Vienna

Before heading home I decided to stop of in Vienna and visit William. Following my swift, dramatic departure at Agen, I changed train at Bordeaux and was on my way to Paris to catch a flight to Vienna. After a mix up on landing times, and me having had no WiFi in the woods at Romy’s house, I was very lucky to be met at the airport by William. We caught the last train back into the city, I stressed him out with my stories of the day and enjoyed the pretty lights of Vienna.

We had a weekend filled with my favourite kind of tourism – slow paced and full of food.

On Friday I had my first lie in in weeks while William was at school before meeting him for lunch. After being cooped up in fast food less Périgueux for the last 7 weeks, a sneaky little McDonald’s was called for! We spent the rest of the afternoon dandering through the city centre, eating ice cream and seeing the sights.

We had some great Italian food for dinner where you told them what you want and they make it in front of you, you can choose your meet, pasta , sauce, anything! We then went to meet Williams friend at the opening of a new pub beside The Hofburg Palace, in the park.

On Saturday we were both feeling sicky so we decided to postpone the sightseeing and spend the day eating snacks and watching Friends (we might have managed to watch all of season 4 over the course of the weekend…). The day turned out to be a bit of a disaster for us, not only did we start it with headaches and colds, William fell out of the bath/shower onto the floor and I slipped TWICE onto my butt on his balcony haha.

At 5 o’clock we decided we better actually leave the house at some stage and headed for PRATER, where we enjoyed the last of the sunshine before meeting the others and going on some of the rides and having dinner. Out disastrous day continued when I got soaked on a ride we didn’t expect to be wet, and William almost died after a spiny, upside down style ride (think experience at Barry’s but more spinning and long periods of time upside down) and we had to lie on the grass for half an hour as he recovered haha.

Sunday was a much more successful day in that it was injury free and we saw the rest of the tourist sights of Vienna. We made ourselves some pancakes for breakfast before setting of to spend the afternoon at Schönbrunn Palace, it’s like the Austrian version of Versailles, but slightly smaller. the sun made an appearance and we relaxed on the hill taking in the views.

When we were done at Schönbrunn we made our way back into the city centre to get some ice cream and see the last of what William had to show me. We dandered around the streets, ate ice cream and avoided the abundance of tourists. Our last stop for the day was Hundertwasserhaus, a crazy building painted all sorts of colours with trees growing inside and all over. I actually think that this was one of my favourite sights of the city! It was so quirky and different and not over run by tourists which is always a bonus!

We made ourselves dinner at Williams, enjoyed homemade apple straddle made by one of his flat mates and relaxed for the evening by watching Friends and planning a trip to Lyon in December to see the Fête des lumières!

Agen

My last night in France turned into an impromptu trip to Romain’s house. Maeve was going to visit anyway, but instead of leaving me in Perigueux alone for my last night Romain invited David and I along too, so after some almost train disasters (typical us) the four of us caught the train to Le Buisson to be picked up by Romain’s dad.

Before heading to Romain’s house we stopped of at his uncles bar in this tiny little town to say hello, but when he heard Maeve and I were Irish, he insisted on calling his Irish friend to chat to us. Turns out he has lived in France for ten years, but prior to that he lived in Northern Ireland, more specifically Enniskillen – what are the chances!

We made our way to Romain’s adorable house in the middle of the countryside, where we were given the most amazing food ever. One thing I have definitely learnt in France is to pace your self at meals, all the courses will be amazing and you will want to eat everything that you see, but you have to remember you will probably have about 5 courses in total! So after our apéro, salad, pâté, duck confit and vegetables, cheese, and desert, we were definitely full!

We pulled ourselves out of bed early to try and make the most of my last morning, we had went to Romain’s friends house the night before so we were all rather sluggish. We got our selves sorted and went off to see one more castle, Chateau de Bonaguil, before I left.

Then it was home for one last amazing meal of pâté, salad, quail and market waffles before we all literally ran around the house grabbing our stuff and flung ourselves in the car to drive the “gross Demi-heure” (big half hour) to the train station for me to catch my train to Paris to get my flight to Vienna. As per usual this wasn’t without drama, and every slow driver seemed to be on the road. We arrived just in time for me to buy a ticket, hug them all goodbye and jump on the train. Crazy to think that that is the end of my time in a France!

Visioconferences, Pour de vrai

All year, 6 hours of my week has been made up of video conferences, where I am in an office in Perigueux and I pretty much Skype schools to deliver their English lessons. But one Thursday recently Karine offered to bring my to the schools and teach the kids for real. The kids were so excited by this as they had only been used to seeing me on a screen all year. When I arrived at the Schools the kids greeted me with chants of “Lauren, Lauren, Lauren!”,  I got bombarded with daisy chains, pictures and many hugs (something that after a year of being told it’s allowed by French teachers I still find so odd after teaching in Scotland).

Besides from teaching in the schools, Karine and I had a picnic in Bergerac and walked round the town, we visited a castle and tastes some wine, and admired the lovely countryside and vineyards – hard day at work, eh?

Les Ezyies

After a few failed adventures that all ended up back on the Voie Verte, we decided to make the most of our Wednesday off and go to a neighbouring town in the Dordogne. As you come in or out of Perigueux on the train you pass a little town called Les Eyzies and every time we have past it we have said that we should catch the train there and go for a walk, so that is exactly what we did. We packed our picnic and set of for the small town of Les Eyzies.

We had our picnic by the river, walked through the town, played in the park and had some ice cream disasters before making our way towards the caves. Which unfortunately we were too late to get a tour of that day, so back we went to relax by the river where Meg would instead describe the caves to us – pretty much the same experience right?!

Vacances d’hiver ~ Strasbourg

For trip number three of the holidays I caught a flight and a train to meet the Perigueux girls who had been in Portugal the previous week. I had my first bother with the French “validate your ticket” system and managed to land myself a lovely 30 Euro fine for my 10 minute tram journey. Somehow I dont think it is fair that in some cities the validating machine is on the platform, and in others it is on the tram!!

We got the essentials of the day done (eating and buying snacks) before settling ourselves in our lovely apartment for a relaxed evening of tea drinking and movie watching!

On Wednesday we enjoyed a lie in, and great breakfast which has since set a trend of lazy weekend brunches back in perigueux! We set out (at a VERY leisurely pace) to see the sights of Strasbourg, we dandered the streets, seeing the river, palace, cathedral and Petit France. Strasbourg is definitely one of those cities that is just lovely to walk around and appreciate the cute streets and buildings! I loved it and would definitely go back! I also suffered from major bike envy the whole time we were there and now have an uncountable number of bike pictures on my phone. I want them all haha. We enjoyed another lovely home cooked meal before heading out for the evening.

Notre Dame de Strasbourg

Notre Dame de Strasbourg

Notre Dame de Strasbourg

Petit France

Petit France

Petit France

Petit France

Our sole aim for Thursday was to climb the cathedral tower so we could have a nice view of the city and the mountains. So equipped with snacks for a picnic at the top, Maeve, Meg and I set of to conquer the tower – it was well worth all the stairs!

Petit France

We had another relaxed evening drinking tea, eating and watching Chicken Run which was unfortunately in French – it was not the same without all the accents! The next morning we bid farewell to Strasbourg, Steff and Neesa and set of on our 8 hour journey back to Perigueux and working (if 12 hours count) life.

Vacances d’hiver ~ Madrid

My second trip during the holidays was to visit Esther in Madrid. This was completly the opposite of the crazily packed Paris week, and was instead filled with late mornings, great food and leisurely strolls around Madrid. As a family we went to Spain quite a bit when I was a child but I’d never been to Madrid so it was lovely to see the city and look around where Esther lives.

Madrid’s sunny weather was a welcome change to the freezing winds of Paris so coats were shed while Esther became a tour guide and showed me all the sights. We had a lovely walk in Retiro park, saw the Royal Palace, took in Madrid’s Skyline from Circulo de Bellas Artes, ate Churros in one of Madrid’s most famous Churros places, walked the beautiful, busy streets of Madrid and spent a wonderful amount of time in coffee shops and eating great food.

Being in Spain made me annoyed that I hadn’t made more effort with Spanish when I studied it and I will definitely be trying to learn some more when I get home! After coming from France where I can communicate fairly easily and understand what people are saying around me it was very weird to understand next to nothing!

Madrid’s Skyline

Glass Palace

Madrid’s huge post office

have you seen weirder trees?!

Glass Palace

Vacances d’hiver ~ Paris

Warning: This is very late and very long!! I’d apologise for all the Photos, but realistically they are the best part as my writing leaves a lot to be desired and I just use it to space out the photos haha.

For the most recent holidays, Les Vacances d’hiver, I started with a trip to Paris to meet the uni girls. Since first year we have been dreaming of a girls trip to Paris and over the holidays we were actually able to make it happen! I caught the train to Paris and found our little Parisian Home for the week (complete with a view of Sacre Coeur and the Eiffel Tower!) and waited for the girls to arrive! We spent the week being ultimate tourists, wandering the streets of Paris, eating croissants for breakfast, numerous picnics, any metro journeys  and of course a trip to Disneyland. It was an exhausting yet wonderful week! Monday morning before Kat arrived, we wandered through the Jardins du Luxembourg and Hôtel des Invalides, taking in the beautiful weather.

Jardin des Luxembourg

Jardin des Luxembourg

Jardin des Luxembourg

View from Hôtel des Invalides

Hôtel des Invalides

Hôtel des Invalides

La Seine

Metro stop

Hôtel des Invalides

Kat arrived later in the afternoon and we were 4! We spent the afternoon walking through the streets of Montmartre, admiring the view from the top of Scare Coeur and seeing the Moulin Rouge. During our stay we took great advantage of the bakery next door to us, spoiling ourselves with cakes on the Monday night, and fresh croissants every morning.

Sacre Coeur

Reunited!

Moulin Rouge

Moulin Rouge

Enjoying our cakes

Tuesday morning we were up early determined to see as much of Paris as we could, and we succeeded! We spent the morning freezing our toes of in the queue to climb up Notre Dame. In my other visits to Paris this year/last year this is something I hadn’t done and and was really looking forwards too! Claire And I almost rendered all the queuing useless by going for a walk to warm our feet and returning after Ali and Kat had entered. Luckily we talked sweetly to the guard man and went in to join them. I think Notre Dame is one of my favourite Paris attractions, beautiful views and the gargoyles are great!

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

Notre Dame

After warming ourselves up with an overprices Parisian hot chocolate and saying goodbye to sick Kat for the afternoon we sent the rest of the afternoon walking along the Seine, taking far too many photos in front of the Eiffel Tower, posing at the Louvre and climbing the Arc de Triomphe. Crazy how much you can squeeze into one day!

La Tour Eiffel

Arc de Triomphe

La Tour Eiffel

La Tour Eiffel

Louvre

Facepalming at the Louvre

L’opera

La Tour Eiffel

La Tour Eiffel

Point des Arts

Pont des Arts

Hôtel des Invalides

Wednesday brought another early morning and a day at the Palace of Versailles. We explored the buildings, playing house  and deciding who would live where; obviously Ali got the palace, Kat got the stables and Claire and I got the bits in between!  We meandered around the gardens, which disappointingly had no working fountains and a lot of the statues/pots were all covered up due to it being winter. It was definitely a lot more impressive when I was there in the summer and everything was in full bloom. Though you can’t really complain when you get in for free and it still made for a lovely day!

Versailles – Hall of Mirrors

Versailles

Palace of Versailles

Playing Princesses

Claire’s new home

Versailles

Versailles

Palace of Versailles

Showing of Ali’s Home

New Bedroom?

Welcome to my humble abode

The Louvre is open late on Wednesday evenings so we made use of that and spent the evening wandering through the never ending corridors, this was my third time at the Louvre in the Past year, and apart from the Mona Lisa I have seen different things each time and I have to say, art museums are definitely growing on me!

We stayed out to sit by the Seine and see the Eiffel tower light up and sparkle before heading home for some well needed dinner!

Louvre

Louvre

La Seine

La Tour Eiffel

La Tour Eiffel

Thursday brought the long awaited Disney Day. We were far too excited for a bunch of 20 something year olds, but we embraced it! Starting with Ali’s dream come true – we met Winnie the Pooh, and our day was made when we hadn’t even been there an hour haha.

We stood in lines for the teacups and “it’s a small world” with as much, if not more excitement than we had for the bigger rides, stalked out our spot for the parade and were overwhelmed by the Disney Dreams firework show at the end of the night. A beautiful day!

We are here!!

Main Street

Winnie the Pooh

Living in the magic

Carousel

Teacups

Ehh which way?!

Playing Princess

Disney Parade

Disney Parade

Disney Parade

Disney Parade

Disney Dreams

Disney Dreams

Disney Dreams

Friday came around far too quickly and it was time to say our goodbyes, we packed up our stuff, had our last french breakfast and caught the train the the airport only to realise Ali had left her passport in the apartment! Luckily for us we had he nicest  AirB&B guy who saved the day and met Ali with the passport so no flights were missed! It does mean there is a whole in our goodbye picture without her though!!

Final goodbyes, without Ali

Carcass On a Sofa (Carcassonne)

Last weekend we visited Carcassonne, a town that I am yet to be able to say the name of properly. Despite Meg and Maeve’s attempts to help me by telling me to think of A Carcass on a sofa, I still always say it wrong. I have given up haha.

We set off early from Perigueux so that we could enjoy a full day in Carcassonne. Once we arrived, we fell immediately in love with with the place, I don’t know what it was about it, but even the “new” town gave us a great feeling! We arrived just before lunch time so we bought some food and enjoyed the (unexpected) beautiful weather by having a picnic on the river. We had some fun feeding the ducks and even saw an otter before making our way across the bridge to the old town: Cité de Carcassonne.

Point Vieux

Lunch on the Aude

Ducks and the Otter

Point Vieux and Carcassonne

L’Aude

Lunch sur L’aude and the Point Vieux

The Cité de Carcassonne is absolutely stunning. It is a city built inside two outer walls, with over 50 towers, a cathedral and the best Castle I have seen in my life! We wandered through the thin, cobbled streets and made our way to the Castle. France has a wonderful system in that people under 26 get in free or at a highly reduced price to a lot of the cultural sites so we got in for free 🙂 Though this is definitely a castle that I would recommend to anyone, free or not. It was beautiful with courtyards, high walls and stunning views to Carcassonne and the pyrennees mountains.

From the castle you have access to the walls that surround the Cité de Carcassonne so we were able to walk these as well.What we didn’t know is that you can’t go the whole way around, so we walked three quarters of the way around only to have to turn round and come back again!

Frist sights of the Castle

Walking through the gates

Carcassonne

Outside the castle

Looks like Game of Thrones

Looking out at the views

Oh hey there

Pretty views

❤

Walking the Walls

Carcassonne

Wall Lads

Being tourists

From the top of one of the Castle towers we spotted a church with a bell tower, so after lunch we headed of to find it in the hope that we would be able to look back on the Cité de Carcassonne and have a lovely view. We were right, the view was amazing, aided by the fact the sun was about to set, Carcassonne looked Beautiful! Well worth the 233 exhausting steps to the top of the tower.

Maeve and I

Meg and Maeve

Carcassonne

As Carcassonne doesn’t have much in the way of Hostels and because we love Toulouse so much, we caught the train back up as far as Toulouse for the evening and stayed in the same Hostel that we stayed in when we went in December. We napped, cooked ourselves a nice meal and headed into Toulouse for the evening. The Christmas Markets where all gone so we were able to see Place du Capitole as it is meant to be – even more beautiful.

Toulousers

Place du Capitole

The next morning we were off again on our way back to Perigueux, seems like most of my life here is spent on trains! I wouldn’t change it though, I love that I am getting to see all these places! Every weekend in Stirling next year is going to be a shock to my system!

Paris

The long awaited reunion with Hannah in Paris finally happened this weekend and it was pretty darn great! Her and Sam made their way to Paris via the fancy Eurostar in less time than it took me to get to Bordeaux but nevertheless I met them in Paris Friday afternoon for a weekend full of fun times!

Hannah and I were both in Paris together during the summer as part of our inter rail trip and it was crazy busy, so it was so nice to see Paris at a slower pace, and with less street venders. (For more of my Inter rail Trip, see the Video below!)

We were staying in the Montmartre area of Pairs, so after leaving my stuff of we headed up to the Sacre Coeur, I swear every time those stairs kill me even more and I fully believe the lift thing should be free as that hill is just too steep. We admired the view and had a look around inside. Sacre Coeur is actually Modelled of the Cathedral in my town, which is a pretty crazy coincidence! After seeing mine so often I actually think it might be bigger and more impressive than Sacre Coeur!

View from the Sacre coeur

Sacre Coeur

We caught the metro down to Notre Dame and had a wander around there too before going to La Musée du Louvre (one of many amazing things in France that is free for EU people under the age of 26!). From there it started to absolutely bucket with rain so we called it a night and headed back to Montmartre for some dinner and drinks.

View of the Sienne and Eiffel tower

Notre Dame

Hannah, Sam and I at the Musée du Louvre

Musée du Louvre

Hannah and I at the Musée du Louvre

Musée du Louvre

Saturday Morning Afternoon, we wandered around a flee market in montmatre and bough some jeweley before making our way to the Eiffel tower. By the time we could see it we realised that we probably wouldn’t be able to see much from the top and it wouldn’t be worth the money or the time waiting in the queue so didn’t bother. We admired from the bottom and got ourselves some lunch instead. Afterwards we went to Galleries Lafayette to see the Christmas decorations and the view from the top.

Eiffel Tower

Hannah and Sam at the Eiffel Tower

Hannah and her Tequilla Sunrise

Hannah and I in Galleries Lafayette

Hannah and I on top of Galleries Lafayette

L’opera

We walked the length of the Champs Elysees so that we could see the Christmas markets and it was the craziest thing I have ever seen, So many people! Périgueux has a much more relaxed Christmas market! I wanted a nice view of the skyline with the Eiffel Tower in it, and at Gallaries Lafayette you can see it but it isn’t a great view so we decided to climb the Arc de Triomphe as it is also free for us!

Champs Elysees

Champs Elysees

Arc de Triomphe

Stairs in the Arc de Triomphe

Eiffel tower

Champs Elysees

Arc de Triomphe

Arc de Triomphe

We had another later night walk around Montmartre, ate good food and saw pretty amazing chocolate sculptures.

Metro

Pretty Impressive Chocolate work

Huge Meringues

On Sunday, par request by Hannah we went to the Cat café and I don’t think I have seen her more excited, easily her favourite part of Paris, And as far as Cat café’s go (this wasn’t my first one) it was a pretty good one! The cat you see on Hannah’s knee was hilarious and stole ham right of somebody’s plate! We finished the trip of by walking past the Centre de Georges Pompidou and the Hotel de Ville where we saw some prett impressive bubbles.

Cat Cafe

Cat Cafe

Cat Cafe

Centre de Georges Pompidou

Hotel de Ville

Bubbles

It was so lovely to see both Hannah and Sam again and it makes me very excited for summer plans and being back in Stirling next year!

Toulousers

We have had our trip to Toulouse booked for quite a time now, so were all very excited when last Friday came around! We had a weekend full of puns, you guys are toulousers, Meg’s trousers are toulouse, I need the loo – there are toulouse over there!!

We caught the train to Bordeaux where we would them catch the train to Toulouse and be there by noon. But of course, because it is France and because there are trains involved it didn’t go smoothly – there was a strike in the midi-Pyrénées, the exact are we were headed. Only every fourth train was running so we found ourselves some hot chocolate, learnt to play Skip-Bo and waited for the next train.

Once on the train we proceeded to annoy everyone around us by loosing Steffs Orange which rolled around the train, getting too competitive over card games and fighting over Disney lyrics, suffice to say people where happy when we got off the train. Also, it turns out we were sitting in the silent carriage which may have been why they were so disgusted at us talking. We arrived in Toulouse and made our way to the hostel where we dropped of our stuff and headed out to see the city.

I LOVE Toulouse, I think it may be my favourite French city that I have visited. I don’t understand why it is over looked so much – it isn’t in the guide books and there is very little information about it online, but it is beautiful. Quite a nice size, and has a metro which is handy too (it is the same as Rennes – electronic and driver-less, so it is super quiet and you can see where you are going as there is a window at the front, feels very strange).

We spent the afternoon wandering through the streets of Toulouse, seeing the Basilique de saint Sernin and the Christmas markets. I can’t remember if this is the same at home of not, but here the only turn the Christmas lights on when it gets dark and turn them off again at like 10 PM – is that normal? I thought they were on all day even when it is still bright outside as it looks nice and Christmasy, maybe I just haven’t noticed it before but they look a bit pathetic when the are off so I vote that the should be on all the time, it is Christmas after all!

Basilique Saint Sernin

Basilique Saint Sernin

Basilique Saint Sernin

Basilique Saint Sernin

Lights at the Christmas Market

Christmas Market

Christmas Market

We made our way to the river so we could see the Point Neuf, luckily for us this coincided with sunset and beautiful views of the bridge (Point Neuf) and the other side of Toulouse.

Point Neuf

Point Neuf

Point Neuf

Point Neuf

On our way back we decided to stop off at the Market again so that we could see it with all the lights on and get some mulled wine/apple juice. After living in the one of the best regions in France for wine, I still don’t really like it so I shall stick to my Mulled Apple Juice!

Then, very crazily I heard someone calling my name and it was Jessica (for those that don’t know she is my flatmates, best friend’s girlfriend who has stayed with us in Stirling before and now is in Amiens as a teaching assistant). She was visiting friends from Uni who are studying in Toulouse this year. Typical Irish Abroad meeting people you know everywhere!

Christmas Lights

Christmas Market

Jessica and I

Christmas Markets and Place du Capitol

The next day I woke up to realise that I never actually plugged the charger into the wall so my Camera had no battery hence the lack of Photos, I will try to get some off the other girls but for now there is none I’m afraid! We spent the morning walking through the rain to see all of Toulouse’s Gardens, which it has plenty of! They were really beautiful with water fountains, bridges, loads of ducks and cute winding paths through the trees.

Here are the girls photos!

It got too wet so we escaped to a cafe to get some shelter and warm up and started to plan our trips for next year. When I get back we only really have 12 weekends not including the holidays and we really want to make the most of it so we are thinking of Carcassonne, Nantes, Bayonne and Biarritz for now. If you know anywhere else accessible and worth seeing do let me know!

That evening we tried out some of the bars in Toulouse, it is one of the biggest student cities in France so there is certainly a lot to choose from. The first Bar we went to was the complete opposite of what we have become used to in Périgueux, so much so that we thought that we had went to a Gay bar, but Birgitta (embarrassingly) cleared that up for us by asking someone. French girls are very reserved, so the bar man found us singing and dancing to the music absolutely Hilarious and was sad to see us leave!

We moved on to a second bar before heading home for the night and getting some late night food. One of the many perks of travelling – food places open after 10pm!!

Swish

Maeve and Steff

Maeve and I

Brigitta, My, Maeve and Steff

Maeve, Meg, Birgitta and Steff

The next morning we gathered ourselves and caught out trains home, luckily this time with no delays or disasters!