A Weekend Trip

Cannes in going well. I feel like I have time to just relax here. My classes are more intense, which hopefully means that I will also learn more while I am here. That is still in the future, though.

Last week I just got settled here, figuring out where things are. I took a city tour on Wednesday which was a bit helpful, but not really. We took a petit train through the shopping district of the city (those things exist everywhere here!). But I did find out where the best sort of grocery store is. It’s still a lot more expensive that what I am used to, but it will do.

This last weekend we went around Provence to Avignon, Arles, Les Baux, and Chateauneuf du Pape (not necessarily in that order). The only two really worthy of mention are Avignon and Les Baux. Avignon had a huge palace that was used by the popes when they were in France. It was massive and cool, but when the popes left, the building was used as a military school and it was stripped. So that means there were no artifacts from that time period, and that some of the rooms had even been changed drastically. But it was still neat to be there. Oh, and they had some awesome street performers!

Les Baux was a little tourist village on the top of a plateau, but the thing that made it unique was that there were castle ruins on the top of the plateau too. Visitors are allowed to go explore the ruins. I have to say it was pretty cool. And the view from the top was amazing! The village actually reminded me of being in Disney World… It was fun though. I spent too much money on souvenirs there.

Arles had a big roman coliseum where bull fights are held today, and at Chateauneuf de Pape we tasted wine. That was about it. Our hotel was right outside of Les Baux, and it was a pretty nice hotel as well.

Now I am back in Cannes. I tried to go out for the football (translated to soccer) game last night, but every place was so crowded I just came back to the school to watch it. It is sad that France lost though. In the end I sort of think they deserved to lose… They were getting very violent. One guy head-butted an Italian in the chest. I think he just wanted to go out of the game with a bang. Weird, huh? Anyway, congrats Italy.

Today I’ve just been taking it easy. I am sort of exhausted. I think I might go down to the beach after dinner. I like being able to say that :-). Not the dinner part, the beach part. The food here isn’t very good. They give us unrecognizable meat products. I am eating way too much bread for that reason. So a nice swim will do me good.