Amazing Castles Continued!!!

The 3rd castle we visited was called Blois.

This is the front view of it.

This castle is known for having several types of architecture, 

This is the inside of the castle, the stair case looks just like the one in Chambord!

This is another angle inside the castle..

And this is another part of the castle!

Here are two pictures of cool/weird architecture in the castle..

Coolest gutter ever! Its a fish head!!!

And these are super creepy gargoyles, theyre the orginals, there are replacements on the actual castle.

The most amazing thing about this castle was absolutely the interior decoration! It was my favorite castle for that very reason!!!

Fireplace

Fireplace

Bedroom

Piano!

Another amazing fireplace!!!

After this castle we headed towards Cheverny, which is known for its hunting hound dogs.

This is the front of the castle

A little table with raspberry tarts!!!

And old time SINGER sewing machine!

The interior decoration

me and my friends outside the castle!

(Amelia, Me, Maria, and Kelsi)

While we were at the castle I just had to see all the dogs I kept hearing barking! But when I got over to where they were holding them it was a little disturbing... There were probably about 80 dogs crammed into this little zoo type cage... They were all un-neutered male dogs, so they would fight each other and do other things that male dogs do together.. And on top of that the smell was horrendous, I guess I just really wasn't expecting what I ended up seeing. An interesting point though about these dogs is that they are all descendants from the kings personal hunting dogs, so they're kind of royalty! I know they are taken out, I hope frequently through out the day.. it was just surprising to see dogs like they were in the zoo! Especially when I am missing my dogs soooo much!!!!!

On the other side of the dogs there is ofcourse a beautiful garden!

This garden had little broken up pieces of like mirrors and colored mirrors in it rather then rocks, which was odd.. but looks amazing!!!

This is the view from behind the castle, if you can blow up the picture you can see there is a fountain in the center of the photo :)

And this is me on a bench, to the right of me there is an Orangerie!, Yea! An orange tree field!.. But there wasn't any oranges.... lol

So! That concludes my intense day of cluing everyone into what I've been doing the past couple weeks!! I promise I'll keep up with it more often, and get some more fun food videos up there too! Or maybe even just regular videos! We'll see.. hope you all enjoyed everything :)

French Castles Will Forever Amaze Me!!!!

Yesterday I went on the final excursion with my school to 4 different castles! The first one we visited was called le Chateau d'Amboise. Its located on the top of a hill and you have to walk pretty far to get there, so we were slightly exhausted on arrival but the gardens and architecture woke us up :)

This is the inside view of the Castle.

And this is the view of the city from the top of the hill where the castle is found.

This beautiful little building is separate from the castle but still on the hill, it's a very special building and I didn't know why, and didn't know it was special until I walked in...

Yea.. This building is Leonardo da Vinci's Tomb!!!!

It was really intense and extremely surprising to just walk in on it having no clue it was going to be there!

This is a statue of Leonardo da Vinci in the beautiful gardens of this castle.

This is the part of the castle that faces the city, I love this type of architecture, I've been finding it pretty often in France and it still gets me everytime!! Its just so detailed it amazes me.

This is a picture of me on the roof of the castle looking out on to the garden. 

Here are some fun garden pictures :)

These are the WEIRDEST trees in the world. They are ALL over France and they freak me out every time I see them. They actually grow little branches off of their nubs, but the french trim them so they look like awkward nubby trees. Haha these one's aren't the worst I've seen, but they can get pretty weird... 

If you noticed in the other picture of me with the garden, there were all those geometrically placed little dots, they're perfectly rounded shrubs!!!! I feel bad though for whoever's job it is to walk around with little scissors and keep them so perfect lol

And this is me finally getting to lay down on a nice grassy field in the sun!!! Honestly, that has to be one of my favorite things to do.. The smell of the grass with the warmth of the sun is just so welcoming and comforting I can't turn down an opportunity when it arises. And this being one of the first weather permitting days in France to let me do this, I had to!!!

This trip was one of our longest trips so far. After we were done at Amboise, we walked up to street to go to Da Vinci's house!!!!!

The inside was absolutely like a castle, not to big, but definitely fancy like a castle..

This is his bed, where he died... Please note, There's a cat on it!!! It was alive!!! Definitely mysterious... hahaha

Here he is hahaha

These were the markings all over the ground in his house.. not quite sure what they meant...

This is a creeeeeeeepy smelly staircase that looks like it leads to the underworld... lol

And this is a statue of Da Vinci.

This is his backyard, gorgeous!!!!

And here are a couple pictures of his garden :)

This one looked amazing in person, honestly like her face was being made of out the tree leaves!

Being at Leonardo Da Vinci's house was awesome, it was very relaxing to sit in his garden and ponder things, very influential to think that one of the most intelligent men that ever lived had done the same thing in the same place :) 

But like I said, this was a longgg trip, so we're only half way through the day right now!!! Two more castles to go!... The next two are Blois (Pronounced blwah) and Cheverny 

And I'm going to do that those on a different post... so they're coming!!!...

Paris! And Where I've been for the past 3 weeks...

On March 8th I went to Paris and met my boyfriend in the airport! We spent 3 nights there and it was really eye opening. Everyone commonly has this magical image of Paris in their minds, or well at least I did, and going there really showed me what Paris really is, a city. 

In my imagination I was completely convinced that Paris was this amazingly romantic city with people slowly strolling along La Seine to their next meal destination and everyone having this loving air about them... I was a little off. Paris is a city, completely comparable to New York City. There's constantly traffic and honking and loud Vespas and begging bumbs and convincing gypsies, and to be honest, it really surprised me. My first view of Paris was taking the subway from the airport to Paris Gare du Nord, which passes right through one of Paris's worst ghettos, so when we got off the subway we were 4 levels underground in a smelly, graffiti-ed subway station.  Once we finally emerged out into fresh air, it wasn't very fresh... try every one smokes cigarettes in france! So our experience didn't start off the best... 

After walking pretty far to get out our hotel, and passing the Louvre on the way, we arrived on this tiny quiet alleyway with a hotel sine sticking out of the building. We walked in and I was reminded why I do like France and even Paris, everyone speaks french :) But it was short lived, because the out receptionist lady after finding my name, told us oh yea! My creditcard numbers didn't work last night so she didn't save us a room! Great.... so she found us another hotel on the other side of the river and we could come back and stay with her our last two nights. Trying to stay positive we walked over the other hotel and saw some more beautiful sights, like Notre Dame and the shiny gold lined "Lock Bridge". Then when we got to our hotel we were given a room four stories up, and saw this view!!!...

Haha it was typical Paris/France and we were genuinely happy to have a place to sleep! Our visit in Paris then commenced. To sum in up, Paris has wonderful restaurants, a little over priced compared to the rest of France, but they are delicious. Paris's are everything you'd expect them to be. Places like the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre are touching because, for some people, you've only ever heard of them and seen pictures of them, but to actually be there is very accomplishing feeling and just pretty to look at! 

The Eiffel Tower looks gorgeous at night, but I have a picture of it during the day... Unfortunately that was the one day it wasn't super sunny out...

But thats it!! I was there in front of the Eiffel Tower! It looks perfect from this angle, but be aware, if you come up on it from behind it doesn't look like any pictures you've ever seen of it, it looks like an awkward structure in the middle of a park, haha so walk around to the front of it and you'll see the typical and well known Eiffel Tower :)

Yep, This is the Arc de Triomphe! It was pretty too look at, and a lot bigger then it appears in this picture, but honestly, if you want to visit it, and you don't like the idea of a huge street with tons of people and huge stores, Don't take the Champs Elysee to get there, because if you do, by the time you get there, you probably wont be in the best mood... But L'Arc de Triomphe was hugeee and you can see it from the very beginning of the Champs Elysee, and it looks intense from there.

This is a very pretty bridge in Paris that has a lot of gold details on it and was very pleasing to look at, so I thought I'd share it with you guys :)

This is probably my favorite picture from Paris, and this was my favorite place in Paris. The Tuileries, or the building where all the Louvre exhibits are that you see in the background here, is where almost all of the French Kings lived, and its so enjoyable to be in the middle of the spectacular architecture that is the castle. We ate our lunch there a spent some other time relaxing there in the sun, it was one of the most relaxing places, because there was little to no car noises :)

So what I think I learned over all from visiting Paris, and having lived in France for the past couple months, is that if you really want to experience real french culture, Paris might not be the best place to go. If you want to see the sights in Paris, of course, there's no where else you can go for those. But as for eating french food, and practicing the relaxed french culture, you have to go to one of the smaller cities in france where you can try everything and not go broke. Everyone in France, or well in my french textbook written by french people where I have found several statements regarding this, knows that people who live in Paris are stressed out, because they live in a city, have high bills and need to get to work, as like in any city. So if you're looking for that relaxed feeling where you can stroll along a river with a baguette and spend several hours on a meal, come to Angers :) Or really any city in France other then Paris. Also people are genuinely nicer outside of Paris. The people in Paris are aware that you are a tourist, and then treat you like one, in a negative manner. In other cities, if your a tourist they get kind of excited and treat you even nicer! 

Sooo, After paris for a couple days, Will and I came back to Angers for a week where my wonderful host parents made us dinner a couple times and Will got to experience a nicer laid back type of french life :)

I also just yesterday visited three more castles and the home of Leonardo de Vinci, so give me a day or two and I'll have so wonderful pictures of those places up for you :)

P.S. Paris is a place worth going to, I think everyone needs to experience it, just everyone will have their own opinions on it, and seeing that this is my blog, I just wanted to share with you mine :) 

Lunch in France!

As you could probably tell, that was only my second bite of the sandwich... So let me give you a better explanation, the mustard is definitely what they call mutarde ancienne because it has all those little mustard seeds in it, so its a little spicyy, but with the mayo it's perfect! The chicken is like a sliced seasoned fresh cooked chicken breast, not subway chicken lol. The bread is crunchy but doughy on the inside, and the egg is smooth and goes perfect with everything else! The lettuce and tomato keep the sandwich fresh, and for dessert, I have a apple pie type of pastry :) I'll show you one of those another dayy :) I hope this video inspires you all to eat a sandwich like this!

Nantes :)

This past saturday I took a day trip with some of my friends to Nantes, which is a city west of Angers. It was not through our school, so I was pretty excited when everything turned out great!!! Our tickets were only 16 euros round trip, and while I was there, I ate a delicious lunch for not a lot of money! Overall it was a fun trip, and made me confident I can travel on my own in europe via the trains :) Heres a bunch of pictures from my little day trip, hope you enjoy them :)

This is the castle in Nantes, for 3 euros we got to view the museum inside, which was huge! It took us 2 hours to get through it!!!

This was very interesting to see, it's a mermaid that used to be on the front of a boat, its made out of wood!!  Nantes used to be a really big port city so there is a lot of history based on the slave trade and big classic wooden boats.

Once you pass through the big stone walls to the castle this is the pretty inside castle.

Then when we were done with the castle we ate some lunch, I had roasted duck with potatoes!!, It was delicious, then we went to the cathedral. This is the back view of the church.

This is one of the side entrances.

This was the main entrance, the carvings are so crisp and detailed!

The church windows from indoors.

Around the tomb of a king in the church, please note she's choking out a dragon!

At the foot of the kings tomb, a king :)

This pictures shows the age of this church, you can see compared to the wall on the right the difference in age.

I wanted to find a way to express how tall this church was, my neck hurt when we left because I was looking up so much! There were these gorgeous chandeliers in every arc of the church, they were made in the same style as the church itself.

There were sculptures all over this church of so many saints and people this was the most of them in one spot, but each sculpture was extremely impressive and detailed.

This was a holy water fountain, please note, that is a REAL CLAM!!!!!!!!!

This was the front of the church!!!!!!!!!! It was sooooo impressive to look at!

Heres me in front of the church, and as you can see it was so tall Maria couldn't fit me and it together in one picture!

This was the loire river in Nantes, please note, the loire river is like everywhere in france!

Here's me with the boats on the river

This is a picture of a Japanese garden we found

Me in the garden :)

And to finish it off the Japanese building in the Japanese garden.

Thats all for Nantes, but I'm going to Paris this weekend!!! So that should be fun :)