Bare Feet in The Sand. In Winter.

When you're in the south of france, you can't NOT go to a beach. So we made a little trip to the Mediterranean Sea with Kaia, one of the original Roy Hart Company members.

It was a beautiful day and a beautiful beach:

We set up a nice little home base and a picnic lunch:

Despite the fact that it was WINTER (December 23rd), it was 16 degrees C (about 60 degrees F!), which was just warm enough to ditch our shoes and put our feet in the water (for short periods of time)

Shoes stayed off the whole afternoon, but sweatshirts stayed on as we took lazy strolls along the water

(Nicole and Sophie)

As is my tendency, I took photos of things that interested me:

And experimented with color balances and such. I really like how this one turned out:

(That's Ryan)

Kaia did some tai chi in the sunset. Because she is awesome.

Ryan and Nicole danced in the sunset. Because they're in love. And awesome.

(and breaking gender norms. woohoo!)

It was a pretty awesome day in France.

The Home of the Roy Hart Theatre

Ok, so as I mentioned in my last post (which I'm SURE you read!), the Chateau at which I spent my Christmas holidays is the home of the Roy Hart Theatre Company.

Told ya. Roy Hart was a vocal theorist who specialized in helping people find all of the capabilities of the voice, and creating theatre to take advantage of it.

Here is the building where all of the rehearsal/performance spaces are housed:

The most observant of you may notice this is taken from the opposite side than the photo it appears in in my last post. Points for you if you did.

First, we will enter the door on the left, which brings us into the main performance space:

Seriously, how cool would it be to live in a chateau AND have a theatre?!

A glance out the theatre's window at the rest of the chateau:

At the bottom of the staircase you see in the photo above, you will see this sign:


...which leads to this rehearsal space (one of 5, yes FIVE rehearsal studios):

The small stained glass windows in that photo were installed in memory of one of the members of the company after she passed away, years ago.

Speaking of which, a little story for you. Shortly after moving the company from London to this chateau in France, the company began touring a show. While touring, a car crash occurred, killing 3 company members, including Roy Hart and his wife. They were buried at the chateau, here:

I'm told the funeral was beautiful with plenty of harmonious singing, as can be hoped for from a company specializing in vocal work.

In the years following, several other company members who passed were buried nearby, along a path leading from Roy's grave.

I'll leave you with that. :)

Italian Villas Are Great. So Are French Chateaus.

A few months back I was sitting on a couch in The Villa (my school), having a chat with my program director, Kevin, who mentioned a house he owns in France. Upon further investigation I learned that this house is part of the Chateau du Malerargues, in Southern France, which happens to be the home of the Roy Hart Theatre Company (of which Kevin is a member).

Well of course I couldn't resist asking if some of my classmates and I could stay there for a while over the winter holidays. You know me and seizing opportunities. After jumping through hoops, navigating logistics, riding a couple trains and planes and a rental car, we arrived here:

A simple sign led us into an amazingly peaceful and beautiful escape

This was my front door. Rowan and I stayed in the first floor apartment in Kevin's house, while Sophie, Taylan, Nicole, and Ryan (Nicole's boyfriend who had just moved to Europe) stayed in the upstairs apartment. This window is part of the upstairs living room.

Kevin's house is just one of many buildings on the grounds. This is the main building, which is full of apartments, a common dining room and kitchen, a library, and secrets.

Please look at this staircase outside the main building:

WHAT?!

The Chateau used to be owned by Henri Meyrueis. This is above the front door:

He had an eye for detail.

So did the Roy Hart company members who took over 40 or so years ago

Oh. and there is a hedge-labyrinth. We had fun in it:

Orange trees...

and old windows...

And gorgeous wildlife:

As the home of a theatre company, naturally there would be performance and rehearsal spaces. The building on the right is full of them. Interior photos to come in my next post.

Oh, and of course, a pool. because why wouldn't a badass chateau also have a half-olympic-sized-pool?

It's only been out of commission for 2 years. Wouldn't be too hard to restore i think... Apparently in the summer it's unbelievably relaxing.

Luckily for us, the chateau is unbelievably relaxing in the winter too, which is exactly what we were hoping for. It was a perfect place to spend a few days sleeping and doing NOTHING but recovering from our first ridiculously-demanding semester.

Once we'd regained some energy, we did a bit of wandering. There are mountains all around, rocks to climb, paths to hike, streams and rivers to follow. More photos of these things coming soon. For now, I'll leave you with another view of the chateau, from the top of a rocky outcrop I climbed:

Bon Jour, Marseille!

When we left our heros, they were enjoying a lovely Christmas ice-skating adventure until midnight in Bergamo. Their night was short however, because their flight to Marseille left before dawn.

Bummer.

Less of a bummer was spending an hour watching the same moment of sunrise out my window on the plane, as we flew away from it, west.

Seriously, this moment lasted the whole flight:

Needless to say, caffeine was in order. And as luck would have it, Marseille has a STARBUCKS! Since we just happened to stumble upon it, and hadn't seen a single one it Italy so far, I figured a venti was in order.

Side note: it took ordering a venti in France to make me realize (with Rowan's help) that it's called a venti because that's the Italian word for 20, and it's 20oz.

We then found ourselves at the Viewx Port, which is awesome:

After checking into our nearby hostel, I unpacked my camera (forgive the blurryness of the previous photos. They were from the ipod), and we headed back to the port to catch a BOAT!

This is the view of the port from the back of the boat as we headed out to sea:

It was really cold and windy:

Moments after that photo was taken, we started hitting some serious waves, which sent major splashes onto this back deck of the boat. We stayed strong for a couple splashes, then decided to move to the interior of the boat...

but not before I snapped a shot of some random cathedral, which is beautiful and apparently has painted clouds behind it:

The boat ferries people to the Frioul Islands, on one of which is the If-Castle. You may recognize it from the Count of Monte Cristo movie:

Unfortunately, that island is closed on mondays so the best we could do was see it from a distance.

We did get to explore one island! It was a very small island with lots of rocky mini-mountains (hills? not really...). This is a view of the Island's marina from the first place we climbed:

There are little outcrops and bays all around the island:

Then we climbed a lot higher. Here is a different bay from a much different perspective:

At the top of one little hill/mountain/thing there were some ruins. But not super old ones. We have no idea what they were or how old they are, but they were cool to climb around on.

Did I say climb around on? Yes. There was NO ONE on this island. no people, no signs, no limitations. Occasionally a little wire was strung up suggestion you don't go beyond a point, but as these didn't seem to be trying to hard to stop you, we (read: I) disregarded them and climbed around all I wanted.

Another view of the island we explored, and the one next to it, connected by a little bridge (I think man made)

It cost 5 extra euro to go to that island though, so we decided one was enough.

FLASH FOWARD to another day in Marseille, one with a few more clouds (and only an ipod to take photos with):

pretty sky... Au Revoir!

Au Revoir!

Christmas Begins in Bergamo!

This is the story of how a slight oversight can cause a LOT of stress, but end up being a huge blessing:

A group of us decided to spend Christmas in the Southern France (several blog posts to come of this - and soon, i promise!). We were thrilled to find plane tickets from Milan to Marseilles for only 8 EURO!!! Yes, 8. In our excitement, we failed to notice that we would actually be flying out of Milan/Bergamo airport, a small airport in a small city about an hour away from Milan. And since it was an early morning flight, we would have to spend the night in Bergamo. More trouble was found when we discovered that because it is a small city that no one really travels too, they are pretty much devoid of hostels, our usual choice to sleep. Much scrambling ensued, but in the end we booked a Bed & Breakfast and decided to arrive mid-afternoon to wander Bergamo a bit.

Fun fact: Bergamo is actually home to Arlechino, the most well-known Commedia Dell-Arte character. We didn't really see anything involving him. I don't think most of Bergamo knows or cares too much about that. Sad.

Anyways, we really lucked out with the B&B. It was cheap, but beautiful. I took this photo standing on the landing of the 3rd floor, right outside our room's door. The patio you see is right outside the office/living room of the B&B.

Here is our door:

And here's a shot of our sweet rooms, and Taylan.

Definitely several steps up from our usual hostels...

Outside out window there was (what else?) a stream!

Also we had a kick-ass old cracked mirror.

Around sunset, we set out to explore the town. But first I needed a photo of the sunset from our landing, duh.

Here's where it really gets good. We had just spent a really intense week in Torino at Circus School, after fighting off exhaustion for the last few weeks of our first crazy-draining semester. We'd had a bit going on. And by now, it was already December 18th and I had been reeeeeallly missing the Christmas season.

LUCKILY, Bergamo must have known, because the city was covered in Christmas!

That's Taylan, Sophie, and Rowan, by the way.

We saw tons of light-lined streets, a plaza full of booths selling holiday toys/crafts/sweets, and even got to listen to some Italian carolers try to sing Christmas carols in English! They were the best actually, and we stayed and listened to them sing for about half an hour, even when they started repeating songs.

I was literally so caught up in Christmas that I didn't really take many photos. Plus I was using my ipod as a camera, which isn't great at night.

BUT, I couldn't miss getting a photo of this guy, who was sitting outside a little shop on a random side street:

The evening was capped by (drumroll please...) and ICE SKATING RINK! Sophie and I skated for a good 2 hours and were the last ones on the rink, refusing to get off before they actually closed at midnight. It was glorious. Once again, no photos. But next to the rink there was a big Christmas tree (yay!!) with some weird lights on it:

Kind of weird, but nevertheless, pretty. Thank you Bergamo, for successfully kicking off my Christmas season :)