Paris! (Part 1)

This post is going to be a doozy. Tonnes of pictures, etc. etc...I mean c'mon, it's Paris! Without further ado:

The first night that we were there (I arrived in Paris by plane close to the afternoon, and after getting to the hotel and meeting up with Phil and walking around for a bit, it was already nightfall), we went to Rue des Lombards, a street in Paris known for several venerable jazz clubs. This was one of them, Le Duc des Lombards -- that evening it was a local musician with a group that played some interesting avant-garde. Besides that we just kinda walked around and took in the sights.

Our second day, I spent outside of Paris actually -- Matt, Jim and I went out on a day trip to Caen, and Juno Beach, site of the Canadian D-Day landing during the Second World War. It was good to see the memorial that Canada has put up there also, and good also to walk the beach for a while and smell the sea air. Beachside they even had a Steveson-esque fisherman's market. If I had a kitchen handy I definitely would have picked up some outstanding-looking mussels. Later that evening, upon our return to Paris we met back up to Phil and made it out to the Arc de Triomphe. One thing that really stuck out about these Parisian attractions, is how much larger than life everything looked. The pictures that everyone sees, and the pictures there are here, really don't do it justice. Everything is just simply massive!

Ach, must get back to work: I'll post more about Paris later!

Mein Bayern

Yeah, yeah, I know I've been lax in updating. July was quite a relaxed month in terms of travel, but nonetheless I went to a few places, specifically Heidelberg, to visit June, and Nuernberg (Nuremberg). More on those, and pictures, another time, though.

I just wanted to put a few words in here about the things I like out here, besides travel. It's been real nice, living a little differently than the usual 'student' lifestyle ("like real people", we say jokingly). Some scenes stand out in my mind as representative of my summer here:

• Watching the Bavarian countryside go by as I sit on a train going somewhere for the weekend,
• Chatting with friends the the courtyard of a centuries-old castle at an evening wine festival, watching a summer thunderstorm slowly roll in
• Simply sitting in a cafe, with a cup of coffee or perhaps a glass of cold Weissbier and a book, and occasionally looking up to take in the magnificent sunset.