Champagne

So I got my camera back, but Flickr is being finicky today. For some reason my photos just don't seem to want to upload! It wasn't working on Facebook, either. I blame slow internet.

Anyway, last Friday I spent the day in Reims. We had a tour with our class of the cellars at G. H. Mumms, then finished with a tasting. They let us taste their normal champagne, and a glass of their 1999 vintage. Both were delicious, obviously. It was very funny to visit Mumm's after being at the Loire Valley Chateau Nitray, though. Mumm clearly is running this huge operation, mass producing champagne and making a big spectacle out of their cellar tours. Very different from the much smaller scale of production at Nitray.


With an old barrel

My first glass

NASCAR in France? Who knew? Impressed, Dad?

Probably should have used the red-eye correction I have on this one, but I didn't.

Tasting!



The tour finished up around noon, and we didn't have to leave Reims until 5:30, so we went and had lunch (croque madame, obv) and then wandered over to Notre Dame de Reims, a very famous, very beautiful cathedral. It's where the French kings were crowned!


Saw the Chagall stained glass window

And then we were stuck spending the rest of the day in Reims. I probably could have left by like 2, but we didn't leave until 6. So all in all I see no need to go back to Reims, but I did have fun.


And the slideshow:

My camera!

We have been reunited! Alison Veith is a goddess!

Me+my camera, loving life. Also pictured is Devin the Lion, on Halloween. I am Waldo, from Where's Waldo, my camera is itself.

I'll try to update about Champagne before I leave tomorrow, but I'm going to see Edward aux Mains d'Argent (Edward Scissorhands ballet!) tonight.

I leave for Florence/Cinque Terre tomorrow night!

It's a good day.

Write to Marry Day

So this is not a political blog in any way, and I cannot vote in California, but for those of you who can please remember to vote No on Proposition 8

Oh yeah and school.

Midterms are over, I got a B (maybe +? I don't remember) on my writing midterm, which isn't bad considering that I really don't click with the teacher. He just doesn't get me, even though he seems like a nice guy. In one of my papers I wrote, "James Joyce may not even recognize 12, rue de l’Odéon were it not for the plaque commemorating the publication of his famous Ulysses in 1922." His note? "Long dead". Really? REALLY? I KNOW THAT. I'm not stupid. It was a hypothetical statement. Anyway, he's a really nice guy but the class is excruciating and I expect a B in the end, most likely. Although we're reading A Movable Feast right now and I'm actually enjoying it a lot. More than I did Toklas even, which I sort of feel bad about. I'll have to re-read that one later.

And Wine! I seriously thought this midterm was going to kill me. I got a 93.5! Heck yes. I totally owned all the essay questions, but the definitions were last and I sort of choked by that point, what can I say?

Gay Paris's midterm was on Wednesday and I don't have it back yet, but I felt good about the test. I actually felt like I knew the material and I studied, but it wasn't cramming. For Oenology I was essentially memorizing things that I never learned. Everything on the Gay test was stuff that we had discussed and I honestly know.

Oh, that paper? Hm. Yeah, I still need to work on that. I have a ton of quotes typed up, a Works Cited Page going, an outline (which I decided to change... tonight... ugh I am crazy) but only about 1pg double spaced of writing right now. I'm getting frustrated with myself because my writing doesn't sound good, so I'm at a point right now where I just need to get over myself, type out my thoughts, and accept that it's a rough draft. It's not actually DUE tomorrow, I still have time to edit! I just hate knowing that other people will see my work when I know that I can do better, especially since I'm really into the book and my topic.

Also, I went to a Halloween party on Friday in the dorms and ended up spending the night there. I woke up at 7:45am the next morning to leave when the other girls did and I think I left my camera there. I hope I left my camera there. The girls are out of town for the weekend though, so I can't be sure. Operating under the optimisting assumption that I will get my camera back on Monday or Tuesday, I will be updating about Reims, my tour and tasting at Mumm's champagne cellar, and the Halloween party. Well, I'll be doing that either way, but hopefully I won't be making a post about my camera being gone for good. That's the kind of post I don't want to make.

EDIT: I got a B+ on my French test and a 93% on my Gay test. Camera still M.I.A., but hopes are high. I only have like 3 days to find it though, because there is no way that I'm going to Italy without a camera.

Loire Valley 2

Okay I officially suck at this. It's a week later, I have a rough draft of an essay due tomorrow, and I still haven't finished my Loire update. Oops. So here comes procrastination at it's finest: I just typed up a bunch of quotes for my Nightwood essay, but instead of trying to actually work on the draft I'm updating my blog. Okay so I am also doing research, but the actual writing of the essay is kind of a struggle right now.

ANYWAY, Loire Valley. Sunday.

We went to a wine tasting at Chateau Nitray

We took a group shot

That picture is clickable, so you can actually see the people in it.

We saw the pigeon house

apparently pigeons were a sign of wealth. Who knew? PS that ladder thing the guy is on? Yeah, it totally spins. Sweet.

Saw some wine making stuff

Basket press, tour guide, creepy mannequin thing


Lia and I took a picture on top of the arch


Aaaand I bought three bottles of wine. I bought two bottles of a sweet white that we tasted, one for when the twins visit and one to bring home, and a bottle of Brut that I didn't taste, but it was cheap and I liked all the other wines I tasted there so whatevs.

The last chateau was Chambord, which was amazing. I didn't get any pictures from the front (who knows why) so I had to steal one:

INSANE

Double helix staircase: two spiral staircases intertwined


Looking up through the center of the double helix staircase (there was obviously a crazy bright light at the top)

Looking down the center of the staircase


Exterior spiral staircases


Old school deerblind? Inside the chateau? I mean, it was a hunting lodge...


This entire room was covered in antlers, it was amazing


To give an idea of scale, here is my friend Kiersten in front of one of the walls. The rooms were huuuge


So I didn't get a legit photo of the front of the chateau, but I did get a picture in front of this weird cutout thing



Crazy details


Yet another thing we should implement at Fife Lake: trophy gallery. Ridiculous.

And as usual, here is the slideshow and the Flickr link

Loire Valley: Week-end de Châteaux Part 1

So we woke up on Saturday morning at 6:15, needing to leave the house by 7:15 to meet up with our bus by 8:15


It was still dark when we left. We had a 3ish hour bus ride before we reached Amboise, where we saw our first château.


We took some pictures from the road, because once you go close it was too big to get in the picture

Also in Amboise is Close Luce, da Vinci's home where he eventually died.

It's the big old brick one back there. This is Close Luce as seen from Château d'Amboise

Because he died in Amboise, da Vinci was actually buried on the grounds of the château. Eventually the grounds were disrupted and his bones were moved into the chapel

The chapel was small but beautiful. All of the stained glass windows were re-done following WWII when they were destroyed by bombings.

Pictures weren't allowed in the chateau, since it's privately owned, but here is a picture of me and my roommates, Lia and Jennifer, from the château. That's the Loire river behind us!


After the château visit, we went out into Amboise for lunch. Lia and I got mousse aux fruits. The only food picture of this trip, I believe


After Amboise we headed to Chenonceau.

You like that scaffolding? Yeah, me too.

History break: Henry II gave the chateau to his mistress, Diane de Poitiers. After Henry died, though, his wife Catherine de Medici took the castle back. The first ever fireworks display in France happened here, too. You know how I feel about fireworks.

Here I am standing in my favorite thing ever:

A human size fireplace. There were beaucoup de human sized fireplaces this weekend, and it only reinforced my strong desire to have one. When I am broke and living in a run down apartment, I will somehow build a human sized fireplace in it. I don't even care. It will happen.


Cane we get a boar's head for Fife Lake?


Martha Stewart, eat your heart out. There are flower arrangements all over the chateau and they are all done with flowers and plants grown on the grounds.


The chateau is built over the river Cher. So cool.

Check this out, Amelia:



The bedroom of Louise de Lorraine.
"Following the assassination of her husband King Henri III by the monk Jacques Clément on August 1, 1589, Louise of Lorraine retired to Chenonceau in meditation and prayer.

Surrounded by nuns who lived in the château as in a convent, and always dressed in white in compliance with the etiquette of royal mourning, she was known as "the White Queen". Her bedroom has been reconstructed around the original ceiling. It is decorated with mourning objects : silver tears, widows' cordons, crowns of thorns and the Greek letter - l - lambda, Louise's initial, intertwined with the H of Henri III."

BADASS, RIGHT?

After we finished in the chateau we headed outside.


The grounds had two formal gardens, a farm, some forest-y stuff and A MAZE.

j/k, we were crouching. The hedges are actually pretty low.


Also, donkeys



That night, our program rented out an entire Château for us to stay in, Château de Razay


Not too shabby

We stayed in the Chateau, but they also had "chalets"


AND TREE HOUSES
I think we should build these on the cousin property at Fife Lake. Treehouses laugh at the threat of wetlands.

And they had animals!


This mini-horse and donkey were bffs. Everywhere the mini-horse went, the donkey followed.


The view from my window at the chateau.

That night we had dinner at a local restaurant, paid for by CEA. We had kir, salad with duck, bread, fish and rice, cheese, dessert and wine.
After dinner we all headed back to the chateau and hung out in the common room playing Psychologist and word games like, "Grandpa likes..." and "What's behind the green glass doors?" Everyone went to their own rooms around midnight except for Lia, Jennifer and I, and two guys who were sharing a room. The guys thought it would be hilarious to try and scare us, and they did a pretty good job of it.

The chateau is in the middle of nowhere, and someone's idea of pleasant decor includes DOLLS. Most notably, a creepy WITCH DOLL

SERIOUSLY, WHAT? I did not take this picture, I had no desire to document it, but luckily Matt did so I can share the horror with you all.

Anyway, Matt and Lee kept saying creepy stuff and Matt actually followed us with the doll at some point and we were pretty much terrified. I made Jennifer and Lia walk me to my room so I could get my bags, because I was going to stay in Jennifer's room. I didn't want to be alone. So then we walked Lia to her room, where Vicky was already waiting to protect her. By the time we got back to Jennifer's room, though, I had calmed down enough that I was ready to tackle sleeping alone.

It didn't help that my room had a fly problem. I have seen one to many An American Haunting episodes to just let that slide. For those who don't know, FLIES ARE A MAJOR SIGN OF IMPENDING EVIL. So I turned on the TV and watched about an hour of Law & Order SVU (dubbed in French) while slowly turning off each light in my room. I slept fine, no ghosts.

I'll have to update about Sunday at another time because this is taking forever and I have to go to class.