Areas of France, including Paris then Barcelona, Spain!

This past week I traveled to various areas in France as a class trip and then went on to Barcelona, Spain for the Thanksgiving Holiday! It was quite a whirlwind as my trip began last Friday and I just got back today (Sunday). The France trip was for my European Tourist Encounters base course trip in which we applied what we have learned to our travels. This one was particularly interesting because it directly applied to our traveling. For this trip, we traveled all day on Friday and ended in a very small French town just outside of Normandy. There, we only had a time to eat dinner and have locals pretty much just stare at us as tourists were extremely rare there apparently. We woke early the next morning to go to the Normandy beaches. This began at Pont du Hoc, in which we saw the cliffs and the former German bunkers. I found this area very interesting, particularly because I read up on it beforehand. From there, we went to Omaha beach. To be honest, I wasn't sure how much I would learn from simply visiting the beach. After reading about the invasion and visiting the Normandy museum, I felt a much greater interest in seeing the beach in which this great historical event occurred. Seeing the beaches really brought home the intensity of such an invasion, particularly to us Americans who have seen few, if any, WWI or WWII battlefields. It was even more meaningful after learning so much about the politics behind these wars in my Poly Sci class here. I really felt I realized the importance of the invasion and our part in WWII. My classmates and I talked a lot about how actually being in Normandy really influenced our perceptions.
We spent much of the afternoon there, leaving around 5 for Mont St. Michel. We arrived at our hotel in the city's outskirt around 8, just in time for a late dinner.
The next morning we traveled (by bus!) to the actual Mont St. Michel. The actual Mont St. Michel is this city that is literally an island and used to only be reachable by foot at low tide. This served as a protection for the city, which is largely built around its abbey. Now, however, it is reachable by car (or bus in our case) due to a man made bridge-type thing. It is very strange to come upon the city in this way as you really feel you are in the middle of some large body of water. I felt I was to be swept up in the current at any moment. Also, because of it's "sea-side" location, it is incredibly windy and rainy. Once we arrived at the base of the city, we had a major uphill walk to the abbey as it was at the top of the city. We were rather overwhelmed by the grandeur of this church, as it is pretty much a labyrinth of rooms and chapels. It was originally a large monastery as well as a church.
We tried exploring the city after seeing the abbey, but soon realized that the city is mostly restaurants and souvenir shops. My friends and I tried a "gaufre complet" which is the specialty of Mont St. Michel. Essentially, it's a crepe filled with cheese, egg and ham (I gave that part to my friends). I found it rather good but with a slightly strange texture.
From there, we traveled on to Paris! We arrived in Paris around 7 and found our hotel in the Montmartre area of the city of Paris. After a quick dinner of pizza and salad (yes, I know we were in Paris and should have gotten a real Parisian meal, but we are hungry, cheap college kids), we traveled to Saint-Coeur, the highest point geographically in all of Paris. From there, we saw the entire city and a beautiful church. Also, because of some anniversary, the Eiffel Tower lights up in sparkles every hour for about 5 minutes!
The next morning, we woke to see the Louvre! I must say, before my Art History class here, I would have been less than thrilled to spend the morning in a huge art museum. Now, however, I couldn't wait! I was so excited to see so many of the Renaissance paintings that I'd studied much of the semester! I saw many of these, as well as learned a lot about the building and history of the Louvre! Following that, we had lunch in the Latin Quarter and went to the Opera Garnier house. No, we did not actually see an opera but we did see the beautiful auditorium! After that, we were supposed to go to the Pompidou center but were unable to as its workers are on strike. We thus decided to go to the Paris Christmas market and rode its awesome ferris wheel. The ferris wheel was both really cool and really scary. It was cool as we could see so much of Paris on it; it was uncool because our door operator guy forgot to let us off after going around it like 10 times!! After finally getting off the ferris wheel, we ventured through the market. We ate nutella crepes and drank hot chocolate, not the most traditional Christmas food but we thought it was a fine dinner! After our adventures there, we went to the Eiffel Tower. As it was pouring and extremely windy, the tower and surrounding areas were pretty much empty. This, my friends and I thought, was perfect and we went to the top anyways!! We got to the top rather quickly (thankfully!) and saw the ridiculously large city at its finest: night time! Because the Eiffel Tower is so tall, the very top of it was actually swaying! This, surprisingly, only scared me when I went to the open-air part. I really enjoyed the view and just the idea that I was at the top of the Eiffel Tower! We spent about 30 minutes up there and then went back to our hotel after an extremely long day.
The next day was spent at Versailles, which was mostly a blur of artwork, architecture and just ridiculous opulence. After our tiring day the day before, my friends and I decided to just have dinner and relax at night.
The next morning, we went on a walking tour of the city as a class and then were free to leave for each of our Thanksgiving holiday trips. I was the only one in my class going to Barcelona and thus traveled all by myself from Paris to Barcelona! This was actually quite scary as I was flying, but I felt rather proud of myself for navigating the airports with my rather minimal foreign language skills. I arrived in Barcelona around 4 and finally found my hostal at like 7:30. Needless to say, I felt less proud of myself as I got rather lost in the city.
That night, my friends and I ate a very late dinner by American standards (like midnight) as they all got in late. This, we learned, was the exactly right time for dinner by Spanish standards! We woke up the next day to the realization that we were in Spain for Thanksgiving. Fortunately, my four friends and I managed to stay extremely upbeat and only slightly homesick throughout the day. The next morning, we took a walking tour of the Gothic part of the city, shopped in the markets, went to the top of the Barcelona Cathedral and took a Spanish cooking class of sangria, tapas and paella. We have found that walking tours are essential to learning about each city, and are most often free! The Barcelona Cathedral is actually my second-favorite cathedral in Europe, it simply can't beat the Florence cathedral! Our cooking class was extremely interesting, and I found out that I love paella as long as I'm not the one making it! We sat with some Americans at dinner and all of us couldn't believe that we were having seafood with rice for Thanksgiving dinner! Our dinner ended around midnight, at which point we were extremely exhausted! The next morning was a whirlwind of the Picasso museum, the Chocolate museum (where the ticket for entry was a chocolate bar!), the beach, the park, and a cable car ride up to the Montjuic castle! The Picasso museum not only gave me a better idea of Picasso's early years, but also of my Spanish skills as the museum used only Spanish and Catalan to label his paintings. This actually made the experience even more interesting! We ended the day with dinner at my friend's cousin's apartment. Her cousin was studying abroad in Barcelona, offered to make us a Thanksgiving dinner that Friday and just happened to have studied at a culinary school for a few years! Our dinner consisted of chicken, corn pudding, green beans, stuffing (sort of) and sweet potatos! Yum!
The next day, we decided to try to throw ourselves into the Spanish lifestyle! We tried to wake late (around 9), ate a late breakfast, shopped the market, ate a late lunch (around 3), siesta-d, went sight seeing to the Sangrada Familia church, saw the fountain lights and ate dinner around 11! I think we did a pretty good job! I must say, I really enjoyed this timetable the most of all of my travels. I do believe that I will incorporate this "siesta" into my daily life as much as possible now!
Although we did not see everything in Barcelona, I felt very pleased with all that we did see. We left this morning extremely tired and very sad to be leaving such a beautiful country. I definitely want to return.