An Amazing Weekend Road Trip to Normandy, Mont Saint Michel, and Loire Valley

We had an amazing weekend experience roadtripping it through France! Our trip consisted of 10 exchange students in 2 cars with Sahil and our friend Peter as the two drivers. Fantastic company, amazing scenery, and a perfect itinerary led to a seamless and beautiful journey around the countryside!

We began our trip by driving to Normandy, France to witness firsthand the battlefields on Omaha and Utah Beach for Operation D-Day during World War II. We left at 1pm on Friday and after our 3 hour drive, we arrived at Hotel Bayeux (a hotel our friend Gary found which we basically took over since January is DEFINITELY not tourist season in any way, shape, or form). We decided to take it easy, get dinner, check out the town, and then have our own party in the private party room of the hotel. After walking around and realizing that most places close early, we ended up at a Brasserie for our pretty tasty dinner. The town of Bayeux is really pretty so we walked around a bit more after dinner before heading back to the hotel to drink wine, eat snacks, and get to know our exchange friends on a deeper level!

We made Friday night the earlier one of the two since we planned to leave at 8am from the hotel on Saturday to explore Normandy, then set off for Mont Saint Michel, and end up at Loire Valley at night. We looked for a breakfast spot on our way to the beaches and came across a small restaurant occupied by 2 local men who polished off a bottle of wine at 830am and a HUGE plate of cheese! Oh, Europe!! After eating breakfast, we drove up to the beach and were pretty much the only tourists there.

It was amazing to see such a historical landmark and be where the German troops had occupied France. We envisioned the Allied forces coming in through the water and saw an actual tank that the American troops used in Normandy. We then climbed into a bunker that the Germans had hid in and imagined being one of the soldiers at that time. Over 75 days, 425,000 people between the Allied and Axis forces died in this pivotal battle during World War II!

We went to the cemetary from there and saw a feature film of 5 American soldiers who lost their lives in Normandy as well as walked through a museum and saw the graveyard of all the brave soldiers who fought for our country and for something so much greater.

With both of us being so interested in World War II history in particular, we thoroughly enjoyed our visit to Normandy. By 1pm, we set off to Mont Saint Michel, one of the most beautiful and popular landmarks of France. It is an abbey church that is 170 meters above the shore and is probably one of the most beautiful pieces of architecture we have ever seen. The girls on our trip agreed that it looked like a fairy tale castle that we all would have dreamt of as children and we fell in love with it as we climbed up to the top.

After spending time exploring Mont Saint Michel and taking in all the beauty around us, we headed out to Loire Valley, the third destination of our weekend road trip. At this point, our car had named ourselves "Le Passat" because we listened to fantastic music, had a club going in our car (which was a Volkswagon Passat), and we pretty much danced our way to Loire Valley. We decided that our song here would be Stereo Love by Edward Maya featuring Vika Jigulina. It's SO catchy and just SO good with this amazing accordian tune that really makes it that much more our Europe song! You HAVE to hear it - once you hear it once, you won't be able to get the song out of your head - its THAT catchy!

We drove to Loire Valley and upon reaching, we realized what a cute find our friend Sandra booked for our stay that night. We stayed in 2 cottages which were extremely accomodating and a ton of fun! We drove to Chinon for dinner and found a really trendy, not too expensive restaurant for dinner with great food: Cafe Des Les Artes. It was the perfect closing to the most productive and beautiful day! After dinner, we headed back to our cottage and got our PARTY on! We played games, drank, ate, and at 4am made it to bed feeling really good about our weekend trip so far!

While Loire Valley is a wine region, most of the vineyards are closed on Sundays so when we woke up, we decided that we would go to one of the most famous Chateaus instead of a vineyard. We drove to Chambord to visit an INCREDIBLE chateau with 426 rooms, 77 staircases, 282 fireplaces with Leonardo Da Vinci's influence in the architecture (a double helix staircase). It was BEAUTIFUL!

After a perfect weekend of seeing beautiful sights, our trip got better as we drove away from the Chateau. It was raining but it was also really sunny - the perfect recipe for a RAINBOW. We saw our first FULL rainbow and that too, two of them on top of each other. It was just gorgeous. As we got back in the car after that sighting, we decided we had pretty much seen it all on this trip!

We made it back last night VERY content with our weekend road trip around France. We bid farewell to our friends and we're back in Paris! This week we have class (Mana has her first French quiz tomorrow!) and then we are off to Rome on Thursday for the weekend. Rome is very special to us because it goes back to our story about how Sahil proposed to Mana, so we are SO excited for that trip!

Have a great week!

Embracing the Diversity At ESSEC

This was a GREAT second week of school! Our classes were MUCH better than last week (partly because 2 were cancelled for the week and partly because they got slightly more interesting since we didnt spend an hour having each student introduce themselves to the professor)! We had an exchange student party on Tuesday which was REALLY fun. With 50+ exchange students, a welcome from the Dean of ESSEC, and then an opportunity to eat, drink, and mingle with the students from Argentina, India, Germany, Canada, Mexico, US, etc., we had a BLAST!

One of Mana's most exciting revelations this week was that ESSEC partners with IIM in Ahmedabad, which is one of the most prestigious institutions of India and so close to her Sunrise Park bungalow in Ahmedabad. She bonded with a student over Ahmedabad and found it so cool to be in class with him in Paris of all places on exchange! We had a debate as to the prestige level of IIM compared to IIT (Sahil believes IIT is MUCH stronger, Mana thinks IIM is just as strong as IIT if not better) - let us know if you have any input on this debate!

Wednesday was a great day because we went to our morning class and then had our afternoon class cancelled so first we went to eat lunch at the Indian restaurant on campus, which to our surprise was not as bad as expected. We've been told that Indian food in Paris is not the best, but interestingly enough, there are SO many Indian chefs at French restaurants here. We learned from our IIM friend that because Pondicherry, India was once a French colony, there are many people from that region who are now here and have taken on the career of becoming chefs! So interesting!

After lunch, Mana and her friend went shopping at the mall closeby and after finding a SERIOUS sale, bought her first pair of thigh-high gray suede boots for a GREAT deal when converted into dollars! She was jumping up and down in excitement. Sahil decided to opt out of shopping and instead began planning our trip for the weekend to Normandy and Louire Valley.

We finished classes on Wednesday and grabbed dinner at night about 2 blocks away from our apartment at the cutest little restaurant called il Tres. It was trendy and fun, with bright lights and had vegetarian food for Sahil so he was happy. We ended up befriending the manager of the restaurant who then hooked us up with an apertif and now have found a hangout spot of our own here when we don't want to go far or experiment with food!

Thursday we slept in and then made our way to the Pompidou Centre for the day. It was the first sunny day in Paris in a long time! We did some reading for class at a cafe inside for a few hours and then called it a day, came home, finished planning our trip for the weekend, and then went to our friend's place at night for some wine to hang with our friends from the US, Germay, Mexico, and Argentina. The international students here are really great and we're loving their company!

It's been a great second week but we are now off with 8 other friends of ours from school to road trip it to Normandy and Louire Valley to check out the castles/battlefields/wine region! So exciting! We'll tell you all about it early next week!

A Lazy Weekend Which Led to An Exciting Monday To Sacre Coeur!

After our entry about Versailles, we pretty much stayed warm at home and watched movies, read, played cards, and caught up with friends and family all weekend. It was too cold to go out and we thought we'd lay low after being nonstop on the go since we've been here. Saturday ended up being a day of complete homebody-ing and Sunday, we spent part of the day doing intense research on Ryan Air and Easy Jet websites to seek out cheap flights for trips around Europe and then finally decided to venture out for dinner.

First we contemplated going to Little India, but then our friend said that she heard it can be a bit shady at night, so we decided to save that trip for a lunch one afternoon. Instead, we went to what was recommended to us by several people: the best falafal restaurant in Paris located in the Jewish quarter! Sahil was jumping up and down in excitement as he does whenever the idea of good vegetarian food becomes a possibility.

We met our friend Smruti and the three of us headed over to L'as du Falafel at
32 Rue des Rosiers. It was pretty tasty and much more affordable than some of our other meals here! Sahil LOVED it and Mana and Smruti liked it. Regardless, we all indulged and then went to Cafe Feria down the street, a really cute cafe with fantastic ambience for some hot chocolate for Sahil and molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream for Mana and Smruti. We hung out for a while and then finally decided we would walk home to work off our dinner. It was a low-key evening out but it was a really tasty and wonderful one nevertheless, being able to appreciate walking around Paris with the city beginning to feel a little bit more like home!

Today, we woke up early to meet our friend Gary at Galleries Lafayette, one of the most popular department stores in Paris, so that Mana could do some basic research for her Luxury Retail Management class on the brand she chose: Guerlain. We then did some additional research down the street at Printemps, the other famous department store only a block away from Galleries Lafayette at the Opera Metro stop. After about fifteen minutes, we were all on our way to Montmartre, a very cute area of Paris which included one of the city's most beautiful sights, Sacre Coeur along with Moulin Rouge and even the Musee de L'Erotisme :O!

On the train, we ran into Stephanie, who was another exchange student's girlfriend as she was planning on meeting us there. We then waited for one more friend to join us and in the meantime took some photos of the Moulin Rouge. With bright lights around it, we went in to investigate the price of tickets to the show. Once we learned that they started at 80 euros per person, we decided to move on to the museum. As odd and unusual as it is, the popular Paris book said it was a must-see sight, so the six of us ventured into what seemed like an endless number of floors on the subject of "Erotisme".

After about an hour and a half, we left deciding we no longer wanted to feel like we were in the Red Light District of Amsterdam and went to our final and most exciting destination of the afternoon: the beautiful Sacre Coeur. We made our way up and came across Rue de Norvins, which was a very cute and happening street with cafes and tourist shops, where we found a perfect Brasserie for lunch. A little while later, we were recharged and ready to make the final climb to the top. We got to the Basilica and though Gary insisted that today was supposed to be a sunny day and would be perfect for us to see the city of Paris from the top of the mountain upon which Sacre Coeur stood, he was wrong! Haha, Gary, we had to tease you in our blog! Like almost every other day in Paris, it was gray and cloudy and ultimately less visible than we expected. Even so, it was gorgeous! We took photos of the city and then went into the Basilica. Mana reminisced about her last time to Sacre Coeur with her friends Markus and Hannah when she came to Paris for a quick three day trip while she was working in London. Sahil spent his time inside taking pictures secretly with his camera of which none came out right anyways! :)

It was beautiful on the inside and out and it was the perfect Monday afternoon excursion around Paris! We took the metro home, and though it has now become a regular means of transportation for us, we continue to marvel at the efficiency and speed of the Metro in Paris. We love that we can walk and metro it everywhere!

Tomorrow begins week 2 of classes - we are crossing our fingers that it fares better than last week!

Our Trip To Versailles

We have been enjoying Paris thorougly so far this weekend. On Thursday morning, poor Sahil had to wake up early and commute to Cergy for a twenty minute group meeting at 9am while Mana slept in, but when he returned he napped (we know, tough lives we live) while Mana went out around the city to see what kind of sales really existed right now.

Paris apparently has huge sales twice a year in the stores and on January 6th the sales begin for the first week at 30% off in most places, 50% the following week, and 70% the final week. Of course even with the sales, as two students we are unlikely to be crazy spenders at this point in our lives, but you better believe Mana will keep her eyes open for good deals!

In the evening we attempted to get tickets to see the Ballet at the Opera Garnier but they ran out of student tickets so we went to Plan B and had dinner with friends at Le Bouledogue, a restaurant recommended to our friend Yamini by her friend who lived in Paris. The food was not bad, but we realized we really need more spice in our foods. French food is rich and buttery but not spicy at all! We can't help it - its the Indian in us! After dinner, we decided to drink wine and hang out with our friends in a warm apartment (since its FREEZING in Paris these days) and called it a night since we were going to Versailles early the next morning.

At 10am the next day, we met at St Michel to take the RER C train to Versailles. With six girls and Sahil (he was a real trooper being around so many woman for an extended period of time and listening to conversations revolving around fashion and eyebrow waxing), we had an adventurous journey there. We realized once we got on the train that we were on the wrong train, got off, jumped on the return train, got off, and then finally got on the right train. The perk to this back and forth experience and feeling like characters out of National Lampoons European Vacation was seeing the best view of the Eiffel Tower three times from the train ride!

We eventually made it to Versailles and there was snow on the ground when we got there! We walked a few hundred feet and found a cute creperie so we all decided to stop for lunch. First, we all ordered hot chocolate with whipped cream - yumm (in Paris, the hot chocolate is pretty good, not too sweet, but rich enough!) Then, Sahil ordered the savory crepe with onions, tomatoes, and egg, Mana ordered the sweet crepe with nutella and bananas. The crepes were a wonderful delight that morning before we made our way to the Palace.

After we left the restaurant, we made our way in the bitter cold for the Palace and oh what a sight it was. Both of us had been there with our families when we were younger but Mana had not been there since she was 10 so she barely remembered the magnificence of the Palace. It is absolutely beautiful with gold trimming along the fences and a simply royal and grandiose piece of art. We walked through the entire palace and with our very helpful personal tour guides with English translation, we learned all about Louis the XIV, XV, XVI, Marie Antoinnette, Napolean, as well as several other significant members of French history. It was really amazing and SO interesting! Our favorite part of the Palace was the Hall of Mirrors with around 51 gorgeous chandeliers hanging from the ceiling along with 357 mirrors and 17 glass doors.

Our friend Elena is a phenomenal photographer with a side business in wedding photography (for those who are interested- shameless plug: http://elenagorelik.smugmug.com)so she not only captured the beauty of the Palace, but being the she happens to love shooting couples, we had the honor of being captured in many of her Versailles shots as her models.

We spent a few hours in the Palace before making our way out and heading back to Paris. On our way back, we talked about wishing we could watch movies at home and our friend Maria (who we like to call Masha - the Russian version of her name) gave us insight on this fantastic website: watchnewfilms.com where we can watch movies that are in theaters right now for free!

So, we decided to check it out when we got home and watched the Time Travelers Wife, took a nap, called our brother Sagar to wish him a happy birthday, and rallied to go out at night! We went to Elena's for some wine, vodka, and her homemade crepes and then made our way to Favela Chic, a place that her landlord partly owns where we danced and partied and partied and danced into the night. Eventually we went home and slept in today!

While we had plans to go see a European Rugby match, it is bitter cold again and we decided it probably wasnt the best idea to sit out in the cold all day so we may do a low key afternoon and perhaps have a date with WatchNewFilms again!

Au Revoir for now!

Our First Week of Class at ESSEC

Woo hoo! Time to celebrate the end of our first week of class!! Granted, we only have our 5 classes spread out across Tuesday and Wednesday, but sitting in a classroom for 9 hours straight today was exhausting nevertheless!

We went to orientation for the ESSEC exchange program on Monday in Cergy, which is an hour-long commute from our flat in Paris. We met about 40 other students during the 4 hour orientation. The most hilarious part of this day was when we had training on how to use the systems at ESSEC. We watched a Google Docs video to learn how they use Google Docs (which is no different from how we use it anywhere else) and watched the instructor, who wore 5 bright shirts one on top of the other, take a layer off every time she finished going through a few slides in front of the class. We don't think she meant for it to be funny, but you can imagine, that watching an instructor strip down 4 times over half an hour is quite entertaining to say the least.

After our trip on Monday, we got ready for our first day of class on Tuesday.  Mana is taking Luxury Retail Management and French while Sahil is taking Consumer Behavior and Business Analysis and Value Creation. While Mana found her French class pretty intense, we both found our business classes at ESSEC to be...well...VERY different from the classes back in the States. Between the students who snored as the professor spoke, the professor who read 1 slide word-for-word per every 5 minutes, the other students who talked loudly throughout the class, and the funny comments the professors made about American students being overachievers compared to European students, we knew this would be an interesting academic experience. :)

In the evening we had our friend Elena come over spontaneously and we chatted about photography, music, skiing, and business over some French wine. It was a great way to wind down and we followed it up by going to hang out with some of our Kellogg friends who had us over for some more food, drink, and fun!

Today, we started our day bright and early at 630am and left to take the RER A train to Cergy and arrive at ESSEC at 845am for our first class, International Cultural Management. This was the first class that we have ever taken together so it was fun to be students side-by-side. The humorous aspect to this class was while we thought we signed up for International Business, we in fact seemed to be learning all about investing in the arts and how culture and money tie together. Our professor began by telling us we would have a break after an hour and a half to smoke a cigarette before continuing the latter half of the class. Haha - oh Europe! During the second half of this class we watched a video on the Medici family in Florence and their involvement in the arts and Mana literally nudged Sahil every five minutes as he nodded off to sleep. Sahil later said he had a hard time staying awake in what he likes to call "Arts and Crafts time." Mana responded with, "Oh, if only you appreciated the arts the way you obsess over sports!" We then looked forward to the next class, Management of Organizations. We found our professor in this class to be quite quirky and decided to get vocal in class to bring energy to the classroom. We then sat in on Brand Strategies, which we found out again, was actually Advertising Strategy in content. Our professor in this class had a very dry but hilarious sense of humor...or we were just delirious at this point and laughed nonstop as he told us we could have an exam if we wanted to and all that we were really evaluated on was participation.

All in all, we walked away at 830pm tonight realizing that these 3 months would be an "embrace Europe experience" rather than a challenging academic complement to our education at our home schools. Even so, we both agreed that studying abroad in Paris was the best decision we made and these three months would be an experience we would value and appreciate for the rest of our lives!

Tomorrow and into the weekend we are hoping to explore Paris on a deeper level and look forward to sharing more soon!

Weekend Away in Brussels and Champagne

And...We are BACK! To start 2010 off right, we met our friend Smruti and her brother at Les Halles Metro stop before heading to Charles de Gaulle to pick up the car we rented, and 2 hours later (again...took a while for them to bring us the car - its Europe!) we were on our way to Brussels, Belgium. We watched the snow fall to the ground all around the sides of the road but oddly and beautifully for us, it did not get in our way of driving. We drove in an electric blue toy car, as Mana liked to call it, and realized we were in Brussels when the driving patterns from the locals changed. Brussels is a very cute European city, but we got the feeling they don't like to obey traffic laws. As Sahil liked to say, they seem to think it is ALWAYS everyone's right of way!

After what seemed like 2 hours in the car to get to the outskirts of Brussels, it took us 2 more hours to get to our hotel with NUMEROUS stops to get directions since everyone's response was always "Go straight for a few km and you'll be close. Then ask someone there to find the exact location." Turns out while the directions were simple, we didn't see a single STRAIGHT road. But, we made it eventually! And when we got there, it was beautifully quaint!

The two boys got immediately excited with the Belgian waffle stand and the girls jumped up and down at the sight of a Mango store with 50% off clothes...that is until we walked in and saw 20+ people waiting in line to purchase and 30+ people in line for the dressing room. We decided to indulge in a belgian waffle instead which was delicious! Sugar on waffles that melted in our mouths! We proceeded towards the Grand Place, a beautiful square with a castle-like building, cafes with famous Belgian beer, and a huge Christmas tree in the heart of the square. After capturing photos in the chilly weather, we decided we were ready to warm up with some Belgian beer. Numerous beers later, we made our way to see the "pee-pee boy", a famous statue that Brussels is known for. It is a small statue of a little naked boy with water pouring out of his private area to create a fountain. There are many chocolate shops with chocolate renditions of the statue as well as souvenirs and we were told that this was something we had to see. After seeing the somewhat underwhelming statue, we needed comfort food and found it in the form of Belgian chocolates. We spent half an hour selecting the perfect chocolates to eat and Mana's favorite was definitely the white chocolate with vanilla butter cream filling while Sahil's was the milk chocolate with hazelnut and caramel filling - SO YUMMY!!

We headed back to the hotel quickly to change, drink champagne and eat our chocolate, and set out for a night to paint the city of Brussels red, and what a night it was! The nightlife in Brussels is fun - we visited many bars, and finally settled at O'Reilley's where we danced the night away to the beats of famous American artists. Our only issue with the bars in Brussels is that it is impossible to breathe - smokers EVERYWHERE!

The next day we got up and drove around the city (after showering a few times each to get the smell of smoke out) to see the Royal Palace and the other beautiful cathedrals in the city. After a few hours of our rented car tour, we made our way out of Brussels and set off for Champagne, France, the final destination of our mini vacation from vacation.

As we approached Champagne, we saw the rolling hills of grape fields and enjoyed the beautiful scenery. We visited the city of Reims, a pretty town that plays host to the Veuve Cliquot and the Pommery vineyards. We stopped at the Pommery vineyard and did a taste tasting of two different champagnes: one was a Cuvee Louise which was said to be their best champagne and the other was a Rose. While Sahil's favorite was the Cuvee Louise, Mana preferred the Rose which had a slightly fruity undertone. After the winery, we headed to the Reims center and saw a beautiful cathedral alongside a really fun street full of various restaurants and bars. We had dinner at Cafe Latino which seemed promising but ended up being mediocre Mexican food at best. We decided that Mexican food was not the right food choice in Europe for us!

After a wonderful evening in Champagne, we headed back to Paris and enjoyed seeing how clear the stars looked in the countryside. We drove to Charles de Gaulle to return our car and took the RER back to our home! We had a wonderful weekend away and are looking forward to our next adventure! Tomorrow brings our first day of business school at ESSEC as we attend our orientation. Wish us luck!

Bring it, 2010!

Bonne Annee, everyone! Paris is an amazing place to bring in the New Year and we are excited to share our experience with you! Yesterday started out wonderfully as Mana had the chance to catch up with her friend from Kellogg, Damayanti, who studied abroad in Paris first quarter. We made plans for the evening since we were all planning on bringing in the new year at her friend's house party and see where the night took us thereafter! We then left for our day's adventures which involved purchasing cell phones. (We love how we have one small task a day and we call it a day's adventure...it goes to show you how productive we are being here - haha!)

After getting suggestions to hit up the Parisian Best Buy known as Fnac or as Mana likes to call it F-Nack (in the Aflac voice), we took a fifteen minute walk to Les Halles and found the huge store.  Sahil fumbled through his French to communicate that we were trying to buy prepaid phones, but unfortunately they were completely out. Luckily a French local overheard our conversation and helped become the translater with his perfect English. He then took us in the direction of another store, Darty, which is perhaps the electronic store version of a Target and in the process told us how he was pursuing his PhD at NYU in cancer genetics. Once we made our way to Darty, we selected our phones in about 2 minutes flat only for the rest of the process to take about an hour and a half. They really don't like to work fast here...:)

We finally bought our cell phones and watched Destiny's Child music videos in the background of the store singing with French subtitles. We walked out with cell phones in hand and grumbling stomachs since it was now 5pm and we hadn't eaten yet. Sahil jumped up and down when he sighted a Pizza Hut; in his words, we had uncovered "a little slice of American heaven." We ventured into the Pizza Hut and waited for 15 minutes to get seated, 20 more minutes to get our menus, 20 more minutes to get our pizza, and 10 minutes to get our bill (after it was requested). Furthermore, Mana went up to go to the bathroom and waited 15 minutes behind a lady washing her hands who might as well have been washing 3 piles worth of dishes to scrub off ever nook and cranny of her hand. When Mana made her way to wash her hands she decided to bypass the lady who was now at the dryer and used her clothes to dry off her hands! Hopefully we'll get better at getting used to the slow pace of life!

We finally got back, took a nap from our long adventure (which we know, sounds just SO stressful and exhausting - hah!) and then got ready for New Year's Eve! Our friend Smruti and her brother Siddharth came over and we made dinner together after which we made our way to D's friends Matt and Quinn's place in Bastille. The combination of French, British, Canadian, and American personalities was hilarious and perfect. With a projector up on the wall, we partied, danced, and laughed through the night.  We celebrated into the countdown and discovered an amazing local French vodka which we can't remember the name of right now (clear sign of a great night)!

After hours of partying, including a delicious late night pasta snack at a cafe (gotta love Paris) we finally got home at around 430 am. We slept and slept and slept and slept and are now writing this blog after finally waking up at 3pm! Sahil claims that he is trying to get over all the exhaustion of 2009. Mana claims that we are just being lazy bums and trying to adapt to the slower pace of life :).

We may meet Sahils friends from Chicago for dinner and have a low key night because tomorrow, we head off on a road trip with friends to Brussels and Champagne for a 2 day trip! Au Revoir for now! And HAPPY NEW YEAR or Bonne Annee again!