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.
BACK AND BETTER THAN EVER 