Fontevraud

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Yesterday we had our last day-long excursion. I can't believe it's getting toward the end of the semester already! (Although really it just feels like it's getting to the end of the semester because classes are almost over and we have almost three weeks off in April--I still have a solid two months left in Europe. Yay!)

We went to Fontevraud, an old abbey that was built around 1100. It’s famous/unique because (besides being pretty) there was always an abbess (a woman) in charge of the abbey—not a man. Also, after the French Revolution, Napoleon turned the Abbey into a prison—and it stayed a prison until 1985! Sadly, the weather was rainy on and off the entire time for us—we haven’t had one excursion with nice weather the entire day!

After the tour of the abbey, we went out to coffee (on Bucknell) before getting back on the bus. We had all planned to have a pot-luck picnic somewhere outside, but due to the weather Mme. Fazelly found a room in some tiny city hall around there to eat! It was kind of weird to just be in a random room in some random town, but it was fun (and delicious!)

After lunch we had a boat ride scheduled, but the boat company was really horrible and running over an hour late, so we had to go home with no boat ride.

Today is Carl’s birthday, so last night his host mom told him he could invite us all over for dinner. We all got dressed up to go over to Carl’s and meet his host mom who had prepared a fabulous meal for all of us and a delicious chocolate cake to top it all off!

Afterwards we went to a bar/club to meet up with some of Carl’s French friends (Carl’s the only one out of our group who actually has French friends—it’s like he leads a whole other secret life) where we got to meet Blandine, a French girl who will be coming to Bucknell next year as an exchange student! She was really nice and hopefully we’ll get to hang out with her again before we leave!

Today was a lazy day—my host family was all gone so I got a good amount of homework done and then went on a bike ride along the Loire which was fun—although awkward when passing people walking on the bike path because I would never know what to say to get them to move so I would usually just end up coughing which worked well enough.

Marguerite came home in time for dinner and she also made some chocolate chip cookies for us to have for dessert—yum! Afterwards we watched the second half of the Parent Trap together (we watched the first part Friday). It was fun to watch a movie that I know in English—we watched it in French with no subtitles and I could still follow perfectly! (It definitely helps that I pretty much know that movie by heart in English.)

Overall a pretty fun weekend for my last weekend in Tours! Huge amounts of traveling, here I come!

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Comments

[Mom]

Tours weekend
Sounds like a fun weekend! The birthday party for Carl sounds fun. You'll have to make sure and include Blandine in your activities in Lewisburg next year. Your month of bicycle rental is almost over already! That "cough" will surely go away when the bike is returned to the rental company!