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Finally finally finally I am writing about the end of my tour de France! I have a few minutes before heading off to Lourdes, so I thought I'd be productive for a change. I've been terrible at keeping everyone updated, and for that I am terribly sorry, I'm sure you'll all forgive me when I get home in EIGHT days!
Before writing about Tours and the Loire, I thought I'd get you all up to date on Perpignan life lately. Two weeks ago were exams. It was pretty crazy. We had all of our exams on Monday, May 5, and Tuesday, May 6. All of the level 3 exams were on Tuesday, while our level 4 civilization exam was on Monday. From 8 in the morning until noon, we sat on hard wooden chairs trying to take all of our exams while the Chinese students talked and cheated amongst themselves throughout. We were really frustrated because it was so obvious that some of them were cheating (there was even an incident where one girl translated the writing directions into Chinese for another boy!), but the professors did nothing but warn them to stop. Oh well, earlier this week we got
I'm a Princess
My very own Princess picture, overlooking the gardens at Chenonceau our scores back...the three Americans were all towards the top of the list, with a few Chinese mixed in there...but I was #1 in the level. Pretty cool, if I say so myself. My score was 87.5 out of 110, not bad for French grading. I don't know what that will translate into for my American grades, but I'd say somewhere around the A range, especially with Pichot grading (he loves me...I got an A+ in his last class).
Now, back to Tours. We arrived in Tours from Caen on Friday, May 25th. Actually, we arrived in St Pierre des Corps, which we were NOT informed, is NOT the name of the train station in Tours, it is a different city, thus we had to take a bus into the actual Tours. We found a hostel, left our stuff, and went back to the train station in Tours. We bought tickets to Chenonceau, our first chateau visit. We grabbed some lunch while waiting for the train. I found a pop machine in which WATER was actually CHEAPER than POP! It was amazing...it was evian water too! It was a short train ride to Chenonceau; we were dropped off right
Chenonceau
the side of the chateau from the gardens outside the castle entrance. We wandered around the castle and the grounds or as long as we possibly could. After we had exhausted the wonders of the castle, we wandered around the little village for a bit. As we found out early on, public transportation to the chateaux, sucks.
The next day, Saturday May 26, we took a train to the city of Blois, hoping to visit Chambord and Cheverny. Turns out the bus circuit to those two chateaux had not started running yet, thus we had to choose one. We chose Chambord, but we were out there for SIX hours before the bus came to bring us back to Blois. Touring the castle itself barely took an hour. It was beautiful though. Later we walked around all of the souvenir shops and had some ice cream (two hours down, four to go). To waste most of the time, we laid out on the lawn in front of Chambord. It was nice, we tanned, read magazines, and did French word searches. For our last hour of waiting, we ate some pizza and waited at the bus stop. We had some more waiting to do at the Blois train station
Chambord
front of the chateau from the lawn where we waited for three hours before getting back to Tours. Once in Tours, we went back to the hostel.
Sunday, May 27, was our day of departure. Our train back to Perpignan didn't leave until 9 at night, so we had planned to do more sightseeing during the day. Sunday morning, we checked out of the hostel, but left our luggage because there was nowhere to leave it at the train station. Then we caught a train to Amboise. Amboise is the little town where Leonardo Da Vinci spent the last few years of his life. We first visited Clos Luce, the little chateau that was given to Da Vinci by, the French king, Francois I. It is now a museum. We walked around the inside and saw all of Da Vinci's rooms. The basement was filled with the plans and little models of all of Da Vinci's inventions. Throughout the grounds of the estate, were bigger models of his inventions. It was really neat to see all that he invented (no shoes to walk on water with though 😉. After finishing the Clos Luce, we wandered back into town for lunch. After lunch, we still had a ton of time to do nothing.
Clos Luce
Da Vinci's home in Amboise Libby and I ended up splitting up because she didn't want to pay to go into another castle and I hate wandering around aimlessly. So she wandered around aimlessly while I went into Chateau Amboise. I'm really glad I did too, it was beatiful. The first thing I did was walk into the little chapel outside the chateau. Inside was Da Vinci's tomb, I didn't know he was there so it was quite a surprise. The thing that made me the most happy was that not only could I take pictures inside the chateau, but the rooms were well lit, so the pictures actually turned out. When I finished at the chateau, it looked like rain, so I headed back to the Amboise train station to wait for Libby. We took the train back to Tours, went back to the hostel to get our luggage, and hung out at McDo (one of the few places open on a Sunday where we could loiter for a few hours). We had dinner, then dessert. Then we got on the bus back to St Pierre des Corps, where we waited outside the train station (it was a beautiful day) until it was time
Chicken Coop
me in front of Da Vinci's chicken coop to board the train. This is when Libby realized she did not have her ticket...for most of the trip, I had all of the tickets for both of us, the one ticket I gave her she accidentally threw away. So she had to buy another one, with a few minutes to spare. It was not a good night's sleep, and we had a make-up class at 10 in the morning on Monday, but we made it!
Alright, that's it for vacations! You'll probably hear from me again before I leave! See you all soon!
Freya
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