Pictures!

I'm finally back in the connected world! So here are the promised pictures from the past two months. Starting with Monaco...

This is the view of the provencial countryside I took out of the bus on the way to Monaco one of my first weekends in France. You can see why I have fallen in love with it... We took a trip with a travel agency there and the whole thing was only 25 euro!

Wherever you go in Provence you can usually see some snow-capped mountains somewhere

In Monaco, this is the marine museum which overlooks the Mediterranean

In the royal gardens

Looking out over the city/state of Monaco. It is the second smallest country in the world... yet has the largest concentration of wealth anywhere in the world and the home to the longest reigning family in the world. Both of those are due to the absence of an income tax...

The changing of the guard ceremony outside of the royal palace. I was very surprised by how the guards wern't as "military stiff" as I am used to seeing at places like the toumb of the unknown soldier.

In front of the cathedral

The casino from which the government gets its money instead of taxes


We tried taking jumping pictures but it didn't work too well...

This is the Mt Saint Victoire that I mentioned so often. You can see it from certain places within the city and it is gorgeous! Mid-January me and some other people from my program were invited by a french student to climb it. He lead the expedition and we climbed to the top...

The bus dropped us off a ways from the base of the mountain and we walked to it


olive fields we walked by/through



As amazing as the climb was it was freezing!!! The temperature wasn't all that bad (although there was snow still on the ground at the top) however the wind was awful! The view was so worth it though! The church you see is a monastery that is built almost at the top... I want to know how they got all the materials up there!


Oh yea, I just climbed a mountain!





On our program trip to Antibes. The Mediterranean was so pretty! (Phil, Mary Kate, Erin and me)


We went to the market in Antibes and found the spice man!

This is a Picasso statue in Vallauris near the chapel he decorated.

SUPERBOWL MONDAY!!!!!! There were so many americans stuffed into that tiny room!

The first day of our February break I traveled to Paris with the girls where we stayed the day and one night to catch our flight to Athens the next day. It was really cold and the other girls just wanted to sit in a cafe but I took a 4 hour free walking tour of Paris! There's snow!

Le louvre

Le louvre from another angle

After the tour ended I walked over to the Eiffel Tower then got lost (purposefully with a map) in Paris. I took so many pictures of the Eiffel Tower because the light was just right!




the upside-down pyramids of the louvre

I finally saw the Mona Lisa! For as much as people say it is much smaller than they expected I thought it was bigger!

La Liberte Guidant le Peuple--I love this picture!

Finally in Athens! This is Hadrian's Library the first ruins we really explored. That morning we went to the flea market which was quite the experience then just walked around orientating ourselves.



We also stumbled upon these ruins the first day. The sign about them said something like "We tried to build an entrance to the metro here... they we found these... freaking ruins always getting in the way" (Well, not exactly but we got that impression while we were there that the Greeks got a bit annoyed with the ruins because they were always in the way.

We tried getting up to the Parthenon on the wrong side but got rewarded this amazing view of the city. The picture didnt turn out too well because its so bright but it was gorgeous!

It was such a sprawling city... and absolutely beautiful!

A temple in the Agora

Hadrians arch

The temple of Zeus Olympiad. We had to walk by it to go anywhere in the city (though i wasn't complaining)



still the temple of Zeus Olympiad

The theater of Dionysus Eleuthereus. It was really cool because we could actually climb all over it!


The Parthenon


It was so pretty!

The Porch of the Caryatids on the Erechtheum... These statues are copies of the real ones which are in a museum close-by.



The Temple of Zeus Olympiad at night

These are the ruins of the old entrance to the city


This is the view of where I ate lunch one day :) It turns out I was sitting about 50 feet from the place where democracy may have been created.

The Acropolis

The changing of the guard at the toumb of the unknown soldier... they had a very interesting "dance" for the actual changing of the guards... They lifted their legs really high and really did do a kind of dance.

The view from the Lykavits mountain in the middle of Athens.


The group :) Left to right: Alexa, Mary Kate, Amanda, Hattie, Kellsey and me
The smog over the city made things very hard to see but I got this picture of the Acropolis which actually turned out fairly well.

On our day trip to Delphi. The ruins of the temple are on the side of a mountain overlooking an absolutely gorgeous valley.



This is one of the buildings which surrounded the temple. Each city had one and would put their offerings/payments to the Oracle in here. This one is the one for Athens and is the best preserved.
These are the ruins of the temple. There used to be an opening in the earth and the oracle (an old peasant woman from the area) sat above it and breathed in the fumes. She would then start to speak meaningless words (a message from Apollo) which the priest would then interpret. The priest was apparently very good at wording the message so it could be interpreted in two ways. The opening has since closed up due to earthquakes in the area.


I love this picture

The temple of Athina

One of the thousands of ancient statues I saw. This one is actually Roman.

One of the few bronze statues that remains today. Most of them were melted down and the metal was used again during the middle ages.


We took an excursion down to the port... which really wasn't worth it for all the work (a train and three busses) we took to get down there, but the water was really blue!

This is back in France on a program trip to Glanum and Arles. In Glanum (the picture) there is an extremly extensive archeological site of a roman town with a few Greek buildings which rest. This site was the city of 3 civilizations: the Gaulois, the Greeks and then the Romans. Why? Because there is a source of water which never runs dry no matter how hot or dry the summer. The Gaulois actually thought the source was magical and that it had healing powers. People would come from all over (throughout the period of all three civilizations) to try its healing power.

The Arc de Triomphe of the ancient city of Glanum

The Colosseum of Arles. When I got to this city I went to get lunch first (steak and fries sandwich) and then my friends and I started walking towards the first thing we wanted to see. As we were walking a group of highschool aged French kids started jeeringly yelling something at us. We couldn't really tell what they were saying so we just ignored them. Then one of the guys came up to me and just took a french fry out of my sandwhich! I was so confused!

The view from the top of one of the towers of the Colosseum. The seats of the Colosseum were actually taken out in the middle ages and a city was built inside and the stadium was used for protection. They also built two lookout towers on top.



A monestary next to a really pretty church in Arles

Re-creating the scene from the tapestry from the Middle-Ages


Our attempt at baking cookies... we didn't have a recipe, brown sugar or baking powder yet with a little tweaking we made some pretty good cookies!

Well... I hope that gives you enough pictures to look at! I'll upload more as I take them! Ive been meaning to take some at the school and put them up...

Miss you all!