A joyful day at Angers

Morning for me, 6:45am. Morning for MG, 7:30am. (side note by MG: I was only awake at this ungodly hour because breakfast was at 8.) At 7:30am I was blessed to be joined by a (semi)conscious MG for listening to French bird calls outside our window and for dream telling. It just so happens that MG had a gem of a dream last night about one of the professors on the trip with us. The dream involved this professor’s wedding day- awkward, but hilarious. The respective prof was running late, driving a 15 passenger van, and running even later because she was trying to capture and save a stray cat. In the process of saving the cat, the prof ruined her wedding dress and had to buy another at target. We don’t try to explain these dreams, but we did end up telling the prof to her face (this may have been my fault…) at breakfast.

Moving on from the morning, we traveled with the group to Angers. (On-jay) Angers was a beautiful town with a huuuuge castle (chateau) right at its center. Before going to the castle, we stopped at a late Romanesque cathedral for an hour and a half. Yes, 1.5 hours. Although I was skeptical of filling the time, I think these pictures show that we did a good job of it:

A human head relic… creepy but cool.

Our boredom once we saw all of the cathedral in 20 minutes may have resulted in an attempt to mimic this statue:

As you can see… it did not end well.

(There may be some video of this event… you can look forward to seeing that in a coming guest post from Tim.)

After the cathedral we walked on to the castle.

 
The King and Queen!  (Two of the professors on the trip lost a card game- the wager for which required them to wear the crowns from King cakes the whole day in Angers.)

The castle was amazing, but the 700 year old Apocalypse tapestry it houses was even more spectacular.

After being set free to find a place for lunch on our own, we sat down at a fashionable creperie near the chateau. It was certainly the right place because our professors arrived after we did. Score. This was a double score because again, neither of us (nor anyone else in our small group of friends) knows much French, so our professor, even on the other side of the restaurant, could help us out with emergency questions. Our lunch was huge and delicious. MG topped off her goat cheese galette with a nutella crepe and I had a ham, spinach, and crème galette followed by chocolat chaud. (side note by MG: you may be aware that goats are my favorite animal.  And by ‘favorite’ I may actually mean that I am slightly obsessed with them. Something I am NOT obsessed with on the other hand, is goat CHEESE.  It is gross, and not what I ordered in my crepe.  Unfortunately my limited French did not allow me to communicate that they got my order wrong, so I sucked it up and ate most some of it anyway.  This nutella crepe mostly made up for it though: ) 

Although we did ask our professor some questions, we did not think to ask how to pay for our meal. We waited for the bill, and waited some more. Finally, we discovered that you had to pay at the door. Oops. Our poor waiter was confused at us, I’m sure.  We eventually did pay the bill, and made our way out to explore Angers.

After shopping for the afternoon in fancy, financially inaccessible but fashionable stores, we headed back to Nantes and ate a huge dinner in a mall. Getting back to Nantes involved a bus ride of riddles courtesy of Tim’s phone. (side note by MG: the riddles were not contained to the bus.  In fact, the whole night pretty much turned into riddles any time the opportunity arose… waiting for dinner, waiting for the tram, on the tram, walking the streets… I’ve never in my life done so many riddles.)  Anyway, at dinner we caved and got hamburgers and french fries. (side note by MG: a wonderful change of pace after the nasty goat cheese crepe.) French fries are pretty good here in France.

Simply enjoying the sights and eating food has been a great joy today in Angers.

So much HAM.

This morning we went to a French church.  All I have to say about that is… not understanding French and going to a French church is not exactly the most fun activity.  The only word I understood through the service was ‘Pizza’ and hearing it really just caused more confusion than clarity.

Ironically, after church we had a big pizza lunch at the house.  Then we headed to a little town about 45 minutes away called Clisson.  While there we got to see an old castle and explore around the grounds.  It was really cool.  No big stories from it, but I’ll try to throw little stories in with picture captions.

Funny sign before entering the old castle area.

The guys enjoyed climbing all over.

When we saw this old well, my first thought was the beginning of Call Me Maybe (“I threw a wish in the well…”)  Gretchen on the other hand began singing the song from the beginning of Snow White.  I think this is a very accurate representation of our differences, haha.

So cool!

Some of our group.

Alex and December

At the top of the castle, overlooking part of the city of Clisson.

Tim with this weirdo van parked on the street.

Really pretty sunset from the bus on the way back to the houses.

We spent the evening playing some very rousing card games and laughing to the point of tears multiple times.  One of those times was while our professor was telling us what was for dinner.  If you don’t know this about me, one of the only meats I don’t like is Ham.  Can’t stand it.  The pizza we had for lunch had ham on it, which distressed me slightly.  Well dinner was sandwiches and for some reason there were like 6 different kinds of ham. Gretchen started giggling while Dr. B was telling us about them and there were just more and more.  Eventually he just quizzically looked over at her which caused both of us to just completely lose it.  And if you know me, once I cry laughing once, it happens pretty much every time I laugh for the rest of the night.  And I was laughing quite a lot, ha.

Overall, I am surprised (in a really good way) at how quickly all the people on this trip have bonded.  Before we left I had remarked that it was a really odd assortment of people coming… but we’ve meshed really well and there is definitely a great sense of camaraderie.  It’s awesome, and is making the trip even more enjoyable.

Well, it’s late and breakfast is early because we are headed on a day trip to Angers.  Hopefully Gretch will have some great stories to tell you about that tomorrow, but for now I’m signing off.  Bonne nuit!