Pérouges (Pay-rouujjj)

Hello! And let me take you on a virtual tour of the Medieval town of Pérouges, France!

This small village is located north-east of Lyon, just 30 minutes by train. The tiny and currently under-construction train station is about a 15-20 minute walk away from the little Medieval village perched on a hill (or 25-45 minute walk- depending on if you take a slight detour like us, and how in-shape you are to make it up the steep gravel mount). There are sheep grazing the hills as you climb up to this blast-from-the-past village (and I do mean... passst). The town was home to farmers, ploughmen, weavers, butchers, and ironworkers.... these craftsmen enjoyed communal freedom as early as 1236 (according to the visitor's website).

The town's name is tied to another city of the same name in Italy (also known as Perogia). A Gallic colony is said to have migrated from Pérouges, Italy to this area of France. The Romans built a look-out tower in this village to defend their prize Lugdunum territory, or Lyon. The first historical date I can find for Pérouges is 1167.... something about some guy taking refuge in the walled-in-city to get away from the troops of the Archbishop of Lyon. So- let's just say- it's purty old:)

You can enter the city through either the Porte d'en Haut or the Porte d'en Bas (high door or low door). We entered through the "low door" arch where you can find an inscription that reads when translated: Perouges of the Perougians, impregnable town, the Dauphiné scoundrels tried to take her but could not do so. However, they took the doors,the hinges and the locks and fell with them. Let the Devil take them! (How dramatic! Perfect for the set of the 3 Musketeer's!) Through this entrance, you continue onto the Rue des Rondes, or what I liked to call it: "the round road"... because it goes around the entire village. Once we had seen all that we could see, we made the loop a second time just for kicks.

When we first arrived, we were pretty hungry from the adventure of getting side-tracked and climbing the baby mountain hill, so we went straight for one of 3 open restaurants in the village- L'Auberge du Coq (or the Rooster's Tavern...?). Their specialties included farm raised roast chicken, the famous Perougian galette au sucre, and grenouilles... Yes- frog legs. And well- when in Pérouges, I say taste the frog legs. For an apéritif, I had a delicious kir... so I was ready for my froggies when they brought them out in the old frying pan and hot plate apparatus. The woman scooped a hearty portion onto my plate... I guess to show me I shouldn't eat them from the pan, and gave me a wet-nap. They are deep-fried in a garlic batter... so as you can imagine, they didn't taste half bad. I had to get used to how many bones were in each little portion... so that got annoying after the first few (I'm not big on having to work too hard for my food lol). Thankfully, they also brought out a huge casserole dish full of the regional favorite gratin dauphinois (or very creamy scalloped potatoes). The bland, but super creamy potatoes balanced out the greasy froggies (with meat that tasted somewhere in between chicken and fish). I can only call them froggies now because it's been a few days since I ate them. I had to try very hard not to think of the frogs-in-wheelchairs scenario when eating them or later that evening. They weren't bad, but I don't think I'll be eating them again...

For dessert, I tried the Pérouges famous galette au sucre. A galette is technically translated as a flat cake made of puff pastry, but the one I had in Pérouges tasted more like a pizza crust covered in sugar. It was nice, but I think I'd rather a nice mousse au chocolat or tarte aux pralines:)

After our lengthy French lunch, we headed back out onto the round street. The streets are very narrow and cobbled. If you ever find yourself in this little town, make sure you have on sneakers. (I can't imagine trying to walk around in high heels!) We were surprised to see cars driving on the narrow streets amongst the modest grey stone houses.... can't imagine that's good for your tires...

Anyway, on our walk, we passed the village's one and only boulangerie, a few gift shops (I bet this place is pretty crowded in the summer), the 15th century fortress church, a 33 meter deep well, la Place du Tilleul (sort of town square), a 13th century Ostellerie, 2 sun dials, and beautiful old houses with wide first-floor windows where merchants displayed goods long ago. The fortress church was built before the siege of 1468, but destroyed by the townspeople themselves to keep it safe. It was rebuilt in the following years, keeping this Medieval church in remarkable condition. It was a cool church (and I do mean cool as in cold too... very drafty!)... with circular windows and wooden statues from the middle ages.

Although the town started to feel a little grey and dim after a while on a chilly February day, it is easy to see why this cité has been voted as one of France's most beautiful villages. I'd like to come back in the spring time when there is a bit more color though! Even still... it's both so rich in history and charm... that the Pérouges visitor's website boasts of a recent visit from former President Bill Clinton and his wife Hil;)

Hope you enjoyed your visit!

Reste cool:)

Pérouges Picture Post

Coucou!

Well- I'm very sleepy after a late night and a big day.... so here are some pictures from our little adventure to Pérouges. I'm going to post about my fun night out with les filles and write a more detailed Pérouges post for you tomorrow:)

A plus!

Colmar Pictures

Trip to/from Colmar

ohhhhh where to begin? As you can tell from the title, the Colmar adventure was not just in getting and being there, but also in getting back. But I'll back up a few days before I dive into that part of the story.

Friday night, after going shopping for a few things at Porte des Alpes and watching Elf (to get ourselves in the Christmas spirit), Hannah and I went to bed early to get up early early for our train to Colmar. Catching our train was fine, we both grabbed a pastry and coffee, we chatted it up with Caroline and Lindsey on the train, and took a cat nap or 2 in between. Helen and her boyfriend, visiting from England, got on the train at the Bourg-en Bresse stop.

We arrived in Colmar about 11:30am.... excited to be there, but also pretty hungry. We decided to get the lay of the land first and walk around a few markets before finding a place to eat.... which should have been fine had there not been a million people there. These markets were smaller, very cute, and way more crowded than the ones I went to last weekend in Strasbourg. Of course, by the time our hands and feet were frozen through and we were starting to get cranky from hunger, every restaurant we found was full. They had signs saying complet, reopen at 2. So we tried to hold off and walk around more, stopping in a store once to thaw out. We kept our eye out for an open restaurant with no such luck. I was getting to the point of feeling sick from not eating for such a long time, so I went into a restaurant, asked how long, and we waited until we got a table. Thankfully, we only had to wait about 15 minutes to be sat. However, we had to wait about 30 minutes for our food to come out once we had ordered.... we were feeling pressed for more time at the markets, so we ate insanely fast and paid as quickly as we could. (Side note- our waitress was probably really fed up with all the foreign tourists so she was super rude to us the entire time. This was my first experience with a very obviously rude French waitress.... she rolled her eyes at us anytime we asked for something.... slammed things down on the table...ignored us when we tried to get her attention. I guess it's a good thing for her tip is always included in the bill in France!)

After inhaling our food, we were able to enjoy the markets a little more.... even though it was ridiculously crowded. The markets sold different things than in Strasbourg, but still had the vin chaud and other Alsatian delights (pain d'epices or spice bread, gingerbread, pretzels, hot drinks, etc.) We shopped, took pictures, got lost occasionally from one another (it was hard keeping up with 6 people in a large crowd). We found petite Venise (little Venice), a quarter of the town that had cute little bridges over canals and gondolas (snow covered and not in use at this time of year). After buying some pretzels for the ride home and seeing the lights come on, we headed back to the train station.

When we got to the station, the timetable showed that our train was 15 minutes late. We huddled in the book store.... and eventually got on the train about 20 minutes late. On the trip home, everything went fine... we had a great time talking about our favorite topic, the differences between England and America. Helen and Rob got off in Bourg.... and then about 20 minutes later, the train stopped in the middle of nowhere. About this same time, the train became unbearably hot. I guess they wanted to make sure we didn't freeze, but it was so hot and dry, that we often got up to go stand in the little area between the cars where it was cooler. They came on to announce that the tracks were frozen (or something like that) and that we would be waiting here a while. If in 45 minutes, we couldn't continue on, they would send for coach buses to come pick us up. Well, of course, 45 minutes went by, and they came on to say that we'd be rolling our way back to a smaller station to be picked up by the buses. The train ride was supposed to take about 4.5 hours. We sat on the train for a good 7 hours. We didn't get onto the buses (which smelled of body odor and alcohol from some of our fellow passengers) until about 1:40am.... we didn't get off the bus until about 3am... and we didn't get home until about 4am. We had been up since 5:20... so we were working on being up for almost 24 hours. It was a mess. Thankfully, SNCF (the train company) provided us with free taxi rides from the train station to home, as the metro system wasn't running that late. They also gave us little boxed meals with water. And they also gave us reimbursement cards, which we can send in and receive a whole 50% of our ticket price (24 euros.... so 12 euros). But- that's 12 euros I didn't have before.... and an experience I've never had before. I would like to not have this experience again.... but at least I know I can live through it if need be:)

This morning, I made myself get up at 11:30 so I had time to eat, shower, and see Hannah off before going to tutor Julien. We mostly had a conversation in English today, which I think he thought was fun. He doesn't ever get to speak English... so he enjoyed being able to take a second to think through how to formulate a response and have me correct his pronunciation. I also got to learn a little bit more about him and his family (I got to ask lots of questions...and I figured it wasn't considered being nosy if I was providing a language experience hehe). Afterwards, Corinne drove me and my big bags of laundry to the laundromat... hesitantly letting me out....asking if I'd be walking home in the rain and if I'd be ok. I told her I'd take a bus home, which I didn't end up doing (sometimes it's just faster to walk than wait). I'm exhausted still, but I'm very glad to have some laundry done in a real washing machine and dryer done for this week.

Anyway, pictures will be posted tomorrow. I have a few snowy ones from Lyon and lots from yesterday. Hope you enjoyed hearing about my crazy adventure!

Reste cool:)

More Bourg Pics

Trilingual Day in Bourg-en-Bresse (with 2 versions of English)

Today, Lindsey, Hannah, Caroline, and I went to visit Helen who lives in Bourg-en-Bresse. Bourg, as Helen calls it, is about an hour north-east of Lyon by train. Helen lives and teaches in the Bourg area high school, but comes to visit Lyon most weekends. So we thought it would be nice to go and visit her! And for only 11 euros round-trip, it was a perfect little day trip for our long weekend:)

Once we arrived, we started off by going to see her high school (or lycee), which houses students and language assistants. The students are usually only there during the week (as they may live farther out of town), but Helen and the Spanish language assistant reside there full time in dorm rooms. The high school itself is pretty cool because it's old and has a beautiful courtyard with "whomping willow" like trees (Harry Potter reference-fyi). It also has a ton of plaques to commemorate professors and students who were involved in the French Resistance movement during WWII. Cool, non?

Then, we walked around the very cute old town area (with more wood-framed houses and trompe l'oeil paintings...can you tell which is real and which is a painting?) and went to the huge Saturday market. It was such a pleasant experience in comparison to the hussle and bussle of the large markets around Lyon or Paris. This was much less fast pace, even though it still had tons of vendors, and there were lots of stands giving free samples (which of course we tried). After a good 15-20 minutes of walking around the yummy fruits, cheeses, vegetables, meats, nuts, and flowers, we decided it was lunch time.

We went to a darling (well it was) creperie, probably owned by the man and woman serving us. The restaurant was modern on the inside, but also quaint and very clean, with a moderately priced creperie menu. We had some delicious cider and crepes sales (or real food crepes, as opposed to sugar crepes). These are made with a different type of pancake batter and filled with anything from ham and cheese to chicken and potatoes. I just had the regular old ham and cheese crepe, but it was an excellent choice:) Then for desert, I felt like I couldn't possibly continue eating, so Caroline and I split a caramel crepe. It was basically a crepe with a delicious, buttery caramel puddle on top. I kind of wish I had eaten it with a spoon. It was SO good.

And then, we just talked and talked and sat in this quaint little restaurant for 2 hours. It is amazing how long we can go just talking about the differences between American English and British English. I actually learned quite a lot about different phrases they say... for example, in American English we say to rob or bugglarize, the British say to burgle. In America, we go to the bathroom to pee, in England, they go to the loo to have a wee. In America we have fanny-packs, in England, they have bum-packs (and their fanny is not the same fanny!). In England, to say someone is speaking with a "posh" accent means that they are speaking proper English (and it isn't usually meant in a good way... as in they are Snooty and speak the Queen's English). In American English, you might hear someone say they had a wicked awesome night (well at least maybe my friends up in New England say this) or an amazing time. In British English, you might hear, "I had a dead (or right) proper night." The list goes on and on and that's why we sat and talked for 2 hours... it was a dead hilarious time ;)

We eventually left in search for the main attraction in Bourg- the 16th century monastery. On our way, we met up with the Spanish language assistant, and Helen's friend, Racine (I think that's how it's spelled) who is from Mexico. She obviously speaks Spanish and French, but not so much English (although she seemed to understand a good bit). So we mostly spoke in French from then on out (and I attempted to recall the very little Spanish I once knew... which was super hard to do with French in my head). Anyway, the monastery has a beautiful patterned roof (similar to the ones I saw in Dijon) and more wood framed work in the courtyard of the monastery. There were several modern and classical art exhibits up in the Church and the monastery (we enjoyed interpreting the modern art especially).

On our way back, we had a quick look at the Cathedral Notre-Dame in Bourg, continued comparing languages (now Spain-Spanish to Hispanic-Spanish, French, American English-British English), stopped for a quick drink (I had mango juice, yumz) and got back on the train. Our brains certainly got a work out today!

Enjoy the pictures:)

Reste cool!

Because it's so pretty...

More Annecy pictures!!!!