(<-- This is Chateau de Chambord in Tours.)
Last post= bad moment. This post= I LOVE THIS PLACE! I really do. I love being in Paris right now. I really like the people on this trip. I don't even worry about Madame anymore because she is the way she is. BUT, I have awesome people to be with and an awesome city to be in. Nothing, and I mean nothing, could spoil my time here. I'm so glad I get to share these pictures and my experiences with all of you in the United States. It's such a great way to release any frustration I might be having while I'm here. Thank you for reading this... is what I mean :).
This weekend, our group took a trip to the Loire River Valley. For those of you who don't know, we stayed in Tours (a city 2 hours south of Paris). It is settled among beautiful chateaux from the 13th-18th century. Absolutely breathtaking. No other words describe this place. Our group had so much fun just hanging out together in the hotel and going out to eat. I can't wait to go back there.
On Saturday, we left at 8:00 a.m. for Tours. We, first, stopped at Blois- one of the oldest French castles. It was beautiful. Then, we headed for Chenoceaux (sp?), a chateau that is built literally on the Loire River. It was beautiful, as well. We had lunch there then we headed for a "suprise" from our Directors. We were taken to a little family-owned winery in Tours where we got a guided tour of a cave-cellar winery- probably the neatest thing I've seen on this trip. Then, we got the real suprise. We had a wine-tasting at the winery. Now, they told us it would be a "tasting" and that's why I call it such. The truth is, however, that is was more of a wine drinking party/birthday celebration for Katie/get crunk/have a ball kinda thing... basically, we all had the BEST time. Our director, Gabriel (he's French and Greek) was so fun. We love him. For our "tasing", he brought out this ridiculous little funnell-ish wine drinking thing that he called "the way the French drink the wine." HAHA! We were all just peeing on ourselves from laughing. This "thing" he brought out was a glass penis-shaped (I mean, literally) caraffe of wine. He let us all drink out of the "penis" and we headed on our way :). During the bus ride, we literally had a ghetto dance party. It was hilarious- someone held their iPod headphones to the microphone. Our director probably thinks we're insane.
We stayed in a Best Western where I took the longest shower of my life and had a great night's sleep. It was so great- it's funny how we take these for granted until they're not available :). I loved Tours, it was so quaint and little. We ate at this little restaurant. I finally got mussels (I had been wanting to try them so bad.) They were delicious. We all stayed up drinking wine and hanging out.
The next morning, we got on the bus and headed for the biggest chateau of them all in the Loire Valley, Chambord. It's the castle that the liquer, Chambord, is named after. This one was beautiful. We got to separate into groups of 5/6 and drive a boat around the river of the castle. That was the funnest thing so far on this trip. We laughed so hard the entire time. We tried really hard to get a good jumping picture but it proved to be rather difficult haha. Then, we toured the castle, had lunch, and headed back for Paris.
We arrived in Paris around 5:00 p.m. on Sunday. Katie, Jamie and I had on the best dinners that I've had here. It was a little Italian cafe really near our apartment. We split a pizza so it was really cheap, too. You can't beat that :)! We did our homework in the Luxembourg Gardens- that's just really awesome to me. Then we went home and got ready for the night.
We went out to St. Michel area for a drink with some of our group. It was one of the girl's birthday's so we went to an Irish Pub. Ok, I'm saying this right now- best pub in the city. It was absolutely the funnest night I've had here so far. We all had a great time.
We're about to leave for class right now so I gotta run. Hope you like the pictures. I'll post again soon! Au revoir... :)
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