Once Again Out and About

So, I haven't updated in ages, mostly because I haven't been doing too much that's obviously exciting. I don't really go out much anymore (with just the girls and their boyfriends, it's started to pall...), but I have been hanging out with Giovanni, the guy from my Greek class, and his friends. It's fun, and he's starting to teach me some guitar! I've learned the chords C, D, E, F, G, A, A minor, and B7, and I can do a simple chord progression. It's really not much, but I've never really worked on learning, so it's fun. I got sick, I've been getting better, and I've had classes, obviously. This week was the last week of class, and then we have two weeks of break before Finals, and then my family is coming to visit me here and we're going to have a blast before I go home! It's approaching incredibly quickly; I'm excited to go back, but I'm really feeling good about being here too.

Anyway, for our two weeks of vacation I'm going to Chartres, Bruges, and eventually Carnac. It's not overly adventurous, but I ended up doing it all myself, so I feel like it's very much *my* trip. This morning, I didn't go to our last Écrit/Orale class because I had to catch the train to bring me here to Chartres. Chartres is famous for having one of the most beautiful Gothic cathedrals in existence, and not much else. It's a really small town, with a couple other sites peppered around to make staying here for a day or three more feasible. The Chartres cathedral is also well-known for having a huge stone labyrinth paved into the floor of the nave, which was my personal reason for coming. They clear the chairs away on Fridays so that people can walk the labyrinth, so I was hoping it would work out. Unfortunately it's also Good Friday this weekend, which I hadn't thought about, but I'll get to that.

I took the train from Tours to Le Mans this morning and transferred trains there to come to Chartres. I had bought a sandwich and had some juice for my lunch while I was on the train; it ended up actually being surprisingly crowded. I also had my ticket checked on both trains, which almost never happens usually. When I got to Chartres, the first thing was to find my hotel. I'd specifically picked one that was close to the train station, and also not far from the cathedral. So close, in fact, that I walked out of the station and barely started down the road in front of it when I saw the hotel on my right. It's called the Hôtel Jehan de Beauce, which is the name of the street. Their main attribute is their location. I checked in and everything (my first time doing all this on my own! I was excited!) and went up to my room. It's really small, but that fits me pretty perfectly. I dropped off my luggage and took my purse and my camera and went to find the cathedral. The hotel gave me a guidebook/map, so I had some idea of where I was going.

Which turned out to be a moot point anyway, since I walked down the street and saw the cathedral instantly. It really dominates the town; you can see it from everywhere. I easily made my way over there; like I said, Chartres is *really* small. When I went in the cathedral itself, they were in the middle of Good Friday services. This was less intimidating than it could've been; they were walking around the nave, stopping at various points and praying. One woman gave me a paper that had the various stopping points and the basic prayer for each one, so I ended up just following and watching the procession. It was interesting in that I was probably the youngest person there by a couple decades; there were maybe four or five kids in the whole group, but I didn't see them until later. Each time they stopped represented a specific part of the crucifixion of Jesus; the three times he fell on his way to the mountain, the time a woman wiped the sweat away from his face, when he actually died, when they took his body down from the cross, those kinds of things. I did surprise myself with how much I was able to follow what the priests were saying; and I did pick out the Lord's Prayer (obviously it was all in French). After the procession, they gathered around the altar for more prayer, and I walked around to see the church itself. I took a lot of pictures of the choir screen, which was incredibly beautifully carved. It was also interesting because the carvings in the shrines were all covered with purple cloths, presumably out of reverence for the day. I was very disappointed in my timing, however; because it's Good Friday, they had all of the chairs out in the nave, covering the labyrinth, so I didn't get to walk it. I still took a few pictures, but I was sad.

I went outside again, and walked around the cathedral, taking pictures of the architecture and the area. It was already late enough that everything would've been closed, so I just wandered around the town and looked at things. It was sunny and beautiful, and just a really pleasant walk. When I headed back towards the hotel, it was getting cloudy and started to rain, so I was glad I'd brought my umbrella. I spent a while relaxing and settling into the hotel room a bit, while I was waiting for the restaurants to open for dinner (most places in France don't serve dinner until 7:30pm at the absolute earliest).

There's a restaurant literally just next door to my hotel that a lot of people recommended when I was looking into visiting Chartres, so I figured I'd try it. It's called "017," and while it's not exactly formal or über-fancy, it is definitely a more upscale place. I went in about 8:20, and was only the second person there. I got a glass of rosé wine and a carafe of water to make it last, and then they gave me ample time to look over the menu. The thing about French waiters is that they expect you to take your time, and to relax and converse with people when you go out to eat. The fact that I was by myself made that a little superfluous, but I went ahead and glanced through my little map guide and started planning what I'm going to do tomorrow. Eventually a different waiter came over. He turned out to be fun; when he caught my accent, he said "Oh, you speak English!" and went to go and get the other waiter (who, I found out when she was talking to a British couple that came in later, does speak limited English). I quickly assured him that no, I spoke French too! It was funny.

I got seafood in a curry sauce for my entrée; it was really good, flavourful but not too spicy, with mussels and calamari and all the kinds of ocean creatures I love to eat. For the main dish I basically just picked something that had a Provençal sauce, and it turned out to be a white fish with pasta. It was pretty good; not heart-stopping, but decent. I did decide over the course of my meal that I wouldn't mind making a habit of having a glass of wine with dinner; it was a really good rosé (and this is coming from me, whose palate is so untrained that almost all wine tastes too strong). The fantastic thing, however, was the dessert. Everything was plated very prettily (with random pine sprigs in, for some reason), but my fondant au chocolat was beautiful. I posted a picture on facebook, but it was basically a little chocolate cake with a gooey chocolate center and a little ball of ice cream on top, and there was a little pitcher dish full of cream to pour over it. I practically swooned, it was so delicious. It pretty much wouldn't have mattered at that point if the rest of the dinner had been gross, I was so enamoured with the fondant. When I'd finished, the waiter came to take the plate and caught me nabbing one last taste with my finger, and I assured him that it was perfect. When I had gotten the check and was about to leave, he shook my hand and welcomed me back again.

Then I came back to my room and stretched out on the bed, contentedly full, fat, and purring. I uploaded pics to facebook and wanted to write this before I forgot, but now I'm going to go to bed. I'm getting up early to see things tomorrow! :)

Chenonceau !!

Yesterday, Valeria, Mamie, Joel, and I went to the Château de Chenonceau for a day trip, before classes start and because we've been bored as hell sitting around the house all day.

The train left at 10:08am, so we got up early and went into town for pain au chocolat for breakfast before we left. If you've never had it, pain au chocolat is amazing. It's basically like a square croissant pastry, but they put two stripes of chocolate in the middle, so it's chocolaty and flaky and delicious. Then we went and got our tickets, which were pretty cheap, since the château is only a 20-minute train ride away.

When we got there, it was kind of weird, because we didn't know really where to go. There was basically just a little train stop (it looked just like a bus stop; there weren't really anything in terms of maps or anything like that) right to the side of a cute little village. Fortunately, when we went towards the village we saw the sign pointing the way! There was a little gift shop where you could buy the entrance tickets, so we bought them and went in!

There's a long drive between the gift shop and the actual château, so we walked for a while, and then finally saw it! The actual château itself is built mostly over the river Cher, so it's kind of a like a combination bridge/castle. We walked around through the four different levels, and saw the kitchens, the gallery, the library, and the bedrooms of various kings and queens.

Chenonceau is kind of known as a woman's castle, since it was frequently given as a gift to various women by the kings or lords who owned it. The most famous historical story about Chenonceau is that it belonged to the crown when Henri II was king. He, feeling generous, gifted it to his favourite mistress, Diane de Poitiers (which, you can imagine, didn't please his wife, Catherine de Medici, at all). Diane owned the castle for a long while, and did a lot to improve and expand it, making it beautiful and comfortable. After Henri died, however, Catherine expelled Diane and took over the castle herself, remodeling it again and making it her place. There are several other notable stories associated with the castle, too, including the fact that during WWII it was one of the few crossing points over the Loire between Nazi-controlled France and Vichy France, so a lot of people escaped through it. It was also used as a hospital during the war, so it saved a lot of people directly, too!

It was a lot of fun to just walk around the castle. A lot of it was obviously built for people my size; there were lots of tiny doors and hallways, which was fun for me. It's a lot smaller than you'd think, for an actual castle, especially if you've ever seen Versailles or any of the other larger châteaux. But I thought it was really cute. Once we had seen everything in the château itself, we went out to the grounds. The whole day was kind of cold and wet and rainy, and only two of us had brought umbrellas, so we didn't really want to wander around too much. But we went through the Garden of Diane de Poitiers, and got some really pretty pictures of the château and the river. There was also a house (probably originally intended to be for the gardeners and servants) that I absolutely fell in love with and really want to live in.

After the garden, I insisted we see the Maze on our way out. It's a hedge maze, with diverging paths and dead ends and things, which was fun. For me, it was tall enough that I couldn't see the right path, but Joel could see the right way to take fairly easily. It was kind of sad; I would've liked to wander more, but it was pretty cold and everyone's toes were freezing. So we took a bunch more pictures, and walked back to the little gift shop. When we got there, we looked around and warmed up a bit. I bought a little necklace that had the maze on it, and says "Château de Chenonceau" on the back. It's not like I'm a little obsessed, or anything. :P

We had basically decided that we'd seen everything we were going to see, so we went back to the train station. At that point, we still had an hour or so before the train was supposed to get there (from my brief looking at the sign), so we went into the town to find a restaurant or something. A lot of them were still closed, since it's probably the off-season for the châteaux, but we found a little bakery/pastry shop, where we got ham-and-butter sandwiches on baguettes and Orangina. We thought we still had some time, and the desserts she had looked incredible, so we also stayed for dessert. Mamie and I shared a little wildberry tart, which was absolutely delicious.

Unfortunately, because we'd stayed for dessert, the train was passing by just as we walked down the street towards the station. We started running, but we didn't realise that there was a second platform to access trains going in the other direction. The trains only stop for about 30 seconds before taking off again, so by the time we had run up to the platform, it was already leaving. That meant that we'd have to wait almost 3 hours for the next train. We basically just sat in the gift shop for Chenonceau, because at least there it was dry, and heated.

We *did* manage to catch the next train, which was a very good thing. All in all, the trip was a lot of fun, and it was wonderful to go out and see things and have fun. When we got back, we told the others about the trip, and settled in until dinner, which was really really good. We had chicken with mushroom sauce and rice, and Jacqueline had some Chinese spring rolls left over from brunch which were also delicious.

Today's been a lazy day, since some (though not all) of us are starting classes tomorrow. I have my first class, Beginning Greek, at 1pm. I went out for a walk along the river a while ago, which was gorgeous. It was late afternoon, and the sun was shining, and the wind was blowing. I went across the Loire River on a bridge that I don't think I was technically supposed to cross by foot, but I did it anyway. Then walked up the other side of the river, where there's a bunch of little walking paths. There were a lot of older couples and people walking their dogs around; I kind of followed where they were going and found the walking bridge across the river (which is what I should have gone over to start with). I took it back, then walked up to the City Library to check their hours, since I only brought two books with me. Then I walked back through the little streets and window-shopped, and saw the Cathedral. I want to go in one of these days, but I think I'll save it for a day that's not a Sunday.

Tonight, we're apparently having sushi for dinner, which is really exciting! (Some people don't like it, and they'll apparently be having something else, but I dunno what.) Then I would say I should go to bed early, since I have class tomorrow, but it's not until 1pm, so whatever. :D