Provence, Days 3 and 2 :)

(in that order)

Today, was, lovely.

Lovely is just the best word to describe it.

I hung out at the Pont du Gard all afternoon after wandering around the chateau de Tarrascon all morning. And finished off the day by chasing Kevin around the French countryside. =) In the sunshine and stuff.

The weather was so super beautiful--Probably at least 50 degrees, although it felt like 70 at times, and breezy and sunny. Hazy because it's France, but there was really real sun instead of "Oh! Less clouds! Let's call it sunshine!"

We're all REALLY worn out from so much sunshine though!! It's 9:22 and I feel like I'm keeping my reading roommates up late by blogging. haha :)

We have breakfast at the hotel buffet every morning, which means I can have my usual toast and yogurt with cereal (and add a pastry if I want :). This morning we visited a cool castle that was a little less well known and strict and well-visited as a lot of the other ones we've been to, which meant we were practically the only ones there for most of the time and could run around being American a little more--for example, singing the alma mater of BG in this awesome echoey vaulted room (none of it had furniture, and Rob and Charles sing two different parts in men's chorus), taking "America's next top model" pictures on the roof--it was so much fun. I wandered around with Laura, Anna (another grad student who's good friends with Laura) and Noel most of the time and Laura (and Anna) laughs at me so much and makes me laugh and we just had a lot of fun being dorky together. =D

We ate lunch at the restaurant at the Pont du Gard after a short (20-30 min?) bus ride.

BUT OH YEAH before that, in Tarrascon still, I followed Laura on her adventure across the bridge to some other old building we could see and it was a fast walk but it was fun to explore and chat and admire the Southern France architecture. Because this place is like someone took Italy and Spain and mixed them up with France--everything's more colorful and stuff. =D Everyone looks more Italian/Spanish. The sunshine is actually sunshine, as I said, instead of a lack of clouds. It's really interesting. :)

For the actual Pont du Gard, there was a museum, but I just ate lunch in the sunshine with Laura for far too much money (but BG gave us lunch money for the weekend, so it's all good (Y) :) and then we wandered down to the actual bridge, which is actually an old roman aqueduct that provided water to Nimes. =) There were enough people that it was festive but not so many that it was irritating and there were a bunch of rocks underneath that were fun to climb around on and even a little bit of sand next to the river! I waded just long enough to take two pictures but the water was frigid! I danced around in the sand some to have fun anyway in my bare feet. :) LOVED IT. =D I think I looked silly but at this point I 100% don't care. I recognize but I don't care.

Laura and I took a quick look around the museum as close to the end as possible because we didn't want to go inside. It was very American/modern? style because it was dark, led you through a specific way, and had weird sounds in the background. We couldn't find the way out right away at the end and I freaked Laura out by saying, "I kinda feel like I'm in a nightmare where there's no way out but no one else cares and they're just wandering around indifferent." It was funny because of course the next door was the way out.

After the rapid journey through the museum, we got a crepe au nutella. I think I'm over the honeymoon stage with crepes, pain au chocolat, and croissants. They're just OK now, like any other dessert. Crepes with nutella AND banana, now, there we're talking...but everyone keeps being out of bananas. The weird thing was one of the other girls had tried to get a crepe when we went into the museum, 15 minutes earlier, but he had said it was closed. We kind of wondered if it was because she's black. It made us wonder if racism is more predominant here, being closer to Africa and all, and if one of us had gone with her if it would've been different. :(

We got back on the bus and went to Uzes, which was close by, and Kevin wanted to find the source of the aqueduct. You're just going to have to look at pictures but imagine a valleyish area with brush and scrub and trees and stuff on either side. We climbed all around in there following rabbit trails before realizing that there was no way this was the "legal" way to get down there. So I followed Kevin back up, leaving the 4 others who had undertaken the expedition in the underbrush, and then followed him back down this rocky path, saw the beautiful park/grassy space/water feature (which Kevin decided must be the source) at the bottom, along with a slice of ancient aqueduct, and then followed him back up. Have I mentioned that this guy is super fit and very hard to run after sometimes?? I feel like he kept it mild for me but I also feel like I'm going to be sore tomorrow (but I exaggerate, I did fine keeping up :). It was so beautiful. I just stood there and basked.

Tonight for dinner back in Avignon we got pizza (me, Hannah, Emily, and Makayla) and it was delicious. We're all, have I mentioned, super tired from the sun and I think they're both asleep. Though I don't hear deep breathing, neither of them have moved in the past 20 minutes. Emily has a hurting tendon and Hannah and Makayla are vegetarians, so it was necessary to eat close by without being forced into meat.

And now I could explain more about tonight (dessert ;) but I'd have to explain yesterday.

Yesterday we did hotel breakfast and then took off to a museum of Roman antiquities in Arles. The lady doing the tour had pretty good English but she made just enough mistakes and it was just enough Franglais that it kept me very entertained. The stuff was cool, similar to what I had seen at a similar museum in Cologne last summer. I dressed MUCH too warmly and had to take off a couple of layers which was really exciting--goodbye leggings and obligatory knitted layer! Welcome to South France! Hello sunshine! (aka--what is that light?? It burns! [I'm not kidding!, we really authentically caught ourselves saying things like that...])

We ate lunch in town wherever we wished (I had a tomato mozzarella sandwich and a piece of this almondy carmely toffee-like thing that Laura got. We sat in the main square on the fountain to eat which reminded me of Bruges. :)

After lunch, we went to the Roman amphitheater which was quite different than any of all the other things I usually go to--museums, chateaux and the like. It was nifty! And sunny! People really did like gladiator fights and fed Christians to the wild animals and stuff there! Now they just use it for bullfights. Just. ;)

I wandered around town with Emily and Charles and Hannah--we sat up on the wall looking at the river for a while, window shopped--it was great. :) Again since it was the weekend but it's early in the season there were a bunch of locals out enjoying life but a few tourists too so we didn't feel too out of place. I had a funny experience when I bought a banana--I walked by this place and saw fruit and a bunch of people standing around inside. Like a younger woman with a stroller, an older woman with a dog, a few guys, maybe an older kid or two...so I just walked by but then I was like, I really want that banana...so I went back and said "Bonjour" as you're supposed to, hoping someone would be like, "can I help you" if I really wasn't supposed to serve myself. But no one said anything so I just stood there awkwardly and then asked the older lady with the dog if everyone was hoping. Then I corrected myself from my Spanish error and asked if everyone was waiting for something. "Tout le monde espere?" versus "Tout le monde attend?" Gets me every time. =P She was like "no no, serve yourself" so I got an awesome banana and a cultural experience for 44 cents. =)P Or something like that. =)P

We had been FIRMLY instructed to meet back in the plaza at 5:15 to get to our train at 5:50 because the next one left 15 minutes afterwards, sure, but it took an hour to get back instead of 15/20 minutes.

We all got to the station with plenty of time to see that our train was going to be late by 20/25 minutes...Germans, they're like, "15 minute delay." French are like "Probable delay of 25 minutes." Kevin's like, "Stick close, they could change the platform and/or it could all of a sudden be here." Laura and I went and sat outside anyway and ate her pretzels and talked about family and life and fun stuff like that. Emily called us in because a train was arriving and then was like, "Sorry, just kidding, I guess it's not ours." So we stood there talking to Kevin about the situation and watched the train pull in and he's all like, "Which way is Marseilles again? That way? Yes. Well if the train is coming from that way, why does it say that it's going to Marseilles? That's very odd." And then, when it drove away and our train disappeared from its THIRD POSITION on the board, we realized, Oh, no, it wasn't going to Marseilles, it was COMING from Marseilles which was the direction we wanted which means that that was our train and we missed it and we're now taking an almost hour long bus ride 15 minutes from now. The situation we had been trying to avoid all along. Ah well. People weren't all that happy of campers but I had had Laura's pretzels and it wasn't really anyone's fault (besides the SNCF for confusing us...(the train company)) so we weren't about to kill anyone.

Kevin moved our dinner reservations and we made it on time to Le Chat Gourmand--a little delicious restaurant covered in cats, as its name indicates. At Friday night's restaurant when we got here you picked one item from each of the little groups under the "17 euro menu" or "23 euro menu" lists, which meant that it was grouped in "appetizers" "entrees" "desserts." This time, there were four groups of four different plates, and a long list of all the things you got with each plate. They were just little cups of very tasty things. I got the duck plate, which included not only duck and a salad with some kind of sweet springroll on top, but a little onion tarte ish thing, some sweet potatoes, an applesaucey thing but with spices that we wouldn't normally match with fruit, and I think a little coconutty dessert ish thing --oh with veggies too! They were kind of stewed but the sauce was spicy and there were chickpeas involved (Y). These were all tiny portions, you know, besides the duck, salad, and veggies, which was awesome because I felt full but not stuffed. And I had room for a little fruit tart at the end. Everyone in the middle of the table left without dessert because they didn't want any and it had been hot in their area because a couple people got cook-it-yourself ostrich meat, which meant having a hot plate on the table. Apparently this was very rude and said, "You're all boring" but apparently there was also some kind of too much drama going on yesterday that involved members of the middle of the table. *shrug* Who knows. We sat around waiting for Anna's dessert to come...but it had been forgotten. In the States, comp-ed dessert. Here, "Oh, yeah. Do you still want it?" *shrug* again. haha! Then we sat around waiting for the bill for another hour (from 11 to midnight). This place was tiny--it had three parties (granted, we're a party of 17) and was run by two, max three people. She had thought that we needed EVERY PERSON SEPARATE which was the reason for the delay because we just needed alcoholic beverages separate. I was kind of dead by then but the conversation was fun. I was actually less dead than I had been before we ate.

There were two things I was going to refer to from today that you had to know about yesterday for. One was that while I've been writing this I've been nibbling on a bigger slab of the same kind of thing that Laura let me try yesterday--only this has a bit of crust at the bottom. It was called a bee's nest. =)P Maybe blogging isn't the place for this, but I've still had drainage in my throat all day and nibbling keeps me from coughing and/or it making me unhappy. But I don't remember the other thing.

Other random things from the past two days? Can I just reiterate how much I love sunshine? So. Much. I got freckles (well, I mean they got darker) and my skin cleared up although my eyes are tired and water easily.

Apparently I'm not supposed to have wifi for free and Anna's trying to start rumors (humorously) about what I did to bribe the receptionist (who are always guys here because they double as security guards) for free wifi. I just asked nicely! (wasntme)

I keep seeing people with short hair that I like and then they keep being older women. *sigh* Which actually lines up with half of my fashion likes--it's always trendyish older women, but still. I just tend to like "classic" stuff and then everyone's like, Oh but that's cool if you put it with the right stuff...to which I say, other "classic" stuff? =)P Anyway, the obsession about chopping my hair has worn off which will help me to make a rational decision. I still want to do it but I've also been OK with just wearing it up every day while I've been here...{Emily's hair (that I did) turned out really good today, btdubs. I took a picture ;) It's Alena-inspired.} So anyway, I think I want to do it (cut my hair really short) still but I'm not 100% sure, which is good because now I won't do it in the heat of the "I'm so sick of all this hair!" moment. Maybe that was more like momentum that I've now lost. We'll see, won't we? At any rate, I won't have time to cut it till Wednesday, so it's all good. I have time for thought. And to look up more hairstyle vocabulary. And to keep creeping on the backs of people's heads. ;)

Lastly, this whole thing is a really interesting study in groupology--oh I mean sociology. We're all together and we all know each other but I know there's drama somewhere in here and we have our little subgroups that mesh and meld and separate and it's all just very interesting. It's been weird to be with people non-stop (almost) since Friday, though.

So all in all, I'm loving and savoring and soaking up this trip to Provence. :) And it's 11 and Kevin has GRACIOUSLY let us start at 10 tomorrow but I'm still going to be the first one up, even though I'm the last one up, ...but that's Ok with me, it'll still be a goooooood sleep after all that clambering and sunshine and walking and goodness. =D

I like life.

Don't worry, I took pictures.

Love to all and to all a good night :)

PS: Shopping has been slim on the ground because I almost found a scarf for 2,75 yesterday but then when I was holding it my hand was all sweaty and I checked and it was acrylic. =P And then today it was Sunday and we weren't in a commercial area anyway. Things tend to be closed on Mondays too but here's hoping! And if not, um, I live in Tours, which, despite the fact that it's under a big cloud almost constantly, is still in France. =)P