Short Update

I am getting worse and worse at keeping up with this.  I have so much to talk about.  I think it might have to wait until I get back home.  I just finished day two of my three days working at the Yves Thuries Chocolate Factory.  So far it has been truly amazing.  I just went to Paris last Saturday through Tuesday and sampled more chocolate and pastries than I ever thought possible.  I am squeezing in as much as possible during my last few days in Europe.  I will update fully about Madrid, Ibiza, Paris and the Chocolate Factory as soon as I stop running around.  I have one more day at the Chocolate factory and then a few more days at the Musee du Sucre.  We are going to Perpignan on Thursday to see a pastry school.  My parents. arrive in Toulouse next Saturday and then we are traveling back to Cordes then Paris and Dublin.  I will be back in Chicago on Friday October 9th. 

 This is a photo of the box of Macarons we bought at Pierre Hermes shop.  They were delicious.

London and Reading

Saturday evening, I took the train to Toulouse and flew to Gatwick Airport.  I took the Gatwick Express Train to the London city center.  Then I took the underground to the International Students House.  ISH is campus housing so my room was  a single dormroom.  It had a shared bathroom down the hall.  I went straight to bed because I was going to the Reading Festival the next day.  I took the train to Reading at ten a.m.  

I got the festival grounds and entered the gates at around 11:15.  Then I walked around a little before the first band went on at noon.  I stayed at the main stage all day.  The lineup was Kids in Glass Houses, The View, The Living End, Noah and the Whale, Brand New, Vampire Weekend, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Bloc Party and finally Radiohead.  It was a really great day. I stayed in the front row until a few songs into Radiohead.  The people around me were singing too loudly so I walked further away.  It was a really great show.  Radiohead opened with Creep.  They hardly ever play Creep live.  I wasn't expecting it at all.  They played almost every song I would have wanted to hear.  It was totally worth the trip.  It was good to see Bloc Party in England because they had a completely different attitude.  They said they met at the Reading Festival 10 years ago.  Karen O. from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came out in a crazy outfit and kept changing her accessories the whole set.  It was great.  Their performance was fantastic too.  They played a truly beautiful acoustic version of Maps.  

Vampire Weekend was a lot of fun.  I had never seen them before, I'm glad I got a chance to see them.  Brand New were fantastic as usual.  They played mostly songs from their last cd, 2 new songs and one each from their first two cds.  Noah and the Whale were really great.  I think their new cd is going to be fantastic.  The Living Edge were very entertaining.  The View was unintelligible and Kids in Glass Houses were Welsh Emo.  Overall I am really happy that I got to experience a European Music Festival.  It was very different from the festivals I've been to in the U.S. in one major aspect.  The crowd surfing was insane.  There were so many people crowd surfing.  They had 200 security guards at the main stage.  They rotated after each act and were all at the stage for the final two performances.  There was a line of burly men near the crowd and then about 10 feet behind them was a line of women.  The women were there to run the people away from the stage after they came out of the crowd.  It was really entertaining to watch.  The head of security said that 1500 people went over the barrier the night before during The Prodigy.  

Radiohead played for two wonderful hours and then I walked back to the train station and went back to London.  It was 1:30 in the morning by the time I got back so I took a cab back to the ISH.