The window needed washing anyway!

So I suppose I should update before I head off for more adventures. France, more specifically Angers and Saumur, were lots of fun. First, Angers--Rhonda had class in the morning, so it allowed me some time do to some exploring myself. Really, I just wandered around the Angers Cheateau (castle) and had a lot of fun taking pictures (if you look at my France pictures link, you'll see there are multiple shots of pictures I took of myself trying to be artsy...sorry. :)). It was also nice to just spend some quite time with my thoughts...I don't get to do that a lot over here. Then we met up again to discover Angers. We went and saw a beautiful cathedral, enjoyed a pastry, sipped a cup of coffee, explored the little shops, and were enchanted by the town that is Angers. That evening we had dinner with Rhonda's host family. It wasn't quite as "French" as I thought it would be, but it was wonderful (and challenging) to have dinner with them. Because dinner didn't start until 8 p.m., and didn't end until about 9:30, by the time we were finished, it was time to go out! (yes, on a Monday night). We made our way to a Cuban Bar (remember we're in France) that served Tapas (typically Spanish food) and had pictures of Che (Argentinian) all over. I think the pub is going through an identity crisis. Fortunately that didn't affect the quality of the sangria we had.

The next day we hopped on the train to spend the day in Saumur, a smaller town about 1/2 an hour away from Angers. We pretty much repeated what we did in Angers the day before, with a few exceptions. We played in the leaves a little bit, and also took a tour of a wine cave. During the tour we got to learn a little bit about the wine making process, and see all that is done to go from grapes to you. A small wine tasting was included with our tour, and as a result we ended up buying a bottle of their specialty sparkling wine (funny side bar...we must have done a pretty good job of shaking up the bottle on the way home...when I tried to open it later, I nearly broke her host family's window b/c the cork shot off so fast. I also gave the walls a nice sparkling wine wash. Oops.) We found some delicious chocolate to go with our wine and spent the evening much like we would back in Kansas...watching a movie, drinking wine and eating chocolate. It was wonderful. (By the way, we watched "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I'd seen it before, but forgotten what an absolutely fantastic movie it is. You should watch it. Right now.)

My plane back to London flew out of Nantes. My friend Jenna (who goes to Wartburg, but I know more so from Ankeny) is studying abroad there, so I met up with her for lunch. Then I wandered around Nantes a little more, not realizing that it is apparently the 5th largest city in France. Who knew!?

I made it back safely to London at about 8:30 last night. Of course that was only after our plane circled the airport for about 15 minutes, nearly touched down and went right back up because another plane got in our way, circled the airport for 15 more minutes, and then waited on the plane for 20 minutes because there was no ground stuff to greet our plane and let us off. The flight cost me 16 euros, so I guess you get what you pay for. :)

Since it is still fall break, I decided to do a couple of things I've been waiting to do since getting here. (I have no good reason for waiting, just hadn't done them.) This included a long awaited trip to "Neal's Sandwich Shop" for a cranberry, bacon, and brie panini, and going to see the play "Shadowland,"-- the story of C.S. Lewis and how he came to know and marry his wife. The play was absolutely amazing, and lucky for you, apparently there is a movie version starring Anthony Hopkins. If you're looking for another good movie to rent, this one is also fantastic (and I think it won a couple of Oscars, so I'm not the only one with this opinion)...

Sorry if the details in here are sparse...I'm lacking motivation to write tonight, but know i needed to update. There is a new link to my France pictures on the side, and also here. The"highlights" version is to facebook where some of the pictures are captioned. The "full length" version includes all the ridiculous pictures I took of myself (mentioned above) and all my artsty stuff. You can choose...or choose both.

Tomorrow I'm off to see Kristen in Leicester for the weekend. I'll update again when I return on Sunday.