And the adventure continues!
Friday: Mont St Michel
I was really looking forward to seeing this, I wrote my "before" post on it as an assignment, check it out here if you don't remember it! Or read more on wikipedia.
After spending the night in Avranches, Normandy, we drove across the bay to Mont Saint Michel. We kept getting glimpses of it as we would round corners, and it seriously looked like a literal castle floating in the clouds at some points. So cool. I was hoping we would catch it at high tide because it looks amazing, but it was low tide all day. Which ended up being even cooler!
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| Doesn't it look like a fairy tale castle? |
Basically Mont St Michel is an island fortress/monastery, surrounded by quicksand during low tide, and the sea during high tide. Awesome right!? It has a population of 70, complete with a post office, and monks still live there.
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| At the entrance! |
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| The streets are all like this, little alleys winding up to the abby |
Well I was super excited to see the abby, it has gothic and romanesque architecture, a beautiful cloister, and supposed to be really cool. But when we finally climbed all the stairs guess what we found?
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| Translation: "Because of a social movement, the monument will not open it's doors today." |
You guessed it: it was closed. Why? Because the guards decided to go on strike. Sometimes France drives me crazy. But that was ok. Because instead....we played in quicksand! Unfortunately my camera died right before we went down there, so I'll have to get pictures from people before I can post some. But I'll describe it. Basically quicksand looks and feels like grey, wet, sticky mud more than sand. It is really weird to watch how your feet sink in. It's not as dangerous as the movies make it out to be, and nothing like in the Princess Bride haha. But some of us did get stuck up to our knees and had to be pulled out. I unfortunately didn't plan on playing in quicksand, so I was wearing those pants that I have on in the first picture. They are like skinny jeans, not the easiest to roll up. So I ended up getting wet up to my thighs. But it was totally worth it! So fun. We just frolicked in the quicksand for about an hour, taking crazy pictures and having a blast.
This is a video of the clouds moving over the sand, it was so cool to watch and I didn't think I could capture it really in a picture. Feel free to watch it fast-forwarded, it's cooler that way. And ignore the random conversations going on :)
After a delicious ham/cheese/egg galette, a blueberry crepe and hot chocolate for lunch, we headed out to Le Mans, a Renaissance city near the Loire Valley. A couple hour's bus ride and nap later, we were all starving so we went down to the nearest Carrefour, sat down in the hallway of our hotel floor (we had the whole floor to ourselves) and ate to our heart's content! We played card games and watched a movie that night, super fun.
Saturday: Blois and Chambord chateau's in the Loire Valley.
Blois was a cool chateau, it is where Catherine de Medici lived for a while (I saw her secret poison cabinet) and where the Duc de Guise (War of the Three Henries) was assassinated. The architecture is really cool, each side of the courtyard is a different style, medieval/gothic, early renaissance, late renaissance and Neoclassical.
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| François Ier |
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| The Hall where the Estates-General (French parliament) met |
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| Town of Blois |
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| The flags are from a bunch of different countries I think in honor of the G8 summit. Obama, Sarkozy and the British PM were only couple cities from us! |
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| Chocolate Religiuese...good but waaay too rich |
The main staircase in the keep is thought to be designed by Da Vinci as it is very similar to one of his sketchs, and Francois I was his patron and brought him to France." It's in the shape of a double helix, with two separate stairways (it's also called the "mistress design"). You can catch glimpses of the other person through the windows, but you will never meet. Hence the "mistress" part of it, the king could send his mistress down one while his wife went up the other. It's so cool! I'm still trying to wrap my brain around how it works, because it really does look like you will meet the person across from you in just a few steps.
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| The double helix! |
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| Looking up in the center |
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| Sarah across from me |
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| Looking down from the top |
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| One of the balconies |
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| A passageway |
I would totally go back and spend hours there, I don't think I even saw half of it. There were carriages displayed somewhere...but I couldn't figure out how to get there haha. But it was still super cool. The finished off with some ice cream and laying out in the sun. I loved it!
After another long bus ride, we finally got back to Paris. It was strange, it felt like home but at the same time I would have loved to stay in the countryside for the rest of my life, it's that pretty. Since we didn't have any dinner and were starving, me Erin and Sarah decided to make some taco salad. It was funny I wasn't too excited about it until the meat started cooking and it smelled SO AMERICAN. Haha. We all started freaking out. It wasn't even really Mexican because the French have some really weird ideas about what chips and salsa are supposed to taste like, and we were missing garlic and onion powder because they don't have that either. But regardless, it was amazing and made me miss my Mom's enchiladas!
However, the French still have us beat in the dessert department, so we finished off with hot chocolate and crepes. So good! I have a new favorite crepe (Mom you will love this).....drum roll please......nutella and lemon juice. Sounds a little weird I know. But just think of it as a lemon truffle filling wrapped in a crepe. mmmmm.
Today (Sunday) we decided to try going to the Versailles ward for church instead of Paris, because the Paris ward always has a ton of students and tourists and we end up being banished into the English translation overflow which is harder to understand than the French. Plus it feels like we are a nuisance or something, not really the feeling you want to have at church when you are trying to be uplifted. So, I was sooo glad I went to the Versailles one! We managed to find the chapel after an hour long (total) train ride, and a half hour walk. It was in a real church building and everyone was so nice! Plus it was the Fête de Mères, or French mother's day, so we got to see all of the kids go up and sing, it was so cute! They also had extra roses so us girls got some too, which was so nice of them. That worked out perfect because we needed to get some for our host mom anyway. And the sunday school lesson was super good. AND I UNDERSTOOD EVERYTHING!! It made me feel so much better, I thought I was just inept at understanding church stuff in French. And my roommate Erin was able to meet a family that her mom had known on her mission. So overall it was an awesome day! And I'm finally caught up on my blog wahooo!!!!
P.S. This week is also going to be epic:
- Tomorrow I'm going shopping on the Champs Elysées
- My roommate from last semester Lorraine is coming to visit from London
- I have class. Which is so much fun.
- I'm having lunch with one of my former French exchange students
- I'm having lunch with my best friend from elementary school who I haven't seen since we were 9
- Thursday we go to Ecouen on another excursion
- This weekend: a trip to Nice!
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