At long last, I have a little bit of time and am attempting to begin my catch-up blogging. Don't hold your breath though--it's going to take awhile to fill in my adventures from the past month. Before I continue with the rest of my parents visit in France, I just want to reassure you that I did not, in fact, have to choose between a fun-filled weekend in the Haute Savoie with a bunch of Frenchies and playing in a soccer tournament with a bunch of Frenchies. The Haute Savoie trip was put on a perhaps permanent hold so I got to play in the tournament this past weekend and it was awesome. There were a couple drawbacks, including the fact that the games were only 12 minutes long in order to ensure that each team could play three games. Since we had 12 players show up, none of us got to play much. I ended up subbing for another team twice just to get some more playing time. But on the up side, I had been all worried about not being a student since it was the Lyon 3 University team and NO ONE checked or even asked. I had even gone to all the trouble of memorizing another student's name and number (I'm glad no one was checking because I was going under the guise of a student named Paloma De La Cruz who is Dominican...). Anyway, we won two games and lost two games, coming in fourth out of eight teams. Not great, not terrible. But it was really fun. We got to wear legit uniforms, got free t-shirts, managed to get four fans out to cheer us on (I think the fact that there was beer and music helped), and bonded a bunch as a team.
There's another tournament at the end of May that I'm going to try to sneak into too, but it's in Paris against universities from all over France and I'm not sure my little trick of simply using another student's number will work since Lyon 3 pays for the train ride and everything. Riiiiiiiight.Anyway, on to the real task at hand. So, as I mentioned in my birthday post, my parents came to visit in February right after my surgery. For those of you not in the know, this post title refers to our little family nickname, DEWN (the first letter in each of our names), which was originally created to be the name of our canoe many, many years ago and has since morphed into a much more general usage. :)
Following our running reunion by the metro and my birthday festivities, my parents proceeded to sleep for approximately one million hours. Which was fine with me since I was still recovering from the surgery and the anesthesia and had trouble going more than four hours at a time without a nap. So there was a whole lot of napping and reading leading up to my birthday present to my mom, which was a ticket (with me and Dad) to see a ballet at the Lyon Opera House on Thursday night.
After a nice early dinner at my favorite pizza place (and the only place you can really eat before 7pm possibly in all of France), we went to see one of the most amazing modern dance pieces I have ever seen. Mom was enthralled with the movement and Dad was enthralled with the crazy scenery set-up and I love anything at all dance-related, so it was a hit all around.
On Friday, my parents and I were off to Corsica for four days (with me having thankfully gotten my last shot and bloodwork done on Thursday). It was a nice, easy flight, and another assistant, Zane, was actually on the flight with us since he was going to Corsica to visit a friend. We landed without a problem, managed to finally find our rental car (a slick Mercedes!!! with side mirrors that could be rotated inward for tight parking spaces!!! Dad was in love, seriously), and drove the 30 minutes from the airport into Bastia where our hotel was.
Posta Vecchia Hotel turned out to be charming and perfect, and the Lonely Planet advice to splurge the extra 10 euros for an ocean view room was spot on. I had a little tiny corner room to myself, but my parents had an amazing room that looked right out on to the ocean (see Mom's movie star pic below...)
After a little nap, we ventured out and found an amazing Italian restaurant one block from our hotel. There was only one other person eating there, but the food was divine: tomato-mozzarella appetizer, pasta with lobster, pasta with pesto, steak, delicious wine. Corsica = the perfect melding of French and Italian cuisine. The language is another story. Corsican is supposedly a mix of the two, but it sounded a whole lot more like Italian to me...
The next day dawned beautiful and warm (a LOT warmer than freezing, snowy Lyon), and after a nice little breakfast at the hotel, we hopped in the car and headed inland to the mountainous heart of Corsica. We had sort of a vague plan to go to Corte in the middle of the island and then make our way to the northwest coast of the island to see several "chic" must-see towns. We got a little sidetracked by the ridiculousness of being NEXT to the ocean at one moment and then, 10 minutes later, basically being in snow-covered mountains. I think Corsica is perhaps one of the most unique geographical land masses in the world with its beautiful beaches just an hour's drive from 2000-meter in altitude legit mountains. We kept having to stop the car to take random pictures of mountains that really didn't come out well. The one below isn't a particularly good picture, but it does show a palm tree in stark contrast to the snow-covered mountain in the background. Kind of crazy.
As we were driving to Corte, I saw a sign for the town Soveria with an ad for a candy factory that Sara's roommate's family owns. Jacques, Sara's roommate, had called me right before we left on Friday and in his mile-a-minute French had given me his mom's phone number and told me to call her to get restaurant suggestions, etc. since his family has lived in Corsica forever. I was a little intimidated and had been putting off calling her, but when we literally drove by his town I decided I couldn't NOT call her. So we took a little detour and drove into Soveria while I called his mom's cell phone. The roads were icy and barely big enough for one car in good conditions so it was a little interesting. I kept losing cell phone service so we decided to just follow the signs to the candy factory. It being Saturday, the factory was closed, but the town was on top of a little hill set against beautiful mountains (as you can see in the picture below) so I finally had a bar of service. I called Jacques's mom, Angèle, and she answered right away. After finding out that we were literally next door, she invited us over for tea! The town only has 120 inhabitants and is the most adorable little place ever, so she said to just head for the church steeple and her house was next door.
We parked and found it no problem and had a delicious little snack with Angèle and her husband, Marcel. They let us sample his amazing confections--his specialty being chocolate-covered fruit.
They didn't speak much English so my translation skills were put to the test, but it was so cute! I felt a little weird since I had met Jacques approximately twice for 5 minutes each time and here I was in the house where he'd lived since he was born, but his parents were so welcoming and seemed genuinely happy to have us completely randomly drop in on them. They even invited us to meet them for dinner in Corte that night and gave us a new itinerary for our day. They walked us out to the car for a cute picture, and then we were back on our way.
We drove through more mountains before reaching the west coast of Corsica and ended up on a nice curving road by the ocean that wound through what must be divine resort towns in the summer. Things were really quiet with an almost abandoned air since it wasn't yet tourist season, but the quaint buildings and coastline were still beautiful.
We stopped in Calvi and had a picnic lunch atop a wind-whipped hill near a big fort. We had bought bread, fruit, and Corsican cheese and charcuterie (sausage) at the market near our hotel in Bastia (I made best friends with a little market man who then convinced us to buy a HUGE hunk of charcuterie), but the charcuterie proved to be a tough match for the little plastic knives we had brought.
Luckily, we had had to buy a whole bag so we could afford to have several of them break during the cutting process. I ended up being the only one who liked the smelly cheese. In fact, Mom claimed that it was perhaps one of the worst lunches she had ever had, but it's hard to complain for long when you're eating bread and cheese by the ocean on an island in France... :)
On our way back towards Corte, we stopped in Ile de Rousse, another cute little coastal town, and took a little hike on the beach--had to touch the water, of course.
Even though it had gotten windy and a little cold, we stopped again for a little hike in the rocks to work up an appetite for some more Corsican culinary delights. We wanted a picture of all three of us, but since no one else was crazy enough to be out gallivanting around on the rocks, we had to take an infamous Flaschner-Meyer timed photo and couldn't really capture the view so the picture below looks like it could pretty much be taken in Maine. But it wasn't!
A bit chilled and definitely hungry, we made our way back through the mountains and to Corte, which is where Corsica's university is and where the supposed heart and soul of true Corsica is. We didn't have much time to explore since we were almost late for our 7:30 date with Angèle and Marcel, but it seemed like a cute little town. We were ushered off for an aperitif at a little bar where Jacques's sister's boyfriend was playing traditional Corsican music with his band and then went to a delicious, little hole-in-the-wall locals restaurant called Rivière des Vins. It had a stone fireplace in the dining room where they cooked all the meat so you could watch your meal as it cooked. Dad and I both got the Corsican platter, which included a little bit of everything Corsican that you could ever dream of. Kind of an overload of charcuterie but delicious all the same.
I struggled a bit with translating when the conversation turned to more complex topics like America's capitalist system and running a business, but Jacques's parents continued to be the most gracious and perfect hosts. They invited us out to another bar after dinner, but we were exhausted from our day out in the mountainy ocean air so we headed back to our Bastia base.
Clearly WAY more to come (considering I'm only up to day five of my parents 10-day visit), but I'm exhausted and off to bed so this will have to do for now...
