9/14/11

Well, the trip lived up to the hype I gave it. :]

We got on a train and traveled out to the French countryside, which is INCREDIBLE. Lush, and green, and beautiful. It seriously looks like you are in a painting. Haha. We stopped at a cute little town. The train station was absolutely adorable. It was just a platform with a cute little white trimmed in blue building. Then to get to Perouge we had to walk from the little town the train stopped out about 20 minutes up a hill. Once we got there though, it was totally worth it. It was perfectly preserved and beautiful. I kept thinking if mom was here she would just say ‘yup. This is cortney.’

It was a tiny little town with less than 500 people still living there. It was encased by a fortress wall for defence with two gates. One facing east to Lyon, and the other west to Geneva. Perouge is about half way between the two cities and was the major stop for merchants making their way between the two. Because of that it flourished. It was often fought over by two different princes and that’s one of the major reasons why it was built like a fort on a hill. Inside the wall though, there is pretty church on the outside wall that is half used as defense and half a religious center. One wall is full of turret holes where archers could attack oncoming enemies, and the other wall was full of chapels and stained glass windows. The streets were all cobblestones and all the little shops were preserved. People will usually live in them now but the first floors look how they did back in the day. The town square is pretty small, but most things in the town were. Everything was cobblestone, but instead of the sanded square cobblestone like here in Lyon, it is just stones they plucked from the river so it is uneven and they are all rounded. Its pretty, but a little difficult to walk on. You can still see the lines in the cobblestone though were booths were set up for market in the renaissance. There is a HUGE tree in the square that was planted during the French revolution, and is now so old it has to be held up by posts. There are two old wells in the city. They are still intact with the mechanics but are full of incredibly beautiful flowers now instead of water. There are signs that look like they are from the renaissance festival hanging in the streets. The studded fortress doors on the east gate are still attached to the frame, but almost falling apart. The west gate has a plack put up by the people bragging basically about how the towns people fought off the army of one of the princes who was trying to take control of the city by themselves. It is written in Latin and Canovas translated it for us, it was pretty funny actually. It was like “haha, you suck. We won” only in old English and longer.

After our tour Canova took us to the restaurant in town and bought us the traditional dessert that they are famous for, which is a very simple sugar pizza type thing, and also the cider they are famous for. They have ALL sorts of cider. The kind I got to try was delicious. :] We took a picture of our group in front of the restaurant so I will get that up the next time I can. There were some abandoned houses in the city, which I honestly could not fathom. How is that place not the hottest piece of realistate ever. I asked Canova about it and he said that not many people want to live there. There is no school, and you have to go 10 minutes to get to a store. But seriously, could you imagine living in a perfectly preserved stone house?? The whole town looks like it was ripped out of a movie, like straight up Ever After or something. Really, it looks just like that movie. The one I saw that was abandoned needed a little work, but it was incredible to me that someone wouldn’t snatch that up. Canovas even said that would be a fairly cheap place to buy a house. He said it would be about 30,000 euro to get the four story house that had been abandoned. I am SO all over that when I’m older. It would be the best place ever to live, have a vacation home, or retire. Maybe I’ll shoot for retirement so I have time to save. But its beautiful. :]

After that we just wandered around and ate and such. We tried to go to McDonalds tonight, but the internet just didn’t work. I got pretty upset because I haven’t been on in like a week almost and I really would like to talk to everyone I love but I can’t. I think I am getting really worked up over it just because the other girls get calls from home every day and text everyone back home all the time but I don’t have the money to do that… It is really hard for me. I really like these girls, but they aren’t my friends back home who know me. They aren’t my family. I just really want a little contact from home. Besides maybe 3 text messages, and a failed attempt at skyping, I’ve haven’t really talked to anyone since I’ve been here… Canovas talked to the people here and they said we might be getting internet sooner than October 1^st, and I REALLY hope so. Oh well.

Well the last bit of my test is tomorrow, and I need to sleep. Goodnight.