New Places, New People

Thursday night was cool; we did end up going out and met up with Kate, who's another American girl from the CUEFEE, and with Romain and Alban and their friends. The other girls left first; Sierra and Mamie have now gone out with their two boys a few times, so they were planning on finding them. Aaron and Joel and I met up with them at our favourite bar: Le Puits Sait Tous (The Well Knows All). We didn't stay very long, though, before coming home.

Friday we pretty much just hung around the house, since none of us had anything planned. By the evening we had decided that we should go somewhere this weekend, so we made plans to go to the Château d'Amboise, which is just a brief train ride away.

We woke up early and managed to get out of the house by 10:25, on our way to the train station. In addition to buying my ticket, I went ahead and bought a "Carte 12-25," which is basically a train card you can get if you're between 12 and 25 years old. If you have one, you get huge discounts on most train tickets. With the card, I only paid 4 Euro for the tickets to Amboise, which would otherwise cost 7 Euro. On larger trips, like to Paris, you can save almost half the cost of a ticket.

After about 20 minutes on the train, we got to Amboise. It's a larger town, so we had to work our way through it to find the castle. We had planned to find somewhere to eat, since the castle is closed over lunch. When we crossed the bridge we found a little pizzeria called "Le Salamandre" (which is the emblem of the King François I). We all split little pizzas; mine had artichokes and green peppers and little sausages and was really good. Then for dessert I had strawberry ice cream. We kind of had a hard time figuring out how to pay, since we couldn't get the attention of the waitress, but we finally just put the money on the table and left.

When we crossed the other side of the bridge, we realised that we didn't really know how to get to the castle. It's basically just stuck in the middle of the city, with houses literally crowded up and around it. Fortunately it's France, so there were handy-dandy signs pointing out "Château" and we just followed those. We were walking along through the beautiful little streets and came to an open space where there were lots of little tourist-trap shops selling souvenir stuff. Then we looked to our left, and lo and behold, a château! There was a big long ramp leading up to a gate, but it looked closed, so we walked around the walls trying to find the entrance. We also found a bathroom, which was good for Mamie and I who hadn't gone at the restaurant. It was kind of sketch, though, and several of the stalls didn't have any toilet paper. Finally, we came across a sign that said "Entrance" and was pointing back the way we had come. We, obviously, felt brilliant.

We went back and went up the steps to the gate, but it was still closed. The sign said we had 20 minutes before they opened again, so we hung out and waited. Valeria had brought a huge blue umbrella in case it rained the way it did at Chenonceau, but it was just grey, not raining. So we took a bunch of pictures throughout the day with the umbrella, in order to not have wasted the effort. Eventually, they came back and opened the gate, so we could go in and buy our tickets.

The first thing we did was walk over to the wall overlooking the city and take lots of pictures. We went over to the little chapel, which is where Leonardo di Vinci is buried, and took more pictures there. It was really pretty, both inside and outside, and I became enamoured with the gargoyles. Then we went over to a little lookout point and ran into a couple of girls (we thought they were Italian) who took some group pictures for us. Finally we went over to the actual castle part, which is actually the royal apartments. It was really beautiful, and had a lot of cool stuff inside. I once again was a complete heraldry geek, so the room where *everything* was covered with fleur-de-lis and ermines made me very happy. We also got to go up the tower and see the entire city from on high. Then we went out and walked through the beautiful gardens and took even more pictures. We ran into the "Italian" girls again, and they took a couple more pictures of our group. It turns out that they're from Argentina; we talked to them a little bit. Then we finished wandering through the rest of the castle (I found more gargoyles) and the gift shop, where everything was super expensive.

After we left, we still had a couple hours before our train would leave. We wandered around looking for a little coffee shop or boulangerie where we could hang out for a bit, and ended up going into a bar. Unfortunately they weren't serving food anymore, since it was the afternoon, so we just got Cokes and Oranginas and stayed there for a while. Mamie told us a scary story about a girl who went missing in Mexico and then later her friends saw her sitting in the back of a car and called the police. It turns out she'd been killed and they were trying to use her body to transport drugs across the border. We were all really freaked out, and we've resolved never to let anyone go missing ever (not that we would have anyway, but still). Finally we headed back to the train station and waited a bit longer for our train, and came back to Tours.

That night we had some kind of beef wrapped in something else for dinner, with little potatoes and rice. I don't really know what it was, but it was delicious. Xavier's friend Daniel came to dinner again, and they talked politics for a while. None of us knew what they were talking about, which was a little awkward. After dinner, we girls decided to go out again. Romain and Alban were bringing some friends, so there would be more people to talk to and Valeria and I wouldn't be left out. Sierra did my eyeshadow and Valeria did my hair, so it looked completely different and really cute. We went to a couple bars but they were really crowded, and finally we found a spot in the back of one, called L'épée royale (The Royal Sword). We hung out for a bit, waiting for the boys, and finally when the bar closed we waited in Place Plumereau. Finally they showed up, and I met Aurélien and Théodore (who goes by Ted). We went to a bar where there's a dancing floor in the back and had a really good time. We didn't come back until 5:30am, and were unfortunately really loud outside before we came back in. Jacqueline poked her head out to tell us to come inside, and we were ridiculously embarrassed. We thought about not going to brunch, since we were so worried about what she'd say.

This morning I slept like a rock; Valeria woke me up when she came in to ask if I was coming to brunch, so I had to hurry and put on clothes and brush my hair. We had some kind of baked egg thing, which was kind of strangely spiced but good. Sierra, Aaron, and Grant went to Chenonceau since they'd missed it, and the rest of us just basically lounged around and talked to Luzé for a while. I'm super hungry, so now we're just waiting for dinner. I hope it's soon!