Marching into Spring.

It's been an entire month since I wrote a blog! Yikes!  I've just been so busy I've forgotten. I'm just going to give an account of what I've done this month... so here we go!

March is the traditional start of the cycling season in Europe with one of the best (in my opinion) races of the year. The 'Course au Soleil', the Paris-Nice.   I went down to see the Prologue in Houilles which is a nice little town in the Yvelines departement. I arrived in the town, not knowing where the heck I was going.  I ended up walking about 2,5km of the course.  It was a cold day, but an exciting one where I got to see many of the riders close up, one by one.
The stage was won by a young Europcar rider Damien Gaudin who has basically come out of nowhere to win.  But it was a French win so the local crowd was (obviously) delighted.

The next day I took the long trip to a town called Nemours in the Seine-et-Marne departement, this town is some 100km outside of Paris, a town that has inspired writers such as Honoré de Balzac and Victor Hugo.  It's not too hard to see why, the town has a beautiful river, church and small chateau, it was a ideal setting for the finish of the first road stage. Again, this one was won by a French man, Nacer Bouhami (who went and crashed out the next day) in a sprint finish.Those of you reading who may follow cycling will know of a man named Jean-Francois Pescheux who is the route director of the Tour de France and other cycling races owned by the ASO, the Paris-Nice being one. As he was born in Nemours, there was a small presentation to him on the podium after the stage.
Then I had visitors for an entire week, we went to Disneyland, The Eiffel Tower, Versailles amongst other things.It was lovely seeing some friends from Canterbury and doing some very touristy things during my Vacances d'Hiver. Though I felt exhausted at the end of the week.  We were blessed with beautiful weather, even going as far as not taking a coat out!  (This however, would not last the two weeks of my holiday).
Once they had left, I took a few days to rest up, boy oh boy did I need it. Almost 8 full days of walking around had taken their toll, I was exhausted! Then came Tuesday. By far the most eventful day of the holiday.  It snowed. Again.

It wasn't too bad actually, we've had worse snow.  However, I got stranded. And had to go from Marne-la-Vallee to Paris, Paris to Meaux to get home! And I was on one of the last trains to make it out of Paris.  Lucky me huh?
The rest of the week, I devoted to getting my year abroad essay research into a 800 word summary to submit.  Whilst I think my research is at an 'ok' level, my summary was pretty poor and I'm not expecting a good feedback piece on it.  But I write my essays by doing all my research first, then all my writing. It's how I work best, I'm not changing it for this piece of work.  Especially this piece of work.
Then came the weekend, on Saturday I was visited by my Grandma and Auntie who I met at Gare du Nord at lunchtime, we had lunch, saw the Waterlilies painting at the Orangerie gallery at the Jardin des Tuileries, then had dinner.  The next bit is sort of strange, we went to the Moulin Rouge. This was something I'd never really considered doing, but turned out to be pretty great actually.  Once you look past the obvious, the costumes and the choreography were top notch. As was the atmosphere. Would I go again? Yes! I laughed, was amazed and entertained for a few hours.  It was a great night, ruined by surprise engineering works on my line. It seemed to caught us all out as I went from Paris to Marne-la-Vallée and then caught the 01:20 bus with a full bus of other people. (No photos, sorry folks. Cameras are banned from the Moulin Rouge).

The next day was St. Patricks day, now me not being Irish, I don't really care too much for it. But upon hearing their were some Irish cultural performances and fireworks at Disney, I decided to pop along. I was not disappointed. Well, if you were Irish you'd have noticed their 'pipe band' were actually Scottish, but let's look beyond that! I saw some Irish dancing and stuff like that. I was very entertained by their Leprechauns (who were French of course) who went and turned a mans jacket the wrong way round as his lining was green. 'C'est vert, C'EST SAINT PATRICK HEIN?'. The day had a sour note when I had to argue with a person (in French), as I had to tell them off for pushing in front of me who had been waiting for something for 25 mins, as opposed to their turn up half way through tactic. I had a lovely meal in a restaurant

In short, I had a brilliant day, topped off with some amazing fireworks, followed immediately after by even more amazing fireworks.

The next week, I was back at work having a busy week, but I managed to see two movies during the 'Printemps du Cinéma' (Which is basically where every single cinema place is €3,50). Jappeloup and 20 ans d'écart.  I wanted to see French movies to see how much I understood.  A good amount, I came out satisfied with my understanding in each film.  Jappeloup was very good though, if you are in France, try and see it! I also saw The Place beyond the Pines with my extension vouchers I won through the BNP Paribas facebook page.

A busy, busy month. I'll post more hopefully very soon, as there is always much more to tell. I'll leave you with a photo of me meeting Irish Mickey and Minnie (I couldn't resist).