The best place on earth

Okay. So this post is dedicated to Claire who I'm sure is going to copy and paste it into her own blog....
Chapter One
So this one time these four girls - we'll call them Claire, Lauren-Anne, Caitlin, and Katy (some names might have been changed for the sake of security) - these four girls, take a short vacation to the country of Switzerland. Katy and Caitlin started in Paris and were scheduled to meet the other two girls in Zermatt, Switzerland. Katy and Caitlin boarded a train at 7:44am that they thought was going to Lausanne. After riding the train for about 2.5 hours - they discover, much to their suprise, that their train is in fact heading to Zurich. They, as you might assume, do not want to go to Zurich. However, this story, my friends, turns out good. The two girls descend the train in Bern, Switzerland where they rode to Brig and then boarded the famous Glacier Express which took them to Zermatt. Before even stepping on Swiss soil Katy tells Caitlin that she's moving to Switzerland - it's seriously the best place on earth. Upon arriving in Zermatt the two girls discover that they have arrived in a good ole, down to earth, ski town. Two short hours later the rest of the troop - Claire and Lauren-Anne (we'll call her LA) also arrive in Zermatt and the four amigos (or amies) check into their hostel, eat a quick dinner, and call it an early night in order to hit the slopes early the next morn. The next morning, after renting skis and buying electronic ski passes (for each lift was manned not by people, but turnstalls that only let valid ski passes through), the girls rode two gondolas to the middle of one of the many many mountains. Zermatt is situated on the border of Switzerland and Italy and thus both countries were skiable for our heroines. After skiing Switzerland for the first half of the day, the girls caught a quick lunch atop the Swiss/Italian boarder. Apres ca, they decided to try out the Italian slopes...
Chapter Two
This is where things begin to get interesting for our fine young ladies. Katy heads off down the slope and stops about 1/4 of the way down to watch the rest of the girls make their way down the mountain. Claire and LA make their way to Katy and the girls watch Caitlin begin to slowly traverse the hill. With Caitlin working up top, LA spots an older couple on the side of the run who had fallen down - but as soon as LA moves over to check if they're okay - Caitlin's skis start to move out of control. Before you can say, "Harry Potter" Caitlin's skis are flying through the air, her poles are at the top of the mountain, and Caitlin is sliding rapidly down the hill. Katy -the first to spot Caitlin, calls to LA, who protects the old people from being destructed by Caitlin's screaming body, Claire, who eventually notices her close friend nearing the edge of a swiss Alp freezes, and eventually a French snowboarder grabs Caitlin's hand and stops her. The three girls quickly ski down to meet their friend - unsure whether to cry or to laugh and discover Caitlin herself lauging hysterically but also quite shaken up. Unable to put her skis back on, Caitlin walks the rest of the way down the mountain while Katy, Lauren-Anne, and Claire carry her skis down to the gondola. Adrenaline running, Caitlin decides to sit the rest of the sking out and the three girls spend the rest of the day (especially Katy) working on their sunglass tans. After a quick (and interesting) pizza dinner our heroines discover the Zermatt cemetary which is full of graves from the brave and daring adventurers who have attempted to climb the Matterhorn mountain, Zermatt's most famous peak. And this ended day one.
Chapter Three.
Day two of skiing started by taking a train and two gondolas to the top of what looked like a pretty good run to LA, Claire, and Katy. Upon entering the second gondola the girls realize that they were the only girls heading to what was labelled a "downhill run". After exiting the lift our heroines find themselves at 13000 vertical feet and with skiiers who seem to be attaching their skis to their backpacks and/or stepping into special combination bindings. Always up for an adventure, the girls look at eachother, pick up their skis, and follow a group of 5 Italians who seem to know where they're going. After walking along a ridge which dropped into nothing on either side for about thirty minutes, the girls run into their Italian leaders (all the while coming to terms that, much like their Matterhorn companions, their gravestones will say, "at least they died doing what they loved..."). At this moment two Italian/Swiss jets go screaming past the skier's heads - the three girls look at eachother and take a seat. Nevertheless two hours later the girls make their way to the first avalible T-bar - newly aquainted with the term, "glacier skiing". Claire and Katy decide to take the first T up the hill followed by LA; now the TBar that girls have come across is the scariest, most intense lift they have ever encountered. Approximately 1/2 up the lift something happens to Claire's and Katy's skis and the two girls find themselves sprawled across the snowy terrain. Sore from the descent LA continues up the TBar to meet Caitlin for lunch and CK make their way through some moguls to try the TBar again. This time the girls decide to take seperate T's but the story is far from over for our young Frenchspeakers. Upon nearing the stop of fall no.1 Katy hears her name being screamed like bloody murder behind her. Claire, dear Claire, is pole-less, skis dragging, being pulled up the slope, yet holding on for dearlife. To make a longstory short - the girls make it down to ANOTHER lift (both have banned T-bars for life) - finally make it to Caitlin/LA for lunch, and ski the rest of the day uneventfully. Zermatt ended for the four friends with a nice train ride to Interlaken for the continuation of the adventure.
Chapter Four
Wednesday morning the girls awoke in the infamous Balmer's hostel. Upon waking the girls find a rafting outfitter who will take the young heroines canyoning. Although unsure of exactly what canyoning is, the girls know that they want to do it and upon meeting two of the coolest swiss people ever they put on layers and layers of protective gear, traverse the swiss backcountry, and arrive at the "canyon". For the next three hours Claire, LA, Caitlin, and Katy swim, float, walk, rappel, hike, and jump off waterfall through this swiss canyon. After a wonderful four hour birthday dinner for Caitlin the week continued.
Chapter Five
The rest of the week consisted of Lauren-Anne returning to Paris to meet her parents, Caitlin voyaging to Budapest, and CK trekking/climbing Mt.Pilatus in Lucerene, Switzerland. After a 3000ft climb Claire returned to Paris and Katy travelled to Lausanne to make a pilgrimage to the International Olympic Committee and the Musee Olympic. After putting in a few miles (on the way to 100...) Katy found the Olympic musuem, spent the next hours in fascination and tears, and eventually made the long TGV ride back to Paris.
And the girls lived happily ever after.
Amen.

So i was thinking about telling you all the Switzerland story today......

and then Claire told me she was going to copy my post.

Sooooooo.

I've decided to leave her and all of you hanging a couple days longer....

Ha.
Love you!

A pictures paints a thousand words...

1 - The walk that I have dubbed:
"Deathwish"


2 - That's the matterhorn!



3 - We skiied both Italy AND Switzerland!








4 - I believe that's Caitlin falling down the slopes...
5 - LA and Claire just checking out where we are....
6 - Atop the Deathwish Ridge
7 - Pele at the Musee D'Olympic. I have made my pilgrimige - next stop - London.
8 - Sometime this will be the view from my backyard.
9 -I believe that is Claire - glacier skiing our deathwish run
10 - A pretty BA spring break....

Family Photos

1 - Mom and Dad at the Louvre
2 - Katy and Kyle with the Tour
3 - Kyle covering Katy's face at the Arc....
4 - Katy and Dad atop the Arc with the Tour behind
5 - the happiest place on earth. Although I had to pay Kyle .50 for that photo - it was worth it...

A bit of travelling...

Since I can’t REMEMBER the last time I wrote (I mean, actually wrote something) in this thing here- it must mean it’s time to update…And since the internet in our apartment is not working and I can’t check what I wrote about I’ll start with Roma…

Roma.

So last Thursday Caitlin and I ventured out to the sketchy Beauvais aeroport and took a nice little airplane ride with Rynair to the city of Roma, Italie. Getting to the hostel was a piece of work considering we took the metro from Paris, a bus to the airport, and airplane to Rome, and finally a taxi about three blocks (and 20euro) to the hostel (which was very nice and a pleasant experience). We pretty much passed out and awoke the next morning to find ourselves in a new country (for Caitlin, not for me…) Anywho- we basically wandered around the city for the morning and ran into this thing called the Colosseum. I appropriately pulled out my Ipod and played the Gladiator soundtrack as a tribute to Abby Frederick and Abby Berg (ahhh – those good ole marching band days….) We wandered a bit more and kept running into these really old things that we had no clue what they were and finally met up with a English tour guide for the best walking tour we’ve ever taken. In four hours we saw the entire city including the circus maximus, the roman forum, the pantheon (only one of the seven wonders of the world), the Colosseum, the balcony from which Mussolini used to address the wider world, and then ate the best gelato in all of Italy (to which we appropriately returned every day and made friends with the owner!) After a quick rest and pasta dinner in the hostel we walked around some more and found Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps after which we called it a night and planned on waking early to tackle the Vatican. Saturday we rode the bus to Vatican City (only the smallest country in the world) and got off in this big open area and were like, “Um, okay? Where are we?” Turns out – you know – we were only in St. Peter’s Square. And there was NO one there (when we came back two hours later – I swear there were over 2000 people there…) We DID, however, run into the coolest man ever who was trekking from the Vatican to Jerusalem – on foot. Then we waited in line to enter the Sistine Chapel for about two hours – but no matter how long it took – it was worth it. Brought tears to my eyes. Afterwards we checked out a roman market – some of the back streets of the city and then sunbathed in front of the impressive, yet ugliest monument in the city of Rome. A quick nap and broken boots later Caitlin convinced me to take part in a Spanish steps “pubcrawl” (she wanted the tshirt, no lie). Let me just tell you only crazy people do pubcrawls. I will never do a pubcrawl again and I didn’t even drink. Sunday I went for a run around the Colosseum and then Caitlin and I took the best nap ever in a little piazza. Then we took the metro, a bus, an airplane, a bus, and the metro BACK to paris. What a weekend.

As I don’t go to my Monday class – I slept in, did laundry, and took the bus to class. The weather in Paris was absolutely beautiful and the week went somewhere into the past with a trip up the Tour Eiffel with LA, church with Claire and Annie for Maundy Thursday, eating breakfast with Mme Chochon and her energetic grandchildren (and by breakfast I do not mean bread as it is Passover- I mean matzo, which BTW I would not recommend), and the arrival of the family.

The family arrived safely after a little layover in Frankfurt, Germany. We had a wonderful week together – although I’m pretty sure Kyle will never be returning to Paris, although rumor has it he enjoyed Germany a bit….We did EVERYTHING in about six days – Louvre, D’orsay, Centre George Pompideu, L’orangerie, a soccer game, the Notre Dame, St.Chappelle, Versailles, DISNEYLAND (which I had been waiting to go to for FOUR MONTHS!), the pont-neuf, champs, concorde, tullieries, Luxembourg gardens, Pantheon, Sorbonne, Sacre-Coeur, Arc, and the Eiffel Tower everyday. Had a slight disaster when we discovered that Mom had forgotten my eurail pass that I had forgoteen to remind her about – but Aunt Cathy fed-exed it over here right away and it all turned out fine….The appt we stayed in was GORGEOUS – I wish I could move there considering Annie and I continue to have difficulties with our housing. Are we really that hard to live with? Our host attempted to rent our room out to this couple for the week after our springbreak and Annie and I were going to have to sleep on the floor of her daughter’s room. This led to a huge confrontation between Annie and Mme in which she told Annie never to speak to her again. The next night however I receive a text saying that they chatted about art and were friends again. Oh boy. Pretty sure she’s bi-polar. Anwyho- All in all I had a wonderful week and I certainly hope that they did too – I can’t believe I hadn’t seen them in four months – what a time this study abroad has been – and it’s crazy to think that I only have one month left!

Okay – I’ll get to Switzerland aka the love of my life this week – no worries!

BISOUS!

Roma pictures will have to do.

Quick weekend in Rome.
Captions and story to come.


I guess we'll try captions with the post - the people who critize the blog are coming to Paris so they won't see it for awhile.... Ha -
1 - A piazza in Roma where we had clowns give us red noses and a balloon and then we took a wonderful nap!
2 - I think that might be a building you guys know...
3 - Pele REALLY enjoyed Roma.
4 - So did Caitlin and Katy!
5- Hmmmm - we just kept running into it!
6 - Outside the Sistine Chapel - we have never been so glad to be in Roma - it was raining (suprise, suprise) in Paris.
7 - An illegal picture of the Sistine Chapel (i know, i know...)
8 - One of the seven wonders of the world. And the Pantheon.

Spring break thank dieu.

I'll get to this someday.

VERY excited to see the family!

Miss you all very much.
Less than two months till i return.


If i do.


Kidding.