Mont Saint Michel!, In a cloud...

Yesterday we went on another excursion to a must see in France. Its called Mont Saint Michel. All the pictures I've ever seen of it have been gorgeous!, So I could not wait to get there! We had to arrive at school at 7:15, on a saturday, which for me means wake up at 5:30 to catch the 6:30 bus that gets me there at 7:02, because the next bus didn't get me there until 7:28... So going into the excursion I was extremely tired and a little irritated at the Angers bus system, but I really can't complain entirely, every other day they come extremely often.


 Our trip was to both Mont Saint Michel and Saint Malo. We arrived in Saint Malo at around 10:30, meaning we had been driving for around 3 hours! When we got there the entire city, no lie, was in a cloud!!!! Still with the misty, extremely humid and cold weather the city was very interesting. There is a big wall around the entire city, thats about two stories high and has a walkway on it. So all the tourists that visit there can walk around the city on its wall and see everything! Saint Malo and Saint Michel are both in Normandie, so we were right on the Atlantic Ocean all day. But since it was on the Atlantic Ocean, the city was about half-way rebuilt in 1944 after the end of WWII. While in this city, after eating at a wonderful creperie, me and my friends went to visit the Chapel. It was the first church I've been in since I arrived here. It was extremely pretty and the architecture was beautiful. This church had also been rebuilt in 1944 after the end of the war, and it reminded me of what happen with my grandfather. My grandfather was in WWII in the airforce on a B-24 bomber plane. He recently received the French Medal of Honor award for basically saving an innocent french town from being bombed. My grandpa said he saw a church that reminded him of his church in Buffalo and knew that they shouldn't drop the bombs there. So while in this church on the beaches of the Atlantic Ocean in France, that didn't get saved, that then had to be rebuilt, I lit a candle for my loving grandmother who we all miss so much.

After the touching church experience we rushed back to the buses and drove another whole hour before we arrived at Mont Saint Michel. The thing that is interesting about Mont Saint Michel is that it is an entire city built on a mountain, and at the top of the mountain there's a church. When we arrived though, the whole region remained in a cloud, so we couldn't see the top :( But I still have some gorgeous pictures....

Here's the church at the top of the hill.

That is the praying section, in the little spot where there's a yellowish tint, the Eucharist was exposed. 

 Then when you leave the church, you walk out in to this gorgeous garden.....

This is the hallway surrounding the garden

And this is the garden!

 An interesting story about this church is that there are several nuns who live there completely isolated from the rest of the world. They stay in their rooms while there are tourists visiting, there are several parts of the church that are blocked off, and certain hours that you cannot visit the church.

I think this is one of the hallways that leads up to where they live!

On a clear day, this would be me next to the Atlantic Ocean!, but its just me next to a cloud lol

I found this A and thought of myself :) lol

And this is me and Maria on the beach!

And this is Mont Saint Michel!! After about an hour or so of being there the cloud had cleared and we could see the whole mountain!, and some tour buses...

Another fun story about Mont Saint Michel is that it is almost entirely surrounded by the Atlantic ocean. The tides come up to the point where there's only a road that takes you to the mountain, and then it goes down and exposes a huge field/prairie. What happens then is that the grass that is exposed when the tide goes down, is extremely tasty! It becomes salted by the ocean water! So herds of sheep come and feed on the tasty grass! Then what happens is the sheep meat is sold for a very expensive price, because the meat is already salted! Before it even gets to the kitchen and then on your plate! There weren't any sheep yesterday but this is a picture of what they look like feeding on the grass in front of Mont Saint Michel...

Well that about sums up my trip to saint michel and saint malo! It was a lot of driving in once again a huge tour bus, but to eventually see very impressive places :)

A Couple Fun Pictures :)

This is a picture of me standing in the stand marks of everyone who has ever stood there, in Chenanceau

And this is a picture of me in a massive, no-longer active, fire-place!

Les Chateaux de la Loire!

As my stay here continues my ability to speak french confidently increases daily :) The most intimidating of situations while speaking french has to be the phone call, and even worse, a phone call to someone that doesn't know you're not a native french speaker and probably won't have the same patience with you as your wonderful host mom.... So! A phone call then to a hotel receptionist in Paris should be on the top of the list for most intimidating situations! So tonight, having made myself entirely phyched out, I dialed the ten numbers of the cute traditional french hotel and started my conversation with a shaky bonjour? I struggled through the first sentence of "Is this the l'Hotel-de-Lille Louvre?" And when the receptionist quickly answer ouais? I started my reservation. After then having to spell out my last name, Byczkowski, in the french alphabet, which might I add is ofcourse different then the english alphabet (for example, y in french in pronounced igreck, and w is double-ve), the receptionist made a sound like wow, what kind of a name is that? And I became confident that yes! She did understand me! And continued with telling her numbers confidently and telling her the dates right and now, I think I have officially over come the fear of speaking on the phone in french!, and I have a reservation in Paris for 3 nights and the most adorable hotel ever! So two positives come from that experience :)

Now! On to the subject of this blog!
Last Saturday my University took all the exchange students on an "excursion" to the castles of the loire river. They were absolutely gorgeous as anyone would expect, and I have some beautiful pictures :)

I arrived at school at 7h50 and we left at 8h03, meaning, they literally didn't wait for anyone!, If you were late, you missed the bus!!! So after about an hour and a half of driving in a HUGE tour bus on TINY french streets we arrived at the first castle with our cameras out feeling like real tourists lol :)

 This one's called Azay-le-rideau

Azay-le-rideau

The morning fog on the castles moat

The TINY street we drove through and that leads right up to the castle.

Just so you all know, I have more pictures of Azay-le-rideau, its just my camera died right after I took these pictures, so my friend Amelia is going to be sharing her pictures with me :) So probably in a couple days I'll have another post with the other fun pictures she took :)

So after we left Azay-le-rideau, we drove for about another hour or so to Chenanceau! :D This is probably the castle I was most excited to see because it was the one I knew the most about :) I know it was built by Francois 1er for one of his wives, and all the pictures I've seen of it are gorgeous, so I couldn't wait to see it in person!....

This is the walk way up to the castle, if you can, click on this picture and make it bigger and look at the branches of these trees, they're amazing!!!

This in the entrance way to the castle, notice the two Sphinx, pretty odd for a french castle right? Apparently it made perfect sense for Francois, the sphinx show that he has knowledge on other cultures, like Egypt, and he also probably felt a connection to the Pharaohs because they were in a sense both rulers by divine right? That's my theory and I'm sticking to it!

This is the view once you pass the Sphinx, Ah! So exciting ! It looks similar to the front view of Azay-le-rideau but surprises lay ahead!!!!!....

So! Once you get in front of the castle, you can see that they're actually two buildings!, I think this one was Rapunzel's castle :) Its the perfect size though! 

This is actually the castle Chenanceau, and thats me and my friends!

From left to right, me, Irena, Maria, Kelsi, and Amelia! :)

And thissssss is the surprise!!!!! This whole castle is built over the Loire river! The left part of the castle is actually one long ballroom......

Here's me in it!!!!, but the reason that picture is a surprise is because until you walk to either the far left or right of this castle, you have no idea that it's over the water like that! So, it's a surprise :)

Here's a painting of Louis XIV, probably my favorite French King because he knew how to take advantage, or well how to handle being an Absolute Monarch lol, I'll hopefully have some more information on him and his lifestyle after I visit Versailles, which I have sworn to myself I will definitely do sometime while I'm here!!!!

Here's one of the beds in Chenanceau, beautiful and impressive.

This is me in front of Chenanceau and the mini castle :)

After we left Chenanceau we had about another hour drive before we arrived in Chambord, which I think was one of the most impressively intricate structures I've ever seen! There's apparently 356 chimneys, and around 400 rooms, which is HUGE! The castles architecture was beautiful though. There is in the middle of the castle a staircase designed by Leonardo da Vinci! It's called a double helix staircase, I unfortunately don't have any pictures of it, because a picture couldn't explain what we experienced! The way it worked was one could enter the staircase from opposite sides of the hallway, but when you enter the staircase, you are actually on a completely different staircase then your friend. And while you're walking down the staircase, there are several windows where you can see your friend, but what really gets you is, you never, NEVER run into them! Because your on completely different staircases. Haha maybe the idea sounds simple, but the experience was definitely exciting and slightly mind-blowing lol. Anyways!, Heres the castle!!!!...

This is me posing with another different staircase I found extremely beautiful, and I made it my goal to eventually make my way it!

Here's the same stair case from a different angle as I was trying to find a way to get to it, which I had to try to do fast because after about 35 minutes at the castle we got a nice french announcement saying the castle was going to be closing in 15 minutes! So, as Amelia said, we were fast castling!!

This is on the roof of the castle, and the top of DaVinci's staircase, this to me is stunning.

Here's the view from the roof, I can tell now why Kings felt so powerful!, This view makes you feel confident in saying, This is My Land!!!! lol

AH-HA!!!! After running around for about 10 minutes stressing to find the staircase, I made it!!!!!! 

So that was my lovely castle trip :) I will have more pictures of the actual trip in a couple days and possibly more pictures of other random things happening in Angers, France!

French Food!?

Here are some pictures of the food I've been eating!!!

Every morning when I wake up I get to come down stairs and see this!! 

A table full with breakfast food! I usually have toasted baguette, or pain grille, with butter, but this morning I was surprised by a treat! Pain au Chocolate!...

Here's a close up of the buttery, flaky, pastry :)

After breakfast, Odette, Francis and I returned to Chalonnes for another market and for Francis to take pictures of the Loire river with ice on it! Apparently this hasn't happened in 50 plus years! So I snapped a photo too, it was beautiful!, And the ice made the calmest noise while passing by....

And I couldn't help taking pictures of these beautiful doorways :)

So after another extremely scenic drive back from Chalonnes to Les Ponts de Ce, I had worked up an appetite and had bought a fresh baguette "L'Ancient" I was ready to make my sandwich for lunch. Unfortunately, I remembered halfway through eating my sandwich that I wanted to take a picture of it!, So this picture only shows about half the size of my sandwich :(... But on the sandwich I had a slice of thick ham, and slices of butter comparable to slices of cheese! The butter was made in France with salt from a region very close to where I live :) On the side here is some mustard I took from Francis out of politeness... I really don't like mustard that much, but it was the best mustard I've ever had! 

In France on the weekends people eat about 4 sit down meals a day. Breakfast, Lunch, Snacks, and then Dinner. Its also very common to invite people over for "Les Goutes" which translates as the tastes, or snacks :) Today Odette and Francis told me I could have my friends over for les goutes to make crepes! So Odette made the batter and heres a picture of the mini crepe maker we used!..

I met Maria, Kelsi, and Amelia at my bus stop around 3 o-clock and after about a 30 minutes the fun commenced! We all had about 6 crepes each, which is a ton of food!!! Heres a picture of my first one :)

First with a scoop of nutella :)

Then you fold it like this or roll it up...

 And ta-da! It was delicious!!!

My happy reaction :D

Here's a picture of the steaming hot fresh crepes we just made! 

This combination was the best idea ever!!! Kelsi created it, Cherry Jam with Nutella, it was like a chocolate covered cherry on a crepe!!!! Soooo good :)

And here we are! Starting from left to right in both pictures...

Maria, Me, Kelsi, and Amelia :)

So after les goutes, I took a nap and knit a little while watching the french news, which is still completely filled with everyone freaking out about the snow and the cold temperatures, which I haven't been enjoying either :(. But Odette insists on us having "potage" or soup every night to keep us warm. So at 7 our dinner started with potage au tomate. It was pretty good!, But my favorite of her soups was her zucchini soup! With those crutons you can see in my picture it's delicious!

After soup we eat some form of meat and vegetable. Here we have the chicken odette bought me from a farm!, Pan fried in buter and some form of vegetable, I honestly don't know the name in french or english, but cooked with more tomatoes and garlic :) 

After dinner we usually eat about 5 different types of cheese with more bread, but today I took a second helping of chicken and veggies rather than fromage... But I absolutely had to save room for dessert because odette made chocolate mousse! I have had chocolate mousse here before in the school cafeteria, but I absolutely forgot it can definitely be home-made. It was perfect! And dessert is always eaten with a piece of bread, which I enjoy :)

So, thats a day in the life of my kitchen here in France!, I will definitely include pictures of interesting other meals I have but today was pretty basic, but as always very delicious :)