drenched in beer, liquor, water, and juice pour these things from the sides into other student's open mouths or drop cans and bottles into their waiting hands.  The parade starts at the Old University, continues down the hill, turns around Praça de Republica, and continues through the city.  We practically traced its path, as we saw many of the floats waiting up at the university.  There the students first got drenched by their friends and colleagues, who poured and sprayed whole cans on one another.

Classy.

While we were no stranger to the Coimbra University uniform, this was the first day that we saw the finalistas decked out in their dress uniform: sans cape, both the boys and girls had black jackets with lapels covered in colored satin (the color depended on your department) with a flower for emphasis button on their chest.  They also had colored top hats and colored walking sticks.  It is tradition to hit each senior's top hat three times (and hard!) with the walking stick (for good luck?), so most of the students had huge dents in the top front of their hats.  I was pretty jealous of their uniforms, though not so much of the hat abuse.

I didn't have any good up-close pictures myself.  How great are these uniforms though?

We walked down the Escadas Monumentais and met up with Ashleigh and Barbara to watch the parade in motion.  Absolute chaos.  If I had a Euro for the amount of times I watched someone fall down in the street right in front of me, I would be rich.  Everyone was drenched in alcohol, completely drunk, and dancing through the streets.  And this wasn't just students!  Young people (and quite a lot of older people too!) from all over the world were on the street, dancing in the parade or dodging the sprays of beer on the side lines.  As the floats passed, students tossed cans of beer to the people below.  Every once and while they would also throw bags of chips or homemade sandwiches.  One float passed by handing out little pieces of cake.  Don't worry, I fought the people at the base of that particular float and got two.  Of course I did get sprayed while trying to get a can of beer, but the mood of the entire parade was infectious and I didn't mind at all.  Unfortunately my camera got a little sticky and the zoom button still sticks a little bit, but otherwise I had a fantastic time.

Before the mayhem.

This float gave us cake.

 

Sprayed with beer. Super Bock!

Pouring vodka right into students' mouths

That night we headed to the Noites do Parque once again and saw Quim Barreiros in concert.  I'll insert a video of Quim Barreiros for you below so you can comprehend why we were at first astonished that he was headlining and then had the greatest time ever dancing to his songs.

Quim Barreiros and his accordion!

Once the weekend was over, we were a little partied out and didn't return to the Noites do Parque until Wednesday night.  Each night, though, we could hear the concerts from our apartment and, later, the music of parties going on in the different student houses around us and the bars near Sé Velha.  But attendance at the Noites do Parque on Wednesday was completely necessary: Yolanda Be Cool, who are behind one of my favorite songs of all time "We No Speak Americano" (the song I used in my Queima das Fitas video) where playing and I was determined to worship them in person.

Having too much of a good time.

In all, this week was absolutely insane.  To give you an idea of the amount of people here in Coimbra and the amount of drunkness that they carried with them, it has been reported that more beer is drank during these eight days of Quiema das Fitas than during Oktoberfest.  I really hope I can return again while I'm still young and experience this celebration again!  Later, when my video finally uploads, I'll post a link to my video about Queima das Fitas on here. 

But for now I will leave you with this, a recent vocabulary discovery I found that I don't think is entirely by accident and may be completely inspired by the Queima das Fitas festivities:

Licenciado, -a graduate

Licenciar to graduate

Licenciatura degree

Licencioso licentious

Hmm. Coincidence?  I think not.

12: Sintra: the Palace Tour

I'm going to start this blog on a bit of a somber note and talk about the current politics of this tiny little country.  Simply, Portugal seems to have a quality of changelessness about it.  No matter what is happening in the country or around the world, every day here is just like every other.  Several people have asked me recently, "How is Portugal dealing with their current economic crisis?" and its a little painful to tell them that they don't seem to care very much about it at all.  There are just as many people out taking two-hour coffee breaks.  There are just as many people in shops and grocery stores milling about.  The student life hasn't changed a bit: more parties, less studying.  There was even a university-wide strike to complain about the government cutting university scholarships.  It almost seems as if the people here don't really care to understand the situation or how it can be changed.  It reminds me of a film my Portuguese class watched back at Brown about the Carnation Revolution here, when Portugal finally rid themselves of the longest dictatorship in European history.  In that film there was a particular moment when the reporter was interviewing a woman about the changes.  But she didn't seem excited at all.  She said something along the lines of, "So we don't have a dictator now.  Who cares?  Nothing is going to change.  I'm still going to be poor, whatever government we have."  Has that mentality affected all of Portugal?  This sense of "Eh, what can you do?"  Maybe its just me missing Brown, but I would think that on a college campus there would be more outward feeling about such an issue than this passive acceptance.  If you are unaware of the situation, here's a quick intro article.  It's not the best, but the language on my Google has officially turned to Portuguese and it is rather difficult to find much in English after a quick search.

On a much lighter note, I managed to leave these contemporary metaphorical ruins for some much older ruins this weekend.  Sintra, very close to Lisbon, was the choice vacation spot of the rich and royal back in the times of Portuguese monarchy and now might just have the greatest percentage of palaces and castles per square kilometer (I may have made up this statistic but it very well could be accurate).  We've been wanting to travel down to Sintra since the beginning of the semester, when Helder, a friend of Tatiana's father, offered his vacation apartment to us.  And since housing is usually the second biggest expense of a trip (after food... at least for us college students), we jumped at the chance to have a cheap weekend trip. 

We took the train down on Friday afternoon to Lisbon, where Mario (a wonderful man who, with Tatiana's father, acted as our tour guides and program directors when we first arrived in Portugal) and his son Ricardo, a young engineer who was working on his post-graduate, picked us up.  I was delighted to see Mario again and so grateful that, once again, he was helping us tremendously.  We ate dinner at his house and then his son Ricardo drove us to Helder's apartment in Sintra, about 20 minutes away.

Helder's Apartment.  Lucky guy.

The apartment was incredible.  Maybe I had become a little too used to our apartment, with the ants, the flaking paint, and the shower that never ceases to make some sort of trouble, but this place seemed like paradise.  Wide-open spaces, comfortable bedrooms, a television, and three different bathrooms.  There were even tubs.  It was like we died and went to heaven... until we realized the hot water didn't work.  A little discouraged, we made plans with Ricardo for sight-seeing the next day.  It turned out that he was going to be our unofficial tour guide throughout Sintra, which was at first a little unexpected and strange but ended up being so incredibly helpful since Helder's place did not seem to have any easy transportation to Sintra proper.  The lack of hot water and, unfortunately, the worst reaction to lactose I have ever had in my life (Mario had made some sort of bacalhau/potato/cheese dish for dinner), made our first night a little less than perfect.  That seemed to be a theme for the rest of the trip: everything was wonderful except for one very small but hugely noticeable thing.

Tiles decorating the outside of the Palácio de Pena

The next morning Ricardo picked us up and brought us to Palácio de Pena, a 19th century fantasy castle.  It truly looked like it came out out of some zany Disney movie: yellow and pink towers, curvy lines, and much too much coziness for a "palace."  It was built by D. Fernando, the German-born husband of Queen Maria II, who built this residence out of jealousy of a nearby nobleman's home.  He actually was a huge patron of the arts and is known as "O Rei-Arista," or the Artist-King. 

Disneyland?

Posing, as usual.

I absolutely loved it, despite the fact that weather.com had predicted a 79°F day when in fact it was much colder, much cloudier, and much windier than that.  Unfortunately we couldn't take pictures of the interior (and even watched some tourists get booted out for doing so), so I can't show you the amazing little rooms where the king and queen lived.  The residency part of the palace was originally a monastary, so the rooms are very small and short.  Of course, the architect managed to dress them up spectacularly though.  The queen's bedroom was breathtaking.  I think I drove my friends crazy with the amount of times I whispered, "I want to live here!"

The fantastical trees in the park.

After this particular sight, we walked through the surrounding park, which was absolutely beautiful.  We hiked a little ways to "O Trono da Rainha," or the Queen's Throne, which was Queen Maria II's favorite belvedere (I've been using this word too much lately... I guess that happens when you travel excessively) and now has a cute little tiled seat where you can sit and look at the palace in the distance.  I took far too many pictures of trees (as usual) and flowers.  In the park there was a little row of man-made ponds, one with a real-life black swan that was terrifying and a duck shelter in the shape of a medieval tower.  It would not be the first time I would be reminded of Lord of the Rings that day.

Terrifyingly territorial black swan

The medieval duck shelter in the background.

After we left the park, we walked down to the entrance to the ruins of the Moorish Castle (Castelo Mouros).  This was far older than the Palácio de Pena of course, but apparently much of the ruins present were reconstructed by a Portuguese king who read far too much romantic literature.  One site, the ruins of an old church, included at the bottom: "Reconstructed into romantic ruins."

Steps at the Moorish Castle

The actual castle ruins were great, despite this apparent reconstruction (I'm certainly not one to complain about romanticism).  Rick Steves referred to these ruins as "the castle-lover's dream," and as I'm definitely a pretty avid castle-lover, I can say that this description is pretty true.  I'm sad to tell you that I definitely nerded out and started describing to Amy how the castle was more like Helm's Deep than Minas Tirith... I'm sure she appreciated all the detail.  At one point Ricardo demonstrated for us how the archers would shoot from the guarded tower tops (like I didn't know... ha!) and I almost compared him to Legolas in the Mines of Moria but... I was able to hold back on that one. Some things never change. 

Four flags leading you to the to

I loved climbing the steps to the different towers though, despite the fact that I was in a skirt and sandals and definitely had to watch my step and mind my balance more than once.  Each tower had a different type of flag waving in the very violent wind, which I figured were the flags of Portugal through the ages.  Definitely a very awesome site.

After the Moorish Castle, Ricardo took us into the town where we had lunch and he ordered special pastries native to Sintra called "travesseiros."  Unfortunately I ate mine too fast to take my own picture.

View from Cabo das Rocas

Having a Titanic moment

All castled out, we then proceeded to Cabo das Rocas, the western-most point in Europe, where the sun finally came out and we goofed around a bit.  They even sell certificates saying that you have officially stood on that particular western cliff in a little shop there, but I was satisfied enough with my photographic evidence.

We also stopped by A Boca do Inferno (the Mouth of Hell), which is simply a (famous?) rock structure on the coast.  The water was super violent there, though the place was covered in fishermen.  I still doubt that they had much success.

After this, Ricardo took us back to Mario's, where we had dinner with him and his daughter, son-in-law, and his 3-year-old granddaughter Maria, who was the cutest little girl ever.  We even got to practice some "bebê" Portuguese as she told us via coloring book pages about The Little Mermaid and the "bruxa feia" Ursula.  Adorable beyond words.  Dinner was again delicious, though I had to refuse the home-made cheesecake that Mario pulled out afterward... I don't know what kind of milk and cheese that man uses, but I certainly didn't want another episode.  Ricardo drove us back to Helder's place, where we watched "In Her Shoes" (the first time in a while that I've watched a movie or TV program on an actual television) and went to bed.

Outside the Palácio de Mafra

The King's Bedroom

The next day, Sunday morning, we finally had hot water!  We had a bit of a later start than the day before, as we had to wash all the sheets and towels we had used that weekend.  Ricardo picked us up again and brought us to the Palácio de Mafra, which was breath-taking.  Though the Palácio de Querluz is the one nicknamed the "Portuguese Versailles," Mafra definitely came close.  The architectural style was very similar, the rooms were massive and tall, and the rooms were gorgeous.  The palace had a full-size cathedral in the center, and the tour inside took us through a museum of the building's time as a religious infirmary, convent, and royal residence.  I loved this museum as well because it included little stories about the rooms as you went.  The Queen's Bedroom, for instance, was where Manuel II, the 21-year-old and last king of Portugal, spent the night before fleeing to Brazil during the Republican Revolution. My favorite room, of course, was the amazing library.  It might be the most beautiful library I've ever seen in my life.  Only the second time I've ever thought of "Beauty and the Beast" in regard to a library... the first time was the Joanine Library here in Coimbra. :)

I guess the royal family enjoyed hunting...

THE LIBRARY

Balcony in the Library where Belle taught the Beast to read.

Seriously, Beauty and the Beast, right?

After the Palácio de Mafra, it was time to depart back to Coimbra.  We stopped back at Helder's place and folded the sheets and towels we had cleaned that morning, then we hopped over to Mario's apartment.  Mario and Ricardo drove us to the train station, where we said goodbye and quickly hopped on the next train.  All in all, a fantastic weekend.  I mean, how could it not be fantastic after three castles?  Sintra definitely made a good impression.

9: Carnaval Holiday: Lisbon, Terror, and Paris

If any of you reading this have been bored by my recounting of classes and grocery shopping, this blog post is definitely for you.  Just be prepared for a pretty long account.

Ora and Portuguese food: Arroz de Marisco

This weekend was Carnaval in Portugal, but since we had both Monday and Tuesday off from class, my friends and I decided to forgo the Portuguese celebrations and travel farther out into Europe.  While we planned on meeting in beautiful Paris on Sunday night, the weekend separated all of us: Dan and Amy met Amy’s boyfriend James in London; Tatiana flew off to visit her boyfriend in a town outside of Paris… and I went to Lisbon with the wonderful Ora Star, who came to visit me during her spring vacation!  

It was amazing and surreal to have someone from home here, which is so different from Rhode Island and Maryland.  Ora arrived Friday evening.  I met her at the train station, forced her on a death march up the many hills of Coimbra to my apartment, and then we spent the night getting dinner and wandering around Universidade Velha and the riverside.  We passed out early to the melodious sounds of the latest Jersey Shore episode, and then woke up early that morning to catch the train to Lisbon.  

A Brasileira, where famous Portuguese writers and thinkers would meet and eat

Hanging with A Brasileira regular Fernando Pessoa

SATURDAY

Entrance of Sao Jorge Castle

Alex, Ora, and Lisbon

Our train arrived much earlier than we thought it would, so we called our hostel from the train station and they said that we could drop off our bags before official check-in at 3 PM.  We bought cheap day-passes for Lisbon public transportation (if anyone ever comes to Lisbon, this is the VivaViagem card is the greatest thing in the world) and did the first of three walking tours listed in my Rick Steves book (Rick Steves is the greatest tour guide of all time).  We went through the Bairro Alto and Chiado neighborhoods, which I remembered from my 2008 visit with my family, and ended up near the famous A Brasileira restaurant and a huge shopping center where Ora found her favorite part of Portugal: a Sephora and Starbucks right next to one another.  We hopped back to the hostel to check in after that, then walked through the Alfama neighborhood, which started at one of my favorite parts of Lisbon, São Jorge Castle.  We didn’t go in, as it cost too much money and we were both on a serious budget, but we ended up hanging out around the outer wall and surveying the shops around the area.  We also got free porto, or Port wine, though it wasn’t the most enjoyable experience.  I couldn’t tell if I just don’t have a taste for the strong liquor or it was just terrible, free Port.  I’m hoping it’s the latter or else I am failing at being truly Portuguese.  

Praca do Comercio and the Arc de Triumph

We walked around the Baixa neighborhood, which is definitely the most metropolitan area of Lisbon.  It has the most history anyway, with giant plazas like the Praça do Comércio with its Arch of Triumph, and all the new architecture that replaced the destroyed buildings after the 1755 Earthquake/Tsunami/Fire (Portuguese people have the worst luck).  There Ora also tasted her first small cup of ginjinha (which, though I sang his praises earlier, Rick Steves has wrong: You don’t say “sem/com elas” if you want fruit.  You just say “sem/com frutas.”  Nice and simple.  None of those messy prepositions.)  While I think she definitely enjoyed it more than the porto, I don’t think Ora will be buying a bottle anytime soon.

Pasteis de nata and galao

After that walking, we waited for the bus and went to Belém, which is kind of a separate district of Lisbon.  We got there pretty late, so it was rather dark and had started to rain, but we walked over to the Monument of the Discoveries and stood outside of the Monastery de Jerónimos.  We also went over to my mom’s favorite place in Portugal, a Casa Pasteis de Belém, who claim to have invented pasteis de nata (which I’ve mentioned in this blog before).  We ate two there and got two to go for the next day.  

SUNDAY

The next morning we went to the Gulbenkian, which was just as amazing the second time.  I absolutely love that museum, especially when I think about how every single beautiful thing in there was owned by one singular man.  It is all a thank-you from Calouste Gulbenkian, an Armenian oil tycoon who found refuge in Portugal during the Second World War.  He willed his amazing art collection to the country after he died to thank them for harboring him and his family.  Must see when you come to Portugal (because you should).

After the museum, we shot over to the train station to buy tickets to Porto, from which I was flying to Paris that night and Ora was flying to Madrid the next afternoon.  We ate delicious Chinese food at a huge mall-like complex near the station before riding the train.  In Porto, we tried to find the hostel where Ora would spend the night, but the hostel owner’s heavily accented English was more confusing than helpful and Ora ended up taking a cab while I got back on the metro and rode to the airport.

Despite causing a little bit of drama getting on the plane because I didn’t go to the check out desk (as I thought that, as it is in the US, one does not need to check in if they have already done so online… but this is Europe.  I keep forgetting), I boarded the plane just fine and turned off my phone in preparation for the flight.  Amy and Dan had flown from London to Paris that afternoon and were taking in the views from the Eiffel Tower as I was boarding.  That news would be the last I heard from them for about 12 hours.

We landed in Beauvais that night, and unaware that anything was about to go horribly wrong, I retrieved my phone and turned it on to text my friends that I had landed and would see them in a little over an hour.  However, when my phone turned on, it suddenly asked for a pin number.  I had no recollection of any such pin number, and after plugging in all the numbers I could think of and all the numbers I could find printed on and inside the phone, the SIM card blocked the phone and all information I had on it.  I had no way to look at my texts, which included the metro stop where my hostel was located, or my contacts, where Dan and Amy’s numbers were listed.  Walking to the shuttle which brought Beauvais fliers into the city, I decided that I would drive in, figure out the metro, and find my friends.  I allowed myself to get a bit hysterical on the shuttle, but when we pulled into the Middle of Nowhere, Paris, France, it was time to act.

By the time I arrived in the city of Paris, it was about 11:30 PM.  I’ve never been a particularly street smart individual, so how I managed to find the metro, figure out the machines which were stubbornly only in French, read the metro stop, and make a transfer to the metro stop I remembered from earlier, are all completely beyond me.  But at 1 AM, I exited the Voltaire stop and realized that, unless our room was directly overlooking the metro stop, I would never find them.  I wandered the empty plaza for a few minutes and then gave up.  

This might be the point where you might think, “Dear God, this 20-year-old girl is walking around a city at one in the morning, suitcase and travel book in hand and absolutely not phone or knowledge of the French language to speak off.  This is going to turn into a real-life version of Taken.”  However, I wasn’t completely lost.  The week before I had contacted Hayley, a Brown student I had only met once before at a party.  Her family were the hosts, and my godfather and his family were one of the many guests.  They had invited me along, and while Hayley and I had never seen each other before on campus,  we traded information about our study abroad plans.  I remembered she was in Paris while planning the trip with Amy and had sent her an email, and her response, which included helpful phrases, amazing sites, valuable advice… and her phone number, had been printed and put in a folder with the rest of my travel documents.  I went into a restaurant that was still open (that would have never been an option in Coimbra) and, through the miracle of universal hand signals, managed to borrow one of the waiter’s cell phones and call her.  By the grace of God, she picked up and immediately gave me the address of her friend’s house, where she was staying that night.  I took a cab and met them there, sent a mass-message on Facebook to everyone in my Portuguese program in an effort to somehow let Dan and Amy know that I was alive, and passed out on a wonderful make-shift bed.

MONDAY

Post-drama: In front of Notre Dame

The next morning, after not one response to my Facebook message, Hayley and I tried to figure out how to get in touch with Dan and Amy, who had no Internet access.  I realized that I had a small notebook in my purse in which I had written my landlord’s phone number and his son’s email address.  After sending an email to his son, Hayley graciously put credit on her Skype account and allowed me to call my landlord.  He and his son sent me Tatiana’s number, who I also called on Skype, and who answered the phone hysterically.  Dan and Amy had been texting and calling her all night just in case she had heard from me.  The theories ranged from plane crash to kidnapping, but after I assured her that I was completely fine, she was able to contact Dan and Amy and coordinate for us to meet in front of Notre Dame that morning. Hayley brought me there herself and waited with me.  I could not be more grateful to her and her friend Sarah.  They are truly the nicest people of all time.

Saint-Chapelle

The Pantheon

After that, the excitement of the day moved from anxious terror to excited amazement.  With luggage in hand, Dan, Amy, and I took copious amounts of photos of Notre Dame, Sainte-Chapelle (one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen), Place St. Michel, the Sorbonne, and the Pantheon (what I deemed to be France’s secular attempt at a Westminister Abbey type establishment, with their history painted beautifully across the walls and a crypt where many famous French thinkers, writers, politicians, and scientists are buried).   

The Sacre-Coeur

Coming out of the Pantheon, we met up with Tatiana and her boyfriend Laurent, both of whom were in the city for the day, and then parted ways again to go see the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur, which was amazingly beautiful and had such a good view.  Despite Dan almost punching a street vendor who tried to scam us, it was a perfect place to watch the sun set and take artsy photos of the Eiffel Tower in the distance.  After the sun went down, we went to the Champs-Élysées and had dinner at the classiest McDonalds I have ever been inside.  Afterwards we returned to the hostel and fell asleep to French-dubbed “Gone in 60 Seconds” And “Top Chef.”

Hamming it up on the Champ-Elysees

TUESDAY

The main Entrance to Versailles

The next morning we woke with the dawn (or 7:30 AM) in order to get to Versailles when it opened at 9 AM.  This was the biggest, most necessary thing I wanted to do during this trip, so even through the exhaustion I was completely elated.  Arriving in the town of Versailles was fantastic, and then turning the block and seeing the main entrance to the palace was breath-taking.  I can’t say that I have no words for the interior, because I have millions of words: amazing, wonderful, enchanting, incredible, beautiful, stunning… The list goes on and on. 

In the Hall of Mirrors

I often hear people comparing Western art, style, and culture to that of the East and using the “exotic” aspects of the latter to make it seem better and more sensual to the European way of life.  After living, studying, and visiting Europe, all that seems absolutely ridiculous.  European cathedrals are just as dramatic and gorgeous as Indian palaces and Asian temples.  Go to Versailles and Paris, go to Lisbon and Coimbra, and tell me that those places aren’t exquisitely beautiful, graceful, sensual, and magnificent.  If your views are still plagued by the legacy of European imperialism, you need to study history a little bit better.  Versailles was everything I could have wanted it to be, and the audio tour was comprehensive and wonderful (I especially loved the specific voices that would only read whenever they were sharing a specific quote from a specific French king or dauphin).  Despite the multitude of tourists, even that early in the morning, this was definitely the highlight of my trip.  I even loved the Japanese school girls taking jumping photo after jumping photo, their fingers making “V” For “Versailles”… that’s what I’ve decided, anyway. :)

The Travelers, reunited.

The gardens outside of the palace, while rather dead due to the time of the year, were amazing all on their own.  The amount of land there is incredible, and the gardens stretch out (it seems) forever.  A tourist can actually rent a bike to tour the gardens alone.  After failing to convince my friends to eat at a Tex-Mex restaurant, we ate sandwiches in the town and then headed back to Paris.  We again whirled around the city, visiting the Rodin gardens, the Army Museum, and the Orsay, which was sadly closed by the time we got there.   

Rodin Gardens

The exterior of the Army Museum

Awkward with the Sarcophagus of Napoleon

Rhino statue outside of the Orsay

After dinner at “Ming Dynasty,” which served sushi, we took a boat cruise on the Seine and took pictures of buildings like the Louvre, Notre Dame, and the Eiffel Tower at night.  It was absolutely beautiful.  After the boat tour we stomped around until we found a creperie.  Then it was back to the hostel and back to bed, because the next morning we actually did wake up with the dawn.

Customary with Eiffel Tower shot

WEDNESDAY

Checked out at 5:30.  Took the metro to the shuttle at Port Maillot.  We left there at 6:30 and got to Beauvais at 7:30.  We weren’t able to check in until 8 AM and didn’t find out our gate until almost 9:30, but soon we were in Porto.  We rode the metro then to the Campanha bus stop, had lunch in a nearby café (where we remembered how wonderfully cheap and broke Portugal is), and then left Porto for Coimbra at 12:52 PM.  We got back to our favorite Portuguese city just in time for Dan and I to run to Portuguese History at 2 PM.

All in all, I’d say a very good, busy, exciting, adventurous weekend.