Heroes Are Eating My Brains!

Ahhhh! I'm addicted to Heroes! Seriously, is anyone else watching this show? Its popularity is spreading among the expat crowd like the plague around these parts. My intention was to write a nice update blogpost, recapping my two week vacation, etc., but all I can think about is this NBC network program that I have in fact only ever seen in grainy pirated versions scrounged off the internet! I've already blown through the first eleven episodes in the last four days. The show is just that good... Or, it makes for a great escape, which is what I think all the assistants and I are really hungry for right about now. Vacation was fun, nay, really really fun, but coming back to Toulon is like a bucket of cold water in the face, a truly cruel awakening. I can't instantly teleport back to Barcelona or Paris, but Hiro (a character in the show) sure could! (He could also stop time so that I could watch every episode back to back and not feel guilty about wasting time!)

All mental diarrhea aside, vacation was great! The new photos should be up, and I hope to have more photos soon from my fellow travelers as well. Spent the first week in Barcelona, staying in a really cool youth hostel called Gothic Point. Did some sightseeing during the daytime and saw a lot of really cool architecture by Gaudi and strolled along the 5 km shopping route, and then in the evenings we partied almost until sunrise! Seriously, half the clubs in Barcelona don't even open until 3am! I wasn't crazy about the tapas, the traditional Spanish food, but I was all over the falafel! That's right, Barcelona has a fantastic falafel chain called Maoz that features freshly made falafel and an all-you-can-eat salad bar including the really yummy (and artery clogging) deep-fried cauliflower, all for super cheap. As a vegetarian, I felt like I had died and gone to heaven! We left Barcelona just as it was starting to heat up, and got to spend at least one solid afternoon laying on the beach, where people actually walk around selling beers and offering back massages to the beach bums. Then, I flew to Paris where I met up with Zoe and her mom. We ate a Maoz there too, except for some reason (if you've been reading my blog for a while now, I'm sure you will share my utter lack of suprise) the Maoz in Paris was totally lame! They didn't have the deep-fried cauliflower or any of the really tasty sauces they had in Barcelona, it was twice as expensive and the portions were half the size. (Leitmotif = everything in France sucks more than anywhere else. Period.) But, the really cool part about Paris was I actually spent the first two nights there by myself. Readers may recall my initial hesitation about traveling alone, but I decided to go for it as it was only two days, and it was a city that I'm very familiar with at this point. You're never alone in Paris, anyhow (even if you want to be!). It turned out to be a very serendipitous choice. When I first arrived in Paris, I checked into my hotel, and then decided to take a stroll to grab a bite to eat and maybe check to see if there was a movie theatre nearby or some other way to wile away the evening alone. Not three blocks from my hotel, I stumbled upon a theatre advertising a concert being held that night featuring Lily Allen (if you don't know who she is, you need to listen to her album, its fantastic!). I inquired about tickets, and sure enough, the concert wasn't sold out yet. I went back to my room to freshen up, then stood in line for tickets with a couple of die-hard Lily fans from Limoges who graciously let me cut in line with them. It was a long wait, but totally worth it. The show was fantastic, and it was probably the best venue for the cheapest price I would ever have the chance to pay to see her since she's not too famous in France (she's English, afterall, a major cultural and linguistic stumbling block for the French). Being packed into a tiny theatre in and amongst a multicultural crowd of hipsters felt so... homey. Where were the slicked back black-dyed mullets and the lace-up pointy toed pirate boots? Nowhere, that's where. In Toulon, where they should stay. These were my people. This was the Europe I was hoping to find, one in which language barriers dissolve when met by an overarching global culture based upon a philosophy of really great music, art, fashion, and enlightened principles. Such a relief to know it may actually still exist outside the realm of my inner fantasies... And then, Zoe's mom came and went, and then it was just Zoe and me in Paris. She made me spend too much money as always (not my fault, I swear). Finally, we spent last weekend in Digne, staying up too late with the Digne assistants and doing a little hiking, and then POOF, I was back in Toulon like I'd never left.

So, there's my vacation in a nutshell. I left a few things out, of course, but maybe I'll get to those details at a later date. You never know, it could happen. I could squish up my face in this really cute way that makes me bend space and time. Watch Heroes. You'll get it.