Easter weekend was a fairly slow one. It was the beginning of our spring break, so most people had taken off for their various adventures. On Saturday night, I went out to dinner with my friend Ali and her mom and aunt who were visiting, which was a lot of fun. We found a nice little restaurant that I hadn't been to before and I got ribs, which is an interesting concept in France. I felt sort of funny eating them with my hands, but the waiter assured me that was how I had to do it.
I planned to go find some sort of Easter Sunday church service with Ali and her family the next morning, so I got up early and dressed up and headed out to meet up with them. They assumed that someone at the hotel would be able to help us find a church service, but no one really seemed to know where we might find one. Even Ali's french host mom had no idea where to go for an Easter service.
We decided to just wander around Montpellier to see if we could find some churches that might have a service for us, since France has quite a lot of churches and a very catholic population. We were able to find 2 pretty size-able churches in the city, but both showed no signs of people around and they were both closed. After awhile of searching, we gave up on church and decided to just go walk around a park for awhile and get some coffee and breakfast.
It wasn't a total loss, since I wasn't ever really set on going to church, but it was really strange to be in a country that I know to be so christian and have such a hard time finding a service on Easter Sunday, of all days. It was also interesting that no one seemed to know where we should go. I guess a lot of French people are religious but don't actually leave their houses to worship? Who knows, guess I should ask around and see if I can figure something out. Another weird thing was that even the night before when we were looking up Montpellier churches online it was really difficult to find any information other than the fact that the churches existed. None of them had websites, let alone information on when they had services, holidays or any other time.
The rest of my Easter was a little more successful, although not necessarily Easter-y. I met up with my friend Lauren to lay out in the sun for a few hours. The original plan was to go to the beach, but it was a little too cold, so we stayed in the city and went to a big grassy park. to soak up the sun. We got a little chilly from the wind that annoyingly wouldn't stop blowing, but otherwise had a nice afternoon.
For dinner, Jalynn and I had our friend Emily over. We cooked chicken and mashed potatoes and watched Sex and the City (one of our favorite dinnertime rituals) and afterwards enjoyed the chocolate kinder egg that we picked up at the grocery store as a replacement for the Easter baskets we knew we would be lacking this year.
So here I am playing catch-up again. Once I get caught up from the last few weeks, I am going to try really really hard to stay on top of my blogging for my last month in France.
Mom and Nick came to visit in the end of March, and I got to spend two lovely weekends with them. The first weekend they arrived in Montpellier, so we spent a few days shopping, touring the city and, of course, eating. Nick did some visiting of the more tourist-y parts of Montpellier on the day that Mom and I did our shopping (since it's not really his thing).
I don't get a chance to eat out much, so it was nice to get to go to the few restaurants I know about and also explore some new ones. We ate some delicious French food, and also learned that the French do not know how to make iced coffee. This spring weather has been making me seriously crave Dunkin' Donuts' iced coffee. I know, I know, I'm in Europe so I should enjoy their coffee, but there's just something so satisfying about Dunkin's and their iced coffee on a warm day.
After the weekend, Mom and Nick took off in their little, fuel-efficient rental car to Avignon, where the spent the week touring around Provence while I was in school. On Friday, I took a quick, easy train ride to Avignon to meet them. The first afternoon we walked around Avignon and went a little ways out of the city to see a giant, beautiful garden that used to be the regular strolling ground of bishops. We had a nice picnic and walked around. Everything was just starting to be in bloom, so the country-side around us was a bright, light-green and a lot of the flowers were just starting to come out.
After the garden tour we had a nice dinner in the centre of Avignon.
On Saturday, we drove to Aix-en-Provence, another sweet, Southern French city. We walked around and enjoyed the warm weather, did some shopping and stopped into a small art museum. It was fun to see another city that I've heard about for awhile, but never visited. There was not a whole lot to do, but it was a nice few hours spent there.
Sunday we took another day trip to l'Ardèche. This is a region of France where there is a huge gorge/canyon. There is a long road that winds and twists along the top of the gorge, with lookout stops every few miles to see the view of the river and the valley below. There were some pretty incredible views.
We also made a stop to visit one of the 700 caves that have been discovered behind the cliffs of the Ardèche. It was really cool to see real stalactites and stalagmites and go really deep into the ground. It's pretty astounding what nature can do over hundreds of thousands of years.
Near the end of the gorge, we happened to drive by a natural stone archway, which apparently is shown in the move Cave of Forgotten Dreams. I haven't seen it, but Mom and Nick have, and they recognized it right away, so we had to stop to take some pictures and soak up some sun.
On Monday, en route back to Montpellier, we stopped at Pont du Gard, a really old, huge Roman bridge. We walked along with a whole lot of tourists, American, French, Spanish. The parts of Southern France I've been in are not too touristy, so it was kind of a surprise to see so many foreigners.
We ended up getting to have two goodbye dinners in Montpellier, because Mom and Nick got stuck here an extra night, due to strikes at the airport. Not so great for them, but it was nice to spend one more evening with them before they took off.
Wonderful to show off where I've been living to them and to travel to some other really great parts of France that are so close by but that I haven't had a chance to see.
So last Wednesday was my 21st birthday. I was lucky enough to have Mom and Nick here visiting the weekends before and after my birthday, although they weren't actually here on the day of, so we started off the celebrations on Sunday night with a birthday dinner out with Jalynn.
On my actual birthday I got to open a present from Josh, which he sent with Mom, specially to France. It was nice to get something directly from home to start off my day. After a busy day of classes and beautiful weather, I might add, I came home to start the festivities. I had a few friends over to have a spaghetti and meat sauce dinner (our favorite family recipe) as well as some delicious garlic bread which was a huge success. We all ate too much, because I also made a cake from an American mix that I specially requested Mom and Nick bring me. It was delicious, and topped with some easy icing and fresh strawberries. As yummy as French pastries are, it was fun to have good ol' cake from home to celebrate.
Once I had time to shower and get dressed and make myself presentable after rushing around the kitchen cooking, we headed out for the evening to meet up with some more friends from the program. It was a wonderful birthday and an awesome night, and I was so lucky to have so many new friends to share it with me. It's too bad I'll have to wait till May to have my first legal drink in the states, but it was still pretty great to celebrate my birthday in France, and my friends helped me to make it a great one! Now I just have an excuse to have more birthday celebrations with the rest of my friends when I get home!
