Blogs from Troyes, Champagne-Ardenne, France, Europe - page 2

Not quite as sunny a day but perfect for a day of city sightseeing. We decided to take the bus into the city rather than walking and managed to negotiate the ticketing system, not something we do often as we so rarely use public transport. Found Troyes to be a delightful city. Just the right size for a day’s visit and so much to see. Fantastically decorated and colourful half-timbered buildings everywhere we looked as well as some large, very ornate stone mansions as this was a very wealthy and thriving city of trade in the 1500s. We visited the cathedral and several churches all of which were superb with features of delicately carved stonework and vibrant coloured stained glass windows (I note that the pictures in the many of the windows were painted rather than ... read more

This was a long hot hard day in the saddle ( 68 miles ), Paul wanted to push on a little further so we headed towards a town as we tracked the river Seine, assuming there would be places to stay.. First problem was Pauly didn't realise what time it was ( still using english ) and second problem was that it turns out this is the least populated regions of france ( 3 people per sq km ) and places were very few and far between, we almost gave up hope and decided to seek refreshment at the only cafe on route, by now Pauly was suffering a little from a poor bot ( nappy rash ) and heat stroke, luckily the owner helped us out and found us a fantastic farm house to stay ... read more

From Paris we were off to the region of Champagne. Rightly, I was thinking we might be drinking some nice champagne which as it turns out we didn't, but we did drink sour wine (more about that later). We had decided, in the spirit of touring and also of stinginess that we would avoid all the toll roads, taking back roads instead. We felt that while we might be taking a bit longer, this way we would be getting nicer scenery and a better feel for the country and it's people. It didn't take long to work out that probably everyone took the toll roads, as sat nav lead us down one country lane after another. Every 20 minutes or so we'd be driving through some neglected agricultural settlement situated on a one way road which ... read more

So these past two days have paled in comparison to the weekend. It's crunch-time here in Troyes, meaning that we are loaded with projects, presentations, and final exams. This week is super hectic since many of us are leaving Wednesday night for Scotland and our projects are due early next week. Quite a frenzy. Yesterday, Monday, we only had Project Management from 10am-12pm. It was fairly uneventful, but we did some work on our project (planning the conference for the Society of Women Engineers). After class, we picked up where we had left off, and worked on the project the rest of the night after eating lunch first. The girls in my group (Amanda, Ellen, and Melissa) were the only ones that actually did a significant amount of work while Jason and I pulled off an ... read more

I'll start this with information relevant mostly to those of you back in Michigan, I will be returning on July 4th in the late evening! A number of factors influenced my decision to do so, but I won't go into them here. How exciting, I know! So since the champagne tasting on the 5th of June, not all that much has happened. The next Sunday, June 6th, was a free day, which means we were given the entire day to do our own thing. Oddly, everyone seemed to sleep in until 11:45am, at which point we all woke up and hung out on Facebook for a while. Facebook is a way of life here since we really don't have all that much to do during the weekdays, so you'll probably hear me reference it a lot. ... read more