Week-end en Provence

First of all, I'm sorry I haven't written in a while. As I said in my last post, we spent the last weekend in the south of France (Provence more or less), and I didn't really have a significant amount of computer access. I've also had an absurd amount of work to do, but I managed to get the bulk of it done today so I finally have some time to tell you of my adventures.

This weekend was by far the greatest weekend of my life. The south of France is the most beautiful place I have ever been. Right now, I think I'm going to retire there and run a vineyard or something like that. That's how awesome it is.

I had to wake up really early Friday morning for our train ride to Avignon. I had heard of the city, but my expectations for it were low. When we pulled into town, though, I was amazed. Avignon was the most beautiful city I have ever visited. Beautiful old buildings, not too crowded. The perfect place.

We were given some free time for lunch, so some of us decided to grab some food and eat it in a park we were told about by our wonderful tour guide Mireck (more about him and his awesome-ness later). This park had the most beautiful view I had ever seen (at the time). Here's a picture from there (I ended up taking about 100 pictures on Friday, so you can tell how beautiful it is):

There were far too many pictures to choose from, so I decided to go with this because honestly, it doesn't really matter. Everything was absurdly beautiful

Anyways, after lunch, we were given a tour of le Palais des Papes, which is where a few Popes lived (and some anti-popes too). Mireck, who works for the ACCENT Center in Paris, gave us a wonderful guided tour. Unfortunately, I didn't pay attention because the history of popes in Avignon bores me. Still, he was so knowledgeable and I'm glad he was with us.

After the tour, we were given some time to chill in our rooms. After that, we went out to dinner at some nearby restaurant...

OH YEAH. THEY HAVE SMURF FLAVORED ICE CREAM. IT WAS BLUE (I ate it before the visit to le Palais des Papes but I only remembered it now).

So after dinner, we decided to walk around Avignon a little bit. We were relaxing on some steps when my friend Bridget (like Bridget Jones) suggested we play some campfire games. The first was called slack-jaw. You basically have to slacken your jaw and stare other people down without laughing. It was hilarious. I wish I had some pictures of people's faces during this game (especially Bridget's and Scott's) but we were all too busy laughing to take pictures. The next game we played was called pterodactyl. For this game, you go around in a circle saying "pterodactyl" without showing your teeth to the person you're saying it to. The direction can be changed simply by making a pterodactyl sound and motion back to the last speaker. As you can see, this is a recipe for fun. Scott and I frequently got into head-to-head pterodactyl call duels, in which we both lost because it was far too funny to not laugh. I'm honestly surprised that I was so involved in these games. Normally, when I'm in public situations, I'm incredibly introverted, yet my pterodactyl calls filled the ears of the residents of Avignon.

After that, I went back to my room where I took a bath using bath salts that were in the bathroom. I felt like this:

The next morning, I went for a run with my friends Bridget, Jenn, and Amee. It was pretty difficult since I haven't ran since Spring Break with Winnie, but I manged to survive for the most part. I wish I had brought a camera with me because everything was so beautiful.

After breakfast, we were off to the Pont du Gard. For our trip, we rolled in an almost new Mercedes tour bus. The greatest ride I'll ever be in to the greatest place I've ever visited. When Mireck gave us our tour of the Pont du Gard, which is a Roman aqueduct from the 1st century, I was captivated by his every word.

The valley around the Pont du Gard is by far the most beautiful place I had ever been (eclipsing the area around Avignon and our next adventure which I'll get to eventually). Here's one of the many pictures I took there:

While it's possible that I took a better photo of the Pont du Gard, does it actually matter? (the answer is no, this is beautiful enough)

It was the most beautiful place ever. After an exhausting climb to the top of the aqueduct, we decided to go down toward the river so maybe stick our feet in the water since it was so hot out. We carefully made our way down a steep, slippery, rocky path. At the bottom, I ran into our teacher, who had taken the safe (and apparently faster) way to the river.

When we got there, my friend/muse Scott stripped into his skivvies and dove into the water. While I was initially stunned by his actions, it was really hot and I had wanted to swim in ever body of water I had seen in Paris (various fountains, the Seine) due to the heat, and I knew this would be my best opportunity to go swimming without contracting some disease from the trash of the Seine, so I too stripped down to my boxers and dove in:

This moment (and the ones surrounding it) was the greatest moment of my life. I honestly don't think that I'll ever be as happy as I was at that moment.

This was by far the greatest decision of my life. The water was so comfortable. I had never felt so free before. I wish I was still swimming in that river right now. That was the greatest experience of my life. After getting out to dry up a little bit before putting my clothes on, we skipped some rocks, and I threw some to the other end of the river (a few made it across), mainly because I've had this burning desire to throw stuff really far since I've been in France. Basically, I accomplished the two things I had really wanted to do at the Pont du  Gard: go swimming, and throw stuff.

After the Pont du Gard, we continued our bus ride to Aix-en-Provence, while reminiscing about 90's television. On the way, we stopped by an old fortress called les Baux de Provence. We had a nice lunch with the class, and then we got to explore the old fortress. Unfortunately, Mireck didn't give us a tour (we were kind of rowdy and once we entered the grounds, they were demonstrating the use of a trebuchet so we all ran to watch that). Speaking of which, I got to help arm what I think is the second largest trebuchet in Europe with my friend Chevalier Daniel (he got knighted):

This day was by far the most fun day of my life

After that, we got to explore the grounds. I forgot to mention that this old fortress was on the top of a small mountain, giving rise to the second most beautiful view I had ever seen (eclipsing the view from the park in Avignon for second after the view around the Pont du Gard). Here's one of the many pictures:

Scott, Amee, and Jenn looking off into the yonders

After exploring, we finished our journey to Aix-en-Provence (it's possible that this is when the reminiscing occurred, I don't remember anything other than swimming in the river honestly). Aix was honestly a bit of a disappointment. I had decent expectations for it before the trip, and it wasn't nearly as good as neither my expectations, nor Avignon/le Pont du Gard/les Baux de Provence. Still, it was quite the hip town, with many college students, so there were plenty of things to do. I was just frustrated at night, probably because I really missed le Gardon (the river). Oh man I really miss the river right now. Sigh.

The next morning, we got a tour of the city, and we got to see Paul Cézanne's house. It was alright, but I still wasn't in the best mood/Aix wasn't as picturesque as Avignon/le Pont du Gard/les Baux de Provence, so there aren't really any good pictures from the day.

After our tour, we got to explore the town a little bit on our own. There were many outdoor markets distributed about the town. At one, I bought this one book containing the works of Gérard de Nerval, who is probably my favorite poet (I actually only really know one of his poems, which I had to memorize for my French Phonetics class, but it spoke to my soul on so many levels, so I decided to buy this book so I could enjoy it any many of his other works). At another, Scott and I bought a large bottle of fresh apple juice, which was by far the most delicious thing I had ever drank. Man i really miss that stuff right now (I'm making the mental note to buy some apple juice tomorrow, though I doubt it'll be as good). We then took a quick train to Marseilles (getting a glimpse of the Mediterranean) where we took the TGV back to Paris, back to homework.

I'm sure there is a lot more stuff I wanted to write about (probably about le Pont du Gard because that was by far the best experience of my life), but it all seems like a distant memory right now, which is kind of sad (thankfully I managed to take 267 photos this weekend so I have 267,000 words to remember it by).

Au revoir tout le monde!