Smells like Tapas!

We have just returned from a week in Barcelona! The first day started a little rough with lunch at a restaurant where they didn't speak any english, and our Catalan is very rusty! I ended up ordering the Russian Salad, the waiter told me it was green (or so I thought, again, the Catalan is not so good) and something I thought was supposed to be a steak. As a public service for anyone planning on traveling to Barcelona soon, I'll give you all the translation to Russian Salad so you don't have to look it up in your travel dictionary: Mayonayse Salad. Under all the white stuff are some potatoes, carrots, hard boiled eggs and I think 2 or 3 green beans. But this is not a potato salad. When you call something potato salad, potatoes are the primary ingredient. Not the case with a Russian Salad. I don't care if you're talking about potato salad, egg salad, macaroni salad, ambrosia salad or any other kind of "salad" you find behind the deli counter at Stop and Shop, this amount of mayo puts america to shame. As I looked around the restaurant, I could tell this was a wildly popular dish and is offered at many restaurants around the city. My steak turned out to be some kind of mystery meat sausage. Aside from that, most other meals ranged from good to fabulous. One night we had an incredible tasting menu that mixed spanish tapas with japanese sushi. And I tried my first pair of frog's legs. They were fine but I don't need to have them again. The owner of that restaurant then asked if we could go downstairs to see his pet frogs (not to be confused with the ones in the kitchen). He so seldom has children customers that he wanted to show them off (the frogs to the kids not the other way around). Turns out he has 2 nice frogs and one mean one that he likes to poke with a stick. We also had an amazing dessert that was called Dracula. It was a type of parfait with frothy Coke on the top and if you dug down deep you were rewarded with strawberry flavored pop rocks. You heard it folks, Coke and Pop Rocks, it's a wonder we're still alive. Aside from the food, I would have to say the most amazing thing was the Casa Batllo by Gaudi, it's so fantastical, the girls really enjoyed it too. The weather was also warm enough that we got to spend an afternoon at the beach, the girls put their feet in the water and I got a 5 euro foot massage from one of the Chinese ladies roaming the beach, it wasn't too bad either. Sadly, I think that will be one of the last times we will see the open water in quite a while. We came back to Paris on friday, one day after they closed all the airports here because of another strike. Speaking of which, things are not as bad here as they seem on the news. At this point there is one more strike day scheduled and then hopefully we'll be done with this and we can just wait for the next opportunity the French feel like complaining about something.

EuroDisney or Bust!

Hello. It's me, Lili, as you can tell from the font, seeing as no one else writes like this. Aunt Jody, has just left, they were a lot of fun( I'll see if i can post some pics.). Now, Bobby Nancy and Mike are here, but I'm going in between all that, to disney. That's right, for my birthday, we succeeded in going to euro disney, we said we would do it, and we did it, boy was that fun. I'll try to list everything I went on, though I may not get everything. Let's see.... Big Thunder Mountain, Buzz Lightyear, Peter Pan, Pinochio, Haunted Mansion, Teacups, Alice's Curious Labyrinth, Star Tours, uuummm, there were these Dumbo like rocket ships. That's all I can think of. I obviously put Big Thunder Mountain first because it was my favorite, but there were also parades, and shows. More than usual, because they were doing a "Halloween Special" as Noa said. That was a lot of fun, and I can't express it in type, so I'll have to skype with those of you who have it, and call those of you who don't. It was amazing. I only have a couple minutes to write, because I have to cook my potatoes. I also wanted to say, I was just looking through some pictures of me with everyone, and I'll admit, I teared up a little. I will write more on Saturday ( or will try), but I just wanted to beat my mom to talking about Disneyland, even if it's only a little bit. I'll talk more about it now, if you like(I would). Well... there was Sleeping Beauty's castle, not Cinderella's, but at the top, there were stained glass windows telling the story of Sleeping Beauty. Downstairs, there was a glass blower, it was so pretty, and amazing watching him make a little rose. I'm gonna take 5 more minutes to write, so I'll make it snappy. Way below, in the dungeon, in fact, there was a sleeping dragon. My dad said he was going to go down, and told us to help him if he got in trouble. So far, we hadn't seen the dragon move, so we thought nothing would happen. But as soon as dad went down, the dragon lifted his head, opened his lowing red eyes, and growled. Dad came running up, and then the dragon took one last look around, and went back to sleep. We stayed from 9:30 am (the park doesn't even open till 10 am) to 6:00 pm, when the park closes. We each got to pick one thing from the shops. Noa got a Mike Wosowski (from Monsters i.n.c.) stuffed animal, and a notebook with him on it. I got a rockin' black sweatshirt, with a skull on it. Thats all!! Oh, one more thing, for those of you who don't know, to get to my class's blog, go to adaptationeabjm.scholablog.net and the "motte de passe" is pomme. I have to make potatoes!!!

Lili(an) Belle in PARIS!

Metro Moment

Riding home on the metro friday, I had a little metro moment that I wanted to share with you all. It was the middle of the day and so not particularly crowded but every time we came to a stop at a new station there was some yelling and whooping coming from one of the other cars. Normally, the Paris metro is a very somber place. You know you are in the presence of a tourist if you see someone smiling on the metro, it just isn't done. Unless of course, it's very late at night and you are with a partner with whom you can nuzzle and whisper to, press up to very snugly, and generally do all kinds of things that would require the privacy of a residence or at the very least, the back seat of an automobile, anywhere in the United States. But I digress. So, there is this silliness going on at every stop as we're going along and then all of a sudden there is clicking on the loud speaker. This kind of clicking happens when someone is about to talk to give the passengers a message and it doesn't happen very often. But there was no message, there was music. I was trying to figure out what it was over the shrieking of the wheels against the rails when I finally realized it was the theme to The Love Boat. And then there was happiness. People were smiling in the metro. And it was funny. Soon the music stopped and it was time for me to get off. When I left the train, the source of the whooping was revealed. At every stop, there were some young kids jumping out of their car and mooning all of the other passengers as they entered and exited and they had their friends cheering them on. And that was funny too.