Last night in Gif

Well tonight is my last night in Gif, tomorrow morning I move into the Cite Universitaire in Paris it certainly doesn't feel like I have been over here for 5 weeks already. . Here is a google map link to my new place http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Cite+Universitaire,+Paris,+France&sll=48.856558,2.350966&sspn=0.118139,0.242043&ie=UTF8&ll=48.819552,2.339079&spn=0.003695,0.007564&t=h&z=17&om=1
I am going to be living at the College Franco-Britannique which is south-east of the green arrow. To be perfectly precise if you go directly south of the arrow, to the first building you come to, on the other side of the boulevard Jourdan and then go 2 buildings to your right and then one more building south, that big brown one is the CFB. The park certainly looks like a nice place, with running tracks and there is even an indoor pool in one of the buildings, only 25m unfortunately.
Before I leave the Chateau here in Gif, I took some photos so you can all see where I have been living for the last month
This is my room with my bed and the little washbasin.
























Here is the communual kitchen. We each get a cupboard where they put our breakfast in the morning and the dining room.



















This is the breakfast I got on Saturday morning. It is usually heaps better with a chocolate croissant, croissant and a bread roll with orange juice. They are just heaps slacker on the weekends, breakfast is always late on the weekend, they didn't give my anything at all on Sunday. The French really are pretty slack! I'll take a photo of tomorrow's breakfast so you can see what it normally was like

Shopping

This weekend I couldn't hold out from the Paris shops anymore. I wanted to go shopping before the sales ended and in France the shops are only allowed 2 sales in a year and they are at specified dates. Apparently it is to stop the big companies dominating the little businesses. It was true that I didn't see any of the big US brands out shopping so maybe the idea is working. It does mean that everyone else is also out shopping at the same time though. I could put up a whole stack of photos of what I bought, but I don't want to bore everyone. One thing I did buy was the new Harry Potter book. In France there really is no need to queue all night for a book, they were just sitting in a pile in one of the department stores. I guess the French aren't all that interested in the stories of a British wizard, plus the books were all in English. I won't tell you how it ends but I liked it, maybe even one of my favorites out of all of them. Now I'm going to have to read it again as I raced through it the first time to find out what happens in the end.

Credit cards mustn't be used as much over here, I think everyone here stills uses cheques. As almost every place I used credit at they wanted my passport or other identification and they then copied down the details on their receipt. They never really checked that my signature matched the one on the card though, so I don't think they have quite got the hang of the whole credit card thing.

French Weather

Up until now the weather has been pretty bad here, not what I would call summer at all, cold and rainy/overcast. Everyone here said that it's not normally this bad and that the weather normally gets better after Bastille day (the 14th of July). On the 13th it was still cold and raining in the morning so I didn't really believe that it would get much better by the next day. But by that afternoon the clouds had cleared and it was really hot, and it's pretty much been like that ever since, sunny skies and really warm. I think that is the real reason why the English hate the French, they have much better weather than them.

Another reason to visit me

Just in case the idea of seeing me, the wonderful French countryside and the awesome Paris sights aren't enough I had a look at the price of alcohol in the supermarket today. Over here 1 euro has pretty much the buying power of $1, that is 1 euro buys the same amount of stuff as you would expect a dollar to here, and yet a bottle of cointreau was 17 euro and vodka was 8 euro! When I move into Paris I think I might be stocking up on a few bottles.

As well as the alcohol my supermarket also sells suitcases, strange I know

The Tour de France

This weekend the Tour had one of its 3 mountain-top finishes, and this one happened to be on a weekend. It was Stage 8, the second Alp stage of the tour, finishing at the ski resort in Tignes and it was too good a chance to miss. Reanna came across from Manchester and together we caught the train out to Bourg-St-Maurice on Saturday afternoon. Bourg is a great little town, nestled in amongst the Alps, with two fantastic supermarkets (I know I'm obsessed with them, but they were good!). We had an epic adventure trying to see the Tour, but in the end the Alexander luck came through and we made it to the stage about 5 minutes before the sponsor's caravan came through.

So the story is that I checked on the cyclingnews and official Tour de France web site to try and get some maps of where the stage was going to go, so I could work out a good spot on the second last mountain that was within walking distance of Bourg. I thought I had worked out a plan that if we walked for at most 2.5 hours we would be a fair way up the hill and still have time to make it back to Bourg in time to catch the train back to Paris. So Reanna and I set out on Sunday morning ready to see the Tour, we followed what I thought was the road and we saw heaps (!!!) of cyclists along the way and all the team cars/buses/trucks and officials so we were pretty sure this was the right road. It didn't seem to be going up as fast as what I was expecting from the profile map, but after 2.5 hours (and 11kms) of walking we started to climb a mountain. I thought great this is it, so we found a good spot, had lunch and settled in to wait. All the time there are cyclists and team cars constantly coming past us, but it wasn't until about 1.5 hours before the race was due past that a French cyclist stopped and said "You know the tour doesn't come past here? It comes past further on".

At this stage there was no way we could walk further on though, because we wouldn't be able to get back in time for our train, we were already 2.5 hours away from the station. At first I didn't believe him, but then I stopped a British cyclist and asked him and he kindly pulled over (even though it was a steep hill) and pulled out his Tour map and showed us where we were and where the tour goes, which yes wasn't anywhere close to where we were. At this stage we thought we were going to miss it, we couldn't make it back to Bourg in time to see it, and if we kept walking we would miss the train. Luckily there was a French family (with a car) near us, and when I found out the Tour wasn't coming I let them know and they very kindly gave us a lift back to the second last climb. We managed to arrive about 5 minutes before the caravan came through, so we got to collect a whole stack of free stuff from the sponsors (mostly just key rings). The pick of the bunch though was the Predictor-Lotto and Caisse D'Epargne water bottles that were discarded by the Tour riders. All in all we ended up walking about 18kms, when the most we should have done is 10km. No wonder I was sore the next day!

Now to the Tour! It was awesome, there were stacks of people all over the mountain and we walked a bit further out to get away from everyone so we would be able to see the cyclists clearly. The atmosphere was awesome, with the sponsor's cars taking about an hour to come through, and some of them were pretty crazy. Then all the officials and gendarmes would come flying through the roads and about 40 minutes after that the cyclists started coming by. There was actually a pretty steady stream of cars coming through all the time, until just before the cyclists. And the team cars that follow the cyclists are actually really close to the riders so you have to really watch out or they will probably hit you. Some of the team cars were a bit crazy with how they were driving to get around cyclists to get further up the road and I'm suprised that the cyclists don't get hit.

The cyclists are all really small too, I didn't realise just how small, but they are probably about my height, if not shorter, and really skinny! Even George Hincapie, or Big George, is pretty tiny. They are also really colourful too, I suppose you don't often see every cyclist wearing brand-spanking new team kit, the average cyclist wears their jersey's over and over again. By the time the cyclists got to us the peleton had been shredded by the climbs before hand, so we got quite a few groups coming past. First was Rasmussen, on his way to the yellow jersey and then the main group of GC contenders before the sprinters group came by. In amongst that there were quite a few cyclists riding by themselves too. I got to see Robbie Mcwen, he came through 2nd last and in the end didn't make the time cut-off so he wasn't allowed to start the next day. It was really hot and he looked like he was suffering. I also go to see Tom Boonen, the best looking cyclist in the peleton, so that was a bonus. The bomb from Ballan is what they call him. All in all it was a good day, once we made it there, and I'm looking forward to the finish in Paris, where hopefully I can get some better pictures than these ones.


The crazy caravan cars:




































The cyclists coming through, they went really fast, even on this steep hill. The first picture is the sprinters group just taking it easy up the hill. They weren't pushing themselves at all, just sitting back and chatting amongst themselves. The second picture is Rasmussen in the breakaway currently leading the Tour.


















Finally we have a stylish European, and no those are not Speedo's, they are just his underpants, I like his hat though. And then we have the schwag we managed to collect from the sponsor's caravan.


























And finally we have obligatory photos of the French Alps. In the second picture we walked to the base of the mountain on the right with the very sharp peak, it was a long way away!

Weird-ass supermarkets

Today after work I decided to investigate what I thought was a supermarket around the corner from the train station in Gif. It was kind of a supermarket, but only for frozen food. It was a strange shop, it looked like they had decided that since all their food is really sterile and processed they were going to go for that same feel with their decor. So it was this weird hospital blue colour with fluorescent lights and stacks of freezers. They sold everything you could imagine, including frozen bread and frozen patessiries. And the weirdest thing was there were actually quite a lot of people in there. I thought the French people actually liked food?

The Rodin Museum

Sorry about blogger again, I don't understand what is wrong with it, in the Preview my photos look fine and then when I publish the post it looks really bad, and the photos seem to end up in completely random places. Maybe I should start a list about all the things I hate with blogger. But this is a blog about my adventures in Paris, so I'll leave that for another day.


The second part of my art day involved the Rodin museum. He was the guy who sculptured "The Thinker" or in French "Le Penseur". For some reason I always thought The Thinker was sculptured in the time of Michaelangelo, I don't know why I thought that, but today I discovered the truth. Here is the obligatory photo of The Thinker.

There was heaps of stuff here, and the museum had really awesome grounds which are only 1 euro to visit by themselves. Rodin really had some amazing stuff, I especially liked his marble sculptures, they seemed smoother than the bronze ones.













Here is a photo looking back towards the museum with the gardens which were really immaculate, though I think they need to change the water in this fountain.