Journal Entries from my Trip

So on my 10 day tour of the South of France, I could only get internet for one day, which is why I haven't posted in a long time. So I wrote some journal entries in Microsoft Word and pasted them into my post. I haven't written about every part of the trip yet--just the entries for October, but November entries will come soon. So here is the October portion of the trip. Enjoy!


Sunday, October 26

Sunday morning, we visited the Chateau d’Azay le Rideau. Despite our good weather yesterday, the weather that morning was cold and foggy. It was a nice castle, but not as nice as some of the castles we had visited earlier. Our tour guide, Annabelle, showed us a lot of cool little things about the castle—like the fact that they had foldable chairs in the Middle Ages as well as this bench that had a movable backrest—this bench was situated in front of the fireplace and the backrest was movable so that the people could easily switch from warming their fronts to warming their backs. Random fact, I know, but that’s kind of what the visit consisted of apart from visiting the typical king’s and queen’s bedrooms and looking at various portraits, sculptures, and tapestries of said king.
After visiting that chateau, our bus driver, Siad, drove us to another one, the Chateau de Langeais. This castle was much prettier than the first one, and thankfully, by the time we got to this castle, the weather had improved and it was sunny. We went inside this castle and saw all its beautiful rooms and portraits of all the kings that had stayed there. Interesting fact I learned at this castle: the high collars that everyone wore in the 1500’s became the fashion trend of that century not because everyone thought it was cool. By the 1500’s, syphilis had infiltrated France (apparently the French believe it was brought in by men who had slept with sketchy Italian women/prostitutes). Syphilis caused large spots to appear on the neck of anyone who was infected by it, so to cover it up, these people started wearing high collars to hide their spots. Eventually enough people who had syphilis started wearing their collars high and subsequently started a fashion trend for the times. Fact.
After visiting that castle, we went to lunch and then visited the Chateau d’Amboise. Again, we had the typical castle tour, looking at all the bedrooms and paintings and other rooms in the castle. There was a church outside this castle and inside was a memorial to Leonardo DaVinci because he had spent the last years of his life in that castle with the French king. So it was cool being in a place where DaVinci once stayed and unfortunately died, but nonetheless, it was still really cool.
After that, we then went to a wine cavern in Vouvray. It was so cool because the caverns were like a small underground city—there were street signs labeling the different pathways through the cavern because it was so big. There were tons of bottles of wine stacked in cases that were in this machine that turned the wine bottles twice a day. Annabelle told us there were 4 million bottles of wine in that cavern. Then after walking through the cavern, we had a small wine tasting with this little French gay guy, which made the whole thing even more enjoyable. We tasted two types of champagne—a drier kind and then a sweeter kind. Then after tasting both, we got to pick our favorite to sip on again. Though it was a bit short-lived, it was fun. Then we went back to our hotel and I walked around the city of Tours with Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, Erika, and Michele. We walked along the Loire River and then walked into the part of town populated by the young university students. We went to dinner outside o
f a pub that was packed with guys watching a French soccer game. It was fun being in the area because it was very lively and every once in a while the whole pub would go crazy after a goal was scored. Based on the cheering, it sounded like France was having a good game. After dinner we headed back to our hotel to sleep.

Monday, October 27

Today, we left Tours early to drive to the city of Perigeux. We spent the majority of our day in the bus because it took about 6 hours to get there including the time we took to stop for lunch. Around 4:00, we arrived at Perigeux and took a tour of the medieval city with a tour guide. We went up inside a tower that served as a fortress for the old city, and then we just walked through the medieval part of the town looking at the architecture and listening to its history. It was so cool to see such old buildings still in place. We saw a house that once belonged to a poor family in the 15th century—it was known that the family was poor based on the building’s architecture and the materials used to build it. We also saw the door to the town’s prison, which was located on an uphill street that prisoners had to hike up with a ball and chain attached to their ankle. After visiting the town, I walked through the city at night with Roz, Enna, Monika, and Lubaina to find some dinner. We ended up eating a
t a little Greek place and then walked around the city for a bit, and then walked back to our hotel to sleep and get ready for the next day.

Tuesday, October 28

Today, we went to les Eyzies and visited the caves of Font de Gaume. It was really cold and wet that morning, but the tour in the caves was so cool—by far the coolest thing I’ve seen so far. The cave itself was really cool, but the best part was looking at all the cave drawings—some weren’t very well preserved, but others were still very much intact, which is pretty impressive considering the cave was over 14,000 years old. Most of the drawings were of bison but there were also other drawings of reindeer and horses. Another impressive thing about the drawings was the fact that the people who drew them created their paints with minerals and they drew these animals from memory—and these paintings were well-drawn. It was just so cool being in a place that had been around for so many years and thinking about the people who had been there before me. I loved it.
After the cave visit, we drove to Sarlat to have lunch and tour the town. We arrived an hour before our lunch reservation, so I walked around the city with Roz, Enna, and Lubaina before lunch. We went into a bunch of stores, but then we found this old bookstore down an alleyway. It was small and there were a couple of older Frenchies in there as well as this adorable, friendly cat. We spent about 15 to 20 minutes in that bookstore playing with the cat. Thankfully, the cat didn’t mind all the attention and the French people were entertained by the fact that we liked the cat so much and didn’t mind us being there. We stayed until we had to leave for lunch. After eating a really nice lunch, we met a tour guide who took us around the city talking about its history, architecture, and church. The tour was kind of boring, but it was fun walking around the city taking in the buildings and scenery. After the tour, we left for Carcassonne in our little bus, which took about four hours. When we arrived,
I went out to eat with Katie, Michael, Monika, and Erika. We went into the area of the city where the castle (the Chateau Comtal) was and found a restaurant to eat at inside the ramparts surrounding the castle’s towers. After eating some good food, we walked back to our hotel in the rain and got ready for the next day.

Wednesday, October 29

Today, after eating a really great breakfast in our hotel, we had an official visit inside the Chateau Comtal with a tour guide. Unfortunately, more than half of our visit consisted of us being outside or in towers that had open windows, and of course, it was windy and cold the whole time we were touring—by far the worst weather we had had so far. On the upside, our tour guide was pretty entertaining, but he was really hard to understand because he spoke really fast, but every once in a while I was able to catch some of the jokes he made. We learned that the Chateau was mainly used as a fortress and the towers housed prisoners and the town was inhabited by Cathars, which were a people who had a different religion from Christianity who were eventually massacred by order of the Pope because of their heretical beliefs. Sad story, but only one of many in French history. We were all pretty happy when the tour ended because the weather was horrible.
After the castle visit, we all got into our bus and drove to the Sinnigers’ home in Durfor, a city known for its copper and copper products. Monsieur Sinniger met us outside the door to their home and right on their medieval style French door was a little Furman University vanity plate. It was so cute. They invited us in and we all drank champagne for an aperitif and met their large Spanish dog named Benny. He was cute, but he whined a lot. Madame Sinniger had to leave 15 minutes after we arrived for a meeting (we were supposed to have arrived at their home earlier, but we ended up coming an hour or more later than what we had originally planned). So Monsieur Sinniger (who is over 80 years old) had to take care of serving us all the lunch and dessert that Madame Sinniger had prepared. We had sausage cassoulet, which consisted of sausage and beans. It was pretty good, and then we had a carmelized applesauce dessert with fromage blanc, which was also really good. Then Monsieur Sinniger offered us
coffee, but he didn’t really know how to make it, so it wasn’t that good, but it was really cute that he tried.
After lunch, we walked around Durfor for awhile looking at all the copper items as well as the many leather shops around the area. Then we hung out at the Sinnigers’ awhile longer, and Monsieur Sinniger gave us a tour of the whole house, and we got to see old pictures of Madame Sinniger when she was younger. She was a very pretty woman and she actually reminded me a bit of my Grandma Porter. It was cool seeing what she was like when she was younger. Eventually, we all returned to our hotel in Carcassonne, and I shopped around a bit inside the ramparts of the chateau with Elizabeth, Monika, Michael, Katie, and Erika. Elizabeth and Erika bought soap and then we found a café to eat at that had really great food as well as really good ice cream. It was so good. After dinner, we all went back to the hotel and hung out a while together in Katie’s room before we finally all went to bed.

Thursday, October 30

Today we were supposed to visit an abbey, but unfortunately, Siad missed the exit to the abbey and ended up driving 45 minutes outside of where we were supposed to go, and by the time we realized we had taken a wrong turn, it was too late to go back. So we ended up arriving in the city of Sete earlier than expected. We had a boat ride scheduled, but we got there three hours before the boat was supposed to depart, so I walked around the town for about an hour with Michele, Elizabeth, and Erika. We just walked around looking at all the shops and the markets and ran into Siad and Dr. Patton. We walked around with them for a bit and found a café to eat lunch at. Since Sete is by the sea, there was plenty of seafood offered, and I had a really great lunch: fish soup, grilled tuna with ratatouille, and an apple tart for dessert. It was so good!
After lunch, we took got on the boat and enjoyed an hour boat ride around the outskirts of the city. I stood at the very front of the boat. The sea was pretty rough that day and the boat kept moving up and down with the waves, and being at the front seeing the boat rise and fall was so fun—like being on a roller coaster. Siad was on the boat with us and he felt sick—he came up to the front with me and some of the other girls for a while, but then couldn’t handle all the motion of the boat. I felt kind of bad for him, but it was also pretty funny. After the boat ride, we went to the Aigue Morte to visit there for an hour. It basically consisted of this small little town surrounded by ramparts and towers that had a bunch of little shops in it. So I spent most of my time walking around the town with Katie just visiting all the different shops. We found a giant candy, cookie, and chocolate store, which was like confectionary heaven with an old fashioned kind of feel. It was so cool—made me feel lik
e I was in a toned down version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. We also browsed through clothing stores and art galleries. It was pretty cool all in all, and I’m glad we only spent an hour there because that was about as long as we needed.
After that, we drove to the city of Arles and stayed in a pretty primitive hotel. There was no TV or wireless, so we had to find other means of entertaining ourselves. We got to Arles early, so we had a dance party in my room using the music from our computers and then I went out to eat with Elizabeth, Katie, and Michael to a fun little place called Coco Bongo where we ordered some really good tapas. Siad saw us in the restaurant when he was walking down the street and joined us for drinks for like 20 minutes before he had to meet up with Dr. Patton for dinner. He was fun to talk to and he ended up paying for our drinks, which was so nice. After a long, but very good dinner, we all went back to the hotel, and I watched some Gossip Girl with Monika and Elizabeth (Elizabeth had episodes on her computer) before finally going to sleep.

Friday, October 31

This morning, we visited the city of Arles with a tour guide. We first started the tour by visiting the ancient ruins of a roman city. These city ruins were so well intact that the city decided to preserve them underneath the city. There were a long series of connected stone arches that we walked through that had column ruins around it, which was really interesting to look at. The extent of the ruins lasted a good while because we walked along a few series of long pathways and one pathway led us into an area that was clearly used for a chapel. Then as we walked past the chapel, we saw large openings in the stone walls and the tour guide told us that those openings were used as shops. The whole tour was very cool.
After visiting the ancient city, we walked around the modern city of Arles, visiting first the gothic church in the city. Unfortunately, it started to rain really hard at that point in the tour, so I missed a lot of what the tour guide was saying because the combination of the noise of the rain as well as my occupation with staying as dry as possible. We learned that Arles was a popular place for hosting bullfights because they had a large arena to host the tournaments in. This arena was also used for watching people be attacked and killed by lions. After visiting the arena, we walked around the city some more and went to a couple of the locations where Vincent Van Gogh painted when he lived in Arles. We went to the café that he painted as well as a courtyard that was the subject of another of his paintings, so that was cool visiting the same places that Van Gogh once sat with his easel and paints. It’s too bad he ended up being really weird.
Once the tour ended, Elizabeth, Katie, Monika, and I went back to the café that Van Gogh had painted called “Café de la Nuit” and had lunch there. It was a pretty good restaurant and Katie and I got to try bull meat. After lunch, we shopped around at the markets and bought some Van Gogh copies. Then we took a taxi to visit the Beaux de Provence, which is basically just the ruins of a fortress. It was incredibly windy up there. We actually saw a middle-aged woman wearing a skirt that was too short for her up there, which was a bad choice of dress because the wind blew her skirt up, and we all saw that she wasn’t wearing any underwear—not a pretty sight. After distancing ourselves from this woman, we climbed up into the fortress, observed the medieval weapons that launched stones towards the enemy, and admired the view from the top of the huge hill it was built on.
After spending 2 hours at the fortress, we all came back to Arles and ate dinner together. It was a lot of fun because a guitar player came in and played some songs for us and sang while we ate. He was a bit awkward at times, but it was entertaining. After dinner, a group of us went back to Coco Bongo because they were having a Brazilian themed party. It was really cool—the place was packed, and there was a live band playing. The music was fast paced and there were some really great dancers there who could really move well. They were a lot of fun to watch and mimic (or try to mimic). We stayed for about an hour and then left to go back to the hotel.