Again, I am a little behind as far as the updates go...
I had a nice break in my semester from Saturday, October 22nd to Sunday, October 30th, week 8 of my 15 week stint here in Paris. I decided it would be best spent with my Aunt Kristi in her home in Lavaur in the South of France, seeing as she so graciously offered to not only to let me stay with her and show me cool stuff, but she also said I could bring a friend! So on a Friday evening, the 21st, I made my way down to Toulouse (a larger town in the South of France) where Kristi amazingly picked me up at approximately 1:00 in the morning! It was so nice to see an American, and family at that! It was definitely time for some R&R for me, and I had been missing my family a lot. We had a pretty easy Saturday, just waking up late, watching French cartoons with my 4 -year-old cousin Maxim, and buying groceries and such. Seeing her home in the daylight blew me away: it is an adorable farm house surrounded by beautiful rolling hills on all sides and a hazy view of Mountains on the horizon on a clearer day. Watching the sun rise over the hills that first morning was incredible!
Sunday was the big Rugby match (the World Cup or something like that... lol) between France and New Zealand. Kristi and her husband Theiry, had a few friends over and we drank wine and ate cheese and sausages and pates. There were 2 other little boys around this day, too, so they were very cute to play with. Then, later that day Aunt Kristi and I went in Lavaur to pick-up my friend Leanne from the train station and we just went home to relax. Monday we used as another lazy day (I really got used to the schedule of waking up late and slowly waking up with the help of French cartoons and chocolate-filled pastries). We just hung around the house, went to the grocery store, and we contemplated our plan of attack for the rest of the week.
We woke up early Tuesday morning so we could go to the Pyrenees Mountains and we started the day with the 2-hour drive to get to Seix, an adorable mountain town on the way to the peaks where we wanted to walk around. We stopped to see the gite that my grandparents had rented one year when they visited France and made it up to Col de la Core, a nice picnic-y area with some small walking trails. It had the most incredible view of mountains in every direction and all the fall color of the trees and cows and sheep wandering on distant mountains... breathtaking! We climbed around for a little while and took a TON of pictures, but we decided that we just had to come back to the mountains another day, so we would gear up a little better for a hike that day. Once we were thoroughly exhausted we piled back into the car to go home.
Wednesday, we decided, was a good day to go to the shore and see the beach and stop in the medieval town of Carcassone on the way back. The beach was also roughly a 2-hour drive from Lavaur, but in a different direction. The beach was a little chilly and windy, like we expected it would be, but it was beautiful just to see the Mediterranean Sea. When we stopped in Carcassone on the way back it was like walking through a little medieval town within castle walls filled with tons of shops and little restaurants. Many of them touristy, as expected, but they had some cool ones with candy, soaps and candles, crystals (I got a few crystal pendants there) and tons with little toy chevaliers (knights) and swords and such.
Thursday was decided to be our second day in the mountains, so we headed out early for the drive (which didn't feel as long anymore) and stopped in Seix again. We went up a different direction into the mountains this time because we heard of a ski resort that we wanted to check out and see if they had any walking paths, or at least any for cross-country skiing that we could just walk. Leanne goes to school in Vermont, so being in the mountains and at a ski resort, even without the snow and all the people, totally made her feel at home! We drove around for a little while, wandering until we found some kind of path, and we found one up where some of the rent-able cabins were at the resort. It turned out to be a beautiful walk... it felt as though we were really right on the peak of the mountains, again mountains sprawled in every direction as far as the eye could see, which just blew me away. We even had a little picnic on top of a mountain. Imagine us plopped down on top of a mountain eating little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice boxes, and ham & cheese flavored chips haha. (France has different flavors of everything, chips, yogurt, etc, and I am convinced that some of these NEED to be sold in the States, ex: Coconut Activia yogurt= out of this world). Once we got enough walking and fresh air, and hundreds of pictures, we had one more stop before we went home. We thought it would be cool to find a yarn shop in the mountians, because Leanne and I are both into knitting on a hobby-level, so we got a little lost finding it but once we did Max pet some goats and we checked out the little shop with every color yarn you could imagine! After the quick stop, we had had enough walking and fresh air, and hundreds of pictures, and we climbed sleepily back into the car to return to Lavaur. Once we got home, however, Kristi made some amazing Boeuf Bourguignon, Thiery made pasta from scratch, and we had a little French feast :)
Leanne and I thought we would have to get up early on Friday morning to take the 6 hour train back to Paris at 9:00 something, but luckily we were bumped back to one at 4:00 pm so we had enough lazy time to wake up slowly in the morning, relax, pack, and bring ourselves back to the busy city. Amazing week overall, I will always be soo grateful that I had the opportunity to see where and how Kristi gets to live, hike in the Pyrenees, picnic by the Mediterranean, and wander though a medieval town.
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