En Provence

Last weekend my friends Casey, Mary, and I decided to go to Aix-en-Provence to visit our friend Tim.  The province of Provence is in the south, so it's warmer and has lots of sunshine.  It's just north of the riviera.  

We arrived Thursday evening, and Friday during the day Tim had to go to school, so Mary, Casey, and I spent our time wandering around town and hanging out in a café.

View of Aix from the top of the theatre.  You can see the mountain in the background.

 

  

Mary and Casey, at the café. 

Friday night we hung out with a bunch of Tim's friends.  A lot of them had come to Lyon for the lights festival in December, so it was fun to see them again.  We stayed up pretty late that night, but Mary, Ilikaa, a friend of Tim's, her boyfriend (also named Tim), and I had to get up early to catch a bus to go to Ilikaa's house.  I wasn't really sure what was going on, or why we were going to Ilikaa's house, but I just kind of went along with it.  Well, we got up late, not surprisingly.  So we had run all the way to the bus station, but thankfully we made it.  Tim and the others were going to drive down later, so they didn't need to rush.  So Mary and I were on this bus, not really sure where we're going, but the scenery was gorgeous.  About an hour later, we stopped in town where Ilikaa's mom would pick us up.  There was a market, of course.

  

  

Ilikaa and her boyfriend Tim.

Her mom picked us up in the town (Riez) and drove us to their house.  Which, by the way, is a 13th century monastery at the foot of the Alps.  No big deal.

  

  

There's even a chapel attached.  It became a dumping ground while the monastery was abandoned, but if you climb up a ladder (there's a false ceiling) you can still see the original painted ceiling.

  

  

  

And they are a 5 minute walk away from lavender fields.  

  

  

  

  

  

  

We might have been having a little too much fun...

  

  

In case you wanted proof that I was actually there.

  

The others arrived later that afternoon, and we all stayed the night at Ilikaa's.  The next day, her dad drove us to a little mountain village called Moustier.  It was so beautiful!

  

We ended up hiking up a path that led to a little chapel.

  

  

  

We then drove to a nearby lake named Verdon.  It reminded me a little of Table Rock except that the water is bright blue!

  

 

Beaujolais Vineyard Outing

I apologize for not updating in over a month, but honestly nothing super exciting has happened.  I go to class and that's about it.  But this Sunday a group called Lyon International organized an international student outing to a vineyard int he beaujolais region!  So we all piled into buses and drove about half an hour outside Lyon into the beautiful French countryside to walk through the vineyard and taste the wine.

 

 

This was a chateau that an elderly woman owned, and when she died she donated the house and the fields to the Pasteur foundation for science.

 

 

 

 

Just in case you wanted proof I was there :)

 

 

Origins of Brouillette, perhaps?  We make a pretty good wine...

Awesome art gallery where we had our wine tasting.

 

We have a mount!

And now a bunch of pretty landscapes:

 

 

 

 

 

That's all for now! I'm leaving for Norway tomorrow for a week, so I'll have a bunch more pictures to post soon!  Love and miss you all!

Annecy!

     On Sunday, Lyon 2 organized a trip to Annecy for the foreign students.  It was about an hour and a half bus ride from Lyon.  I don't have a lot to say about Annecy except that it's a really old city kind of near Geneva and it's ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS!!!!  I think the pictures speak for themselves.

Annecy sits right by one of the cleanest lakes in the world.  Some of my friends swam in it, but it was much too cold out for me.  Look at how clear the water is, though!  It looked like the ocean.

 

 The city itself is like a fairy tale.  I loved all of the old streets and buildings.  Some of the buildings date from the 16th century.  Coming from the US, it's almost hard to fathom a human structure that old.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

And what do you buy at French markets?  Cheese and bread, of course.

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

The swans on the lake were pretty hillarious.  They would wade in the shallow areas and dive to eat the plants on the bottom, and when they dove their butts went completely vertical.  Needless to say, we were fascinated and continuously amused.

Before:

  

After:

  

  

  

There was kind of a fake beach near the lake where a lot of people were sunbathing in swimsuits, even though it was like 60 degrees.  

  

  

  

These are the two friends I was walking around with for most of the trip, Lisa and Jill.

  

We got really excited because we thought this little guy was a humminbird, but it turns out he was a moth.  He was still really cool to watch, though.

  

This is the interior of the Church I posted above.  This painting is from the sixteenth century.