Visiting Sean (and Darth Vader)

On our final week of break, we took the time to explore Lille a little bit more and, most importantly, visit Sean in Amsterdam. I can cover the exploration of Lille mostly through pictures:

Palais des Beaux Arts

Yes. These are boobs. (Okay maybe they don't look very much like boobs BUT
I promise they are because it was a breast cancer exhibit).

Fountain! 

I didn't know flowers like this existed in nature and now I want
to plant them EVERYWHERE

Of course, there were many a panorama taken that day

Carson in his element.

Porte de Paris

The beffroi
(tallest municipal building in France and a UNESCO world heritage site for some reason) 

Carson in his actual element.

Super enthusiastic street band

A man with his which. And a mechanical flower.

It’s hard to capture how pretty some of these places/things are, but I think Carson did a standup job.

One of the best things our exploring led us to is one of the most famous/popular dessert spots in Lille called Aux Merveilleux. There are a couple of these places around France and they make almost exclusively hard meringue (is meringue always hard...?) covered in a type of whipped cream. Adequately describing these little balls of adorable pastry mastery is difficult, but they have 6 different flavors and we have vowed to try them all. This time around we went with Le Magnifique: two meringues bonded and then covered by praline flavored whipped cream, and finally coated in pieces of almond and caramelized hazelnuts. I have no idea how we managed to take a picture before inhaling it in what felt like the span of several seconds.

Pre-inhalation: when the world was still full of wonder and possibilities

Only 45 seconds later, yet the world seemed a sadder place

...I do not find it even remotely sad that this pastry was the obvious highlight of the week.

That night, we had some friends over and they brought along their assistant friends from other parts of France. This was very fun but evidently overshadowed by prior baked good-related events. 

The next morning we went to the Sunday market in our neighborhood, which is always very charming. Though, we might actually have to start buying things because the proprietors are starting to recognize us and will eventually get angry at the fact that we are there solely for the whimsical ambiance.

Market-ing 

Now moving on to Amsterdam...

Carson and I decided to go by bus because it is absurdly cheap and a manageable 5 hour ride. At least, that’s what it advertises. The bus was 20 minutes late getting into Lille, and after our first stop in Ghent, the bus driver announced that the next stop was only 50 minutes away but, you know, sometimes it took 4 hours...

He said this as if 50 minutes versus 4 hours wasn’t a huge and problematic discrepancy.  You see, the best thing about no one having an international phone when traveling is that if you don’t time your meet-ups perfectly, you will never find each other ever again. This meant that if we were 4 hours late, Sean (who kindly offered to meet us at the station) would either have left by then or be very very unhappy.

Luckily, we had the foresight to assume that the bus could (and most likely would be) late and knew exactly where Sean lived in the case that we were 3 to 4 hours late and couldn’t contact him. Oh wait, no. No we didn’t. Because we are dumb.

Despite our lack of foresight, we were only 10 minutes late and Sean somehow immediately found us in the large train station. We then took the metro to the Dutch grocery store chain, Jumbo.

Probably one of my favorite things to do in a different country is go to a grocery store, because every place has one or several things that they randomly sell in abundance and is either adorable or horrifying. In Amsterdam, it’s little waffle chip things (adorable), sauerkraut (adorable to say but horrifying to smell), schnitzel (adorable and delicious), and herring (only horrifying).

After making the weird decision to buy a large package of sauerkraut (I microwaved it too long and it made everything smell weird and...fermented-y...sorry Sean’s roommates!), we went back and met all of Sean’s friends. Most of these friends were also his roommates and came from extremely interesting places around Europe. Their set-up is essentially a giant dorm with one kitchen/bathroom/common room and a bunch of single rooms. This arrangement, as per usual, does not lend itself to cleanliness or sleeping, but is fantastic for parties. We also apparently came at a great time, because for some reason their workload was lighter than usual and it was a Hungarian girl’s birthday week.

It was a great night and we loved hanging out with all of Sean’s new friends. We ended up going to a bar called CoCo’s, which was full-out decorated for Halloween and played awesome music (like “I Want It That Way,” which ALL of the foreigners knew every word to. This was a pretty young/hip bar...so take that high school students...I’m still totally cool.)

The next day Sean had class, so Carson, Will, and I went to explore the city. (I might not have mentioned this, but our good assistant friend Will tagged along for the trip). We did all of the Amsterdam activities: canal and park seeing, near death experiencing with bikers, flower market perusing, etc. It is probably the most beautiful city I’ve been to, so here are some pictures:

One of the gazillion canals

I felt like I should include pictures with people in them but now see that the
selection is not exactly great...

...so back to canals

Flower market!

Sign that (for some reason) you have to take a picture with or you actually did not
go to Amsterdam.

Once again making what would have been a beautiful picture somewhat
awkward with our presence. 

Most importantly: SEANNNN

Now for my favorite story... We were in one of the main squares eating lunch when Carson noticed there was a guy dressed as Darth Vader taking pictures with young children. He got it in his head that he had to get a picture of him being force choked by Darth Vader. However, he didn’t just want to be force choked, he needed it to look like he was being force choked in the air. So Carson, who doesn’t like going up to strangers to ask for directions, walks up to Darth Vader and asks him to force choke him in the air. This is a very nice Darth Vader, so he immediately tries to fulfill Carson’s dream by getting off his elevated stand and telling Carson to climb on up. Unfortunately, Carson did not understand that Darth gave him his stand so that we could simply omit his feet from the picture and it would look like he was floating in the air. What followed was the most uncomfortable, hilarious interaction I’ve seen in a while. Carson proceeded to jump up and down on Vader’s stand while Vader just kind of looked around and half-heartedly pretended to force choke Carson. If you thought it was impossible to sense discomfort in someone wearing a full costume and a mask, you would be wrong. This guy does awkward interactions for a living, yet I think that this one will remain in his memory forever.

The best part is, after all of this, Carson still had no idea what had just happened. When he looked at the pictures, he just said “Wait, Will, why didn’t you get my feet in the picture?” After several minutes of explaining that that was the entire point, Carson finally understood. My favorite quote of the trip then came from Will: “Between you and Darth Vader there was just...a huge discrepancy in the amount of effort being put into this picture.”

I really hope this wasn’t a you-had-to-be-there type of story, because it will never stop being hilarious to me. Here is the photo montage:

 

Carson didn't even know what to do with all of his excitement  

This is going to be epic - Carson 

What in the hell is this guy doing - Darth Vader 

Hands down the best of the bunch. 

That night we took it easy because Carson and I both had colds, and just hung out with Sean’s roommates. I’m actually a little jealous of the fact that he gets to live with so many awesome/interesting/nice foreigners. All in all, Amsterdam was wonderful and Sean was the best host imaginable. We’re super excited to return to favor and are making him come to Lille ASAP because one Sean-eunion is not enough.

Now that we’re back, my cold is more or less in full force and Carson is reaching the end of his. Halloween plans might include going out tonight or just making pizzas that look like ghosts and watching Hocus Pocus. There are also a couple of cool things going on during the day. In fact, the place we live above (randomly the most popular candle/soap shop in Lille) is doing some sort of Halloween day. I’m not really sure what a candle shop could offer on Halloween, but I’m interested to find out.

Happy Halloween to all!