Chateaux de la Loire

On Friday and Saturday, I went on an overnight trip to the Chartres cathedral and the Chateaux de la Loire. Specifically, I saw the opulence that is Chambord, Amboise, Azay-le-Rideau and Chenonceau. The chateaux served as hunting lodges for kings who wanted to take advantage of the wildlife in the lush Loire valley, and gifts to reward loyal ministers, royal mistresses, and famous artists like Leonardo da Vinci. The architecture is beautiful, and I got to see the classic four-poster beds, gilded furniture, tapestries, turrets, and royal accomodations that form the backdrop to my beloved fantasy books.

The four of us from AYA who had paid for the cultural component went on a small bus with 15 students from University of Delaware, who were pretty cool. They've been together on similar trips to Mont St-Michel and Normandie before, and are about halfway through their semester here, so they had a different point of view, and told many amusing stories about their travels (especially to Italy and Amsterdam). I'll see if I can stay in touch with some of them, but they all take classes with their university, so they have a different schedule. (Unfortunately the very cute boy kept talking about his French Canadian girlfriend.) I'm really glad I'm taking classes at the Sorbonne; it's a little disorienting, but I'm getting a taste of a real French education. I mostly hung out with the AYA people, especially Kelly, who was my roommate; we had a great time being silly together. She's taking two of the Sorbonne classes with me, too.

Being a typical tourist trip, we spent a lot of time in the bus, stopping for tours with the French tour guide (who spoke to us in French, bien sur, although we spoke to each other in English) and walks through the gardens of each destination. We skipped through the gardens at Amboise singing a French song about a shepherdess carrying apples on her head, and ate a delicious dinner (with a taste of a kir) in a restaurant in a cave near Azay-le-Rideau. I got to see working models of some of Leonardo da Vinci's many inventions in the da Vinci museum at Amboise, where the great renaissance man spent the last three years of his life at Francois I's invitation. They included the printing press, the bicycle, the car, the machine gun, the suspension bridge, the life preserver, the water mill, and the helicopter. He was a real genius- all this in addition to painting, drawing, anatomical observations, wise aphorisms, and writing poetry and music. For lunch yesterday, we went to a real family-owned boulangerie, where a 9 or 10-year-old boy took orders while his parents made the sandwiches. He was very cute, and added up the change out loud. I had a great time on the trip.

I have to get into the swing of things with actual homework- I have 600 pages to read in a week and a half for my literature class, and of course French takes longer to read. And unfortunately libraries are not open on Sundays so I have to find some time during the week to get some books out. I like my classes a lot- but I'm going to have to make an effort to meet more French people and not just stick with the other foreign students. I've met some great people in my lit TD and one girl in my Architecture class, but I want to build a social circle.