What accent is that?!?

Had a very horsey morning, came out of the apartment building and found myself following... ahem... going in the same direction as three strapping young gendarmes on horseback. Then as I sat waiting for my bus I was passed by at least twenty-five horses, I kid you not.

Had my last-but-two French class this morning and it was rather fun, we did a ridiculously easy quiz (one of the questions was putting a name to the Eiffel Tower) and then got sidetracked during the correction discussing how our various countries name animal noises. Things like bark rather than woof for dogs or crow rather than cock-a-doodle-do for a cockerel (it all came about because another of the questions was to identify how the French say the cockerel's noise, incidentally its cocorico). Just so you know English and German have by the far the most alternatives.

After class Anna and I went to book the last couple of train tickets for our trip next month and the deutchbahn office (the German rail company because the French one is incapable of booking any journey outside France) was positively inundated by Australians who were very easily identified by their bright yellow and green t'shirts and caps. Listening to them I confessed to Anna that I had forgotten just how broad the Aussie accent can get, at times I was almost convinced that they were speaking a language other than English!

One final thing, Anna and I must really have improved in our endeavours to speak French as we conducted the whole rail transaction in French and not once did the saleswoman offer to continue in English, something which formerly happened every time we attempted to use French in such a situation, yay for us!

It's France...

Here's a lovely picture from my birthday party on the weekend, look what a good job I did of blowing out the candle, just one in keeping with my mental age!

One of my French friends who came to the party hadn't visited my apartment before so I sent him my address. Unfortunately when he tried to find directions the internet told him that my street didn't exist! I had a hunch that I knew what the problem was so I suggested that he try splitting the street name, Lekain, into two parts, Le Kain, and of course it worked. At the party we got talking about the problem and I told him that I had noticed that although the signs up my end of the street say 'Lekain' at the other end they do indeed say 'Le Kain'! His answer was a very gallic shrug and the answer 'This is France'. Hahahaha I'm glad it's not just me!

Tourism

Had a visitor last week, which led to me playing tourist for a few days. Mostly we went to see things that I had already been to, such as the Louvre, Montmarte, Sacre Coeur and Notre Dame. But we also went to the top of the Eiffel Tower (I have been up it previously but only as far as the second stage) and we were very lucky with the weather (because for the most part it is still being pretty rotten) as the sun shone the whole time we were up there (in fact I ended the day rather pink), to the Chateaus Versailles (really enjoyed it) and Vincennes (the interior is being renovated so we couldn't go inside but the exterior was still worth a look) and to the hippodrome at Atueil to see a steeple chase, which was great fun.

Today was 'Free Sunday' in Paris, which means that all the museums open their permanant exhibitions to the public for free. Having been to the major ones like Orsay and the Louvre we chose to visit Guimet and Cluny and enjoyed both of them. The cluny had a great collection of stonework and the Guimet specialises in Asian artworks so both were very interesting. We finishe off the day with an icecream, whichin my opinion is really the only proper way to end a day out!