It's raining in England

Lisbon was great. It felt much more like a big city than Porto, but was pretty and super fun. There was tons going on, and tons of people everywhere. Also, we found a restaurant where we ate a wonderful Portuguese meal and listened to fado, a locally famous type of music. We weren't sure what we were in for, but once we got there and ordered, it started almost immediately. There were three different singers and each got up and sang 3 or 4 songs with one guitarist for the background music. Fado is a loud, melancholy, operatic kind of song, and it was wonderful. We liked it so much we each bought a cd from each one of the first two professional singers. The last singer was one of the cooks from the restaurant. It was a wonderful evening. We made it back to Porto and spent the afternoon by the waterside before catching our plane back to Marseilles on Sunday night. All of Monday was spent getting retrieving our luggage from the hostel and making it back across town to the train station. Then we took the TGV from Marseilles to Paris. (The TGV recently broke the record for the fastest train in the world at 357 mph.)

Upon arriving in Paris we were met at the train station by Christina and after getting all of our stuff back to the apartment, we went to the steps of Sacre Couer and saw the lights of the whole city from the hill. Despite Jed trying to start a fight, it was nice spending one last night with Justin and Christina. The next day I accompanied all three to Charles De Gaulle to see them off. After a few small issues, and Justin buying an extra bag to distribute the weight out of his gigantic suitcase, everyone made it off ok. So I spent the next three days in Paris alone and staying in Christina's friend's apartment in Montmarte, the neighborhood made famous by the film Amelie. I even shopped at the store highlighted in the film, and had a lovely conversation (albeit a short one) with the guy running the shop.

I wandered around Notre Dame, The Orangerie and the Eiffel tower on Thursday. The Orangerie is a lovely museum with some of Monet's giant Waterlilies paintings exhibited and a lot of other expressionist paintings there. It wasn't open last time I was in Paris, so I was excited to get to see it this time. Then, at the hostel I stayed in my last night in Paris I met a girl from New York state, Kristy, who was super nice and invited me out to hang with her Parisian friends, and it was super fun.

I am now in England with Nat. All of her flatmates are really nice (there are 5 of them, three Brits, an Aussie, and another Kiwi besides Nat). It's been raining since I got here, but I think I will take my chances with the weather tomorrow and go and see some of the sights. London is huge and feels even bigger than Paris. I think that by the time I get back to Toulouse I will be ready for a medium sized city in the south of France, complete with mountains and sunshine.