Perpignan

This past weekend the Davidson group headed down to Perpignan, a city near the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees, next to Spain. 

Emily (friend from Davidson) came to Perpignan with us!

The canal thing in Perpignan

Quincy and Emily in the french-sized door

Snow!!

The group on our walk into the mountains

Getting closer

More snowy mountaintops

Abbaye St. Martin

It would be fun to be a monk here

Carcassonne

Banyuls Sur Mer

Cerbere

Spanish on the left, French on the right, must be getting close

Old border control

Spanish tank

Cerbere, France

Town in Spain, didn't have to move to get see both towns

Night train adventures

Sorry I didn't really write anything. I have to work before I go to Greece on Wednesday, so hopefully after that trip it will be easy to find time to actually write a post.

The French Riviera

I am going to warn you now; this is kind of long, but the pictures at the end will make more sense if you read it all. But you can just look at those if you want. I don't really have a way to control you. And even if I did, I don't know if I would. I support liberty.    

    This past weekend, the Davidson group took a trip down to the Meditteranean. We left on Thursday morning on a train headed to Marseille. After about 30 minutes on this train, we found out that it was not heading to Lyon for our change, but instead, going nowhere near it. Cool. Kruger asked the train guy what was going on, and he explained that because of the strike on Wednesday, the trains got changed around, and now we were supposed to make two changes in order to get to our last train a couple minutes late. So there we are, going from train to train, hoping that somehow we will make it on the train from Lyon to Marseille. Lucky for us, that train actually ended up being a half hour late, giving us a little time to eat what food we hadn't already demolished. We hopped on the next train, and enjoyed our ride past the mountains and down to the sea. Getting to our hotel from the train station was simple, essentially, all you do is go downhill, because our hotel stood next to the old port. Because we got there a little later, we were able to explore the old part of the city as the sun was setting, and everything was really pretty. For dinner, we just kind of wandered until we found a restaurant that served Marseillais specialties. I did not go for the fish soup, a local delicacy, instead, I got the veal with a side of spaghetti, and it was amazing. After dinner, we went back to the hotel real quick so we could warm up before heading out for desserts! We went to a little creperie with around 72 different flavors and possibilities. I ended up getting 155, aka a crepe with mint chocolate ice cream, chocolate sauce, and peppermint liquour drizzled overtop. Then we went to bed. On Friday morning, we woke up, ate breakfast in a little cafe outside the hotel where I had the most delicious orange juice I have ever had in my entire life. It literllay tasted like I bit out of an orange, just with less solid stuff. After that, we took a bus up to Notre Dame de la Garde which allows you to see a panoramic view of the city and surrounding mountains and sea, but it was cloudy and cool, but not as breathtaking as it could have been.
     Fast forward a couple hours. We are on a train heading to Nice from Marseille. The entire time, we are able to look out the window and stare out over the Medditerranean. Upon arriving, we just walked down one street for a while, and there we were at the hotel. It was the Windsor, and it was pretty legit. Blake and I had to be roommates, go figure (we are the only guys), and our room was simply designed. Each room had a different artist theme, and ours was just some guy, and the stuff in the room was labeled. That was our theme. It was stupid. After a little bit, the group met back up in the lobby so we could leave the country for the first time. That's right; Monaco. It was awesome. I am going to skip the part about walking around the town, and get to the good stuff. Monte Carlo. Three words I would choose to describe the casino: fancy, giant, intimidating. Those seem kind of negative, but just walking through the casino was so much fun, and I am proud to say that I played slots (and lost 5€) and roulette (and lost 5€) and took away a 5€ chip as a souvenir. Is that allowed? Oh well. It is in my wallet and will stay there forever. Also, I suited up to respect the amazingness that is Monte Carlo. After finding a new vice, we headed back to Nice for dinner. It was at a restaurant called Koudou, where we ate African based dishes. I had more veal, in a mushroom sauce, with potatoes on the side. It was pretty delicious. For dessert, I had a sorbet sampler and got to try peach, mango, pear, blackberry, and raspberry sorbets. All of which were amazing, but the mango was kind of dissapointing. That night, we went back to the hotel to hang out in the biggest room which had a massive jacuzzi bathtub.
     Saturday morning. Go downstairs to eat breakfast in the hotel: petit pain au chocolat, baguette, confiture, chocolat chaud, and cereales. So good. That morning, after fueling up, we were super touristy and took a bus tour around the city and got to see some amazing views. I loved it, and even though it wasn't quite summer temperatures yet, I wore shorts and a t-shirt to celebrate our vacation to the sea. During the tour, we stopped at a museum that showcased Marc Chagall. It was nifty. Then we went back to the hotel to change into our swim trunks and head down to the Mediterranean. Yep, Quincy, Sara, Jane, and I swam in the Mediterranean Sea. It was fantastic. I can't wait to do it again, but that will be another story for another day. (Probably my next post) The Mediterranean amazed me so much it was able to replace my desktop background of for the last year. After swimming and tanning, we dropped off our stuff at the hotel before La Bataille des Fleurs. This is basically a lot of different types of floats going around a circuit throwing flowers like beads at Mardi Gras. It was awesome. Paisley, Jane, Blake, and I headed out of the stands to go catch flowers closer to the road, and it was easy to get the attention of the girls on the floats being the only ones who weren't parents or old men. Needless to say, I got a good batch of flowers including roses and carnations. They were lovely. After this, we meandered our way to an ice cream store in old Nice. I can admit that this place is one of the best if not the best ice cream I have ever had. Not because it was just that good, but it was really good, but because they had something like 96 flavors including the normals, all sorts of sorbets, and rose, violet, lavender, and cactus. My two scoop cone consisted of a sort of cookies and cream and cactus. I couldn't resist it. And it turned out to not be too bad, in fact, I would recommend it if you want something light and sweet, not too strong of a taste. Anyways, this was near the restaurant we had reservations for, where we got to sit in this kind of igloo/stowaway little area around a big round table. The waiter was funny, and they played good music. I split some fried calamari with Quincy, then each of us decided on bunny for dinner. That was an experience. I had never tasted "lapin" before, and had no idea how to eat it, but I kind of figured it out by the end. I would like to have it again in a more manageable manner so I can focus more on the taste instead of how to eat it. After this was the nighttime part of Carnaval. This meant going to the third row of seats in a big square to watch the 30ft floats/inflatables go by with loud music and bright lights all around. It was something unlike anything I have ever seen before. I loved it. Then I went to bed.
     Now it is Sunday, and I eat the exact same breakfast before going to the open-air market where we saw tons of flowers, fruits, paintings, soaps, meats, cheeses, and breads. It was so cool. My mouth watered so much looking at all of the fresh fruit that is now coming in season, it was ridiculous. I ended up buying a large baguette type thing and a demi kilo of strawberries for my lunch, and it was scrumptious. Some of us also headed up the hill/mountain in Nice to see the old chateau up there, but I mainly wanted to see the waterfall I had spotted during the Bataille des Fleurs. It was worth it. The vies of the city and sea were beautiful. But after just a short amount of time we had to run back to the hotel to get our bags to run to the train station to hop on our train back home. And that is where my story ends. But now, pictures!!!

Sunset in Marseille

At Notre Dame de la Garde

About to go gamble in Monte Carlo

Nice cars all around

Future career?

Pretty houses in Monaco

My new desktop

Chagall

Swimming!!

Tanning/ Drying off

Jane with her bouquet

The Evolution of Weightlifting

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

     That's right: snow!!!! Around Wednesday it got to be around freezing temperatures, and then it snowed just a little in the actual city of Tours, but the surrounding area got a little more, but then last night (Saturday night) it snowed a significant amount in Tours. I slept in pretty late, even though I heard my phone vibrate on my desk, but knowing it was out of arm's reach, I just ignored it and went back to sleep. That was a bad move. Turns out, Quincy had texted me saying, "WAKE UP AND LOOK OUTSIDE!" She writes in all caps all the time because it is either that or all lowercase and all caps just makes her sound either enthusiastic or angry, depending on the context of the situation.
     So I wrote that paragraph a week ago today. I got interrupted by lunch last Sunday, then just haven't come back to finish it until now. Sidenote: from my room, I often hear my host mom singing/humming some sort of church hymn or classical music, but right now, I just heard a little bit of the lovely Star Spangled Banner. Go America. I also got a new pillowcase and duvet cover on Friday, and they are red, white and blue plaid from IKEA, and I really like the pattern. Go America. Plus, they make my super amazing, better than life, hand-knitted Davidson blanket look even better than before. Go America. I don't really know what I should talk about in this blog because I feel like nothing that ridiculous has happened, plus, I don't have the best memory so I don't remember most of the details from our fun activities over the past week. So here are some pictures!

Bus ride on the way to L'Abbaye Saint-Savin

Snowy courtyard 

The trees look scared, also, moon

Lunch

Ashley at the castle ruins place

Sunset

Dessert

Pineapple juice is so thirst quenching. Took us about 3 seconds to down it

Kitty on the way to Paisley's. I may have blinded it with flash

The view from my room with snow!

     So that is about all I have to offer today. This coming week/weekend should provide at least 2 cool stories, so maybe I will actually write stuff next time. We'll see. Bon apres-midi!

First Time in Paris

     So I can now say I have been to Paris. (I am not counting being in the airport for a few hours as a legitimate visit) I must say, as much as I loved the visit, I still couldn't ever live there for an extended period of time. Too big. 'Nuf said. Upon arriving, we took my first metro/subway ride other than Atlanta's own MARTA, which is smarta, just not as smart as Paris' metro. This first station and transfer confused the bejeebers out of me, but when we got off at Glaciere (line 6), and walked to our hotel the FIAP, I was pretty excited. It gave us a little down time before we headed to dinner, also in the FIAP. I got stuck rooming with Blake, ugh, but not really, it was fun, plus we are the only 2 guys so it is obvious that we will always room together. Dinner was, let's say, different. The way it worked out was this: we got one entree (small appetizer type thing), one repas (english entree), one dessert or fruit, and a boisson. After this experience, we headed out into for me, the unknown.

Typical Metro Stop

    After getting off the metro, we headed down a street to find a tiny little theatre where we going to see Ionesco's La Lecon. This is a piece of absurd theatre, so in reading it beforehand, I was not a fan of the piece at all, but after seeing it performed, I understand the more vulgar humor that wasn't explicitly written in the book. Since it was only about an hour long, we were out of there around 9, which gave us time to get gelato! Yum! Plus in January, what could be more satisfying? I got a small cup of straciatella, which is pretty much just creamy chocolate chip flavor. After this petite pause, we walked literally about 100 feet and around a corner and showed up right next to Notre Dame. All we had to do was cross the Seine and see it's magnificence. We made it there, and the first thing to surprise was the giant Christmas tree in the front. It seemed out of place this late in the year, I think. One of the many things I learned that night about Paris was that to make sure you make it back sometime in your life, you have to step on the star which is Km 0 for all maps of Paris. 
     Being the adventurous youngsters we are, we thought it would be smart to walk all they way from Notre Dame to the Tour Eiffel that night. Turns out that was a great idea. Not only did we get to stop at the Louvre and see the pyramid and whatnot, but we got to walk along the Seine practically the entire way. Sadly, I did not have my camera with me Friday night, so I have no proof of this on my computer, but take my word for it: there was a trash can with trash that looked like a panda. This also means that I didn't get to take picture of the Tour Eiffel, but here is what you can pretend my first full view of it looked like: 

Nighttime in Paris

It was pretty to say the least. We kind of hung out there before we went back to the metro to get some sleep before our big day Saturday. 
     Saturday morning involved going to see an exhibit at the Jeu de Paume. We saw photography by Diane Arbus who, according to her wikipedia page, "was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of 'deviant and marginal people (dwarfs, giants, transvestites, nudists, circus performers) or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal.'" It was interesting, and if you get a chance, I would recommend seeing her exhibition at some point. After that, we took the metro to a restaurant of whose origins I am not sure. My sandwich died because I didn't know I was supposed to leave it in the bag. For our afternoon activity, Ashley, Paisley, Quincy, and I went to the Centre Pompidou, which is one of my favorite places in Paris. It is a museum of contemporary and modern art, which may sound lame, but just know that modern are is a lot less depressing than contemporary art, and some of that isn't all that bad. I also have a new found interest in art, meaning that now I wouldn't reject an invitation to an art museum. 

Centre Pompidou's awesome architecture

Figure it out

Best sculpture ever

Picasso's Arlequin

Outside Pompidou

     Saturday night was a completely new experience for me. First, the group went out to eat at a restaurant of some sort, I don't remember the type, I got pork nems, beef, and something chocolatey though. And yes, I dipped the nems in sweet and sour sauce or something very similar and asiany. After dinner was the real treat. Our director purchased tickets to go see a jazz group play live music. Essentially, we got to listen to good music about 3 feet away in a comfy, warm cafe/bar place. It was a little too comfy though because I dozed off for a tiny bit in the middle. (Walking around Paris is exhausting) Knowing I was sleepy, I went back to bed after the concert finished, along with some of the others.
     Sunday can be called funday in Paris. In the morning, we spent a couple hours at the Musee d'Orsay, which is an awesome building as well- it used to be a train station. When you first walk in, all you see is a huge room with a walkway in the middle with a ton of sculptures. It is gorgeous, however, you are not allowed to take pictures, so I didn't. This is the place I discovered I love neo-impressionism: a bunch of little bright colored dots that make a picture. Example:

Le Chateau des Papes by Paul Signac

Then we ate lunch. I had some sort of falafel sandwich from a place the Jane and Blake took me and Quincy to. It was good. I was in a hurry though because I knew my afternoon was going to be super sweet! So I headed down the metro to the stop to go to the Tour Eiffel, where I ran into Danielle (high school friend)!!! We planned this meeting, but it was still exciting. So we wandered over to the metro to go see the Arc de Triomphe and Champs Elysees. We went up to the top, after dealing with a very grumpy french lady who really didn't want to give us free student tickets. There are many names I could call her, but I am going to just let her be known as "Adelaide" (I googled ugly french names to come up with that, no definition or anything). After we did that, we decided it was way too cold to be wandering around the streets, so we hopped on the metro, got off near the Hotel de Ville, and found a cafe that happened to be called the Grizzlie cafe or something similar. Hey Scott! Since I don't live in Paris, I had to bid adieu to Danielle for the time being, and make my way back to meet the group for one last dinner in the FIAP and our trip home on the TGV.
     All in all, I love Paris. It is a great place with nice people, most of whom speak english well. What I have decided to do is that whenever someone starts to speak english to me to help me out I only speak french just to prove I am actually trying to be a part of their culture. Hopefully the longer I am here the better my accent will get and it will stop happening altogether. But until next time, have a great few days, or week, or however long until we see (through text) each other again. And I just wanted to thank every one that is reading this. It makes me happy knowing that their are people like you who care about me enough to want to know what I am up to across the pond.

Me and Danielle in front of the Tour Eiffel

Exploring What Isn't Meant to be Explored

     I have no idea where I should begin on this post. I feel like so much has happened in the last week or so, and it is already hard to remember all the details. I guess I could start off with what happened the most recently. On Saturday, most of the Davidson group participated in an excursion with the Institut de Touraine that went to two chateaux. After meeting at the bus at 8:30 am in the morning, the group of maybe 40 students and Dufresne (professor extraordinaire), the bus drove for about an hour to reach Cheverny. This castle was very much cool, but the adventurous nature of us college students craved for more. What we found was this: hunting dogs galore! They were at once adorable, and at the same time depressing. For the most part, these dogs were not very young (puppies), and they had sad, droopy eyes. They also smelt terrible. It was kind of like a mixture of dog bath and poop. Weird. In a bad way. But the amount of interest the dogs had in all of the people was so cute. Plus, they were dogs, which are awesome, and helped me get some dog back into my life.
     This was the most exciting part of the visit to Cheverny for me, so heading back to the bus was not to bad. Back in my seat with about -3inches of space between my knees and the seats in front of me, we headed to Blois for lunch. I packed a pique-nique so I wouldn't need to buy a sandwich, but when we got there, our group headed to find a boulanger for either a sandwich for lunch, or a pain au chocolat for dessert. After picking up our supplies, we just kind of wandered through some streets and found a big staircase. Of course, we needed to know what you could see from the top, so we made our way up and found ourselves at a great lunch eating spot. It overlooked the Saturday morning market, and provided a good table for my lunch consisting of a ham and butter sandwich (yes, that is a popular thing, and when I told my family that I made a sandwich without butter last time they sort of freaked a little), a clementine, compote (applesauce in a pouch, but a little different, and better), coca, and little cookie things. Since we had over an hour before we needed to be back at the bus, our group made our way down to the river. It was pretty big, so we said, "Why not cross this huge bridge?" Once across, we could a lot of Blois, including the church next to which we parked the bus. With about 15 minutes until departure, we thought it might be a good life choice to head back across the bridge, up the hill through the town, and back to the bus. Having a tall steeple to guide us back, it didn't take too long, so with a couple minutes left, we sat down in the cathedral for a few minutes. Yes, we sat down in the cathedral instead of just going to find the bus. In retrospect, maybe not the best way of doing that. With our feet a little rested, we walked back behind the church to where the bus was parked. But it was gone! And there was nothing where a building used to be. What happened? Turns out we went to the wrong church. So two minutes past the time we were supposed to be back, we start our journey across a new part of town to hopefully find the bus before Dufresne gets upset. Blake, being the good guy he is, asked a man where the church (which Quincy remembered the name I believe) and he helped guide us in the general direction. It turns out we weren't terribly far from the church, and Dufresne even said that he never gets mad because of lost people. Good to know for future excursions. So finally, we got back to the bus.
     After a pretty short ride, we arrive on the property of Chambord. To get in, you must drive through a gap in a wall surrounding the land that is 33km long. They made the wall to keep critters in when they do "la chasse" aka go hunting. Chambord is amazing. It is huge, looks really cool, and has less security measures, maybe because it is something like 20,000 m² in 427ish rooms. Technically, the public can see a number of rooms that is significantly smaller. As I mentioned earlier, we are a pretty adventurous group. The start of our adventures was in a small yellow room adjoining the room that I called dibs on for my future bedroom. In this room were a few little trinkets, but also a brown door. *Cue dramatic music* Upon further investigation, it was discovered that this door was closed, but because of the way they made the lock, it was possible to undo with my just fingers. So, with me being nervous about my first time, I got Blake to go in to see what was there. I stood guard by the almost closed door, and when he came back, all I heard was "There's stairs." This definitely peaked my curiosity. As I slipped behind the door during a brief period of time when nobody else was in the room, I glanced at a staircase leading upwards, to who knows what. Well, I do. As do Blake, Erin, Mary, and Jane. This staircase led up to what seemed to be some sort of office. It was a series of three rooms. The first was empty, with a good amount of light coming from the window. The second, however, had no light, and was filled with very random objects. Across the room, one could see two posters of human skeletons, providing an ample amount of fear for us adventurers. The third room was similar to the first, just with those posters. As we went back down the stairs to find the rest of the group, Blake and I got stuck. There was nobody to tell us when to go out of the room, and we could only see through a very tiny crack between the door and wall. After a minute or two of waiting for 3 guys to leave, we decided to just hope they didn't care, and as Blake opened the door, they headed out of the room, never seeing us come in. It was absolutely perfect timing. After showing the room to the others, we continued our tour of the chateau. Much to our dismay, pretty much every door was locked. In one room, we may or may not have used a paperclip and swiss army knife to try and pick a lock we thought was simple, but we were unsuccessful in our endeavor. After a long period of bad luck, we went up some stairs to a level of the castle with a little gate barring our passage to the unknown. I had tried to push it when I first saw it, but when I saw some of the others (not in the LOST sense) walking around the balcony, I knew that I just needed to push harder. I managed to open the gate, and what lied behind was both amazing and absurd. First, we encounter a staircase that leads both up and down. Which direction to choose? Up of course, it is always a contest to see how high up in the castle you can get. Turns out, this only led to a locked door much more complicated than the last, so Paisley, Blake, and I took a picture in front of the door to remember our accomplishment. There left only one possibility: go down, down as far as you can. Only Blake and I were brave enough to complete the journey, so as our two wandering souls ventured downwards, we had some good bro-bonding time. At every level, there was a door that opened up to the side, with a series of rooms. All of these rooms seemed to be getting remodeled with new flooring, and the walls looked like dry wall getting painted. One opening led to another hallway with a wooden staircase, but apart from a light at the top, which made me really nervous because I thought someone would be there, that was it. So for those halls, nothing exciting. My biggest regret from our adventure was not going down a hallway that was finished, and appeared to be lined with offices or some type of small room, most of which had lights shining under the doors. At the end of the hall, there was some sort of staircase or new room which I wished we had looked at, but we did not want to get caught by someone. So we continued trekking down the stairs. Then all of a sudden, we made it. We reached the ground floor of this tower. Actually, we had to walk through a small passage first, then we were on the ground floor, behind a set of giant doors that might shelter vehicles at other times. There was another staircase here, but we didn't make it very far because we realized that we did not have much time left before we needed to get out of the castle. So we left. As we finished our tour of the castle, we found a room with a fire burning, helping us warm our bodies in such a frigid place. (Chateaux are cold because they are huge, don't have insulation, and are only heated with fires, so rooms without fires are just stone freezers)
     All in all, I would say that Chambord is a pretty sick chateau, and now on the top of my list of favorite chateaux. My life in Tours is not quite as exciting as that day was, but always know that I am doing something new and fun, because, why not?


P.S. Sorry this took so long to post, I wrote almost all of it Monday before going to bed, and I lost my interent Tuesday, and this is my first time back on a computer. Hopefully I get it back soon because I actually did all my homework the other night because I had nothing else to distact me. Weird.

What Up 2 Star Hotel

     Look over at the sidebar and observe the size of the scroll thingy. Yeah, get excited for a (kind of) long post. So, it has been a while since my last (and first) post. Logically, that would mean that a lot of things have happened in my life in France, and for some reason, logic works the same way in France. I have had so much time for activities, it's ridiculous.

Hotel de Ville, Tours

 Yeah, that's a picture. I bought a new camera. 

     So, class started, and it is fine: a lot of time, but not stressful. It consists of language courses focused on oral and written comprehension and production. Also, there is an art history course with an awesome teacher. In addition, I am taking an international relations type course and literature course with the Davidson group. We haven't really gotten into any real material in any of these yet, so I guess I will update those later. 

     As for last weekend, the highlight was going to visit our first two chateaux. I don't want to find accents. Sorry I'm not sorry. The names, in order, were Langeais and Azay-le-Rideau. I didn't yet own a camera, so Wikipedia should do the trick. Also, on the Langeais page, you might notice an image of figures at the wedding of Anne of Brittany to Charles VIII. These are in the coolest part of the castle. While the room itself was not anything special, just kind of big, it was the show that was put on that made it fun. They had a slide show of images of the figures following the story of the wedding, lighting up different people at different times. This was not a very busy day to be visiting the castle either. Since nobody was in the room, and I like to see how soft different things are, I thought it might be interesting to hop over the rope that may or may not have been there, in order to mingle with some historical figures. While the lights went down at the start of the show, I scurried over to one of the people, and pretended to be part of the show, trying to follow the lights and observing the figures up close. It was very fun, and because of the low security, I voted that as my favorite castle of the day. Next, we went to Azay-le-Rideau. It was a very cool building with great architecture, however, it's security was over the top. There were ropes to guide you through the castle, and everything in every room was somehow monitored. Virtually every chair in the entire castle had wires making it so you couldn't rest your legs for a little bit. Really? The most bizarre thing about the security was a dining room where there were no ropes or wires, but somehow, it knew if you touched something. If you did, something made a loud noise that could be heard for a few rooms. It was unnecessarily protected. 

This is how natives take the train. I know, it's creepy.

A pensieve! Are we in Dumbledore's office?

     During the past week, I was either in class or walking around Tours, doing nothing really exciting. Fast forward to yesterday, aka Saturday. We planned a trip to Bordeaux! This was the first time leaving Tours, and doing something new. We had a train at 8 a.m., which explains why those girls are so sleepy. It took just under 3 hours to get there, so we had a little time to kill before we were able to check into our 2 star hotel. Sounds fancy right? No, but that is for later. Upon arriving, we started walking. Nobody knew where exactly, but it kept us maybe just a little bit warmer. We stopped in a few cathedrals to see some cool gothic architecture, all of which had pensieves, as shown on the right! What was more unique was the 231 steps we climbed to get to a panoramic view of Bordeaux. Keep in mind that the steps were about 2 feet wide, so allowing people to pass and passing people going the other direction took patience and care.  

Stained glass

So after making it up the stairs of what may have once been Gryffindor Tower, we made it to a nice panoramic view of the city. This was cool, but would have been nicer had it not been a completely gray skied day. Blue skies are few and far between. The buildings looked a lot nicer from above as well. 

Bordeaux 

After dropping our bags off in the hotel room, we headed back out into the city to explore more. We never did really make plans of what to do. After a little walking, we stumbled upon a chocolate/sweets store. It wasn't your average store though, they featured live animals in the windows.

An antelope eating macarons off of a tree! What?!

There were lots of little shops along the streets of Bordeaux, enabling us to just wander and see where we ended up. One of the interesting things for me was the process of Christmas tree disposal. Basically, whenever you don't want your tree, you put it into a little area. Then, I guess, somebody comes and takes it. My only question is this: why not burn them?

Christmas tree disposal

This pile of tress, one of many, could easily provide a few minutes of warmth to the homeless. I can't even imagine how awesome throwing a match into here would have been, and trust me, it crossed my mind several times. At this time, we started to get a little rumbly in our tumblies. We now had a set mission: find a not too expensive restaurant with hopefully good food. We found one, but sadly it didn't open for another hour, so we went to a wine cafe type place. We each ordered a glass of wine, and I can now say that I have had a wine that I like. It was Loupiac for any connoisseurs out there. After this, we headed to the restaurant. My order was as follows (selected from lists to create a fixed price meal): a sort of french onion soup, then a foufillet (?) not exactly sure what the waitress said it was (and I didn't know it came with fries) with a bordelais sauce, and for desert, a rich, chocolate gateau or something. I am bad with small details if you didn't already figure that out. To accompany the main course, I had some sort of red wine, picked by  not me. All in all, I really liked the meal, and was satisfied with my first real restaurant experience.

My main course, and I did eat one leaf of lettuce

After dinner, we just went to a bar somewhere to warm up, and for me, watch soccer. Then we returned to the hotel room. Joy.

This is the entire room, with a terrible bed. 

We ended up having four people in this room, which had one blanket and two pillows total, so it was an experience, but it was really fun. I may need a couple of nights to fully catch up on my sleep, but it was worth it, and I am glad we stayed there. 

France is still amazing, everything is great here, and hope all is well back home. But until (insert number of days here), peace out.