Catch up: Holidays, holidays, holidays!

I know, I know, I haven’t updated in a long time. But I have a legitimate excuse this time!

So, just before I went on holiday to Florida (literally less than 24 hours before) by computer’s power cable broke so computer went ‘bye bye’. But it’s all fixed now with a shiny new power cord.

Anyway, so I went to Florida. I flew all the way there all by myself! Flew out with Air France from Charles de Gaulle airport. We left on time and had a long but uneventful flight to Atlanta, Georgia. Unfortunately my parents were delayed at Heathrow…by snow. In April. The one and only time England ever gets snow and it happens to be the day my parents are flying. So they were delayed by two hours and missed their connecting flight. Which meant we all had to stay in a hotel overnight; me in Florida (having made my connection and gotten through US immigration with no problems and even a friendly immigration officer!) and my parents in Chicago. I stayed in the hotel in Orlando airport…unfortunately a Hyatt and costing $200 for one night!!! But it was very nice and my parents paid me back…after having to spend a whole $65 on their hotel, breakfast included *seethe*.

Luckily, I had food in my luggage so didn’t have to pay extortionate breakfast prices, but I did have to while away two hours in Orlando airport. My parents landed at 3 and we finally met up and started our holiday!

As usual, our Floridian holiday involved heat, sunshine and Disney! We did Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood Studios and on the Universal side we did Universal Studios, Islands of Adventure and Seaworld. Plus plenty of shopping and eating lots of American food. Me and mummy did all the ‘scary’ rides for the first time (i.e. Kraken, Hulk, FearFall etc etc) for the first time. Great fun and a fitting end to what is probably our last family holiday in the States.

When I got back to France, I had a little over a week and a half ‘til I went away again! This time I was off to Austria with Dana. We took a plane from Orly Sud on Thursday night (1^st May) and landed at Vienna at 10. Took a coach to the station and then a train from Vienna to Hallstatt, our final destination. Unfortunately, our train had a change at 2 in the morning so we found an open train that was likely to be ours in the morning and slept for 3 hours…Then the train moved, we panicked and jumped off and then got back on 10 mins later when other people started getting on! On the train to Hallstatt, I was out like a light until we got to the station (well, a platform on a single track...) Now, Hallstatt is a teeny tiny village on the edge of a lake, nestled in the mountains and the only way to get there is by boat, which goes to meet each arriving train. And here is a pretty pool up in the mountains:

And here's Dana with the biggest swan I have ever seen!

Arriving in Hallstatt, we looked around a bit until we could dump our bags in the Hotel and then headed to the Tourism Office. After finding out about what to do, we headed for what we had already planned: the Salt Mine tour. It’s just about the only thing to do in Hallstatt, but it is pretty fun. Mostly because it has two super fun slides within the mine! I have a wonderful photo of me on it…

After our tour we stumbled back down the mountain and took the funicular back down the incredibly steep incline…

Starving, we found lunch in a cute café in the main square and I had the best soup I’ve ever had and Apfel Strudel for dessert! Yum! We then toured the town, visiting both the Catholic and Protestant churches and found the happiest cat in the world:

Within the grounds of the Catholic Church is the town cemetery, which has the most beautiful graves I’ve ever seen, both in terms of upkeep and their gorgeous headstones.

Unfortunately, because the cemetery is so small, every so often they run out of space…so they dig up the bones, clean them up, paint the skulls and put them in the ‘bone chapel’. Still undecided whether this is gruesome and creepy, or a novel and beautiful way of honouring the dead…

And by this point we were exhausted, having had very little sleep so we checked in and slept for 4 hours with the dulcet tones of CNN in the background, this being the only channel in English!

Dinner was takeout pizza while watching awful American reality TV such as ‘A shot at love with Tila Tequila’…yeah… And then sleep again J

Breakfast was the usual German fare, i.e. muesli, fruit, and bread with various meats…in other words, weird.

After breakfast we commenced our hike. Up and down, through the mountains…for three hours! Exhausting, but we saw several waterfalls, some beautiful pools, and awesome views of the forests and mountains.

Finally we hired a small motorboat around the lake before we had to take the boat back for the train. We got back to Vienna after an hour long delay on the train. Luckily we were on our own in a compartment and could stretch out and chill. Apparently in Austria no one cares about feet on the seats! Dinner was MacDonald’s in Vienna and we got to the airport at about 11.30. Our flight was not until 6.40…! So we settled down for a long night on the cold hard floor. I actually managed to get some sleep! And then slept for the entire plane journey too. And for most of Sunday when we got back! Even after having had ice cream for breakfast at quick!

Two days after we got back from Austria we (Dana and I) headed off to Nice! We took a night train on Tuesday night and got to Nice at 8 in the morning. Again, I slept reasonably well, but clearly not enough as you will see later. Took the tram to the hostel, well, to a tram stop where we were picked up by the owners as the hostel is on the top of a ridiculously steep hill that is not fun without bags, so thank goodness for a shuttle van. Obviously too early to check in, but they gave us breakfast and we dumped our bags before heading off to explore Nice.

First we went to the market in the old town and bought some absolutely delicious strawberries which we promptly ate on the beach. We walked along the Promenade des Anglais and then up Castle Hill (of course the lift was broken…!) where we chilled, and I fell asleep in the sun!

Did some more exploration and some shopping and found ‘Dana’s’ Indian restaurant (where she and her friends ate when she was there two years ago) but it was closed, so we went to see the Russian Cathedral.

Apparently Nice once had a large Russian population who clearly wanted their own place of worship, and constructed a beautiful cathedral.

Headed back to the restaurant at 6 thinking it would be open, but it wasn’t until 7 and we were too tired and hungry to wait so we decided to eat at the hostel. Checked in there and settled into our room and showered. Ordered pizza for dinner and then endured 3 hours of our roommates getting ready to go out while we just wanted to sleep! Unfortunately Villa Saint Exupery is very much a ‘party’ hostel. Very nice, and friendly etc but also noisy.

Second day we visited Antibes and sat on the beach! And we ate in the Indian restaurant with one of our less noisy roommates who we happened to bump into on the tram. It was possibly one of the best Indians I have ever had and came with free alcohol. Not complaining.

Third day was a day trip to Menton, on the border of Italy. We drove through, and got stuck in, Monaco who was about to hold their historic Grand Prix. Menton is very pretty but not a lot going on. We did have a nice lunch in ‘La Coupole’ of Spaghetti Bolognaise and Sangria with some complimentary limoncello to finish. Yum!

Fourth day we went to Eze and climbed up to the jardin exotique. We bought both lunch and dinner and made our own to save money.

Day five was another beach day. We went to Cap d’Ail (the Garlic Cape(!)) and walked down to plage Mala which was very small and not crowded. Later on we had an amazing crepe back in Nice and then dinner at the hostel. Later we went back to the station to get our night train back to Paris, and so our holiday was over.

I’m now into my final two weeks, and just starting to do all the things I should have done months ago! Like observe classes at school which is fun and informative. Go to some of Joanne’s adult classes and meet adults etc etc I feel excited as I want to go home and also get out of my apartment which is now ant infested, but has one less spider. But I also feel sad since I don’t want to stop teaching and leave the kids. They seem pretty sad I’m leaving too, so I feel like I mean something to them, so that’s quite nice.

Basically, I have had a super year, but I do feel like I could have done more to meet people and speak French and generally practice my language skills. But I’ve definitely improved, and I’m happier and more confident, so it’s been totally worthwhile J Just wish I could stay another year. But then again, hopefully in two years time I will have my own class and can be doing all this for real! And I’ve achieved my goal of wanting to speak French, at least semi fluently. It’s definitely in the forefront of my brain which helps my speech and my comprehension. I just have to retain it. Lots of practice next year!

This will probably be the last update, although I may check in again later. For now I hope this has been a fun, if short blog to read and much love to everyone who is reading this,

Nielle xxx