Loire Valley

I'd love to spend hours and hours writing a detailed description of all the castles, but I'm really tired and I have my ENS class tomorrow. So, to sum it all up, after a while, all the castles started to look the same. They were big, old buildings, each with a room for the king who may or may not have ever shown up, old furniture, tons of pictures (which mean nothing to me since I'm not in the art history class), and recently restored or added stuff to make it look more realistic. The most exciting part of the trip was Leonardo da Vinci's house, which had little models of all his inventions in the basement. Either that, or the bathroom in the Italian restaurant where Alexandra and I had pizza (great pizza, by the way - salmon, artichoke, and tomato). This bathroom was spectacular - the toilet seat spun around when you flushed, and sanitized itself! Then, everything was automated, including the hand dryer which used a laser and cold air to dry your hands. It was very science fiction.

Aside from the castles, it was interesting to meet all the international students in Paris. Alexandra and I met students from Russia, Argentina, Spain, Vietnam, Montreal, and the US, of course. It was neat that, for some of the people we met, the only language we could speak was French, but for the most part, the majority of the people seemed to speak English as a first language. The two French girls who were in charge basically spoke English half the time for the Americans who hadn't bothered to learn French well enough to understand basic instructions. It's fun to hear French people speak English, though. And, it was fun to hear different accents when people were speaking French. When I read The Count of Monte Cristo, I remember wondering what an Italian accent would sound like in French and now I know.

Here are some pictures of the castles.